Feodalism better than Republic?

Culak

Chieftain
Joined
Aug 9, 2004
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Has someone tested the real possibilities of the Feodalism Government ?
I read that it is good for small empire and that you must pay city improvement maintenance. I am playing a large map with approximately 100 Cities and wanted to switch from Republic to Communism... Just by curiousity I saved the game just before the end of the Anarchy and tried every possible Governements (except Fascism and Demo - my Civ has not discovered those gov)... I was a little disapointed to notice that communism gave me less scientific research (approx 550 pts) than the republic (a little bit less that 700) despite the smaller corruption. BUT I was completely stunned by the fact that Feodalism outclassed every other governements for the scientific research (more than 1100!). Indeed It does not require any maintenance for the buildings (the F1-advisor gives a 0 gp per turn for the maintenance) and thus I could put 90% of my funds to research and the remaining 10% to my treasury (to maintain my units.)

It don't know if someone has already noticed that (Feodalism beeing better than other gov for large empire)? I am playing the Mayans and their favourite Government is Feodalism, did it help (I do not know what the "favourite Government" mean).

PS : English is not my native language, so I am sorry for the mistakes...
 
Feudalism is good for unit support if you have a lot of small cities. I didn't really check the research though...
 
It is not because of the unit support that it worked so good in my case, it was because I did not have to pay the city improvement maintenance (more than 1000 Gp per turn under the other governments) so I can use my funds for the research... Hovewer it is true that each new small city I conquer make me spare 15 gp/turn (maintenanc for five units)!
 
Feudalism isn't supposed to be maintenance free. This was tested during beta, and dropped because it turned out to be completely unbalanced.
However, at least the German conquests.biq file is buggy her, and still has zero maintenance for Feudalism (I don't know about the other localizations). This is fixed in the language patches. Unfortunately, I don't know how to get those :(

So, you are right, "your" Feudalism is very strong - but it's a bug :)
 
Doc Tsiolkovski said:
Feudalism isn't supposed to be maintenance free. This was tested during beta, and dropped because it turned out to be completely unbalanced.

Unfortunately, since nothing is added to couterbalance its removal, Fedualism is usually a weak choice for govenement.


Fedualism is only beneficial for those types of games when civ has a lot of up to 6 pop size cities, and are probably low on luxury resources too.

In those cases Republic is out, beacuse of high unit support and low number of luxury resources.
And Feudalism is better then Monarchy due to high unit support for small towns.

The main problem is that it's gained at start of new aga, while Monachy is gained at the end of the previous age.

So if you are already using Monarchy enduring 5-9 turns of Anarchy is too painful, even if Fedualism could be more beneficial, especialy since Fedulism is only better temporary, until you get bigger cities.


So, if you enetered in new era, have a lot of towns (<6pop) and are still in Despotism, Fedualism is great choice, otherwise stay out of it.
With exeption of Religious civs, which could try Despot --> Monarchy --> Feudalism switch.
 
player1 fanatic said:
So, if you enetered in new era, have a lot of towns (<6pop) and are still in Despotism, Fedualism is great choice, otherwise stay out of it.
With exeption of Religious civs, which could try Despot --> Monarchy --> Feudalism switch.

Also, scientific civs gets a free tech every new era... if that one happens to be feudalism, you'll probably get it before monarchy and the republic. It's important to switch government as quickly as possible so feudalism may not be so bad after all, especially if you're playing as the babylonians.
 
Ok thanks for the answers. So it is because I have a "Beta-version" of the Feodalism that it is so good!

I can easily imagine that in the corrected version (with the city improvement maintenance) it is quite a weak government...

Perhaps they should have done something in between... I don't know what but perharps it could be something like this: for every individual city whose improvement maintenance is greater than the money the city produces, some of its "normally corrupted trades" should become "uncorrupted" to try to cover the buiding maintenance. So the buildings would not be free in the big cities but some would be in the corrupted cities (those city would in fact bring no extra-money but at least they would cost nothing -if they are enough "corrupted traded" to uncorrupt - or at least less - in the number of "normally corrupted trades" is lesser than the total amount of gold necessery for the maintenance)...
 
Culak said:
I was a little disapointed to notice that communism gave me less scientific research (approx 550 pts) than the republic (a little bit less that 700) despite the smaller corruption.

Communism does not have less corruption than republic. Communism just spreads the corruption around evenly so that the frontier cities have less corruption and the core cities have more corruption. The reason Republic gave you more scientific research is because it gives you +1 commerce in every square that's already producing at least one, which means that there are more funds available for scientific research.
 
Actually, after building the Secret Police HQ, communism does have less corruption than republic.

Of course, you have to factor in that +1gps as well.
 
I've found Feudalism to be the preferred government for those occasions when you end up with a massive empire by the end of the Ancient Age and intend on further expanding that empire. Because, honestly, is there any point in letting those 80%+ corruption border cities grow beyond size six? Maybe in the industrial age when you can use them as draft fodder if necessary, but in the Medieval Age there simply is no point. So I go Feudalism, leaving the high-corruption and low-yield towns at size six and allowing the cities with potential to grow to size twelve and help the empire as they should. I then amass a large army with the high unit support I've been granted, and conquer more, eventually leading towards a monster of a Communist empire in the early Industrial age.

Works fine with me.
 
I don't like any government with forced labour hurry method in the actual game, the citizens are unhappy for WAY too long, and they are only worth 20 shields. Not worth it at all, even for those border cities you could do better in non-forcedlabour hurrying governments. And the unit support is NOT a really big bonus IMO. If you're playing a hard game, the AI will have like 13 units per city, and you'll need a much bigger free unit support then 5 or 6 when you're going to survive well when going against like 3 other civs at a time. The unit costs will still be a drag. The Republic atleast has a trade bonus and less corruption.
 
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