Do people use slavery

Slavery is a great civic for cities with some food resources. It can halve the time to build most of the improvements in the early going. The best thing to whip is a granary, since it then doesn't take as long for the city to grow back up.

When I have a city that can support pop rushing, I tend to use it for buildings and then build units normally in order to move out of the unhappiness from it and then pop rush another building. With granaries and food resources for the extra bread, it doesn't take long to recover the population and the benefits outweigh the shield production lost to sacrificing the people.
 
I've found Slavery, like nearly everything in Civ4, to be very context-sensitive. When I'm inland, with plains and rugged terrain, I almost never whip and will probably skip the whole Civic. Anytime hammers are plentiful and food isn't, Slavery is bad.

On the slip side, playing on a small island archipelago, the whip will occasionally be my primary source of hammers. A city with two or three food bonuses can grow 4 or 5 times in the 10 turns it takes for the whip unhappiness to go away. Then it's time to whip again. You can whip a LOT of stuff this way (lighthouse, granary, market, library, grocer, and bank in one city in my current game -- unfortunate choice to be home city for my religion) -- two hammers to its name. Eventually I will fill it with specialists, but, for the time being, slavery has been huge!

I almost never whip without at least one food bonus, though. Only exception is needing troops NOW. Having some kind of rush ability is very nice, though. And with production before the AI attacks...well, it's saved a city for me more than once.

So, my long answer is "Sometimes", just like nearly every Civic (except Environmentalism, which I still haven't found any use for).

Arathorn
 
It has its uses, definately.
It's especially great if you have a city that you've left unattended which has grown too big for its happiness limit(+2 or more), and then you can use slavery to knock the city back to productivity(much quicker than specialist-starving it), and also get the extra shields from rushing, killing two birds with one stone.
And if you have a city in the middle of some floodplains and a lot of food resources, you can grow it insanely quickly, and perhaps even get to rush wonders with it.
 
Since Gufnork is in a cryptic mood, I'll bite. Consider the following facts:

1) Slavery increases unhappiness, but only mildly: +1 for 10 turns.
2) Floodplain cities will have rapid growth but health minuses will limit size.
3) Slave rushing once every 10 turns only adds +1 unhappy, which means
your city probably still is health limited.
4) You can slave rush granaries, to double pop recovery time.
5) You can slave rush temples. So much for the happiness problem.
6) Finishing a Wonder 5 turns earlier is worth AT LEAST three pop points,
in a competitive game.
7) Settler production speed can be greatly accelerated (doubled?) via slave
rushing. Saves time building them elsewhere, and allows forests to be
used for other things.

I'm not a big fan of it for my first city (with exceptions), but if I see a second
city spot with 4+ flood plains, I drool.
 
pindicator said:
1.52 now states slavery has no upkeep. Does this make it a must-switch when you hit Bronze Working? At worst it saves you over the default civic.

I'd switch to it as soon as I switch to another civic to limit my anarchy downtime, but yeah it's a much better choice now. Of course if you start off very food-heavy it may be wise to use slavery ASAP to reap the most benefit.
 
i usually use it only in a flood plain/globe theatre city, evil, yes, but effective
 
I find Slavery only to be useful in games where I have cities around lots of food tiles/resources, especially flood plains. Usually the city has low hammers, and tons of food, making unhappy citizens and unhealthiness quickly. This city is useless if all it produces is food, which in turn generates unhappiness. Therefore, use Slavery to turn the food/pop into buildings/units.
 
Actually, it's a little known fact that the definition of the green-frowny face on your city is "time to whip some slaves to finish that building you're working on". ;)

The unhappiness penalty is a non-issue. You already have happiness (or close to it) to support the city. By reducing the population, you don't reduce the happiness (luxuries and buildings) bonuses that city is receiving.

Wodan
 
I always switch to Slavery when I get Monotheism, so that I can get Organized Religion and Slavery in 1 turn of anarchy.
 
Javariel said:
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?

I myself haven't really used it, but I'm still messing around on Warlord :rolleyes: (going to try Noble tonight and go from there). However, over on the RB1 - Cuban Isolationists thread in the SG forum, Sirian showed a very effective way to use Slavery - he went from a very weak military defending his cities to a much stronger one (rifleman or infantry, IIRC) over the course of ten turns. You might want to check out that (very entertaining and informative) thread, not only for this example, but for other strategic ideas w/r/t civics as well.

EDIT: Nevermind -- he did it via the draft (thread p. 12), didn't use slavery like I initially thought....still a worthwhile read, though.

notopt
 
They've also apparently increased Civic Upkeep costs significantly in early game, making Slavery very useful to at least switch to, in the few I've played so far.
 
And don't forget that unhappiness from whipping doesn't stack, only the time needed to get rid of the unhappiness
 
Sometimes I attack Civs that have slavery...It justifies in my mind, even though it won't in the game, why this culture must be "liberated"....heheheheee
 
Well, I'm hardly an expert at this game (I play noble, and sometimes win), but I find slavery to be great. I ensure I'm in slavery before every early war. Slaving out a longborman or an archer has saved my @ss a lot. Also, slavery is free, which can be worth 5gp/turn easily. Not too shabby (esp. when you're going into anarchy anyway).
 
i always play with slavery. But i never kill pop for completing a wonder. I think the cost is too much for only 2 or 3 turns.
I use slavery to complete units. Its vey useful.
 
Guagle said:
And don't forget that unhappiness from whipping doesn't stack, only the time needed to get rid of the unhappiness

Are you sure about that? I had thought so too, until I looked more closely at my unhappiness in a recent game (the screencaps below are a test demonstration from a convenient save point.

Update: ah, that's better. And it occurs to me I may have misunderstood what you meant by stacking, in which case this would all be moot.

Let us visit the gentle residents of Hamburg, who little suspect that the lash is upon them. Observe that we begin with only the usual whinging about elbow room and a yearning to be free, yo! So queue up an explorer (cheap to build, and we see that it will take two turns to rush him, and it will be 15 turns (epic speed) before the citizens stop whining about it. Splendid.


(ob confession: yeah, I should have cropped the happiness details onto the whip screenshot, rather than the other way round).

Now, queue up another explorer and whip. Because the first lash is still in effect, the second is going to take longer to go away....


But as you can see below, we've got two whipped unhappys now, rather than one.
 
S.ilver said:
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.

Oh that's sweet
 
shadow2k said:
In Civ4, there's no corruption.

That should be, In Civ4, there's no corruption displayed.

There is corruption in the form on shield production loss. It is not until Communism that corruption is distributed equally. I am unsure about trade. Cash from towns may not be corrupted.
 
If you want to see the power of Slavery (and Nationalism drafting), play England in the 1000AD scenario. Tons of food, not many hammers.

The thing to keep in mind in analyzing slavery is that smaller cities grow faster than big ones. If you can keep reducing citizens down to working only food bonuses, you can regain a pop every two/three turns. This is a good way to get all the basic infra up quick in new midgame cities.
 
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