Fuedalism

[Jaded Tortoise]

Ok I've been trying to make this government into a viable option that can compete with uni or demo. Unfortunately my real problem is getting the techs that -50% science really hurts. Now I've found some partial solutions to this however here they are.

building and scoutlab rp isn't affected by the 50% cut so

First grab every planet you can even tiny ultra-poor. these can still hold
research labs, supercomps, and autolabs if you get that far.
Second research rlabs then scout labs.
With the 33% cheaper ships you can build a battleship with only
scoutlabs on it for fairly cheap and it gives 8rp

with warlord and lots of small colonies having rlabs you can average about 9 rp per colony just off ships and rlabs And when you need warships later you can just refit the battleships instead of building new ones this makes later army building real quick.

I've found my best so far to be lithovore, +2prod, warlord (allows all 8 pop on home planet to research rlabs (12rp about 15-17 turns), and gives spectacluar production.

The advantage over unification for fuedalism is that the + to uni prod doesn't include any building production or leader bonuses, and uni can't get morale. Whereas the fuedalism ship bonus includes morale, leader, and building prod, and morale can give a huge bonus. So late game ship building is enourmously fast. Also the ship bonus include colony ships so early expansion is quicker. + you get a huge difference in race picks cost which straight out allows the +2 prod further increasing the production bonus.

Unfortunately I'm pretty sure that leaders come less frequently if your repulsive and you really want decent leaders to help science, give morale, and cut pollution. And getting your other race penalties Often ends up hurting somewhat 2 are fairly minor with -2 ground combat but whats a good -4 pick? I ussually use -.5 taxes but this cuts your money down a lot its not too bad but is there a better one?

And can someone think of a better set of race picks? I've thought of tolerant, but that exclude lith and you still only get 4 workers to start on science which delays rlabs by another 15 turns. And I've tried spying style to gain science, but even with lots of spies its very slow (Against comp AI's) and I doubt it would be quick against players with unif as they get +15 def spies. Warlords is a must those command points are a huge bonus+helps with ship exp. And dropping the +2 prod may be possible but not sure what to change it too. Sub would increase pops late game by a lot but not help early game, Aqua would give some colonies higher early pops, but most colonies just need the r-labs and to give command points anyway. tolerant and lithovore would be great together but this excludes warlordwhich kills you fleet size. I can actually see charismatic and +1 prod or char/RW/Lhw being good but have to get a some luck with the leaders you get for that to pan out.

The real hurdle I have is getting to rlabs fast If someone can find a solution to that this might be a more playable government style and that diversity would make the game more fun I think. Unfortunately even at 15-17 turns that just kills you.

[Cabman]

My answer is: FEUDAL SUXXXXXXXXX!!! period. It is playable only with Uni, demo, dict. banned . You have chances only with early blitz. And there's no late game with feudal (you're just stomped by any non feudal race)

[Jaded Tortoise]

IT's only fun to play with obstacles to overcome, and the reason fuedal dies late game so easy is tech differences ussually.

I tried the charismatic a few times and tested it for chance of getting leaders. Admittedly this is with a reasonably small test sample so it may be off some. However the results I am getting within first 100 turns is

Repulsive gives about 3%/turn chance to be offered a leader and the quality of the leader is below average (Cyr, Grum, that +10%farming or +10% finance guy etc...)

Normal gives about 4%/turn chance to be offered leader and the quality is pretty poor still but I got a couple slightly better ones

Charismatic gives about 5%/turn chance and leaders are significantly better. You still get offered about the same number of low quality ones but about 1/5 are better ones giving multiple +for colonies and even got offered some of the best combat leaders early on. Unfortunately even though charismatic says it reduces leader costs by half I think there may be a bug with that as most costs were the same as I remembered from non-charismatic games. That may just be my memory though I need to actually record and check prices before I list in bug forum.

Unfortunately I don't think these bonuses are worth enough to take -6 penalties instead of repulsive, or lose the +3 that can go to something else.

I did have some luck with using Fued/Repuls/+1prod/Lith/Artifacts/Warlord however as you can pull a starting of 21 rps with your homeworld (8x5 gives 40 which should be cut in half to 20 but for some reason it was giving me 21?) This still leaves pretty kickass production and if you spread fast enough this can become a research colony with a decent leader and let your other colonies take the brunt of production. And morale affects science too which can pull up from the -50% pretty well for late game.

Unfortunately still not truly competative yet though.

[Dustin]

I have considered getting Feudalism becuase it is -4 picks and gives you a +50% to ship building and if you get your reserach through buildings like Research Lab and through scout labs with your ships, it should do alright, except... for the fact that there are other -picks and + picks that do way better in comparison... and the -10 picks limit isnt a help.

Compare
Feudalism (-4)
Lithovore (10)
to
Unification (6)

It would seem like Feudalism would do ok, except for the fact that the Unification person can also get Lithovore with some minuses and still be ahead, especially in the beginning!

Also, with the +50% to ship building, it makes sence to get Warlord.
And becuase the start of the game is so slow with them getting to Reseach Labs and scout labs, it makes sence to speed it up some in the beginning with Artifacts Home World, well guess what? That is all the picks you can chose, maybe a Production(+1) out of good habit for a production race. -- The Unification player can get Lithovore and Warlord too with max minuses and his science and production would come out better!


So, my conclusion after this in depth analysis is Feudalism sucks!

[zoetropo]

Since Feudal deserves to be a much worse penalty than -4, use PickHack to make it -10.

[siron]

Feudal can be fun. Some months I calculated a bit, which transd omni tele race can produce 2 CAs with fighterbays afap. My conclusion was:
feudal transd omni tele lrarthw -gc -growth is nice. Dont take repulsive since it decreases the probability to get a navigator!
Put the first 11 turns 3 pop into research and accumulate 88 RPs. Then all into Prod and the only tech u research are the fighterbays.

By turn 36 you should have 2 CAs with 3 interceptors and ext fuel cells and 2 OPs on average. (Can be far better with good leaders. You have also good chance to find a gem, natives or even several artis.)

Won my fastest 4way with this race. Around turn 56 or IIRC.
1v1 in large nowh...I needed 46 turns to place 2 CAs on my opponents hw. He didnt saw me coming

Transd can have 5 parsecs per turn with navi. And 2 CAs can take out Starbase with rhulls.

The only problem is that some players refuse to play you after a while

[Time]

As with most of the others, I too would not use this in a competitive 1 vs. 1 game. However, in a few games vs. comps., I had to make up for the lack of research with spy or creat., usually going heavy in prod. and spying.
Telep, Prod+2,Spy+2,Rhw, Feudal,Repuls.
SPREAD FAST, STEAL FROM EVERYONE, SABATOGE EVERYTHING
the spy stuff, especially from those far from you.

Remember with Telep. when you mind control colony, the colonist's picks are now your picks. If you mind control a lith. race then transfer that colonist to one of your worlds (say a toxic) it still requires no food. same benifits for Aq, Subt, grwth, cyber, prod, food, sci, and Tol.

The Lith race earlier, sounds good, perhaps a Lith, Telep or a Lith Creat.
It may sound funny to take creative, but, it's better to have max. defenses, when you have low tech weapons, and getting all of the morale buildings help alot.
If you can get to Confederation, you rock!

[rewster1]

I don't think the scout labs are worth it. It might be worth it if small ships produced as much as big ships... like +5/10/15/20/25/30 instead of +1/2/4/8/16/32. I tried the scout labs approach also, but it doesn't make sense economically. Even with warlord and building battleships, the command point bonus only nets you 4rp per colony, or 5.33rp with starbases. If you could start the game with doomstars, star fortresses, and the highest communications level, that would be 42.66rp (but would take some time to build). But you don't start with all that.
4rp per colony isn't a bad thing, but you have to build half a BB, whereas a research lab is much cheaper for 5rp per colony. Instead of building a BB per 2 colonies, for just a little more production you could build a colony ship and a colony base, plus the two research labs to give you 10rp instead of 8rp for the BB. ~430pp for BB with scoutlab vs. 200pp + 333pp +120pp for cbase + cship + 2 rlabs. Granted the BB is a little cheaper, but the two new colonies can reproduce. Plus, to do this doesn't require warlord, so that clears the way for lith-tol, or cyber-tol-2prod, or lith-2prod-arti, or some other setup that is economically superior.

According to Cyber's guide, anyway, a prod race supposedly can get by with almost no researchers after rlabs and afacts... so if you can manage to research these as fast as unitol, I don't see why you couldn't be as strong as unitol. On the other hand the same guide says feudal is suicide, so maybe you simply can't research them fast enough.

Edit: forgot to mention, scout labs take quite a while for a feudal race to research! That's time that could be spent expanding.

[Astax]

Of course it would be wonderful is strategy like this was viable. Alas Moo2 was never properly balanced. It would be great if many strategies worked, stuff like you describe would be a natural one! But there would be otehrss of course that also would work. That is why I hope to one day get a game that is like Moo2 together, and have it work with many viable strategies, supporting many game paths.

[c'g~]

Of course it would be wonderful is strategy like this was viable. Alas Moo2 was never properly balanced. It would be great if many strategies worked

Try EXPa Pro Edition Mod (U can find it here viewtopic.php?t=576)
IMO, it have what U want. Moreover, it's still MoO2.

[rottenvenetic]

Astax: Just use pickhack to make the options that lead to a production race more expensive compared to everything else. If people still do play this game, such a setup for multiplayer can really gain popularity; a close analogy is the DotA phenomenon in Warcraft III.