Admin vs Feudal

[Commodus]

I read admin gets you more mma, but early to mid game can you actually afford more mma:/

[Richard]

Yes, Admin is better than Feudal. In Feudal, you can only hold castles, whereas in Admin, you can hold both cities and castles. With Feudal, you get more troops overall and some money, but in Admin, with my high stewardship of around 52 and a lot of bonuses making around 245 gold, I held about 17 holdings—10 castles and 7 cities across 4 duchies. I had 5 Men-at-Arms for my personal army, 5 for the Imperial army, and 12 for the duchies' army. My son had 3 of the better Commander traits along with a 22 in Martial. I was just knocking down every army I came across.

Yes I was mid/maxing at the time.

[Commodus]

So admin emperor/king can have more than 2 duchies?

[Richard]

Originally posted by Commodus:

So admin emperor/king can have more than 2 duchies?

No, I just took the hit to opinion modifier.

[Iwen]

Is there actually any advantage to feudal? I would've just thought that maybe it's more secure succession (excluding elective laws to your topmost titles/factions) since you're guaranteed to inherit while in Admin you could get outcompeted.

[ChaosKhan]

Originally posted by Richard:

Yes, Admin is better than Feudal. In Feudal, you can only hold castles, whereas in Admin, you can hold both cities and castles. With Feudal, you get more troops overall and some money, but in Admin, with my high stewardship of around 52 and a lot of bonuses making around 245 gold, I held about 17 holdings—10 castles and 7 cities across 4 duchies. I had 5 Men-at-Arms for my personal army, 5 for the Imperial army, and 12 for the duchies' army. My son had 3 of the better Commander traits along with a 22 in Martial. I was just knocking down every army I came across.

Yes I was mid/maxing at the time.

In peak late game I agree, but until then feudal is way stronger. The loss of knights really hurts admin a lot. Estates are weak, especially in the hands of the incapable AI. Counts are virtually defenseless. Dukes super weak until you are half way through the game. Influence is a nice idea, but the AI is incapable of using it for more than pissing off the player with factions, bloated in spite of having maxed out dread on the ruler. If you create a full on warrior culture and want to play warfare centric, feudalism is still the better form of governance for the most part of the game. MAA become broken not through numbers, but through the knight support they receive and the holdings they are attached to. Without those buffs, they are essentially overglorified mercenary levies. Holding cities is therefore pointless.

[Commodus]

loss of knights:o

So might be better to start as feudal then swap to admin later.

[Lera]

Originally posted by Richard:

Yes, Admin is better than Feudal. In Feudal, you can only hold castles, whereas in Admin, you can hold both cities and castles. With Feudal, you get more troops overall and some money, but in Admin, with my high stewardship of around 52 and a lot of bonuses making around 245 gold, I held about 17 holdings—10 castles and 7 cities across 4 duchies. I had 5 Men-at-Arms for my personal army, 5 for the Imperial army, and 12 for the duchies' army. My son had 3 of the better Commander traits along with a 22 in Martial. I was just knocking down every army I came across.

Yes I was mid/maxing at the time.

lol. 52 stewardship. Are you using cheats or mods?

[Commodus]

With a really good court tutor and so on, 52 isnt that crazy:P

[Steffan]

In admin you can manipulate your heirs and allies into power of your main provinces. You can force the governor out with no risk of civil war (the successor takes over). The titles are not inheritable which makes it difficult foryour vassals to become huge unless you give them kingdoms or you let them expand too much. You can also use influence to swell your own armies.

A major drawback is the ability of your vassals to drag other vassals into factions. Loyalty and opinion are no longer bullet proof defense against a rebellion. That being said, having a large family allows you to keep most of your vassals into a form of alliance and a powerful spymaster can give you hooks on them. Even if they rebel you get an option to sway the higher opinion rebels to leave the rebellion.

Overall, I like it a lot more than feudal. I like to keep my vassals weak and for a mid-sized realm I prefer to marry with courtiers and vassals to keep the empire together. I always value marriage ties, hooks and ways of control higher than the competence of the people in question.

I usually have a (smaller) rebellion once per ruler in a mid-sized Byzantine Empire (Balkans + all of Asia Minor) which ends with the rebels imprisoned and most of them stay in house arrest until the rest of their days (unless I can get a hook or other way to keep them in check).

Originally posted by Iwen:

Is there actually any advantage to feudal? I would've just thought that maybe it's more secure succession (excluding elective laws to your topmost titles/factions) since you're guaranteed to inherit while in Admin you could get outcompeted.

I am yet to see myself outcompeted. The Empire is 90% run by governors of my own family, all the four major candidates come from my family as well. That being said, I've never had a problem to promote even a minor heir, who is usually a co-Emperor.

[diogocosta9dc9]

Originally posted by Lera:

Originally posted by Richard:

Yes, Admin is better than Feudal. In Feudal, you can only hold castles, whereas in Admin, you can hold both cities and castles. With Feudal, you get more troops overall and some money, but in Admin, with my high stewardship of around 52 and a lot of bonuses making around 245 gold, I held about 17 holdings—10 castles and 7 cities across 4 duchies. I had 5 Men-at-Arms for my personal army, 5 for the Imperial army, and 12 for the duchies' army. My son had 3 of the better Commander traits along with a 22 in Martial. I was just knocking down every army I came across.

Yes I was mid/maxing at the time.

lol. 52 stewardship. Are you using cheats or mods?

You can get 100 of any stat without any mods or cheating, there are plenty of tutorials on YouTube if you don't know how to do it yourself.
You can get your wife/husband to boost your stats, you can get councillor stat boosts, artifacts, court artifacts, events, activities, education, etc.
So many ways to improve your stats and your player heir's stats.

[Mr.M]

Originally posted by Lera:

lol. 52 stewardship. Are you using cheats or mods?

You can reach it with Kushite religion. They get +10 stewardship from holy sites

Originally posted by Commodus:

With a really good court tutor and so on, 52 isnt that crazy:P

What does a Court tutor have to do with this...? It only enables/guarantees lvl 4 education.


@OP, Admin is a pain in the ass. I recommend Feudal

[brownacs]

Originally posted by Mr.M:

You can reach it with Kushite religion. They get +10 stewardship from holy sites

Zunism's another good choice; they get +11 with max devotion and all holy sites.

[PostalGibbon]

I had constantly 40 - 60 stewardship rulers without any holy site bonuses as a Iconoclasm Emperor, Genius trait, Stewarship mentoring, level 5 education, governor bonuses, admin style court really adds whole boatload of stewardship.

Feudal is piss poor governing style compared to Administrative.
In Administrative you have zero succession problems (acclamation=Primogeniture from day one) your vassals are like sheep no one ever does anything, your heir can be any of your sons just pay 2k influence and bam your chosen heir is number 1 in the vote.

You have ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ insane gold income and gold bank, you can buy EVERY mercenary army if you go war and you lose couple knights big deal.

[dwarfpcfan]

Administrative requires more micromanaging then feudal but used effectively you get far more income and can eventually build larger armies.. But here's the key words requires more micromanaging. This is not a weakness in this game since it's what this game is about.

But for some players having to do less micromanaging makes for a more pleasant experience. And, at the end of the day, feudal does the job if you understand the game. It can learn every tech, reach the highest level of development and fully take advantage of men at arms, holy sites and other mechanics. In the hands of a skilled player, feudal is fully capable of taking on any challenge you set yourself to as a player.

[Mr.M]

Originally posted by PostalGibbon:

I had constantly 40 - 60 stewardship rulers without any holy site bonuses as a Iconoclasm Emperor, Genius trait, Stewarship mentoring, level 5 education, governor bonuses, admin style court really adds whole boatload of stewardship.

Feudal is piss poor governing style compared to Administrative.
In Administrative you have zero succession problems (acclamation=Primogeniture from day one) your vassals are like sheep no one ever does anything, your heir can be any of your sons just pay 2k influence and bam your chosen heir is number 1 in the vote.

You have ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ insane gold income and gold bank, you can buy EVERY mercenary army if you go war and you lose couple knights big deal.

But. BUT. The constant spam. How do you bear it? Can one turn it off?

I swear to god every 2 years i inherit either a city or a random ass county inside a duchy of my vassals that i then have to manually hand out again... I actually started considering holding only Thrace with the city holdings or building only Temples...

And that's with Realm Size of Byzantiums De-Jure counties.... I dont want to imagine half the world...