The civics system is one the most elegantly designed parts of Civilization IV. They force the player to adapt and evolve their strategy, changing their government form as History advances, just like real-world societies do. Some are better suited for big empires; others for a handful of cities. There are interesting synergies (run Representation and Mercantilism at the same time for a Merchant Republic with extra science, or a Pacifist State religion with caste system to see great people flooding your empire). Even those civics that are not usually discussed a lot, like Police State or Environmentalism, become a viable and even a desirable choice at higher difficulty levels, where happiness and health are scarce.

However, there is a civic for which I have never found a good situation to make use of: Serfdom. Serfdom, in the Labor civics column, makes workers build improvements 50% faster. It doesn’t sound that bad on paper. Worker management is an important skill to master the game, working unimproved tiles is pretty inefficient, and it is generally agreed that building too few workers is a common bad habit in beginner and intermediate players. Serfdom’s effect would be game-breaking in the beginning of the game, but this civic only becomes available in the Middle Ages (with the Feudalism technology). By then, you should already have a handful or workers ready to improve your city tiles, and the effect of working an additional improved or unimproved tile is not as crucial.

Also, the exact same bonus can be obtained with the Hagia Sophia wonder, considered one of the weakest in the game… But at least it produces sweet Great Engineer points.

To make matters worse, Serfdom competes in the Labor column with three very strong alternate civics: Slavery (considered by many as the most important civic in the game), Caste System and Emancipation (the latter, if only to avoid the unhappiness penalty during the late game). If you decide to use Serfdom, you must take into account the benefit from other civics that you are not getting.

The only situation where I’ve found myself actively using Serfdom is, as a Spiritual leader, to run in the turns where I’m not whipping. If you can time your whips, with the Spiritual trait it’s more beneficial to run another civic until you are ready to sacrifice population; Slavery has only active benefits (you need to click the whip button) and passive disadvantages (risk of slave revolts and medium maintenance cost, as opposed to low). Even then, just one high-food city could be enough to make Caste system more beneficial.

I guess a second strategy involving Serfdom would be for a boost in worker speed if you are mass turning your farms or towns into workshops under State Property (+1 food). But in that case, you will probably want to have super-workshops with Caste System (+1 hammer), or will already be affected by Emancipation unhappiness. Other situations where an extra effort by workers is needed (lots of jungle to clear, turning roads into railroads) don’t seem as urgent to justify losing one of the other civics.

A third one that I came up with involves pleasing an AI to make them vote for you in the United Nations. I’ve won diplomatic victories by switching to the other leaders’ favorite civics and thus gaining their favor (especially if vassals are disabled, so Diplomation is off the table). However, there’s a “small” problem here… No AI leader has Serfdom as a favorite civic! (Perhaps so they don’t get stuck with an inferior choice). So this strategy would require a mod that adds another leader with Serfdom as favorite civic.

Do you use Serfdom? What changes do you think could be made to this civic to make it more attractive, without damaging the game’s balance?

I'm in the same boat as you on this one. I certainly have civics I like and dislike, but I do make use of every civic from time to time... every civic except serfdom. I just can't figure out a use for it. It's the weakest effect of any civic in the game, and it's mutually exclusive with two of the strongest effects.

I feel like they wasted a civic slot on an effect that is completely uninteresting, and conceptually it's not even sufficiently distinct from slavery (they share the same etymology; both serf and slave derive from the Latin "servus"). The game's content was already spread thin across all the eras of history, and having even one weak civic can really stick out like a sore thumb as a result.

Yeah I really like the civics system too. That's why I'm a fan of creative trait, I can swap them around as much as I like with no repercussions other than having to wait a few turns before I can do it again. Especially good for someone just learning to play,

Lacking the expert knowledge you folks have, I'm not keen on slavery. I definitely see its value(mechanic wise) but if you lose production from the lost civilians which take much longer to regrow verses simply waiting for the item to be produced in the first place... it seems mostly only useful in high food low production availability areas or in a pinch when you simply can't wait because of war or something, a low quality draft that works for buildings too. Especially early game when happiness is hard to get and latter game when you don't want to be shaving citizens off for a few turns boost when it takes so much longer to get them back.

Similarly the cast system is more problematic for me then it seems for you two. I can't afford to take workers off tiles for too long to even have the specialists I can set from structures much-less "unlimited" and I note the unlimited doesn't include Engineers that actually get things built.

So considering I don't value either of those as much as some people seem to, it follows I value serfdom more. It's all positive and no drawback. Sure its positive is minor, but still useful. Some wonder or something does the same thing? Maybe but then you got to get the wonder and what about before then. I presume the two effects stack too.

Also I don't know what happens if woods get cut if something is nearly already built. The game doesn't seem to put the extra over unlike other versions of Civ/Alpha cent. That means wood cuts need to be timed right. Which makes serfdom nicer.

If I take everything you say as absolute fact and ignore my possibly bad skill at playing, then the logical solution would be to reverse how early they appear in the game. Make serfdom appear at the earliest stage and slavery appear where serfdom is. That way you can use it for setting up your area better and it would be the labor version you get first that's better than nothing so it doesn't matter how bad it may be if it's your only option. Of course the game designers wouldn't do it that way because "historical accuracy", which is laughable in a game like Civ. You could just swap their mechanics but keep the name and position. Their effect might not make as much sense as their name anymore though. I am sure both could easily be done via mod.

I'd also make slavery high maintenance (or whatever would use its mechanic), if it is how you say.

While we are on the subject of historical accuracy and game mechanics I'd like to take a moment to soap box about putting slavery in the game. This is the bloody game that turns food into people, I hate that part of civ. It's not accurate at all, it's a game! But food into people is bad game mechanics too IMO. Its a real shame IMO that slavery is in the game and that people value it for its use. I would have at least put some long term repercussions in for using it. Maybe negative events that can happen well after you've used it and that increase in chance the more you use it. Like race riots or turns where some of your citizens refuse to work in show of deference to the victims of slavery, or something.

Also, it would make sense if Slavery didn't get along with some of the other civ settings, a drawback for combining them. Like universal suffrage and slavery for example.

Slavery is a food->hammer conversion tool, and the conversion ratio is very generous. You can look up online guides that go over the math if you're curious, but it's vastly more efficient to put your people to work in farms and build using slavery than it is to put them to work in forests or mines.

Most cities can't really grow huge in the early-game. If your city lacks food resources, most tiles are barely going to produce enough food to feed the pop working the tile. Until you get lots of strategic resources and more advanced buildings, sickness will hard-cap all but the most productive cities at fairly low to moderate population levels. Especially once sickness starts being an issue (3 food to support 1 pop gets really inefficient) it's often not worth it to grow your city larger anyways and converting the excess makes sense. The civic has two main uses. The first is that it lets you use specialists without requiring any buildings, and the second is that it allows you more fine-tuned control over which great person you will get next. Used carefully, caste system can guarantee your choice of a prophet, scientist, merchant, or artist as your next great person. It's a bit too micro-intensive and finicky for my tastes, but basically necessary for playing on the highest difficulties since you need specific great people for certain builds to work correctly. Overflow is not an issue in Civ 4, don't worry about it. Honestly, neither effect is particularly accurate towards what they're trying to represent. For instance, a huge consequence of Roman slavery was overpopulation and unemployment in the cities. The influx of slaves from their military campaigns allowed the big plantations to grow bigger and choke out smaller citizen farmers, and they used slave labor rather than employing free citizens. Serfdom is particularly ironic since one of the big problems with the serf/lord arrangement is that there was no incentive to improve the land.

You say that but all my productions start blank, which implies to me the production isn't spilling over to the next project.

The overflow is added at the end of turn, so even if you change your mind to something else you still get it. It works the same way with techs.

Do you get the production bonus of wood if you put a settler on forest?

When a terrain bonus like whaling, "expires" does that mean you get no extra food etc from that tile?

No, you lose the wood in that case. You continue to get the bonus production from the tile, but you can no longer gain the strategic resource. Not a huge deal with whales, but with furs it's sometimes worth replacing the hunting camp

I guess we all pass through a phase where we don't want to sacrifice our population in the game. But it's just too powerful to ignore.

There are two negative repercussions of slavery. The first one is the possibility, each turn you're running slavery, that a slave revolt happens. Your city turns into revolt mode and for one turn it doesn't produce anything. Depending on how you react to the event (= how much you spend you suffocate the rebellion), there's a chance the slave revolt continues for another turn.

The second repercussion is shared by the other civics in the Labor column: once one civ implements Emancipation, the rest of players who haven't adopted start getting an unhappiness penalty, which will only get bigger over time and eventually crippling. That's why at some point you are usually forced to abandon Slavery or Caste System... or Serfdom, should you decide to use it.

It doesn't need to be within your city or worked, but it needs to be within your borders, connected to your capital (via road, rivers or coastline) and with an improvement built on top (the usual one, such as farm, mine, pasture, etc. or a fort). So if the resource is out of reach of your cities, it's more beneficial to build a fort, so you also get a defense bonus.


Yes, for the health bonus/malus they need to be in the workable space (also known as "big fat cross"). They also have a global benefit (prevention of global warming).

Don't believe I've ever used Serfdom myself, but you are touching on a good, if quite niche, way to use it. Though I'd probably also say that it can be fairly powerful if you play on Marathon. Everything is much slower turnwise, so in that case Serfdom could probably be pretty useful. For instance to mass-change tiles in a big empire, chopping down the nature reserves into space parts, or something like that.

Usually I run Slavery as much as I can, and Caste during Golden Ages. Emancipation is a massive pain in the later game, but can be sort of dealt with using spies and converting AIs by trade (but they tend to not want to swap out of emancipation due to unhappiness).

The civic system itself is great, though. Adds so much versatility and strategy. Some options are obviously stronger than others - environmentalism isn't all that great either - but I love this part of the game.

As a guy who runs marathon as his default speed, it's actually the other way around. Due to how slow tile improvement go up on marathon you naturally compensate by building more workers in the ancient and classical ages. By the time the medieval age comes along and serfdom is available you'll have an excess of workers if anything.