The Power of Feudalism

Zardnaar

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I meant to write this around 2005 or so. Better late than never.

Once upon a time people thought feudalism sucked. At first glance it does why pick it over Monarchy or Republic for example which are useful for war and building playstyles.

My arguement is why not both? I will admit it's situational but when utilized well it's a power house.

For starters I would consider it for the following situations.

1. Religious
2. Large/huge map.

You may also consider it if you have a great ancient age UU or early medieval age UU.

The main use is it's massive unit support. But you only get that unit support if you have lots of smaller settlements yes?

Town 5
City 3
Metropolis 1

While true its also not required. You can have a core of fully developed cities while all those useless corrupt settlements primarily have three uses.

1. 5 unit support.
2. Spamming workers.
3. Science.

Putting it togather.

Generally I settle my core using a XXCXXC pattern, X being tiles and C being a city. Geography might make the occasional one XXXCXXC or something similar.

Depending on placement and/or commercial you build 2-4 "rings" from you capital. Beyond that it's corruption zone.

In the "corruption zone" you can lower the city placement to XCXCXC as long as it's produces food- grass or flood plains being ideal desert maybe if agricultural and 2-3 tiles produce food.. These corrupt cities are only to be grown to size 6 and you create as many specialists as you can to generate science or gold depending on what you want.

The economic side is using your massive unit support to spam workers to develop you core. It's not to hard to have 150-200 unit support by AD400 or so. You may struggle to build than many military units but workers are cheap.

If you start with writing one can do the philosophy to code of laws/literacy gambit with a palace prebuild to grab the great library.

If you can I like saving my golden age in the early or mid medieval era but early aggression is also fine. Here's where feudalism gets silly.

Rushing stuff under feudalism kills pops, if you capture AI cities rather than starve then you can use their pops to rush cheap buildings. With a bit of starving expansion increases your number of towns that are easy to reduce to 6 population or lower. Which increases your force limits which means more units........

So you can have a core of large cities well developed cities and lands each serviced by 2-3 workers. More workers means more developed land means more money etc.

There's basically two ways to go once you're on this path. You can pick monarchy or republic short term and jump to feudalism or go from despotism to feudalism depending on the situation. Hence why I recommend religious.

You either use it short term as a path to perhaps democracy or use it to power your expansion though to communism if you like pointy stick diplomacy.

Recommend civs.

Arabs
Celts (best one imho)
Egypt
Indians

Any civilization that has commercial or seafarings for writing to philosophy jump is also decent but you can't switch out easily as religious.
 
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A group of us used fuedalism to spam culture in a large 130K SG a few years ago. We warred and spammed settlers up to the domination limit and then pop rushed all the culture buildings in each city.
 
For starters I would consider it for the following situations.

1. Religious
2. Large/huge map.
Feudalism may also be useful on really extreme maps (e.g. Warm, Arid, 3BYO), where freshwater/ irrigation-chaining is limited, so only a few towns will have the food to support >Pop6 in the early game (severely diminishing the utility of Republic) — so you might as well just ICS everything anyway (<Pop6 towns at CxxC or CxxxC wastes huge numbers of tile-harvests, and will kill your economy with unit-support under Republic), which then advocates for a Feudalist government. By the time you can irrigate without freshwater, the game might already be over on a Tiny/Small map, but on Large/Huge, once you're Industrial and have Electricity, you can then switch to Republic (or Communism, depending on game-aim), and start Worker-disbanding half your towns, railing + irrigating all the intervening (Plains/Desert) tiles, to go from CxCxC to CxxxC.

I random-rolled a start like this last week (India, Huge, Pan, Temperate, Arid, 3BYO, Emperor) — right before the Jungle-start I posted in the other thread! Started going for 160K on the Pan-map, but some way in (I'd just got WarEllies and my GA) I looked at the F8 screen and was horrified to discover that I'd somehow buggered up the Culture-limits during the game-setup, and the game actually wanted 256K Culture to win. I swiftly lost interest in finishing that one! :lol:

Speaking of which...

Feudalism's (also) very good for the 100K victory (especially if Religious). Beeline Republic first, for finishing the Ancient techs quicker and the core buildout, then research/buy Feudalism (the tech) and switch to military-builds: Maces initially; Knights if you can get Chiv quickly, or need it for a Knight-UU (otherwise beeline MilTrad/Cavs, especially if necessary for overseas campaigns). And when you're about to bankrupt yourself with unit-support, switch to Feudalism (the government) and go a-conquering, whipping Settlers (for town-spammage, backfilling into the core if necessary) and/or more Maces, and then Culture: 100+ fully irrigated farm-towns, each with a Temple, Library, Cathedral, and Colosseum (and a University, if Education is also acquired) will get you 1 + 3 + 3 + 2 (+ 4) = 9–13 Culture per turn per town, reaching 100K+ in ~100 additional turns.
A group of us used fuedalism to spam culture in a large 130K SG a few years ago. We warred and spammed settlers up to the domination limit and then pop rushed all the culture buildings in each city.
That sounds very familiar! ;)

And a case in point (it's Jar01 in my sig).
 
Yeah forgot to mention disbanding the cities except I don't it with settlers.

Turn ICS in xxcxxcxxc or close to it.

I find ICS a bit gamey but yeah it's a very old trick. I rarely use it or use it in a limited form.
 
Feudalism may also be useful on really extreme maps (e.g. Warm, Arid, 3BYO), where freshwater/ irrigation-chaining is limited, so only a few towns will have the food to support >Pop6 in the early game (severely diminishing the utility of Republic) — so you might as well just ICS everything anyway (<Pop6 towns at CxxC or CxxxC wastes huge numbers of tile-harvests, and will kill your economy with unit-support under Republic), which then advocates for a Feudalist government.

Or you go ICS with republic or even stay in despotism. Each anarchy period is a huge penalty, the differences between regular governments are much smaller. One always needs think when an anarchy period is going to be paid off.

Since i donnot like to waste one of the 2 traits for being religious, feudalism is unlikely to work for me. If playing large or huge maps monarchy is preferable due to earlier availability on the short run and no war weariness in the long run. And republic again is usually quite preferable to monarchy.
 
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