A change to feudalism.

If feudalism had same corruption as despotism but free unit support like anarchy does. (the lords who swear fealty also pay for their own troops, but because of the individual absolute power over a area corruption is still highly present)

Maybe additionally feudalism could be required for the knights templer GW. So what do you guys think? Too powerful? Not powerful enough? Don't want feudalism to be too useful since its a tech you'll get anyways and easily (not optional or even branched off and comes with other useful stuff)

Feudalism is already very powerful in certain situations (100K). THe government, short of a commerce bonus, will usually not compete with Republic.

Exactly what situations is it "powerful" and how? Don't you have any feedback for my idea?

TruePurple said:

Exactly what situations is it "powerful" and how? Don't you have any feedback for my idea?

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He already said it: 100k cultural victory.

If you didn't notice civver, thats very vague on the "what" (as quick as you can every time your aiming for 100k, no matter what nation, terrian, expansion size, neighbors etc?), and doesn't cover the "how" (is it good for 100k victories) at all.

Feudalism is funky in that it has REGRESSIVE unit support. I.E. a Town provides more free units than a City or a Metropolis. So then it behooves you to spam-settle en masse, with large numbers of towns that are so densely packed none of them will have enough tiles to get above population size six.

[Not a bad way to deal with the classic "bad start" of being utterly lacking in fresh water, actually ]

This also happens to set you up well for going for a 100K Cultural Victory, as each tiny town can build its own temple, it's own library, etc.

Also connected to this, is that if you have a settlement that is in danger of reaching size 7, under Feudalism you have Population Rush (rather than Cash Rush) so you kill two birds with one stone; A) you shrink your city, and B) get that cultural building earlier, thus it generates more total culture.

Feudalism is fine the way it is and in my opinion needs no tinkering.

Being the only pop-rushing government until you hit the Industrial Era, Feudalism allows you to pop rush plenty of Temples, Cathedrals, and Colosseums. The two drawbacks of pop-rushing are mitigated because A) the unhappiness caused by whipping is cancelled out by the contentment generated by those buildings, and B) the loss in pop is to your advantage because it allows you to maintain a larger military. Take that military, conquer more cities, and pop rush even more culture buildings.

Feudalism accels at this because it's availalbe much sooner than Communism and Fascism, and you'll need that additional culture sooner in order to accumulate enough for a Global Cultural victory.

I used Feudalism in my last game (first time using it), and it worked out really well for my situation (large army, small towns, very little land improvement). The unit support structure worked really well for that situation, allowing me to have a large army at the time, expand through military conquest, and have science research ramped up to 80-90%.

It surprised me how well it worked out, and I'll probably use it again in the future. If I would have switched to Republic instead of Feudalism at the time, I would've gotten slammed by unit support costs which the increased commerce wouldn't have come close to covering (though I did switch to Republic once my initial military expansion was completed, tiles were setup to be worked, and the towns started getting to size 6+).

I ended up winning the game via domination and went the despotism-feudalism-republic-communism govt route (regent lvl).

So why is having lots of units especially important for cultural victory?

Sure it has less corruption and tile limit lifted. But if you want lots of unit support for small towns, why not just stay with despotism? Despotism is only 1 less per 6 or less town support. Despotism doesn't punish you for having towns on rivers/with aquaducts you want to grow (say to grab a wonder for the culture)

Even more importantly, if you go over the free unit max, despotism only chargers you 1 per unit. Rather then the punishing 3 per unit of feudalism. (even republic is only 2) Plus no anarchy to get on it

Even if feudalism was especially good for cuture victory (and I'm not sure that it is) I want it to be all around useful. Not just for very specialized situations/victory condition.

To make feudalism more generally useful we could make it 5/5/5 or at the very least niltch the 3 per extra down to 1.

But really, whats wrong with the idea I came up with? That is, all free units but despotism corruption. Might i get some feedback on that please?

Despotism has penalties on tiles that produce three or more of anything- shields, food, or commerce. It takes on away. This is crippling and it is why you should get out of it as fast as you can.

As to how Fuedalism is good for 100k, think about it- it is made for small towns spaced closely together, so you can have a lot more temples and libraries. It has pop rush, so you can whip those temples out faster. And it has high unit support per town, allowing you to field a large army to conquer your neighbor and ICS his territory, giving you many more temples and more unit support! It is a self perpetuating cycle!

Despotism has penalties on tiles that produce three or more of anything- shields, food, or commerce.

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If you had bothered to read my post, you'd know I know about that. Pretty basic information man.

It has ok unit support, Which gets reduced on any town with 6+. Having a few towns with 6+ can be very helpful to get culture for grabbing those GW (this I already said too)

It charges 3 gold per extra unit!! Humph.. if your not going to bother to read my post or respond to anything I said, why should I bother responding to anything more you said?

Does anyone have any feedback for the ideas and suggestions I made for feudalism?

I agree with Theryman about your idea. Sorry, but the despotic penalty is terrible and making Feudalism have the despotic corruption levels would simply make Feudalism worthless.

The power of Feudalism, as already discussed, is in 100K situations. Yes, it's true that despotism can also do pop rushing and has good unit support at less gpt cost if you overdo on units.

However, the main idea behind massive pop rushing efforts is to get pop! If you have the despotic penalty in force making all your irrigated grass worthless and lowering the benefits of your other food bonuses, it's obvious that your 100k efforts would be severely hindered.

TruePurple said:

Having a few towns with 6+ can be very helpful to get culture for grabbing those GW (this I already said too)

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Yep. No one said that your entire empire had to be size 6 and below. Certainly your core will be made of larger cities, and they definitely should consider the Great Wonders in a 100K effort. You just should also have a plethora of small settlements everywhere else.

Also, note that you almost never will run into unit support issues in Feudalism if you build all the small settlements it's designed for. In fact, in most any game hitting your free support limit is nigh impossible! You can easily have 500+ in unit support quite early in game. Thus, the 3gpt for unit costs is nearly irrelevant.

TruePurple said:

Does anyone have any feedback for the ideas and suggestions I made for feudalism?

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The changes you want to make will not honestly change things. For the free unit support, like Othniel said, if you are using Feudalism correctly, you will have way more support than you ever actually need. If you are not using it correctly, then you deserve to go bankrupt.

As for the Templar being able to be built only by civs in Feudalism, it would be historically accurate- after all, it declined soon after feudalism ended. However, would being able to build one wonder be worth passing up republic? The answer is no, especially a wonder as weak as the Knights Templar.

Theryman didn't say anything about my idea. So how can you agree with what he didn't say?

Othniel said:

making Feudalism have the despotic corruption levels would simply make Feudalism worthless.

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It would still lift tile limits Granted those tile limits aren't always "crippling" since many tiles don't hit the limit. Plus completely free unit support. Which would make it more generally all around useful. Not just for cultural victories. How is that "worthless"? It'd be like despotism with a couple nice bonuses.

Also don't forget my other idea of possibly making knights templer a feudalism wonder. I'm not sure if that would be too useful or not. Not sure about taking away that wonder option from the rest. But it sure would make feudalism a more.. interesting consideration.

Othniel said:

Also, note that you almost never will run into unit support issues in Feudalism if you build all the small settlements. In fact, in most any game hitting your free support limit is nigh impossible!

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Try deity level 7 AI on standard map, even just expanding fast enough to claim enough terrain before AI does is a challenge. You will not be left with alot of towns regardless then you'll believe in the possibility of reaching that +3 per unit cost even if every single town is below size 7.(but thanks to cramped conditions you'll want to expand your towns up) Plus unhappiness can be crippling. Yes pop rushing the temples if pop rush 1 is unhappiness neutral. But you'll need the temples benefit anyways. Pop rushing libraries too? Just watch how your economy etc cripples from unhappiness.

TruePurple said:

Theryman didn't say anything about my idea. So how can you agree with what he didn't say?

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I was in the middle of writing a response when I saw others had posted, so I was kinda cutting and pasting so that my post wouldn't be obsolete. Sorry.

Anyhow, I think both Theryman and I--along with others on this thread--were a little confused by what you meant by giving feudalism the despotic corruption levels. We, or at least I, assumed that meant the despotic tile penalty would still be in force. This line cleared up my misconception:

It would still lift tile limits

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Changing Feudalism to the "despotic corruption levels" would indeed make Feudalism very similar to Despotism, although I think that Feudalism has a slightly better empire corruption level.

I still stand by my comments that the free unit support thing is irrelevant if Feudalism is played right.

Try deity level 7 AI on standard map, even just expanding fast enough to claim enough terrain before AI does is a challenge.

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Actually, my normal level is Deity, and in fact my current solo game is on a Standard 60% Continents map with 7 other civs. Now, I'm not going for 100k--space instead--but I have plenty of towns if I wanted to do so. It's about 290AD, IIRC, and I easily have 50+ towns with still more room to expand (as I'm slaughtering Babylonian cities). And that's even with a CxxC spacing pattern, not ICS. Wanna see some pics?

How many other nations? What land mass? Deity gets so much more harder the more nations there are because of all the sweetheart tech deals that cause it to go flying off with the tech tree (making trading for tech tough when AI is many techs ahead of you)

If feudalism was free units period (along with despotism corruption to balance it & maybe knights templer) it would make it so there are more situations where it would be usable/useful. Even if everything you said about it being great for many town cultural wins were true, thats still a very specialized and limited use. It should be more broadly usable.

TruePurple said:

So why is having lots of units especially important for cultural victory?

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You need LOTS of units to conquer LOTS of territory in which to build LOTS of those little towns in which to build LOTS of temples, libs, unis, etc. Wonders generate comparatively little culture in a 100k game, as opposed to having all 5 culture-generating buildings in each of 150-200 small towns, especially when you can do it early enough to get the 1000-year doubling of culture.

Using Feudalism allows your population to grow faster (as someone already posted), so you can kill more citizens to build those culture-generating improvements. I've used Feudalism to win an Emperor-level SG using the Mongols, who get no discounts on cultural improvements. It worked very nicely and Feud needed no tweaking.

Well there is the single town cultural win as well.

" Using Feudalism allows your population to grow faster " You mean from tile restrictions lifted or something else?

1000-year doubling of culture? What do you mean?

So you don't think feudalism has a extremely specialized use? Or you prefer it to be specialized and not useful for more circumstances/goals? Or were you not listening to what I was saying as well?

TruePurple said:

Well there is the single town cultural win as well.

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Yes, but I wouldn't use Feud for that...completely different strategy.

" Using Feudalism allows your population to grow faster " You mean from tile restrictions lifted or something else?

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Yes, removing the Despotism penalty.

1000-year doubling of culture? What do you mean?

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Any cultural building which has been in existence for 1000 years generates twice the original culture. That's what makes your capital expand after 10 turns...the palace is 1000 years old. A temple built at, say, 1750bc will go from 2cpt to 4cpt at 750bc. A lib built at 10ad will double from 3cpt to 6cpt at 1010ad. The latest you can build anything for doubling would be 1040ad because the game has to end at 2050ad.

So you don't think feudalism has a extremely specialized use? Or you prefer it to be specialized and not useful for more circumstances/goals? Or were you not listening to what I was saying as well?

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Yes, I've been listening all along. I agree that it's a very specialized use, and I've been happy with it as is...a good thing since Fireaxis is never going to change C3C v1.22. If you really want those changes, you could try creating a mod.

Which is why I made this post. I plan to make a mod with minor changes to a few things. The main idea is to make more starting locations workable (improved jungle/wetland/ curraghs with transport for island starts, faster boats) And make sure all units/governments are useful(with a few other minor things) That is, after I figure out whats wrong with the conquest editor.

This thread is for the feudalism side of things. I also have ideas for democracy but I'm waiting on making that thread for resolving the feudalism first.

I'd like to make feudalism useful not only for 100k cultural situations but others as well. But not too useful because its a tech you get anyways and you get early on. You don't think thats a worthy goal? Assuming you did think that was a worthy goal for a moment, do you think my ideas could do that? Any suggestions for modulating my ideas to get closer to that goal?

BTW I also play online civ3. Nobody ever wants cultural victory enabled then. (I have no idea way, reasons of "its not personable enough" don't make sense to me) I'd like to make this mod workable under those circumstances as well (hence feudalism useful for something other then 100k cultural wins)