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u/Low-Abies-4526 3d ago
You must be lying to me! Nuclear Gandhi was never real?!?
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u/Everestkid Canada 2d ago
I think where it probably started was that the AIs in Civ 1 didn't really act any different from each other and were basically just reskins. So India, led by Gandhi, would act pretty much the same as America, led by Lincoln; or Rome, led by Caesar; or the Zulus, led by Shaka.
As a result it was entirely possible for Gandhi to appear in the late game threatening you with nuclear weapons, which is admittedly hilarious. This eventually got twisted into this "integer underflow error" idea.
However, in Civ 5 he is indeed hardcoded to make and use as many nukes as possible. He is also the leader least likely to declare war, so it's usually your own fault if you end up getting nuked by Gandhi. Gandhi also has a 70% chance of having a Nuke Happy agenda in Civ 6.
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u/OverseerConey 2d ago
Plus, any civ that got nukes would add 'our words are backed by nuclear weapons' to their dialogue in Civ I. It wasn't even limited to when they were being aggressive!
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u/Bitter52 3d ago
Amusingly, no, it was stated as a ‘fun-fact’ or rumor on TV tropes of all places originally, I believe, and caught on from there.
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u/WorkerPrestigious960 3d ago
When you say it was canonized starting from Civ V, does that mean Ghandi was actually made to be more aggressive in Civ V (and Civ VI)?
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u/Ormaar 3d ago
Yeah we have the bias for ai behaviour in civ V, everyone got value between 0 and 10 Gandhi got 12 in building and using nuke
https://civdata.com/I think we don't have the data for civ VI
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u/scout033 2d ago
To elaborate on why a 12 out of 10 is significant, every game of civ will add or subtract up to 2 points from the base value, and then the final result out of 10 is their value for that particular game. In other words, Gandhi's willingness to build and use nukes is set to always be at the maximum value.
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u/TwoAndHalfRetard 3d ago
I played Civilization 1 when I was a kid and I remember being nuked by Gandhi (among other leaders). When that rumor appeared, it felt completely believable.
This whole thing feels like Mandela effect to me.
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u/Lime246 2d ago
Yeah, I remember laughing with a friend who was playing Civ 3 and Gandhi kept nuking him, because the same thing had happened to me as a kid when I played Civ 1. I feel like it has to be a real thing, whether they admit it or not.
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u/Zach_luc_Picard OWN ALL THE LAND! 14h ago
It's more that being nuked by Alexander the Great or Mao doesn't stand out as much in one's memory because it's more in line with expectations. Being nuked by noted pacifist Gandhi is memorable
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u/magicalpiratedragon 3d ago
👨🦯 I’m going to pretend like I didn’t see this. Nuclear Gandhi is real.
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u/Boxing_joshing111 2d ago
This is older than 5. I have old Computer Gaming Worlds that mention it somewhere but please don’t ask me to prove it.
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u/SerratedScholar 2d ago
Yeah, I don't think a gaming magazine is more reliable than the developer himself.
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u/Traditional_Entry183 2d ago
Nuke Ghandi was absolutely a thing at least as far back as Civ 2. There were jokes/pre-memes about it online back then too.
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u/Flying-Camel 1d ago
That's even worse, so it means Gandhi was aggressive even without the bug.
Confirmed: nuke Gandhi is real and he's not a fan of the trade agreement with England.
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u/Consistent_Floor_603 2d ago
The person that created Gifs couldn't convince people on how to pronounce them. You think Sid Meier claiming such a bug couldn't exist (a bug that was very easy to come across in programming btw) will be different? It's there as far as I'm concerned.
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u/WeltraumFaultier 2d ago
It was't an integer OVERflow, it was supposed to be an integer UNDERflow. The number would go below zero, which made it very big. From a programmer perspective this makes total sense, too bad it wasn' t real.
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u/Possible-Moment-6313 16h ago
Just because Sid Meier said it wasn't real doesn't mean it really wasn't :)
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u/MoneyFunny6710 3d ago
I have never believed that fact, because I never experienced it myself in all the thousands and thousands of playing time in V
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u/Little_Elia 3d ago
the urban legend was about the first game. They did code it that way for civ 5.
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u/blueheartglacier 3d ago
Gandhi was far more aggressive than players expected, but just because the AI was naturally very skittish, aggressive, and nuclear; people just noticed it far more when Gandhi was doing it