Monarchy vs Feaudalism

[ZEE]

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[vmxa1]

Feudalism has never been the government of choice for me at any level. It can have some esoteric applications, but not many.

If you do not have a religious civ, changing governements is painful.

[Arnelos]

Feudalism has its place and Monarchy has its place. I generally found during the Beta test when I was playing around with this issue that Monarchy was increasingly useful if your empire was more "urbanized" with a high-population central core all over pop 6. I would typically go for Monarchy over even Republic because of the reduced support costs for massive armies, assuming I was fighting protracted wars. If my wars were going to remain relatively short and my army was relatively small, I went with Republic.

The times I found that going for Feudalism helped a lot was when I had a massive spread-out empire of tons of itty-bitty little corrupt cities and a massive military rampaging around the board. Under those circumstances, the ENORMOUS boost to unit support would actually yield better net income than the same empire under Republic - sometimes amazingly so.

If you do not have enough key improvements (granaries, aqueducts, markets, libraries, etc.) in your core and a built-up population in your core to support a large military (and you have one), Feudalism makes a lot of sense until the point where your core is making enough income to make Republic or Monarchy (if you're REALLY going to be at war nearly constantly) more cost-efficient.

The problem, of course, is the longer anarchy times in C3C. When they decided to expand the anarchy times, it put a severe damper in the Feudalism swapping strategy I'd been playing around with (bee-line to Feudalism, switch govs, run with that for a while during early Middle Age warmongering... eventually switch to Democracy). Waiting around in Despotism for you to get Feudalism and make the switch - or even worse switching more than once (Despotism to Republic/Monarchy, Republic/Monarchy to Feudalism) can be BRUTAL. Then being stuck in Feudalism can be quite disadvantageous if you get your Golden Age or otherwise greatly expand your core's productive and income capacity before gettin Democracy.

This said, I've seen a few interesting strategies out there of late for using Feudalism throughout the game on harder difficulty levels.

[Goethe80]

I'm going to pre-face this by stating that I'm a big fan of monarchy, but I think feudalism is heavily underestimated.
Feudalism is actually a very powerful 'war' government. The ability to pop-rush, coupled with the high unit support for 'small' cities means that each and every one of your newly conquered cities are instantly 'productive' in the sense that they reduce your unit cost.
Imagine, you've just captured... say.. Madrid (which I actually just did in a painful game w/o iron or saltpeter anywhere in sight). It's size 12, and will probably be size 9-10 by then time you bring it under control. What are you going to do with a size 9, highly corrupt, city that is on the verge of culture flipping? Pop-rush it down! You ought to have a few shields by the time it's out of resistence, so sac 3 citizens, rush a temple. Then sac a few more citizens and rush out a spearman (pikeman, whatever). Then what do you have? A size 3 city, with a temple, a defender, which contributes heavily to your unit support! All without costing you a cent.

It's less extreme when you capture smaller border cities, and you probably won't use the pop-rush as much, but whatever the case, when I can, I'm quite happy to pop-rush as much as I can out of captured cities. They're going to be unhappy anyway, so who really cares? And if you manage to rush/starve the city down, when you finally rebuild, the new citizens will be 'natural' citizens.

The above method of trimming down newly captured cities obvious can work in any government. Even on 'pay-rush' governments, you can still starve your cities down while gathering some bonuses from specialists (obviously far less efficient production wise. 20 shield vs. 2 gold per citizen). BUT, it is by far the most effective on feudalism as it is the only government that rewards you for having small cities (plus if you pop-rush garrison troops, then they help towards MP as well).

A final note though. In the late game, where you should have a reasonably large number of size 12 cities, a far superior version of feudalism is facism (another underestimated govt!). Pop-rush. Super-workers. No war-weariness. 4 MP per city limit. I have fond memories of draft/pop-rushing newly captured metros to little villages...

[ZEE]

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[Arnelos]

Originally posted by AAHZ
Arnelos:
for a feaudy flip strategy to occur succesfully IMHO it would be critical to play as a RELIGIOUS civ. Then you can pop between govts in a relitively short time.

This was part of my point. During the beta test, the feudalism government was implemented before the extention of anarchy times for religious civs. During the time between those two changes, religious civs could rather easily use Feudalism for what it is best suited and then swap to other governments at the optimal timing... all without losing too many turns to anarchy.

Frankly, I think that's one of the reasons they chose to increase the time for Anarchy under religious civs - with the expanded number of governments taylored to different strategic situations and strategies, it made the religious trait's short anarchy times even more powerful.

[MotownDennis]

I'm currently using Feudalism for the first time in a MP epic I have going right now. I've never tried it before as it runs contrary to my normal playstyle, but...

I must say Feudalism kinda rocks! I'm supporting a HUGE army right now with no maintenance costs. I'm in the Middle Ages with tech parity and my military is strong compared to everyone else's.

I'm gonna unleash this army on some people soon. Mwuhahhahaha!

[ZEE]

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[Goethe80]

Originally posted by AAHZ
a way to reduce all those pesky foreign nationals in a republic or a monarchy govt is to buy settlers from the aformentioned city then disband them to hurry the next settler you build. you can significantly reduce city size as effectively as if you POP rushed improvements under feaudy.

well yes, you would reduce the city size that way, but you'd get absolutely nothing in return (apart from having spend money on pay-rushing settlers which you subsequently disband). The reason why I think pop-rushing improvements/units under feudalism rocks is because:
1. Pop-rushing helps to reduce city size in newly captured cities (equally applicable to any non-capitalist government)
2. In feudalism, you're rewarded for having small cities, so the 'bonus' from pop-rushing in a newly captured metropolis is increased.
3. The 'bonus' mentioned in point 3 is the size reduction coupled with whatever units/improvements you've squeezed out.

Originally posted by AAHZ
but the BIG problem is that you will have to keep your cities small in order to support such a military. under monarchy your cities grow, and you can support AS MANY or more than you could support under despotism. by the time you hit democracy your cities will be ready, and so will your economy.

Actually, under feudalism, the best way to organise your empire is to allow your low corruption cities to max out to size 12, and keep all your corrupt cities at size 6 (and pumping out military units for that massive invasion). Which shouldn't really affect your economy that badly.

Anyway, like I've mentioned, I typically switch to monarchy reasonably quickly (once I have a couple of size 7+ cities up), and hang in there until I switch to Demo or Facism(!). BUT, I would say that only reason I don't regularly use Feudalism is because it comes at a rather strange time for me. I don't want to stay in Despotism all the way until Feudalism (for some reason, Monarchy seems to be quite a popular choice for AI research, so it's not hard to pick up via trade/GL), but I do note that everytime I switch to Monarchy, I dearly miss the ability to pop-rush, and I find massive unit support actually quite difficult to achieve.

[ZEE]

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[joncnunn]

It looks to me like they added one turn of anarchy regardless of traights.
(Religious : was 1 now is 2)
(Non-Relgious : was 4 - 8 now is 5 - 9)

Note that the AI has it's own max limit of anarchy set on most difficulty levels.

[joncnunn]

Costs are somewhat offset by the fact that anyone going directly for Feudalism will be bypassing all optional ancient era techs.

Plus they are likely to be using their military attacking their adjoining oppoents so that their oppoents economy is also is bad shape.

[ZEE]

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[Tripledoc]

It is strange because in all the games I have played recently I have switched to Feudalism.

I think especially on the higher levels, such as emperor, since there is usulaly a lot of warring going on as you scramble for territory.

Also you starting position is usually less than good, so you core will not grow that fast.

Since you need to fight and expand at the same time, the high unit support for towns is usefull as you pump out settlers.

The absence of the despotims tile penalty is also good, especially if you are in a golden age.

The only problem is the warweariness issue, but by keeping 3 military police in each town and hooking up to some luxuries it is usually not a problem.

The fact that you can poprush means that military units can be created in unproductive cities close to the enemy.
Poprushing also comes in handy if you are scientific or religious .

Finally the fact that Feudalism is a required tech, and usually the one you go for when at war (Pikemen and Med. Swordsmen).

So summa summarum Feudalism is the best war government for the Middleages in my oppinion.

[ZEE]

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