I finally found some use for Feudalism

[Fistleaf]

Feudalism is useful when you are struggling.
AI is much bigger than you and technologically advanced, the only way to beat them is to churn out large numbers of troops to capture, burn their cities and crush them. Since "spearmen can beat tanks", sheer numbers can overwhelm anything. War weariness is virtually non-existent if war lasts below 16-17 turns. Of course, keep your cities below size 7.

Another use is when your options are practically limited to either Monarchy or Feudalism. If your cities are mostly corrupted, you have great difficulty building troops or temples in your corrupted cities. Under Monarchy, you will be hard-pressed to come up with the money for rush-building. Feudalism allows pop-rush, meaning you can ignore shield production and just go for food production (never reduced by corruption) and use the populations as your production "shields". Keep the money saved for other purposes. Also, you have more troops for war and can slaughter enemy citizens for rush-building temples.

[cousLee]

We can not forget the cruel oppression you have bore down on us.....me....us.......me

[Last Conformist]

The poprush sucks. Give me the money rush any day.

[vmxa1]

Pop rush is ok for ancient ag and maybe even middle age, but after that stuff is too expensive to pop rush.

Now if you could use either, then you got something.

[Yosho]

Pop rush is also good if you have a huge empire, and so most of it is completly corrupted. There's almost no point trying to make anything with shields from those cities , but with a combination of pop-rushing and drafting you can get a lot of benifits out of useless cities. Usually what you want to pop-rush in those places are things like temples, granaries, or harbors anyway. Bigger, more expensive buildings are usually too expensive to be worth cash-rushing in any case; is it ever really worth it to cash rush something like a bank or a factory except when it's already close to being finished?

[Solomwi]

Communism, Yosho.

[gunkulator]

If you have a huge empire, it almost doesn't matter what you do because you'll probably win anyway.

My only goal with totally corrupt cities is to get them to size 7 for unit support. Irrigate everything and use the surplus as taxmen. Once Replaceable Parts is discovered, switch to civil engineers and you can pump out temples, courthouses and police stations in just a few turns. For those small towns out in the tundra, turn on the happiness governor and never bother with them again.

[Solomwi]

Despite my earlier comment, that's pretty much my approach too, gunk. I will toy with the specialists, though, to see if I can bump my research down a notch without losing any time. Sometimes I can, sometimes not, but when I can it more than makes up for the lost revenue from taxmen.

[UnOrthOdOx]

churn out large numbers of troops to capture, burn their cities and crush them. Since "spearmen can beat tanks", sheer numbers can overwhelm anything.

Sounds like a typical game to me...

It's no secret I'm a fan of Feudalism over monarchy, and in most games republic as well, just on playstyle.

I strongly advise against the knee-jerk reaction of 'keep cities under size 7'.

You should still grow your core unless you're on a map that will allow you to win quickly (pangea), since you will likely need another govt change later. If you're planning on a communism change, you'll want to let a few more than just the core grow too.

Feudalism is easy to generate into a Oscillating war killing machine, conquering cities, poprushing improvements there, these new cities act as unit support to let your core grow, sue peace, go attack another target, etc etc.

[Yosho]

Originally posted by gunkulator
If you have a huge empire, it almost doesn't matter what you do because you'll probably win anyway.

Well, usually true, but not always.

My only goal with totally corrupt cities is to get them to size 7 for unit support. Irrigate everything and use the surplus as taxmen. Once Replaceable Parts is discovered, switch to civil engineers and you can pump out temples, courthouses and police stations in just a few turns. For those small towns out in the tundra, turn on the happiness governor and never bother with them again.

Well, my first goal with corrupt cities is to build a temple, to produce some culture and expand the city culture radius and control more land. After that, the goal is to make the city contribute SOMETHING to my empire, either with hurried production, or heavily using the draft, depending on what point of the game it is. The happiness hardly matters if you keep the city small, and the extra units can turn the tide of the war. 10 corrupt cities with decent food supplies using population rushing can make (on average) 2 pikemen a turn early in the game, or 3-4 drafted units per turn later in the game, and that's not much less then what 10 core cities can produce using shields.

[Commy]

I had a game a long time ago as Russia. I was the largest civ, but the map was cool and out of the 37 cities of mine, I believe it was 29 that were in tundra, only a few of which actually had game or fish within the radius. Without Feudalism, I would have been screwed. Will I lost the tech lead, my economy survived, and in the late industrial age, I finally took the lead for good. While the game overall advanced more slowly than a typical game, I still came out ahead, which is all that matters.