Is slavery essential ?

A

AnyKeyz

Chieftain
Joined
May 7, 2007
Messages
81
Since I started playing Civilisation 4, I never used slavery once. In every topic here, people says to whip. whipping decrease the population number by one, wouldn't it hurts ?

Why use slavery ?
 
The math is 30 hammers for 1 pop. From there on, it's your common sense to use it or not... If the building/unit is needed fast, whip, if not, don't...

Strong points of the civ.:

- in war, where the captured cities are starving; whip some buildings, because those ppl. will die anyway...
- when you need units fast; declared or somethin' like that...
- when you want to make sure you get that wonder(rarely, since the conversion rate is worse).

I use it alot, but... depends on the situation, as anything in this game...
 
Once you understand how whipping works you can probably move up to at least prince level if you are not there already.

It's very powerful when used correctly.

Good idea to whip settlers and workers early on as they stunt city growth. Whip and regrow quickly working food specials.

Always a good idea to whip away unhappy citizens. They're not doing anything for you anyways except gripe :lol:
 
Slavery is awesome. Especially if you find copper or iron very early. Just whip away and you can have 10 units ready to go destroy the nearest civ before 700 BC. Be sure to have a granary in the city first so the population regrows faster. The early game is all about expansion, not growth. conqering neighbors is more important than having big cities in the classical era. The ability to crank out units and buildings fast in the early game helps you in the long-run, so Slavery doesn't actually hurt in this stage. Later you can switch to Caste System or Emancipation depending on what type of economy you have.
 
Let's say you have a size 2 city. It already has a Granary. You want to build a Barracks.

Method 1:
Work 2 mined grassland hills (0 net food, 6 net hammers) for 10 turns.

Method 2:
Work 2 farmed flooplains (6 net food, 0 net hammers) for 5 turns.
Grow to size 4.
Whip the barracks and shrink to size 2 again.
 
I am currently playing Noble, winning maybe 20% of the time.

I'll try to get familiar with slavery in tonight's game

I love the 'useless anyway unhappy people' point :p
 
Well, even if you don't use the whip (often I didn't when going industrial), I used to switch to it anyway, because it was the cheapest civic to run. I honestly haven't checked the prices as of the latest version though. I know they often change one patch to the next....

BTW, whipping also comes with its penalities too. Have to balance it out of course.
 
AnyKeyz said:
Since I started playing Civilisation 4, I never used slavery once. In every topic here, people says to whip. whipping decrease the population number by one, wouldn't it hurts ?

Why use slavery ?
Click to expand...

1. When you have ridiculously high food, and a horrible capacity to fight :mad:.

2. To ensure that you don't lose out in a critical wonder race.

3. When you just have way too much :mad: and are building a :D building (e.g. temple)

4. You are maintaining an arbitrary, low pop level per city (e.g. so low as to avoid needing happiness buildings), usually for like a Domination type win. Or in the case of Rome in the Rhye's scenario.

5. You're building something more crucial in the near term than the potential loss of a tile or two of production over the next 10 turns (your bet). (If it's a huge army that you're whipping you have to balance it out versus the tile commerce you're losing though, or risk a Strike).
 
AnyKeyz said:
I am currently playing Noble, winning maybe 20% of the time.

I'll try to get familiar with slavery in tonight's game

I love the 'useless anyway unhappy people' point :p
Click to expand...

Especially after capturing a city. If you have Drama, as soon as it comes out of revolt, whip a Temple. It will give culture, happiness and going down by 2 pop is no big deal. Getting the city happy and generating culture is much more important.

Cheers.
 
manu-fan said:
Especially after capturing a city. If you have Drama, as soon as it comes out of revolt, whip a Temple. It will give culture, happiness and going down by 2 pop is no big deal. Getting the city happy and generating culture is much more important.

Cheers.
Click to expand...

I would whip a theatre instead - more culture and potentially more happiness.

But if you are running caste system (which is the most realistic alternative for the first half of the game) then you can pop your borders by running artists. You can even generate a lot of cash/science by starving your population and running every population point you can as a specialist. Its like whipping - the pop will go down - but you get a short boost in science or gold instead of production. Since you only starve one point a turn there is no point in any of your citizens working food tiles until the city can support itself.

Either way it works out. I'm appreciating caste system as an alternative to slavery more and more - and I absolutely love spiritual where I can use both.
 
I love it .. it has saved my ass on a couple of occasions, when the Germans attacked me.. and that was fine but then then two more neighboring Civs attacked me also... without slavery, I would've been screwed.

And its just too funny to see the little unhappy person there... Arrghh!! we shall not forget the injustice you ha.. WHIP!!! .. everyone happy now :)
 
CapnKill said:
And its just too funny to see the little unhappy person there... Arrghh!! we shall not forget the injustice you ha.. WHIP!!! .. everyone happy now :)
Click to expand...

Yeah, I wonder if they're really happy, or if they just stop complaining and get back to work so it doesn't happen to them!
 
Slavery can make a resource such as pigs,cow,corn,fish or wheat, and a settler into a millitary powerhouse, early game. I noticed that 30 hammers was stated as the value of one pop- not entirely true. Slavery works in multiples of 30 hammers, so in some instances 1 pop=60 hammers. This the case for drafting an axemen/swordsman/cat from said 2 pop city utilizing one of these resources, which then immediately regrows. In fact a single tiny food resource city can fuel your entire early axe rush, while the rest of your empire is better utilized for infastructure/wonders/expansion.
 
Definitely not essential, but once you master bronzeworking:

1) Chop-rushing

2) Pop-rushing

3) Axe-rushing

You should definitely be better off than 20% wins at noble level :)
 
Even if you aren't going to use it much, having the *option* to whip out needed defensive units can be very nice. Even if you're going for as big a city as you can support early on - eventually it will grow to unhappiness - and that grumpy citizen is just hammers wasted if you don't whip him into something useful.

Regardless of what victory condition you're going for, the whip is very effective short-term losses for long-term gains. Whip a library in a city that would take 30 turns to build it, to make the math easy, let's say it's producing 10 beakers - position the citizens so you're still getting 10 beakers base, +2.5 per turn for 30 turns - the whip just gained you 75 beakers you otherwise wouldn't have *and* 29 turns of building something else with that city!

As with *everything* in Civ, it's a trade-off - but slavery (which as a game mechanic is simply a mechanism to convert food into hammers) is often a very useful tool.
 
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