Is the Slavery civic pointless?

[East Street Trader]

TieSolo

Judging from your post one of the reasons you are not getting benefit from slavery is that you are overusing the whip.

In broad terms keep the extra unhappiness down to one.

To do that, once you see that you have the option to whip your current production to completion don't immediately do so. Instead rest your mouse over the whip button and see how long unhappiness would last if you used it. If the number is more than 10 consider waiting until the number comes down to 10 or not much more before you whip.

I find one of the best uses of the whip is for settlers. Ordinarily your city will not be growing while you are building a settler. While in slaver what you do is to let your city grow to, say, one pop point above its maximum while building units or buildings. Now switch to building a settler. Typically at this point you will be told that it is going to take five pop to whip the settler and you will have four available. But within one or two moves it becomes possible to whip. Now do so. The settler appears on the next turn and your city, reduced in size, goes back to what it was doing before. The point is, though that it will continue to grow.

This particular use for slavery tends to solve the problem you have - excessive use of the whip - in that you allow your city to grow to, and just beyond, its pop cap before you whip. Then the city "rests" and recovers from the unhappiness caused by the whip while it is growing again.

You will have seen from the thread the virtually universal respect for whipping as a technique held by experienced players. With a little experimentation you will soon come to share that view.

[snoopy369]

Originally posted by jbp26


whipping is more useful for infrastructure than it is for armies.

Corrected

[Unimatrix11]

I know that, but the typical builder will first build all infrastructure and then an army... If it takes less time to build up the infrastructure through whiping, that means offensive armies earlier (if at all otherwise), means earlier and more wars and since human players tend to win wars on AIs they started, it also means bigger player empires later on, which then means longer (in terms of real time) matches (as long as one doesnt strike domination victory).

[nbarclay]

Originally posted by snoopy369
Slavery isn't perfectly represented because this is a game. In BtS however they do a pretty decent job making it 'hurt' a bit (with the slave revolts), balancing it so there is more incentive to not be in slavery later on. Still vital in the early game, though.

The problem is that from what I understand, the danger of slave revolts is the same regardless of how much or little a civ uses the whip. That makes the Slavery civic significantly less attractive to people who would like to have the whip be available every once in a while when they want to use it, but don't like using it most of the time. The balance would be better if the cost of operating Slavery were tied less to the civic itself and more to how often the benefits of the civic are used. And I think it would also be more realistic to have revolts occur a lot more often when slaves are treated brutally than when they are treated well.

[Shalkai]

I like nbarclay's idea. It would be good to tie the chances for a slave revolt to the amount of (ab)use of whipping pop. The BtS changes are good, as Slavery needed SOME negative properties. I wouldn't mind seeing something even more effective at limiting what most people consider one of the best civics around, though.

You could maybe do an overall counter of "Slave Unrest" for each civ, and have it build up for whipping/overpopulated cities, then decay over time like war-weariness. Or maybe the code could just look for cities where there are from "cruel oppression", then have a slight chance per turn of a revolt in each city with unhappiness due to slavery.

Shalkai

[snoopy369]

I think part of the point is to make it so if you don't normally use it you should get out of it (avoiding the 'convenience factor' and also giving a bonus to spiritual civs who can jump in instantly if there is a reason). I think it should be balanced as is without any extra penalties - ie, the happiness, pop, and hammer balance be set to be balanced. The extra penalty should not be necessary (particularly because events will often be disabled in 'important' games such as tournaments etc.) If you think Slavery is overpowered, give 25 hammers instead of 30, or have happiness last 15 turns instead of 10 (all on normal).

Honestly I'm not sure it's imbalanced. Sure you need to use it generally to win, but not always - if you have a high production low food game you won't slave much at all. I don't think Slavery is any more necessary than US in the later years (for money-rushing)... and honestly other civics give quite a bit also. Slavery is just more ... immediate ... so it gets more press

[Shogun Gunner]

This is an interesting thread. I've rather ignored Slavery for more "enlightened" civic choices. However, I will be revisiting this civic and trying it out over the holidays.

[Theben]

Shogun Gunner sighting!

[Shogun Gunner]

Hey Theben! Its been awhile!

[Lancer]

Originally posted by snoopy369
Slavery isn't perfectly represented because this is a game. In BtS however they do a pretty decent job making it 'hurt' a bit (with the slave revolts), balancing it so there is more incentive to not be in slavery later on. Still vital in the early game, though.

It is morally reprehensable to whip an electron, and energy never dies, nor does it forget. Do you want abused energy zipping around the universe telling its tale of woe to the great galactic core?

Do your dastardly deeds, but just you watch out for sunburn, lightning, that sort of thing. What comes around goes around.

Ommmm.

[TieSolo]

Holy crap! I expected an answer but not so many lol.

Thanks for all the info guys. I now see that I definitely was not utilizing it correctly, and as a tool to get those early settlers I especially see its value.

Keep the tips coming. I am now Tie, the slave master.

[Lancer]

[nbarclay]

Originally posted by snoopy369
I think part of the point is to make it so if you don't normally use it you should get out of it ...

Why? Because someone's arbitrary idea of how a game ought to work says so?

The real problem is rooted in the fact that Firaxis made the Slavery civic too important by making it the only way players can get halfway decent production in low-production cities until Universal Suffrage becomes available. Consider, especially, the situation with one-tile islands, which have no way of building any meaningful infrastructure without the whip. That pushes players into sticking with Slavery regardless of whether or not they have any interest in using the whip in cities where normal production is a viable option.

Now, with BtS, Firaxis tried to "fix" that problem by imposing penalties that, proportionately speaking, hit players who use Slavery in only a few places a whole lot harder than they hit players who use it more generally. In my view, that makes the situation worse, not better, because players are forced to choose between painful options: either not having any way to develop low-hammer cities, or having to put up with just as many slave revolts as the most ardent whipper.

[joncnunn]

Serfdom wasn't directly changed in BTS, but it doesn't have the negative random event associated to it that Slavery has. Since the probablity is associated with being in Slavery instead of whipping citizens you need to regularly keep whipping citizens to offset the risk of it. It's main offset is the micromanagement of deciding which turn to whip.

The main advantage of Serfdom though has always been you don't need as many workers as non Serfdom. So that's less time your cities aren't growing. Using this tactic is easy; it is automaticly used every time you build an improvement.

What Caste system actually does is release the building requirements normally required for Merchants, Scientists, and Artists. At a cost of slightly higher maintenance cost compared to the other choices. So to offset this you need to have at least one city in your empire with more Merchants, Scientists, or Artists than they would otherwise have had.

Caste System works better with Specalist Economy.
Serdom works better with Cottage Economy.

Originally posted by Virulent

Serfdom is still just as useless as ever IMO.

[joncnunn]

Way up in the thread someone mentioned something like "there ought to be a compounding affect", to using Slavery. There actually is one; but it's offset by not whipping the same city until they forget their oppression. Which is a large part of the micromangement involved in the civic, the other being waiting for growth.

And also note that if you have sufficent health & happy there is an indirect negative economic affect to the whipping: The loss of citizens. If you were already at or above happyness limit this doesn't matter but when well below it does greatly slow down getting the city to it's proper level.