Making the Case For a Feudal Government

Good Day Fellow Fanaticans,

With the discovery of Feudalism, I believe that now is a great time to revisit an idea I had championed way back in the late days of my Presidency of our young nation. In order to win this game with the resources handed us, I predicted that our best option would be to become a nation of tightly built towns of Size 6 or less under Feudalism. In my returning to this game, I have found that a tight build has been mostly followed --- with the added bonus of doing the same on our western island.

So, what kind of nation are we at this point?

We are a nation that struggles with happiness, using 10% of our funds for luxuries just to keep most of our cities from rioting.

We are a nation that cannot at this point afford to produce Temples or Aqueducts, or many other improvements for that matter.

We are a nation of untrained fighters with nary the finances to modernize our forces.

We are an Agricultural nation with less than bountiful land.

We are the type of nation that will not stand a chance if we continue our current path under Monarchy.

For our nation, the answer lies with Feudalism. Let's compare, shall we?

Unit Support

Feudalism: 5 units per town(size 1-6); 2 units per city (size 7-12)
Monarchy: 2 units per town(size 1-6); 4 units per city (size 7-12)

Our situation: We currently have 75 units, yet can only support 46 of them under Monarchy. That is 29g thrown out the window each turn! Under Feudalism, we could support 99 units at the present time, giving our military the opportunity to grow without hurting our pocketbook.

And since we are a nation stagnated by unhappiness and lack of infrastructure, we may as well use our small city status to our advantage!

Rush Method

Feudalism: Pop rush
Monarchy: Treasury

Some will say that they don't want to return to the dark days of the pop rush. But to that I say: why shouldn't we?

Our situation: Truth be told, we should not be using our hard-earned gold for anything but upgrading those obsolete units! So I would balk at using cash to rush anything at this point anyway. The poprush may be a consideration in extreme cases, but this alone should not dissuade us from switching to this government.

Corruption, Martial Law

Feudalism: Problematic, 3 per city/town
Monarchy: Problematic, 3 per city/town

It's a wash in these departments......

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Now the only drawback I can see is this: why should we risk the government switch (and accompanying Anarchy) during this uncertain time? Beacuse it will be well worth it in the long run.

Feudalism: 5-7 turns of Anarchy --- we lose 250-350g plus 5-7 production turns
Monarchy: maintain the status quo

Our situation: Yes, we lose the production at a time we need it most, but the gold gets paid back in 10-12 turns --- and continues to keep on giving even as our military grows to 100. And with each new city we build comes support for five more units!

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In closing, I would like to thank everyone who has read this far, and ask that you strongly consider this government switch. We won't end up as the most glamorous in the game, but we will be able to protect and expand our great land of Fanatica with honor and absolute strength.

Please take the time to discuss the important decision that faces you.

Respectfully,

Donovan Zoi
Governor of Equestria

I'm happy too see our governors getting involved. After all, Rik isn't perfect


But I also fear that C3B will take the chance to attack us in anarchy. Also, this war may be long drawn out, so the WW might get us a bit.

A link to the Last goverment type debate

Ability to cash-rush is far superior and overcomes easily some (very little indeed) extra unit support. Feudalism is a very inefficient government just because of this. Pop-rushing will also create considerable unhappiness and has a very limited use of 20 shield increments. Maximum duration of Anarchy can be 9 turns, that is something to consider.

akots said:

Ability to cash-rush is far superior and overcomes easily some (very little indeed) extra unit support. Feudalism is a very inefficient government just because of this. Pop-rushing will also create considerable unhappiness and has a very limited use of 20 shield increments. Maximum duration of Anarchy can be 9 turns, that is something to consider.

Click to expand...

As I have stated above, poprushing is a non-factor in this proposal. I included it for the sake of completion.

What good is cash-rushing if we continue to fritter away 30+ gold per turn on unit support, and have to curb the growth of our army to keep from making that number worse?

When will we have the appropriate funds to cash-rush expensive things like Temples and Aqueducts for 20+ cities? And why should we have to when we can enter a government that actually allows us to benefit from our small cities?

Why should the cash rush even be an option when we have 23 Warriors running around and 7 spearmen ready to be upgraded? Without our complimentary ACs, we would be in sad shape indeed. All this and several of you think we are ready for war!

As far as I can see your only valid point for the short term is our untimely anarchy. Other than that, our situation under Monarchy seems dire indeed. Feudalism is the only reasonable choice here.

@DZ: iirc, I have played an SG in Feudalism and it was a hightmare. The inability to cash-rush and especially partially cash-rush what is needed when it is needed in indispensable. I would even say that it is not worth revolting from Despotism to Feudalism and might be better to stay in Despotism all the way. But it is a rather personal opinion though based on some exerience. You can always try to arrange for some game to further elaborate on the strong points of Feudalism. For example, you revolt to Feudalism and your opponent to Monarchy and this would have been tested in PBEM or Multiplayer game. I'll give you 3 settlers to start with compared to mine single one on a small continents map.

30gpt is very little fraction of our income indeed. And this would not have even been an issue but became one recently during the few preceding turns. This is worrysome for me as well since no effort has been made to cut down on these expences by building more cities and growing the existing ones. Most of our cities have potential to grow to size 7 at least and a few can grow to size 8 even with a single luxury and warriors which serve MP duty don't have to be upgraded.

It looks like we are in the stage of a military build up for war and the longer the war is postponed, the worse would be the devastating impact of this build up on our economy. Triggering the Golden Age as soon as possible would enable to partially relieve the burden, boost the war preparations, and enable considerable additional growth of the population as well as higher research rate. As it stands now, we are building a rather useless military (without required upgrades) and at rather slow rate insufficient to prevail in the war.

But this is again a rather personal opinion.

akots,

I will have nothing but respect for your experienced opinion as it pertains to Feudalism. I must admit that my sponsoring of this government change is purely based on my gut instinct after crunching some numbers.

I guess that I also have a different goal in mind for our nation as well, as I don't see the reasoning behind building an Aqueduct just to get that extra pop point. Especially when you multiply that by 18-20 cities. I am a builder at heart, but I am also a realist.

My goal for the nation in its current state? I truly believe we need to embrace our true essence in this game. We are devoid of luxuries, and almost everything costs the full amount to build. We have inherited a land that will not afford us the grand lifestyle of a CDZ or CGN, with their Size 12 cities. We are wedged between a crumbling relationship to the north and the uncertainty of the intentions of the puppetmasters to our west. In other words, we ain't got much.

This is where my dream for this nation comes in, though it is only my opinion as well. Let's protect our land to the fullest with troops one hundred strong. Let's use our gold to upgrade all of our troops, leaving a few Warrior MPs behind. Let's use our cities to build only military units and Settlers. Let's march through the Tobacco fields, 30 MI-strong with Pike reinforcements, toward the Brazucan fortress, leveling every greencloth in our path and settling the neutral playground once and for all. Let's table the dreams of becoming a more enlightened people and just put our all into this one battle. We can do it with Feudalism; the numbers tell me that it can.

Micromanaging will help us offset the lack of cashrushing, but we must be vigilant. We can do this, akots, but we have to start today.

At least someone is offering up a plan.

I will support the change. I believe with the extra gold, we will be able to prepare our forces more quickly for war.

This war is the end of the game is it not? If C3B is gone, we secure a spot in the finals?

After some quick skimming (I need to get going, will read everything this afternoon) I find my gut instinct to be the same as that of DZ's.

I believe that we would have been served well with a Feudalistic government if we were assured of not going to war for 10+ turns. That, sadly, is not the case. We are very unlikely to have such a luxury.

This means that we would risk a very long anarchy period while C3B sends its fleet and Immortals to destroy us. By the time we got the Feudal government going, we would already have to increase our luxury base due to war weariness (those spears are a 2/unit hit on WW, not to mention those towns being captured giving huge ww). We can not switch to Feudalism and win the game.

If we already had the military that DZ envisioned, we could probably hold C3B off long enough to make the anarchy period pay off in Feudalism. We do not have the 'penalty' phase to protect us from attack. That is the bottom line. C3B will attack if we go into anarchy, and the ww will destroy any advantage the extra unit support might give.

Otherwise...as for Akots claim, we could take some of our Iron Island cities and produce those cheap mp's by pop rushing whenever the city got to size 2. We could then just place the laborer on science or tax and not worry about unhappiness in the city (and the city would STILL grow due to the Agriculture trait!)

War Weariness.......how did I miss that? Can you give an estimate on how quickly WW would escalate? If war is declared by C3B during our Anarchy, would we start the new government with War Weariness?

Also, do you have an estimate on where C3B troops may be positioned? Do you think the Galleys nearby are carrying Immortals right now? In other words, can they do that much damage in the 6-9 turns of Anarchy?

Sorry for all of the questions, but I feel that these are all pertinent. I still feel that our troop build-up will suffer under Monarchy, but the WW factor under Feudalism is a biggie.

Let's continue to discuss our options.

The problem is that while we are suffering from another 7 or so turns from anarchy, C3B will be building units and units and... units. We won't be able to make it if we switch again.

rcoutme: 2 feet is about 60 - 70cm... 750cm would be about... 10 to 13 feet or so. So perhaps you should fix your sig.

According to this: http://www.civfanatics.com/civ3acad_war_weariness.shtml each worker captured will cost 1 ww, each unit attacked will cost 2 (win or lose), each time an attacker loses (when we attack) will cost 2, each pillage will cost 1, each city of Size 1 costs 16 and any other city we lose costs 17.

You start with -30 ww if you are attacked and 31 starts the ww potentials.

31: 25% unhappy
61: 50% unhappy
121: 100% unhappy