Fuedalism???

[kettyo]

Originally posted by Sukenis
Feudalism works well if you have a lot of tundra cities or dessert cities and are not an agricultural civ.
You can also use this for early wars where an overly large military is required by not building aqueducts.

In either case for early conquest despotism is always better than feudalism.

-It does not have war weariness

-Unit support is better in all cases
Free for 1-6 size cities: d:4 f:5
Free for 6-12 size cities: d:4 f:2
Unit cost: d:1 f:3
Under despotism you don't have to disadvance by not building aqueducts!

-Tile penalty is not disadvantage when you don't have fresh water and grasslands/floodplains

-The some advantages of feudalism over despotism are far smaller than his serious disadvantages with unit cost of 3, casual need to disadvance and war weariness

 

[kettyo]

Originally posted by Blasphemous
Iso it's only really handy if you're so wrapped up in a war that you just have to keep pumping out more military and can't afford to build aqueducts. In such a case you'd support an enormous army at very small penalty

The effects of war weariness hinders the usability of feudalism in such situation too.

 

[kettyo]

Originally posted by Sukenis
A city in the tundra can grow to size 2-3 without working the ocean (with a harbor). Inland tundra (without game) can have cities placed every other square (since they can not work many squares). This can allow a civ to have a massive military. Even if half of your land is fertile non-tundra with cities 13+, you can still keep a larger military than communism or democracy would allow.

This government goes "out-side the box" and allows you to win games that most players would simply quit.

This massive city placement is useful for large military but will hinder the potential benefit of your conquests because it will produce overwhelming rank corruption in cities more distant from palace than your tundra/desert unit factories.

 

[Doc Tsiolkovski]

Feudalism is as useful as Communism or Fascism.
I mean, in 75% of my games I go Desp->Rep(->Demo, if Space Race, or the unit support is higher than the free units).
In 20% Desp->Mon(->Demo, if I didn't win by conquest/ domination until I get it).

The other 5% are 'special', and I use one of the others. And my guess is, the majority of players do it that way.

Feudalism is a rather good choice for the Vikings, for example. With those 'dry' coastal cities on the usual 'Pelago maps, you cannot grow well anyway, and Feudalism finally allows to support the Boats, and no need to research Rep/Mon, while Feudalism is the Tech you want most anyway. Despotism is quite bad here, due to the horrible corruption, and the total lack of income (you need money to upgrade your Archers ).

 

[Park Ranger]

Well, I had a pretty good experience with feudalism playing Sumeria.

I'd had an incredibly lucky start - free settler on turn 4, right next to ivory - but was surounded by AI, only got six cities built before I had tostart conquering. SoZ and the GA made that fairly easy, but the AI cities I was capturing were poorly located, often just one tile shy of being built on freshwater.

Also I was researching and trading tech like mad, used philosophy to get construction, and traded for Code of Laws, Currency, and Polytheism. Got Feudalism as free tech, while no one had Rep, Monarchy, or even Literature.

So I opted for feudalism governemnt, got out of the despotism penalty at least ten turns before any AI did, and spent the entire Middle Ages conquering my continent. As long as I could keep capturing towns from AI, I was able to grow my core into cities, pop-rush the cheaper improvements (barracks, library, courthouse, harbour), and expand like crazy.

I think the initial advantage I got from this wore off as I stayed in feudalism longer. Late Middle Ages and my economy started to cry out for the democracy/republic bonus. If I could have left feudalsim about 10-20 turns earlier than I did (waited until I finished Shake's Theatre, my new favourite wonder in C3C), I think the advantage over waiting for monarchy or republic 100 turns or so back was very obvious. By the time I actually did switch, the AI monarchies and republics were catching up to me.

I think in future I would use feudalism again, in the situations where it was available well ahead of other governments. Getting out of despotism is important enough to opt for feudalism if the other governments are 10 or more turns out of reach, I think.

I had little problems with the WW. Just kept switching opponents, the odd little twenty-turn break from war to stock up on more units.

 

[Nisku]

I played Arabs in two of my games and Celts in one of my feudalism games.

In the Emporer level game I just finished I used the Arabs. I started on a medium/small sized island with Carthage. My starting location was nothing special, one bonus cattle. I took out Carthage while I was still in despotism and had the island to myself. I didn't build any wonders until the Theory of Evolution. I didn't bother with aqueducts in most of my towns, what's the point I was just using them as temporary towns to pump out military units. I found the main continent all the powerful civs were on just around the time I got feudalism and chivalry (for the Ansar warriors). I used a huge horde of Ansar warriors and got a nice foothold on the continent, pop rushing along the way in my newly conquered cities. I tried to switch over to other governments and they were all inferior, democracy the war weariness was to high, monarchy I had about half to three-quarters the unit support, republic I would have been bankrupt very quickly. Fortunately I saved my game first before doing any revolutions. I stayed in the Feudal government right up until I discovered hospitals then I changed to democracy. Whizzed past the computer in tech when I got the Theory of Evolution switched to another great government with the 1.15 patch - Communism and finished off the game.

This massive city placement is useful for large military but will hinder the potential benefit of your conquests because it will produce overwhelming rank corruption in cities more distant from palace than your tundra/desert unit factories.

This didn't happen to me, massive city placement was working out well up until mid industrial age. I checked my corruption when I changed governments it wasn't that bad, having cities very close to my palace lowered corruption signifigantly during the early stages also. You can also disband cities by pumping out workers and settlers if need be.

The effects of war weariness hinders the usability of feudalism in such situation too.

War weariness is almost non-existant in republic and feudalism. If your war weariness gets high enough to seriously hinder you when you are in republic or feudalism you are doing something wrong. I always need a short period of peace to restock my armies and clean up a bit around my conquest areas.

Despotism is better then feudalism . The unit support for despotism is better if you have more cities then towns, same with monarchy that part is true. The goal with feudalism though is to not have more cities then towns. The unit cost of three hardly matters I had such high unit cost that I almost never exceeded it and when I did I just got rid of a few workers. You should never have to pay that 3 per unit.

 

[meltone1]

IMO communal corruption is the best way to make this gvmt. worthwhile ATM.. it makes more sense to me than having free maintenance, since I can't really relate that to a feudalistic society anyways.

 

[akillias]

It helps if you play an agritural civ in a map with a lot of desert & jungle

 

[troytheface]

i have had an eye opening experience in my last game. I switched to republic and experienced a -131 negative income return. So for curiosity sake i reloaded and switched to fuedalism
and found i had a +4 income return. Now the circumstances were no marketplaces and lots of small pop cities. 3 or four in 95% of my cities. So the lesson is...Fuedalism is the superior choice for a large civ, small pop cities, and no marktplaces.

 

[meltone1]

Originally posted by troytheface
i have had an eye opening experience in my last game. I switched to republic and experienced a -131 negative income return. So for curiosity sake i reloaded and switched to fuedalism
and found i had a +4 income return. Now the circumstances were no marketplaces and lots of small pop cities. 3 or four in 95% of my cities. So the lesson is...Fuedalism is the superior choice for a large civ, small pop cities, and no marktplaces.

You must have had quite a bit of military force. If I have an excessive amount of military/workers, I would always consider monarchy/feudalism opposed to republic. If I have a small amount of military, and several lux's, then I will switch to republic. Myself, I find republic to be of limited use as well. I usually find monarchy to be a better option most of the time, but that may be because I usually like to have 2 defenders per city.

no doubt feudalism would have been the appropriate choice here, but the question is how long do you plan to keep those cities under 6? I look at it this way, is it worth 2 revolutions just to take care of that extra military until I get aqueducts built? 99 out of a 100 times my answer would be no..

 

[Nisku]

Am I the only person that builds temporary cities? I usually only need aqueducts in a few of my cities because the rest are temporary, only for pumping out military or culture during the early and mid game. I like to send settlers in when I go for war and set up these temp cities in newly conquered territory also. Monarchy is two more support for cities and three less for towns so monarchy usually doesn't pay off for me even if half of my cities are above size 6. Feudalism works really well with this strategy.

 

[RagingBarbarian]

I guess the startegies you guys mentioned have a use for fuedalism, but these are extreme cases. Under normal circumstances I don't see why you would use fuedalism.

 

[Nisku]

Originally posted by troytheface
i have had an eye opening experience in my last game. I switched to republic and experienced a -131 negative income return. So for curiosity sake i reloaded and switched to fuedalism
and found i had a +4 income return. Now the circumstances were no marketplaces and lots of small pop cities. 3 or four in 95% of my cities. So the lesson is...Fuedalism is the superior choice for a large civ, small pop cities, and no marktplaces.

The same thing happened to me in my first Conquests game. I haven't gone back to republic since. Republic might have it's uses I suppose if you have a very small army, a lot of big cities quickly or you play on the lower levels/have the computer set to low aggression. I find with republic I can't even keep enough workers around and have a minimal standing army to keep the AIs off my back.

It's personal choice with governments, in my opinion fascism and republic have very limited uses. I think fascism is the most useless government.

 

[kettyo]

I have to admit that feudalism is really a very powerful govt with massive city placement tactic and propably it's been designed with that in mind. I just never tought about this tactic so i found feudalism unusable.
I was wrong.

 

[Park Ranger]

Originally posted by Nisku


The same thing happened to me in my first Conquests game. I haven't gone back to republic since. Republic might have it's uses I suppose if you have a very small army, a lot of big cities quickly or you play on the lower levels/have the computer set to low aggression. I find with republic I can't even keep enough workers around and have a minimal standing army to keep the AIs off my back.

Well, my newwest game is an archipelago map, 80% water, me the English and to my south (coastal waters only) the Aztecs who have the SoZ, KnightsTemplar, Great Lighthouse, and Temple of Artemis.

Though I have contact with all but 2 other civs no one can join me in holding back Aztec expansion. I could go Feudalism and ty to make a landfall on their continent, but I'm skeptical about being able to do this in early Middle Ages.

I DO have the Great Library (built it as an afterthought - AI still likes to skip Literature in my games. So I elected to go Republic; having secured a largish continent and only need to keep Aztecs off my shores I don't see the point in going Feudal this time . Instead I'm using Republic to add even more commerce to my Seafaring + Commercial Bonuses eek: ). Want to get invention first, but also need money to keep military upgraded (and lean!), and rushing units as they're needed to keep the darn AC away from my cities.

In other words, if I thought I could wage a successsful war against Aztcs I'd have considered feudalism. Instead, I've opted for a waiting game (in a hurry to get Metallurgy and give it to Aztecs!), and Republic combines nicely with England's traits to amass a huge sum of gold which will be way more flexible than the units that a feudal government can support.

If I were in Aztecs position, I'd definitely go feudalism, to suport all those AC's and Crusaders.

 

[Nisku]

Yeah I see your point. That game I described above with me as the Arabs, I was in what sounds to be the exact same postion as you. Instead of going the republic way I went feudalism to make a mass invasion of the continent. I think if I went republic I would have fallen behind because the island was to small. With commercial and seafaring I might have been able to keep up. My Arabs with expansionist/religous and the cheap Ansar warriors made an invasion a better choice. Strangely in my game it was also the Aztecs that were the leaders.

 

[razor1952]

I compared republic and feudalism and feudalism gave better overall income , largely due to military support.

I latter compared feudalism to democracy and the net income was identical!!. My military was quite reasonable but just below the max free level for feudalism unit support the main advantage for democracy was therfore the 150% worker bonus, money was no different.

So fuedalism imho is better than republic worse than democrracy, provided you have many small cities so get large free military, and particualry if religious as change in govt time is small.

 

[Park Ranger]

Originally posted by razor1952
So fuedalism imho is better than republic worse than democrracy, provided you have many small cities so get large free military, and particualry if religious as change in govt time is small.

Can't disagree with anything here. The key is "many small cities". As soon as that becomes "many large cities", though, revolution should be considered. Also religious civ should probably always choose feudalism rather than wait longer for monarchy or republic, which might not be appropriate as soon as they're available anyway. For me getting out of the despotism penalty is very important.

 

[StabbingNirvana]

feudalism worked horribly for me. the science was bad and drained me of my money. i was at war with everyone on my continent and had no standing attack army and hardly had a defensive army. most of my cities had no aqueducts and only 2 of them were 6+ in pop. i also had lots of cities, so yea. feudalism isntt good (or maybe i use it wrong)

 

[Bart2k4]

Recently I played a earth map on regent w/ ai normal... took over the african continent and moved upwords.... I found it very usefull because I had a lots of little villages, the problem I found with it was the 'war weariness'. Im serious. I had long bloody battles with really powerful nations, and I couldn't continue because the cities started rioting, and this type of thing happened may times, so I would have to say, its not the greatest goverment for a warmonger.

Plus, why would you want to subject your people to such a crewl aristocratic government?... Well thats asides from the point, a good old commie gov. does good enough for me

(a little contradicting.... isnt it? )