A case example of when serfdom can be beneficial

[futurehermit]

Serfdom gets little love on these forums, but I think it can be worthwhile in certain instances. In a recent game I had with Hannibal I spent some anarchy on serfdom and I would like to share why I chose to do so. I started off with horses and Sitting Bull as a close neighbour. Now, Sitting Bull isn't generally the kind of opponent you want to be rushing, but I did something a little different and took horseback riding off of the oracle. This allowed me to build about 15 of my UU with stables, followed by reinforcements. This allowed me to wipe SB off the map. This already dipped the slider considerably, but I was teching through currency/col after construction. I teched construction to add war elephants (ivory in SB's territory) and catapults to my already large army.

My remaining opponent was Ramesses who had a very large empire already. However, I declared war and although I took some ceasefires didn't let up until I had conquered his empire. This left me with around 20 cities ca. 1100AD which is quite decent imo for normal speed. Here is what my empire looked like around that point:

However, because of my pure emphasis on military, a lot of my conquered lands looked like this:

I think this is an excellent example of when serfdom really proves valuable. You have a very large, underdeveloped empire and you want to recover your economy in as fast a time as possible. Imo you easily recoup the value of the lost turns from anarchy by superpowering your workers to help lay down cottages and other improvements faster, especially when there is a lot of jungle to clear.

Only a few centuries later my economy was stable, the slider was high, and most of my terrain was developed. I cruised to a space race victory.

 

[brucedecatz]

I run serfdom so I do not get the "slave revolt" random event...

 

[JBossch]

Did you switch back to slavery at some point to whip infrastructure? It looks like you made the right call as most cities appear too small to get much out of whipping.

 

[futurehermit]

Yes, I switched back to slavery during a later golden age to help with some infrastructure and then into emancipation during a subsequent golden age.

 

[DaveMcW]

Try reloading and whipping 50% more workers.

 

[JBossch]

Try reloading and whipping 50% more workers.

That will solve the unimproved land problem but he might not have been able to take over so much land if he had diverted resources to building workers, thus negating the need for the extra workers altogether.

 

[qwertz]

1.I don't see how one can have too few workers after 2 sucessfull wars. Especially when you attack with mounted units, you can capture loads of enemy workers. As the AI stupit and rebuilds his workers instead of building military, you can get yourself more workrs than you will ever need.
I often even disband come workers after a war, to save up on the upkeep cost.

2.Even if you had too few workers after the war, you could have wiped 50% more of them quite easily AFTER the war and not delay the rebuilding too much. Staying in slavery would also give you the ability to whip some infrastructure which would also help you with rebuilding you economy.

 

[UncleJJ]

Looking at that map and situation I'd say that whipping courthouses would do a lot more for your economy than Serfdom ever could and then after that as Dave says just whip a few more workers. Given that you've expanded so much, and in fact there are a lot of extra cities you can found to consolidate the situation, I'd just build infrastructure everywhere. In any city with lots of food and low hammers that's going to be tough without Slavery. Workers are important but so is infrastructure.

Can you post the savegame of this situation? Because I reckon a case can be made that Slavery is far better than Serfdom here and it would be interesting to test that hypothesis.

 

[tycoonist]

nice attempt FH, but you may just have to accept that serfdom is the weakest civic in the game. even in this case, you would be better to just build/whip a few more workers

 

[kniteowl]

I was thinking about switching to serfdom in a situtational circumstance where you expand to mostly Jungle Areas and you'd need those +50% workers to clear the Jungle but then I reed I could whip 50% more workers lmao... I guess Sefdom is only useful under Spiritual lol.

Maybe if they switch Serfdom to be come Available with Bronze Working and Slavery with Feudalism it might be useful as a Transition Civic like monarchy. *Shrugs*

 

[futurehermit]

I captured as many workers as I could and whipped some workers in the homeland. I didn't want to whip my larger cities too much though because they were working cottages I needed to keep my economy from crashing. You can see that my economy was already at 20% science in the screenshot. Especially with all that jungle serfdom helped get the cities fully improved in a much shorter time. And, as has already been mentioned, the new cities weren't large or functional enough to whip a lot of infrastructure in a timely manner. Once serfdom had done its thing for awhile I ran a golden age, switched back into slavery, and whipped infrastructure.

 

[linfeixb27]

If your leader has spiritual trait, then converting to serfdom would be a good idea to recover the economics and to clear the jungle. But in this case 2 turn is a high price.

 

[futurehermit]

It was only 1 turn because I was able to switch back out of it during a golden age.

 

[madscientist]

ANother point in this case, your empire is large and serfdom is cheaper than slavery, plus you avoid the capital slave revolt which always costs gold and usually population. 1 worker that's works 50% faster is cheaper than 2 workers because of the unit upkeep cost. In you case I would also adopted serfdom.

 

[linfeixb27]

It was only 1 turn because I was able to switch back out of it during a golden age.

Sorry I didn't see it that you switched back in a golden age. 1 turn is much better, and it indead worth the acceleration you got from serfdom.
The bad thing is that you are restricted by it, i mean you had to start the golden age exactly when serfdom is not useful to switch the civil and get the benifits from slavery or caste system, but maybe actually you have a better choice on when to start the golden age.

 

[Tatran]

I agree with madscientist.
Most players underestimate the civic upkeep costs + inflation which both only increase during a game.
In most of my games Serfdom conflicts with the Mercantilism + Caste System combo.

 

[futurehermit]

Sorry I didn't see it that you switched back in a golden age. 1 turn is much better, and it indead worth the acceleration you got from serfdom.
The bad thing is that you are restricted by it, i mean you had to start the golden age exactly when serfdom is not useful to switch the civil and get the benifits from slavery or caste system, but maybe actually you have a better choice on when to start the golden age.

I started the golden age once my empire was functional so I could get a strong golden age out of it. when you have 20+ cities golden ages are pretty powerful. The side-bonus was being able to switch back into slavery free of charge

 

[Diamondeye]

My main point of choosing Serfdom from Slavery (I rarely use Slavery at all, which can be a weakness in my games ), is this:

Upkeep/effect compared to basic civic:

Slavery:
Higher Upkeep (Medium compared to Low),
Ability to whip,
Risk of Slave event occurring.

Serfdom:
Same upkeep (Low),
+50% worker speed.

Now, add to this that I rarely whip and always play with random events on. And even though Organized is a favourite trait, I always play a random leader, so odds of getting Organized is something like 9 (?) out of the around 40 (?) leaders.

Using this information, the civics does this for me:

Slavery:
Allows ability to whip soldiers/culture buildings/lighthouses/courthouses in emergencies, while allowing a nasty event that sets your capital out of order in atleast one turn, with the risk of either losing population, more turns, gold or happiness, or multiple of those.
Add to this the upkeep increase and compare it to this:

Serfdom:
Grants 50% extra worker speed for free.

Granted, this comparison is not solid in every game, since the odds of being spiritual are low. Also, add the possiblity that Caste System will work even better (a civic I am beginning to love), and that I have not played with the Aztecs for some time (playing them seems to bring forth the love for the whip a bit).

As far as I can see from this example, you have literally no happiness resources linked up, since your cities are all below size 7 despite the Charismatic trait, so whipping would be suboptimal (unless whipping monuments, granting because of said trait). I would've gone with Serfdom here as well, although I might not have switched without a GA.

Just my 2

 

[Quechua]

Serfdom is awesome. Instead of a farm costing 5 turns, it goes way down to 4. Better yet, it only takes 2 turns to build a road instead of 2.

 

[Cookie Crumbs]

I use Serfdom if I'm Spiritual and only switch to Slavery when I need to whip. I then switch back to Serfdom.