Determined to make Feudalism Work

[Zardnaar]

In cetain situations Feudalism seems to be a good government. Unfortionatly its often not worth the 7-9 turns of anarchy switching to it then switching out later on. Unless I'm a religeous civ I doubt I'll ever use this government (and even then I think I'll stick with Monarchy/Republic). Yes I know its a bad government but I'm determined to either make it work or die trying.

However I'm a little bored with civ at the moment and I thought I'll have a game where Feudalism will be my primary source of government until either Demcracy or Communism depending on what type of playtstyle I go for. To make it a bit more interesting I'll try this game with raging hordes of barbarians and AI aggression turned up to max. I'll use Babylon on emperor difficulty setting. Anyway what do you guys think will be the best strat to use?

1. Keep most of your cities small. Space them about 2-3 tiles apart. Basic idea is to have a huge unit support to support a massive army.

2. Have a 5 city core (ala 5CC) with alot of small colony cities. Have a productive core with huge unit support

3. Similar to 2 by having a normal core and have a corrupt ring of small dense cities packed in as tight as you can.

My theory is to have a higher income than Monarchy with a bigger army. The advantage over Republic is you can support a massive army early on and still make just about as much money. Wars will have to shorter but I think the same strategy can be used when being aggresive in a republic.

 

[Ision]

Nothing you do will make Fuedalism better than Monarchy long term if your goal is to stay in Fuedalism until Democracy or Commie. A 'huge' fuedal empire is a contradiction in terms - it simply is not designed that way. If you want to improve this governement try modding it in the editor to : 5-3-1 free unit support and with a unit support cost of 2. This will make Fuedal viable for a longer period and for a larger empire. Did you say ' " die trying" - well thats exactly what you will do with Fuedalism.

Ision

 

[Zardnaar]

Well I'll have fun trying. It does offer short term benefits though doesn't it? Is it worth switching to if you are religeous?

 

[nullspace]

The nice thing about about Feudalism is that as long as you keep founding or capturing towns, your army can keep getting bigger at no cost. I went into some detail about a Feudalism strategy I've been using in this thread here.

 

[Zardnaar]

Heres my current save 1.15. I should really update my patch. I had a smoewhat slow start anyways.

 

[nullspace]

Lookin good, Zardnaar! Your military advisor says you are "Strong compared to" all your nearest neighbors!

I see what you mean about a slow start: Babylon isn't on very good land, and it looks like you were quickly surrounded by other civs. Perfect time for Feudalism! Now you've almost filled up your support limit with troops. If you go over the limit, you could build a city or two at the outskirts of your empire, or take some from the Indians. Speaking of which, you've got a good mixed force of med. inf, trebuchets, ancient cav, knights, and pikes ready to go, and India doesn't have Chivalry yet. You could add some longbows by upgrading those bowmen.

Just keep fighting, watch out for war weariness and the support limit, and you'll be on your way to domination.

EDIT: Well, I oughta share a save of my own. Here's my current game where I'm using Feudalism as the Dutch. It's on Deity, but I stacked the deck by playing on an Archipelago map as the only seafaring civ. I had an OK island to start, and I first fought the Indians with swordsmen and catapults against their med inf and pikes. It didn't go great, and I had to stop when they sent elephants at me. Put I got a discount on Feudalism for peace, and I went and conquered America on their tiny island with my new unts. Now I'm back attacking Inda and making real gains. Hopefully I can defeat them and the Russians before Rifles show up. I'll switch to communism, and with that much territory, the fact that I'm behind in tech won't matter.

 

[nullspace]

Sorry for the double post, but you can't add an attachment when editing. Here's the save.

 

[Zardnaar]

Those troops are there for a reason Nullspace. They are going to pay a diplomatic visit to the Indians. I'll have a look at your game soon.

 

[smallmoskito]

just when i thought i could really believe in this thread, i was made a believer almost immediately when i started my game just now.

my starting position and area is perhaps the worst you can get. no bonuses, no horses, just one iron. north of capital is desert, south is jungles followed by lotsa marshes to the east. no natural mountains range for defenses and the fertile land on the north west is populated by the japanese.

being the chinese, industrious and militarious, what else could i do? a feudal chinese empire is all that i can think of. didn't really manage to make a perfect ICS, but had enough cities to support up to 109 units in feudalism. indian in the south came attacking with elephants and that simply reminds me how i have always hated the Indians and their elephants. 4.3.2 is not a good stats against the best unit i could afford, med inf. I've got no horses remember? or else i'd be churning out riders!

but oh well, i think it's simply because i am using feudalism that holding me up in the monarch game and i've been keeping my cities under size 6.

well, next stop, indians from the south are gonna get crush!

 

[KrikkitTwo]

One thing that I think feudalism could be useful for is an extreme ICS type 100 k culture win.

Build
1. a productive core of cities (reasonably spaced)
2. a blob of tightly packed cities farther away.

The Blob is for two purposes, unit support, culture and poprushing of units. The only buildings they would have would be Temple and anything 0 maintenance.

The Big disadvantage would be the cap on research because only your core will have uncorrupted trade, and the Temple maintenance drain. (if they put free maintenance back in then feudal could actually be super powered culturally getting more culture from a particular amount of territory).

However since corruption does max out, you could get the buildings such that the cities are self supporting, (I believe that a temple isn't more than one maintenance cost)

The key would be managing War Weariness, a large army ought to help do that by allowing you to not get into wars when you don't want to.

 

[Zardnaar]

Heres an interesting save. Feudalism, 300+gpt late middle ages/early industrial, productive core and a decent size army with room for more. Not sure if I should switch to Democracy or continue warmongering- I have alot of gold and decent gpt and wonder if I really need to be democratic.

 

[smallmoskito]

i am not doing so well myself as feudalism...

read more of it here:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=86658

 

[Zardnaar]

Smallmoskito. From what I can see your cities are to small ie not productive enough. You don't need all your cities size 6 or below. I've let alot of mine grow to size 12 while I found new ones far away from my core to build up my unit support. I've just discovered rail road and have 6000gold in the bank in my feudal empire. I think the money will last until I can switch to communism.

 

[smallmoskito]

Zardnaar, I've been thinking of that too. Previously I was entangled in a war with Japan, I needed units and I was freaking frustrated at my musketmen that were losing to those pesky longbowmen... it's about production now since i've had two cores running... well, I am gonna boom after this...

 

[Zardnaar]

I actually disconect my sources of saltpetre as you can build 2 pikemen for every musketmen. I can usually find enough money to upgrade them all.