Do people use slavery

[Javariel]

I almost never do, unless under attack and needing units now! I was thinking today that it may be a leak in my game- if a library is going to take me 19 turns, it may be better to lose a pop and get it now. Well before those 19 turns are up I'll have replenished my population and lost the unhappiness penalty. Perhaps this would be enough to let me finally crack monarchy. Thoughts?

 

[automator]

I don't even know how the game decides how many people die, so I don't bother. I never sacrified pop for buildings in Civ3, so I'm not going to go through anarchy to be able to do it in cIV.

 

[xGBox]

I would try using Hereditary Rule + Slavery if they get too pissed off of you killing the population. You should have enough military units to cancel out the hate. With slavery alone, if the city goes through starvation, you can use slavery to counteract the starvation and also finish whatever you're building.

But otherwise, slavery is usually used in emergencies and the like, but this method is obsolete when you get to better civics like Universial Suffrage (the alternative to hurrying up buildings and units if so desired).

 

[ichbinsehselber]

it could be useful for a city, which has a lot of food but almost no shields

 

[kb2tvl]

I use it when my city gets unhappy people or unhealthy. This gets ride of the pop in exchange for a building which fixes uhappiness or unhealthiness.

 

[kamigawan]

Slavery is great for cities that have recently gone into unhappiness/unhealthiness - in particular, cities near 1 or 2 food resources (fish, corn, etc). The number of people used is related to the amount of production remaining (I believe its ~30 hammers per person??). The upshot is, any additional production gets added to the next item in the production queue. So one trick is to hurry something that is getting closed to finished, and you get a head start on the next thing, with only whipping 1 or 2 population, whereas if you let the next thing start from scratch you could not whip at all (may need 3-4+ population). Early on, you can whip a fishing boat into a settler, for example, or a worker into a wonder, a military unit into a library...

I would recommend whipping early on about as often as it takes for the +1 unhappiness to wear off in cities of size 6+ near 1 or 2 food resources. The time it takes for unhappiness to wear off, on average, is about the time it takes to regrow 1 or 2 population.

 

[obsolete]

I don't know. I"ve been advised time and time again it just isnt worth it for this civic. So I just avoid it.

 

[Roxtar]

I find the Slavery civic useful during the early to mid game, from the time I discover Bronze till the whole map is settled & I can no longer expand. When I found new cities, I like to pop-rush granaries & lighthouses, followed by courthouses, theatres & forges (not always in that order). Those buildings just take too long to build otherwise! For the most part I reserve chop-rushing for Wonders & cash-rushing for the late game.

I know that other labor civics have their uses. Caste System, for instance, helps a Philo leader like Saladin (as whom I tend to play nowadays) get GPP faster, & if I have Mercantilism &/or Statue of Liberty I don't get stuck with a Citizen specialist in my newest/least developed cities. But then I'd have to give up my pop-rushing option, & production would be slowed even further (merchants, artists & scientists don't provide hammers)!

In one game I kept Slavery as my labor civic even when I adopted US as a gov't civic, primarily for the thrill of seeing both "hurry arrows" lit--I could rush production in a given city with EITHER pop OR cash!

 

[MyOtherName]

Slavery is pretty powerful; it turns happiness into a resource, instead of a limit, and food into production.

But it's only at its best when you can rush more than one citizen at a time. Think of it this way:

If I pop rush one citizen, I get 40 hammers (on on Monarch) at the cost of one unhappiness, which simply means that I work one less tile for 10 turns. (Or more, if it takes a while to regrow the population point)

This is mediocre, unless you have no viable sources of hammers. But what if I spend two citizens?

I get 80 hammers, again for the cost of one unhappiness. This means I work two tiles less... but I can start working one of those tiles again immediately upon regaining the first population point! With enough food, this is an incredible boon to your production! The more citizens you can spend, the more benefit you get!


This has a subtle advantage too; sometimes in the early game, if you work your food resources without slavery, you get simply too much food. This is a shame, because food resources are nice! (Especially seafood) Slavery enables you to work all of your food resources without detriment, because they get converted into hammers via the whip. So, in such a case, slavery actually improves the quality of the tiles you're working.


Pop rushing becomes even more powerful once you have a granary!

 

[BlackMage]

Does the pop rush get affected if the city in question has the Globe Theater, i.e. is there still the unhappiness side effect?

 

[LostKing]

I'll have one fertile city that I'll set up as a leader mill from the begining. Thus it will have farms in nearly all squares. Early in the game I use slavery to rush wonders for the leader types I want, before I can keep a significant number of people happy. I usually don't do it until I can sacrafice 3 or 4 citizens. So, ironically, it usually gets me out of a revolt.

 

[BigCMan]

Slavery is a really good civic. I keep it on most of the game, just in case I ever need to rush something. It's got a low upkeep as well, so I don't have to worry too much about its financial effect. I usually don't need my workers to work any faster or have more specialists, so slavery suits me just fine. Of course, once it's available, I switch to emancipation, if for no other reason than to screw everyone else over.

 

[PekkaM]

When you have early cities built on floodplains, you can really whip out stuff without improving the nearby tiles. Also when I get into early war, I just change what every city is producing and whip out an axeman or spearman for each one.

 

[shadow2k]

The reason whipping was so popular in Civ3 was corruption. Food was the only thing that corrupt cities had a lot of, so you'd use it to whip everything you needed there. It was especially nice to whip out temples, or other buildings that counteracted the angry citizen. The loss of the pop point didn't matter, because he wasn't bringing you anything due to corruption.

In Civ4, there's no corruption. So you actually lose whatever that citizen was bringing you for however long it takes you to grow that pop point back. So it really comes down to being very situational (as a lot of things are now, which is good).

I don't crack the whip nearly as much as I did in Civ3. But there are a few things to look for when considering it...

If your city grows very fast
If your city has excess happiness
If your city has no productive tiles
Can't wait

Any of those situations are great for whipping stuff out, even better if more than one apply. There's of course, other situations as well, like a coastal city that needs a lighthouse to grow, or getting a granary online, or even whipping up a cultural building to expand borders for whatever reason.

Just don't overdo it. Population is power, so wasting pop points can hurt if you are whipping without good reason.

 

[Oggums]

On higher levels, your cities' size is so limited at the beginning, that you may was well whip them when they grow. They grow back from 4-6 fast enough to whip out your next project.

 

[Gufnork]

Learning how to use the whip will probably enable you to kick the difficulty up a notch.

 

[DangerousMonkey]

Slavery is a very powerful civic, espcially in multiplayer, but you have to be careful not to overuse it. Generaly cracking the whip is really good for...

1) Getting rid of unhappy population. Unhappy citizens just eat food and don't do anything, so if you lack the ability to keep them happy (for whatever reason) just send em down to the mines. If the ammount of people you kill is equal to the ammount of unhappy faces in your city +1 you can actually get a short-term increase in production.

For example, if I have a city with one unhappy worker and I use slavery to kill two workers, I will now have no unhappiness (the +1 unhappiness from slavery doesn't effect you right away because the population is now two lower). Though you've reduced your working population by one, you no longer have to feed that useless jerk of an unhappy citizen (because you just killed him) and thus you can assign your population to lower food/higher hammer tiles without enducing starvation.

2)You need an emergency unit (or two). This happens a lot in multiplayer due to the unpredictability and agressiveness of human players (it happens in single player too, but not as often). If you absolutely need that extra longbowmen to hold your city next turn it doesn't matter that you have to kill half your population to get it.

3)Rushing important improvements. This has been mentioned already. Sometimes killing a few guys to get a granery right away will actully increase productivity in the long run.

4)Making low hammer cities viable. A single tile island with a few fish around it or a strech of flood plains/grasslands without hills can make decent city sites if you use slavery to convert food into hammers. Sure, these places will never be prime sites for pumping out knights, but with slavery you can make sure they have the basic improvemens that they need to boost commerce and maintain happiness, or maybe you could rush a forge and make some engineer specialists.

Anyway, slavery rules. It's way better than serfdom (unless you don't have enough workers, and you shouldn't have that problem by the time serfdom comes along) and it's better than caste system under many conditions.

 

[S.ilver]

Does the pop rush get affected if the city in question has the Globe Theater, i.e. is there still the unhappiness side effect?

Heh... The Globe Theatre is SO evil if you've got it in a super high food city. Said city will have NO unhappy faces ever, so you can whip until you run out of population, and they won't care.

Likewise, once you get nationhood, you can conscript from the city every turn (provided it grows fast enough) and get free troops at no real expense to yourself.

In a SG I'm playing right now, we captured Timbuktu from the Malinese. The city had rice, corn, and 3 crabs within the city radius, and was on the coast. Also, it was a grassland heavy area. For the longest of times, I simply farmed the whole city, and conscripted every turn.

Slavery is also nice for making your crowded city happier. If you lose more than 1 population point, you will actually have less unhappiness due to people not complaining that it's too crowded, which is nice.

Finally, slavery is a nice saving grace in the early ages. If you get caught with your pants down, slavery can allow you to throw up a retalitory force pretty quickly (equivalent cash rushing would not be possible in the early game, too little gold, and the rushing costs too much).

 

[Saint_Saturn]

I try not to use slavery, at least, not while the game is still in its early stages. This is mostly because I already have a few cities up by the time I would have population available to spare, and I generally prefer to just chop-rush things I need. I usually have at least 1-2 workers per city, so if something needed to be made fast, I always have a worker or two I can spare for chopping. This allows me to have essentially the same effect as slavery without the population drop, the ensuing unhappiness, or the upkeep costs.

The only time I could see it useful was if you had a city that was absurdly overcrowded, and are in a dire need to raise happiness. Then again, this should really only happen late in the game, and there should be plenty of other civics that should be able to counter this (hereditary rule, environmentalism..)

 

[dar]

I usually build large amounts of workers to let me exploit slavery as much as possible. New cities get at least 4, 5 growth tiles (food bonuses or irrigated grassland) and whip out all their early infrastructure (granary usually choprushed).

I try not to use slavery, at least, not while the game is still in its early stages. This is mostly because I already have a few cities up by the time I would have population available to spare, and I generally prefer to just chop-rush things I need. I usually have at least 1-2 workers per city, so if something needed to be made fast, I always have a worker or two I can spare for chopping. This allows me to have essentially the same effect as slavery without the population drop, the ensuing unhappiness, or the upkeep costs.

The only time I could see it useful was if you had a city that was absurdly overcrowded, and are in a dire need to raise happiness. Then again, this should really only happen late in the game, and there should be plenty of other civics that should be able to counter this (hereditary rule, environmentalism..)