What's the point of Feudalism govt?

[Fistleaf]

Going to a republic before democracy is a waste of several turns since both governments are similar. I would rather stay as a Monarchy until switching to Democracy, or remain a Republic throughout.

[DrSpike]

3 switches is not easy to defend unless you are religious. Otherwise straight republic carries with it the advantage of needing a single switch.

[Goethe80]

Originally posted by jomateix
I always do monarchy -> republic -> democracy. Never tryed communism, fascism or feudalism. So, it has any point ?

I'm not sure if it's effective to make the switch from republic to democracy. Making 3 switches is painful (unless you're a religious civ, and even then, I'm not too sure about it).

That said, I used to make a beeline for Republic and just stay there. But recently, I've been considering Monarchy -> Facism instead. The worker bonus for Facism is very very useful when you start railroading, plus the capability to pop-rush units is nice when you start capturing large enemy cities. But even then, the 2nd switch is always painful.

[UnOrthOdOx]

I personally place Feudalism as equal to Monarchy in many situations.

As stated, pop rushing in caputred towns is certainly a personal preference, so in some cases it out does Monarchy for me.

Second, if I don't have 3 lux, I'ld rather have the police than go reoublic and spend 30% on happiness.

Third, there seems to be some misconception that Feudalism needs to have all small towns. This is not exactly so. The trick is PICKING which towns you want to grow and letting them. From there, you can plant forts, as outlined so well in another thread here, for all the reasons of forts, plus for the specific purpose of unit support.

War Weariness?

Oh please, it's LAUGHABLE. WW never stopped my warmongering in Republic, it certainly doesn't when I am given the advantage of MP's as well!

So, what am I end up with typically?

Usually a little more unit support than a fledgling Monarchy (though less later), the ability to bypass those OPTIONAL techs and get a lead in the required ones while the AI researches the govt's, military police if lux are lacking, pop rushing for those nice juicy cities I'm about to capture, and Military Police for the War Weariness to make a mockery of it's very inclusion.

I will say it does take some different planning than typical.

[Krill]

So its suits the unorthodox, then

I never use it, but then I am a builder, so I only need republic.

Fistleaf, every gov has its own niche, and Feudalism is no exception. You just have to find where it is the best government.

[DaveV]

The combo of Feudalism and Agricultural can be very useful in an ICS playstyle. Corrupt cities that can work an irrigated grassland will have +4 food, so can grow in 5 turns (3 if you have the Pyramids). That's an effective production of 4 shields/turn (or 7 shields/turn with Pyramids) if you pop-rush. Not overpowering, but pretty powerful. Once the cities get tired of the whip, you can convert them to specialists.

[DrSpike]

But specialists don't count for the dissolution of unhappiness. Your cities will stay mad for a long time if there are few labourers.

[joncnunn]

Actually, it's the opposite:

The more normal labors there are, the more your citizens are unhappy. All normal labors in excess of X [1 on Emperor and above, 2 on Monarchy] are by default unhappy. Specalists themselves are always content.

The pop rush penalty lasts 20 turns.

[DrSpike]

Actually I was right, you just failed to understand the point correctly.

The point was that specialists do not count for the dissolution of unhappiness. Ergo a strategy of immense whipping followed by turning much of the city to specialists guarantees that unhappiness will last a long time for the few citizens that are able to work the land (who have to bear all the unhappiness/turns), affecting growth for a long time.

The difficulty level is largely irrelevant to the point. Your other point that the specialists are themselves content is also irrelevant.

[DaveV]

Dr. Spike: actually, I meant to turn the single citizen remaining in the city to a specialist, which works for any level of unhappiness, as far as I know. The city will produce 20 shields while growing to size 2 (10 with Pyramids), at which point I can whip out another 40(30)-shield unit. Now the production is down to 2(3) shields/turn, but I'm also producing a bunch of extra beakers or coins.

[DrSpike]

Yeah I got that part...........I just wanted to make sure you realised cities you do this to will be *forever* unhappy, since specialists don't count for the dissolution of unhappiness. I am sure you could build a fearsome early/mid game army with an extreme ICS + whipping, but in the long term you may struggle. A skilled warmonger such as yourself can probably take your own continent this way, but what happens later on? Also you can never disband the perpetually unhappy whipped cities without transferring the unhappiness.

You can keep a core for 'proper' useage, but would it be enough? And if you made the core big enough to compete all game how much room would you have for the extreme ICS.........after all it's an early to mid game strat not a late game one when units cost a lot more shields.

Anyway I'm just throwing up a few thoughts on practical implementation really.

[joncnunn]

To my knowlege, the pop rushing penalty is a flat 20 turns per occurance just like the flat drafting 20 turn penalty.

There's also seems to be a limit that you can't pop rush more than half the current population at once. (e.g. a pop 3 city is not allowed to pop rush 2 citizens but can only pop rush 1.)

20 turns after the last pop rushing, city happiness will be fine, and all that will be needed then is to massively join workers into the city.

Yes, disbanding a whippped / drafted city seems to transfer the unhappiness to the city in your empire that was founded immedately after that one.

[DrSpike]

Sorry Jon but you are wrong. Though lately testing by Player1 has raised some doubts about a small change in the mechanics for C3C it is still definitely true (in fact more true) that the unhappiness from multiple rushes stacks (early on in this strategy the rushes would be less than 20 turns apart also), and the number of citizens working the land is a crucial factor in determining how many workers will be made unhappy for how many turns. My point that specialists don't count for the dissolution is a fair one, and Dave's proposed strategy would mean that the cities in question would be out of commission for a long time, longer than 20 turns after the last rush.

[joncnunn]

Interesting, by any chance would you happen to have the formula?

I usually only pop rush a city once or twince in the whole game with Temples on cities with no forest being the most common.

[DrSpike]

Well I would be able to give you an exact account of how it works, but last time I did that Player1 pointed out some tests which showed that there was a slight difference with C3C, at least for 1.22.

Essentially you need to think of the unhappiness caused as unhappiness turns to be borne. If you do 2 pop points of rushes in the same turn you have 40 turns to bear, which is shared equally over the workers in your city, with specialists not counting. Ergo if you started from 4 population points the unhappiness would last for 20 turns, but if you started from 3 it would last 40. Also with regard to this strategy the stacking allows for a labourer to be double (or higher multiple) unhappy.

Player1's tests showed that it doesn't work quite that way now with multiple rushes, but the change doesn't favour this strategy, in fact the opposite. Using the 4 population example you get 2 unhappy for 20 turns and 1 for a further 20 turns.

Anyway it's certainly not the case that 20 turns after the final rush your city would be fine, unless there was no accumulated unhappiness whatsoever........that has always been the case since vanilla.

As regards Dave's strategy it's important to underline (as I did when inadvertently starting this side debate) that the heavily whipped cities could be out of action for a long time. Of course one could attempt to set up a situation where there was little accumulated unhappiness then rush only every 20 turns when the city grows (as with +3 food and 1 citizen as a specialist). With enough cities this could work in some very specific circumstances, like large map Pangaea games for example. I have my doubts about whether this strategy could beat a more conventional warmonger approach for other settings.

What is more, as I mentioned earlier, the best approach would be to have a core to produce and kick out some beakers, and do this from an extremely large number of peripheral cities.