Does anybody use Serfdom?

[Ming]

I'm a big fan of taking COL, and getting a religion if I was aced out of the other early religions.

As far as running serfdom... never have, and probably never will.

[Yaga]

I play Large Marathon maps and use Serfdom extensively, through the early industrial eras to Lumbermills and Railroads before I switch off.

In the early game I bee-line to Alphabet through Priesthood, while expanding quickly. As such, it's usually more necessary to build roads for my armies to march up and down than to get all the squares built up. I'll tradeback for Agriculture, Pottery, Animal Husbandry, etc , when I have the opportunity, but I don't like to give the AI too good of a deal so I usually focus on developing whatever I got from my Civ at start.

So by the time Fedualism comes around, I'm in desperate need of developing my land. On Marathon it takes 27 turns to clear jungle (iirc -- that might be clear+build), and 9-12 for most everything else; the 50% bonus is hugely beneficial.

And, after building up my Civ and having a nice little population explosion, I'm usually off to conquer my neighbors. They invariably do stupid things to their land, and my allies usually pillage the heck of 'em, and so I need to re-tool their entire economies, tearing down workshops and watermills and putting in cottages and farms. And, of course, improving on the transport network so that I can get my Stacks o' Doom from one side of my Civ to the other in under 15 turns.

Depending on how much plantation-era resources and remnant forests I have, I may switch off Serfdom once I've reached the military lull between Engineering and Rifling, but it's unlikely. It seems there's always something for those guys to do, and I invariable want them to do it quickly. And it is nice to have an army of 40+ workers when you hit railroad -- I'll string them all in a line from one side of my civ to another and get the whole thing done in half a dozen turns.

So yes -- there are occasions where Serfdom, even for extended periods of time, is incredibly helpful.

[couerdelion]

Only run serfdom with a SPI civ and then tend to fluctuate between it and Slavery, using the latter to whip every so often and running +50% worker speed in periods in between.

Particularly in the time when you are setting up windmills, watermills and workshops, this can be quite a nice and quick way of terraforming