Monarchy or Feudalism?

[V. Soma]

Which form of government shold one prefer?
Could we gather the advantages of both?

Monarchy: no despotism penalty, high corruption, allows war
Feudalism: no despotism penalty, high corruption, does not like war so much

Then what is the reason for choosing Feudalism as vs. Monarchy?

 

[Longasc]

Feudalism takes profit of small cities and a close city build. You can support a high count of military numbers in spite of having lots of small size cities.

I do not like this form of government as I tend to built large cities with optimum infrastructure.

 

[V. Soma]

Ok, well, that's for military
And is there any difference as to economy? Money? Shields?

 

[narmox]

well, in some of my games I was rushing so much to the middle ages that I skipped the ancient govts, had not enough assets to trade for them, so when I got feudalism I sure as heck switched to it, if only to improve my economy a bit (until my army gets too big), then either go to Republic or Democracy.

Despite the 3 gold/unit thing in feudalism I've found it quite manageable as long as not ALL my cities go beyond size 6... It does become annoying near the end of the middle ages though, so I beeline for democracy usually

 

[Tomoyo]

Feudalism supports ICS, or close to that, as well as FRFR. Monarchy is better for prolonged warring, with fairly spread out cities. Republic is best if you are not in a prolonged war.

 

[Mad2rix]

As long as someone support enough massive pile of cities or metros, they probably have no problem maintaining the upkeep of military units if they revolt to Monarchy.
I think Fedalism sucks if someone else plays in smaller island maps, due to the fact that you can't support enough ICS.

 

[tomart109]

Yes, they're very similar, and i've adopted them as my main first governments. The main differences that i go by are:
1. when i have lots of gold, Monarchy's rush method is my favorite, and then i can let more cities grow larger.
2. if i'm keeping towns mostly size 6 or below (for the fastest growth rate), Feudalism gives me more free military support.
*[Note that you can easily avoid that 3 gold per unit penalty, by either building (or capturing) more towns, or reducing towns below 6, or starting a war to expend some units (while capturing more towns, et cetera, etc) so i find it quite annoying when people cite that '3' as a reason to avoid Feudalism. It's not really a problem. ]*

P.S. (What's FRFR?)

 

[Tomoyo]

FRFR stands for Finally Ready For Regent, refering to a Succession Game that Sirian and Charis did with the variant of not being able to do terrain improvements with workers. No irrigation = low sized towns.

 

[Breunor]

The support difference is pretty big. If you are warring a lot, Feudalism supports 5 per city below a population of 7, that is, 1-6. Monarchy only supports 2.

In a typical game, you may have about 30 towns and 3 cities (7 - 12). If you have 150 units they are practicaly free on Feudalism and will cost about 78 for Monarchy -- that can be the difference between winning and losing.

If you are on Emperor or above, and especially if you don't have a lot of luxuries, you may want three units per city as MP's and on Monarchy it is already expensive.

However, the war weariness on Fedalism is pretty severe if you have that many units and are constantly warring (which you are at high levels). So it isn't easy!

Breunor

 

[Tomoyo]

which you are at high levels

Not me. I can't war and still win. Wierd.

Why has no one mentioned Republic as the bestestest government?!?

 

[Zardnaar]

It really depends. The hidden cost of feudalism is the lack of big cities until Democracy or Communism. Do you have room to expand? Under Feudalism I have had a huge army/workers and made more gpt than under Monarchy/RepublicFeudalism can support large cities but you have to constantly expand into AI territory and build disposable cities in any spare gaps (disband them later on). At least you can pop rush buildings etc to bring the population down though if you have to. Helps to keep captured AI cities docile to. Monarchy is great for war but the economy suffers.