UncleJJ:
We agree on a lot of Civic usages. I use my Civics pretty much a lot like you! Vassalage for the early war, Police State for the late game war, Nationhood for drafting and happy faces, and so on.
I rarely use Serfdom myself, but I have used it on occasion. The question is, is the Hagia Sophia's Worker benefit at all worth getting it? The effect is similar and the cost is similar. Instead of bothering to build Hagia Sophia, why not just build more Workers?
A few times, I used Serfdom for a wartime benefit. I used it to build roads to the frontline through ravaged and conquered enemy territory very fast. I could've used more Workers, but I didn't want to expose a lot of them to enemy attack, and they were rather far away to begin with. Here, I had a few captured Workers now, and they'll do the job fine, if they had a little boost.
In another game, I used Workers under Serfdom post-Railroads. I had just acquired Railroads and realized that I could use Railroads to get my Drafted troops to my frontline faster. I didn't have enough Worker to do the job fast enough. I couldn't have enough Workers to do the job fast enough. If I had one Worker for every tile I had to railroad, it still would be too slow. Of course, I didn't have that many Workers. Doing Serfdom for a while made my Railroad Transport System come online about 50% faster, which was worth the switch from Caste.
Occasionally, I'd use Serfdom to quickly retool enemy lands into more sensible patterns. And yes, I had to clear cut half a continent's worth of jungle from time to time, particularly about the same time I acquire Feudalism.
Still, it IS my least used Civic, and I tend to use pretty much all the Civics, depending. To make Serfdom more appealing, I'd suggest that it also allows you the power to "draft" workers. Two to a pop point sounds about right. That'll make it much more powerful for chain-irrigating the world, while also allowing you to retain benefits afterwards.
General Commentary
I notice a lot of people don't appreciate Environmentalism. I use Environmentalism rather extensively actually. In the immediate run up to Assembly Line and Industrialism, I often Windmill many hills just in preparation for it. The thing is, without Medicine and Hospitals and using both Factories and Coal Plants, your pollution tends to shoot sky-high. This tends to cost you a pop point or two in your largest cities.
Rather than deal with that, I use Environmentalism. Under Environmentalism, each grasslands hill produces 2 food, 2 hammer, and 4 Commerce. 5 Commerce if you're Financial. That's butch. Moreover, your National Park City gets 2 Commerce each for the Forest Preserves.
With the proper preparation, and without Corporations to muddy the issue, Environmentalism can equal or exceed Free Market in Commerce and also deal with pollution issues until after you finish building your health buildings. Any small losses you get from using Windmills instead of Mines is easily recouped with Factories and Coal Plants, with interest.
).
