Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by ra1n85 3777 days ago
Amazing series.

I still recall being able to recount all of the 7 wonders, all of the large Greek city states, and all that other countless historical context that the developers packed into the game that gave me a slight leg up in middle school history class.

And of course I'll encourage my children to play someday. No childhood is complete without having to fight back Gandhi's unrelenting hordes of musketmen with stealth bombers.

2 comments

It would be remiss to mention Civilization and Gandhi on a tech site without discussing why he was such a crazy warmonger.

In the original Civilization, Gandhi's "aggression" rating was set to 1 to make him a pacifist. Except that when a civilization adopted the Democracy form of government, this reduced the leader's aggression rating by 2. The ratings were unsigned, so this wrapped around and gave Gandhi an "aggression" rating of 255 once he adopted Democracy. Oopsie.

It's also worth pointing out that apparently in some later editions of the game they have reimplemented this bug as a joke. (Not a very good joke, IMO.)
You just solved a major mystery of my youth. Thank you!! :)
Wow - that's hilarious. I guess we should be grateful it was only a char ...
The expected range for aggression is 1-10. So a max unsigned char makes Gandhi plenty aggressive.
interesting, I remember this happening and thought was odd!
Just hope that your kids won't try to answer questions about Ghandi in class :)