Anyone Else Largely Skip Slavery?

[DAC]

Hey everyone.

I always read alot of articles (I've lurked here a long time lol) where people are debating the mathematical advantages of whipping every certain amount of turns, how some players even keep slavery for as long as possible, and some articles which suggest slavery is almost too overpowered and open to abuse because the a.i can't manage it to as much as an advantage as the human players.

However, am I the only one who prefers to largely skip whipping my population and proceed as quickly as possible Caste System?

I tend to run a hybrid economy that has some cottages (maybe around my capital for bureaucracy, or some financial cities) but which probably leans more towards a specialist economy by a ratio of 60/40 or 70/30.

So I have never really seen the advantages of long term whipping. Sure every now and then when your cities population is too high, and you can't maintain happiness levels you can whip out a building or national/normal wonder and alleviate, the problem for a few turns, but by and large I prefer large cities with big populations that can not only work lots of tiles, but also support lots of specialists aswell. Therefore reducing my cities population and incurring unhappiness I can't get rid of for a set number of turns seems like anathema to me.

I play on Noble/Prince difficulty, in which means I win all the time on Noble, but haven't completely mastered the transition to Prince so that it is an auto-win.

But am I missing a trick here?

Like I said, I know there are some excellent articles that break down things like, the hammer ratio to population whipped, or how overflow should be managed with in depth graphs and examples. But I just fail to see whats so great about whipping and prefer to beeline - Representation, Bureaucracy, Caste System, Decentralization (the other economy options come by the time I'm changing things around or winning) and Organized Religion. But do you think is this maybe missing out on some potential for my civilization games or is my strategy sound enough?

 

[Keilah]

tl;dr but skipping slavery entirely is insane

 

[mtr12]

Slavery's use is limited in food-poor setups, but you need Slavery in every other kind of game.

 

[DAC]

tl;dr but skipping slavery entirely is insane

I don't know what the first part means or if it is a typing mistake ...but just to clarify the discussion.

You can't skip slavery entirely, you are quite right. Its available sometimes within 20ish turns if you start with mining, and is somewhat useful when your population gets too big or you need a building in a city surrounded by farmed flood plains.

However, I don't whip very often and prefer to proceed as quickly as possible to Caste System and so I'm just wondering what the big deal is about slavery, and why some people swear by it and keep it well into some games?

Slavery's use is limited in food-poor setups, but you need Slavery in every other kind of game.

Sure it has some use, but even for example axe rushing an opponent early, I settle a production city with a food resource/unit resource and some hills around it, get it up too population 5 and start cracking out axemen or chariots in 3-5 turns AND I don't have the problem of mounting unhappiness.

I know thats a very specific and hard to judge example, but my point is, Slavery for me, has always been a sign of a poorly managed Civilization, because your speed rushing things ... why? Have you not developed a wonder technology quick enough, have you not produced enough units for your war, etc etc.

I just prefer to set up positive infastrcuture around my cities, mines, farms, resources, cottages etc get those worked asap and then start getting some specialists to boot.

So, like I said, I see that Slavery can be useful ... but ... for me, its a stepping stone to bigger and better things. So I'm wondering why some people swear by it, and if I'm missing out on something, because I hardly whip in my games.

 

[OneLeggedRhino]

Slavery is so awesome, many players use it even late game. Heck, half the reason I pick Spiritual is to use Caste while still whipping. There's a correlation between not using Slavery and not beating Prince.

 

[VoiceOfUnreason]

So I have never really seen the advantages of long term whipping. Sure every now and then when your cities population is too high, and you can't maintain happiness levels you can whip out a building or national/normal wonder and alleviate, the problem for a few turns

This comment reminds me of novice discussions of Spiritual: "what's the big deal about no Anarchy when you only change civics maybe six times per game?"

But am I missing a trick here?

Sounds like it

But I just fail to see whats so great about whipping and prefer to beeline - Representation, Bureaucracy, Caste System, Decentralization (the other economy options come by the time I'm changing things around or winning) and Organized Religion.

Where do you fit "killing the AI" into your beeline?

Let's review the math for a second - at normal speed, a two pop whip provides 60 base hammers, at a cost of 11 "tile turns". That's 5.45 hammers per turn.

5 hammers per turn is a good tile. What you're giving up is 11 turns on your worst tiles - unimproved forests, immature cottages, water tiles, specialists that aren't going to contribute to spawning a great person.

Another way of representing this idea: every time you grow in population, the Granary gives you half a bar of food. For two pop whips, that's a full bar of food every 10 turns.


On top of that, it's "production on demand". For example, you discover a tech that gives you an important military edge, and three turns later - BAM, you've got yourself a stack.


Big cities are good (if for no other reason - you can whip the bajeezus out of them ) but they come with two hidden costs.

First, you generally need infrastructure if your going to push past your health and happy caps. That means hammers that aren't going into something useful.

Additionally, the new citizen doesn't actually bring you any profit until he's worked off the cost of the food required to grow him.

Example: your food bar is at 20/40, and you decide to grow another pop at +4/turn. Five turns later, you've spent 20 food; the foodbar is at 21/42, so you got one back. But your new citizen isn't actually profitable until after you first get 19 food worth of stuff out of him.

It's especially bad if you had to stop working good tiles to get the food surplus; If you generated that surplus by switching someone from a green mine to a green farm, you've also got the cost of 5 hammers to make up.


That doesn't mean big cities are always bad - but they are a long play. They make the most sense when the key to victory is clawing your way to the top of the tech tree. They make a lot less sense when the plan is to take over the world before 1000 AD.

 

[vicawoo]

If you can avoid happiness problems, massing great people trumps the percentage extra production you can get from slavery. Not to mention that often you might skip buildings after your granary or granary/library, so you'll often be building wealth (which you can't whip) until universities.

The problem is an unhappy citizen (high food cities) has negative value, and buildings cost hammers.

I did some unfinished testing on expansive - fast caste system awhile ago. Then one chopped forest (granary) is all the hammers you need to invest in a city.

 

[kossin]

Given the right conditions and very good micro, delaying slavery can be done.

However that isn't going to happen in 99.9999999% of the cases.

We all use Slavery to make up for our sloppy play

 

[AutomatedTeller]

I used to not use slavery.

Now, I tend to use it a long time. Spiritual helps with this, of course. A lot of the time, I use it in cities that i've conquered. And since I tend to be at war from for a long time, even in research games (gotta get to 30 cities SOMEHOW), it's a great way to build up infrastructure in captured cities.

Going into caste without workshops is a problem unless you have a lot of hills, too.

 

[Dirk1302]

Slavery is the best civic around, not using it will hurt compared to those who do use it a lot.

 

[Bei1052]

I used to skip slavery because I found the idea of sacrificing my population to be asinine. Needless to say, I learned the error of my ways. Slavery is extremely powerful.

 

[MarigoldRan]

What difficulty level and settings?

 

[TheMeInTeam]

If you get a map with PERFECT hills distribution etc then maybe you can skip slavery.

Sometimes you can delay it especially if you're going pyramids or some other wonder in a capitol with tons of hills and you can swap into 2x civics at once.

Generally, avoiding slavery is a bad idea.

 

[krikav]

You can compromise.

Let your capital grow insanly large, and work huge ammounts of cottages.
While every other city in your empire, you whip heavily to get out new workers/settlers.

If you try this, you might be able to utilize slavery to a greater extent, without stepping out of your comfort zone too much.


Theorycrafting about slavery is difficult, and there are plenty of times where it feels intuitive to whip, but when it is really counter-productive.
Most of the time however, whipping is a excellent choice to get maximum yield.

 

[vicawoo]

Whipping workers/settlers isn't as efficient as people seem to think it is. Slavery is most easily avoidable when you have a ton of land to settle, in which case workers/settlers can pay greater dividends than buildings, and said workers/settlers alleviate happiness problems. It's still efficient to whip granaries once you start growing, though.

Slavery is mostly influenced by needing a few fundamental buildings/units, and avoiding happy cap problems. And plains mines are worth whipping up to a large city size.

But noble-prince difficulties are also very hammer dominant, where investing hammers in units can easily outpace the value of great people.

 

[krikav]

Whipping workers/settlers isn't as efficient as people seem to think it is.

While some people might be abit over-zealous about the efficiency of slavery. It should not be underestimated.

When you have a granary in a pop4 city, you get 60 hammers from a 2-pop whip, and it costs only 25 food to grow back to pop 4 from pop 2.

Other factors play in ofcourse, but this small piece of fact illustrates what awesome power lies in slavery, when circumstances are right.

 

[MyOtherName]

While some people might be abit over-zealous about the efficiency of slavery. It should not be underestimated.

When you have a granary in a pop4 city, you get 60 hammers from a 2-pop whip, and it costs only 25 food to grow back to pop 4 from pop 2.

Other factors play in ofcourse, but this small piece of fact illustrates what awesome power lies in slavery, when circumstances are right.

And it should not be overestimated either -- something you do when ignoring the lost citizen-turns. You straight up lose a minimum of 22 + simply from the fact you lose 11 turns of opportunity of working a mine. (10 from the , and an extra 1 from being size 2) More, if you can't grow back in 10 turns while working your highest yield tiles. And this neglects any incidental your fourth citizen might be able to generate.

(And don't forget that you had to build the granary! Cities don't always need one asap)

 

[ZeroM]

I don't know what the first part means or if it is a typing mistake ...but just to clarify the discussion.

tl:dr = too long, didn't read.

 

[iggymnrr]

The recent settler OCC space colony gauntlet was a case where avoiding slavery was desirable. A lot of players tried a National Park strat. Higher happy cap at settler, monarchy + caste and the happiness from forest preserves and the NP in the BCs all added up to rapid growth and teching.

 

[Unconventional]

Hey everyone.

I always read alot of articles (I've lurked here a long time lol) where people are debating the mathematical advantages of whipping every certain amount of turns, how some players even keep slavery for as long as possible, and some articles which suggest slavery is almost too overpowered and open to abuse because the a.i can't manage it to as much as an advantage as the human players.

However, am I the only one who prefers to largely skip whipping my population and proceed as quickly as possible Caste System?

I tend to run a hybrid economy that has some cottages (maybe around my capital for bureaucracy, or some financial cities) but which probably leans more towards a specialist economy by a ratio of 60/40 or 70/30.

So I have never really seen the advantages of long term whipping. Sure every now and then when your cities population is too high, and you can't maintain happiness levels you can whip out a building or national/normal wonder and alleviate, the problem for a few turns, but by and large I prefer large cities with big populations that can not only work lots of tiles, but also support lots of specialists aswell. Therefore reducing my cities population and incurring unhappiness I can't get rid of for a set number of turns seems like anathema to me.

I play on Noble/Prince difficulty, in which means I win all the time on Noble, but haven't completely mastered the transition to Prince so that it is an auto-win.

But am I missing a trick here?

Like I said, I know there are some excellent articles that break down things like, the hammer ratio to population whipped, or how overflow should be managed with in depth graphs and examples. But I just fail to see whats so great about whipping and prefer to beeline - Representation, Bureaucracy, Caste System, Decentralization (the other economy options come by the time I'm changing things around or winning) and Organized Religion. But do you think is this maybe missing out on some potential for my civilization games or is my strategy sound enough?

Just like you I'm not a big fan of whipping either, and when I was playing on noble-prince I almost never used it. But when it comes to Monarch-Emperor and above, I now really appreciate the advantages of whipping. I still don't use it for whipping soldiers constantly, but I do use Slavery for building the infrastructure like Monument, Granary,Courthouse, Library, later Universities (for Oxford), Theatres(for Globe Theatre), Banks (for Wall Street) etc. And of course some settlers if I'm competing for land.

Why do I do that? Because at high levels you have to be competitive and quick. For example when you found a new city, it takes so many turns to get a border pop( if you are not Creative) and so many years to build a Granary, Barracks, Courthouse etc. Especially one needs to whip courthouses immediately because maintenance kills your economy at higher levels. In addition, if you let the cities build infrastructure buildings by themselves it may take thousand years to get National Wonders. For example, in the recent deity game of Seraiel, he built Oxford at 10 BC IIRC. How did he do that? By whipping of course. I'm not a master of whipping and I don't know much about the mathematical calculations you mentioned, so when do I usually build the Oxford on Monarch or Emperor? Around 1000-1500 AD depending on the map and the game. So as you see, there is a huge difference.

So the point is, even though I'm not a big fan of it, Slavery does have its own advantages. But I still don't understand those detailed calculations. Maybe it's my level in the game and maybe you do have to know those calculations when you play Deity.