How are slaves supposed to work in the latest revision?

[User0918]

I played an earlier version of C2C a good while ago and back then slaves worked just fine. You incurred some noticeable drawbacks, but overall they were a valuable addition to your cities.

I installed the latest revision and started a deity game on prehistoric, snail, longer research/production, complex traits and some more of the advanced options. I went straight to Slavery tech and was dumbfounded to find out that slaves completely cripple your cities now, while barely providing any advantage at all. First of all, you have to choose a Scientific leader to counter the malus or your research will be zero. Second, your GP rate will also drop close to zero. Lastly, your cities will get swamped by crime and disease at a rate which you just can't counteract in the early game.

So what are the benefits then? Hardly anything, a few coins/hammers/culture points, surely nothing worth neutering your cities over. I chose Financial as my first trait, not expecting to brick my game in that very moment. Why do you portray slaves as concentration camp inmates, disease-ridden and more of a burden to their surroundings than anything else? Looking back at history, slaves played an integral part in advancing civilizations beyond what they could have achieved on their own. If anything slaves freed up citizens from performing menial tasks so they should be a boon to science and GP rate instead.

If your plan was to balance slaves in terms of gameplay, just reduce the rate at which you can capture them or add a slave limit per city. The way they work now is inane and a slap in the face of anyone who decides to focus their civ around them.

 

[Septentrion]

It is odd how the scientific trait synergizes with slavery, but I think there's has to a point where's there is too many slaves. My guess is that this system is designed for insane authoritarian min-maxing, but you receive powerful boosts from some classic traits. I don't believe slavery has a particularity exceptional track record of civilizational achievement. The Great Wall of China might as well been "whipped," but with settled slaves, all I can think of is the story of Exodus.

Slaves had a rigid place in a social structure, which meant the social structure was rigid as well. The Greeks idea of society was to have slaves do the labor so the citizens could solve all the mysteries of the universe by thinking very hard. They did not solve the mysteries of the universe. The existence of Tutors and commence slaves would imply that this would be a viable strategy. GP farming with the Greek gameplan wouldn't seem too strange, but then again, how different is it from a caste system? It is very odd that there's such a strong delineation between slavery and caste in the game. Perhaps the Greeks were going for cultural victory.

Supposedly, the most free civilization should have the most GP. I would be a nice path if implemented. Humanitarian seems do strange things to non-specialized slaves instead of being anti-slave. The system is such a mess and I don't even think these various specialist slaves seem more gamey than historical.

Also, I don't think whipping is something really even considered by people.

 

[garfunkel]

It's not slavery itself, it's just the Slave Market. The slave compounds are still very beneficial. So stick to turning prisoners of war into slaves and avoid building the markets that presumable make some of your own citizens into slaves, and you're good.

 

[arihant]

IMHO slaves works fine. Dont join them too soon in prehistoric era into your cities and you must specialize your cities althogether with you slaves. For example my capital city I always specialize as production hub, so I settle only production and food slaves in this city. Before update slaves were too overpowered, now its more balanced. Crime, unhappinest and unhealty can be handled with other units/buildings. BTW there is limit how many slaves you can join into city(it depend on population of city)

 

[Septentrion]

IMHO slaves works fine. Dont join them too soon in prehistoric era into your cities and you must specialize your cities althogether with you slaves. For example my capital city I always specialize as production hub, so I settle only production and food slaves in this city. Before update slaves were too overpowered, now its more balanced. Crime, unhappinest and unhealty can be handled with other units/buildings. BTW there is limit how many slaves you can join into city(it depend on population of city)

Zero science and culture production in the early medieval period? I've wondered about creating viable dystopias at the earliest possible time in the tech tree. What traits do you do with the build? Would your civilization be more powerful if that palace was moved?

Presently, I want to historical with this game. I go with a random Civilization, I try to be like them. I have a few civilization I would never embrace slavery, like I'm sure a lot of people never embrace cannibalism. If I roll Persia, Zoroastrianism and Antislavery are the law. On the other hand, there isn't a lot to antislavery ideology in the early game even with that religion. I often give "barbaric" civilizations the benefit of the doubt. In Fall from Heaven 2, one barbaric race could immediately convert captured "slaves" into warriors, which implied a "slavery in name only." There is often social mobility through military service, but that is very contingent on the specific culture.

I don't think I can set up a proper Ottoman experience. There military production settled slaves which works for Sparta, but the Janissary system existed because the free population itself wasn't militarized. Amerocentric influences strike again. The C2C Janissary unit is like any other cultural unit. I only know of two warrior slave units, but maybe they could get free XP from those Settled Military slaves.

Pacifism currently has a +50% capture rate which seems to be the most defining benefit only than maybe rushing the Cultural Victory. Maybe the type of civilization that would use slave-warriors would be a bourgeois/pacifist. Maybe Pacifism is more of attitude towards military service. Bourgeois currently has only minor interactions with military aspects of the game.

 

[Thunderbrd]

You may be suffering from some trait determinations that make them worse to have but personally it's been my experience that slavery is perhaps the single most powerful thing you can do in C2C. Most of their maluses are to reflect the fact that they are largely population by proxy. When you add captives to your city, they bring incredible tons of production and that production enables the city to do what it must to counter the negative impacts as well with more crime and disease control units, which would be equally as necessary to manage the larger population they represent that aren't counted in the population totals. If you are having trouble with slave specialists, perhaps the point is that under slavery, it can become difficult to keep enough people OUT of slavery to not stifle innovation. That said, with minimal direct management of your assigned specialists, you don't have to let the AI take so much of your population and make them pissed off with their lot in life as it tends to do when left to its own devices. That also makes it much more manageable.