Serfdom vs Slavery

[InFlux5]

A couple of thoughts...

1. Slavery's opportunity cost is essentially lost commerce. When you you whip in a food-heavy city (or any city, really) you are going to drop a food/commerce tile rather than a production tile.

2. Serfdom can be more useful if you plan for it. Save forests, only build one Worker prior to Serfdom, then undergo a "burst" of development before switching back to something else.

3. I think Serfdom is good as a short-term solution. For that reason, it may only be worth using if you're Spiritual.

There comes a point where my empire is so large that a humming economy is essential. Losing population in my capital and core cities means a fairly lengthy period of lost commerce which, in the long run, is hindering my expansion. Then there's the obvious loss of another laborer or specialist for that period, which may delay any number of other goals.

I think Slavery is attractive because of the immediate reward. When populations are low, the cost of Slavery is smaller since it takes less time to replace the population. But as you approach mid-game the cost gets higher.

Does all this justify a "Worker boom" under Serfodm in mid-game? I would say very rarely. Only in a specific situation might I use it. For example:

I'm a Spiritual civ, who's just taken a lot of jungle territory. There are some high-commerce and high-production tiles in my core that can contribute a lot of research/happiness/production over the next several turns. In the long run, clear-cutting the jungles and putting up cottages will pay off big time - the sooner the better.

 

[DigitalBoy]

1. Slavery's opportunity cost is essentially lost commerce. When you you whip in a food-heavy city (or any city, really) you are going to drop a food/commerce tile rather than a production tile.

This is the biggest pitfall of the Slavery civic. When I first posted on the CFC forums, people left and right were lauding the benefits of Slavery. So I started using it, and I would whip constantly, everywhere. Absolutely destroyed my economy.

But the real selling point on Slavery mid-game is being able to whip out stuff in new cities, not the old ones.

 

[Idlenessss]

Theoretically I am isagreeign with all of this.

Optimally, you never whip. If you had to whip, then it might be a sign that our werent building flexibally enough earlier. You cannot rush population. Optimally, u get a city working all useful tiles as soon as feasably possible. And if a city is growing faster this way, then serfdom is more important...obviously...the two would not mix well.
Of course this optimum might generally be impossible to acheive....might being key word. Ill usually, on multi player and at noble difficulty, shoot for never using slavery, never takign the anarchy. Cause its quite possible. But, if you have cities with zero production, like some island city, then you really have no way to produce OTHER than slavery. (or sufferage maybe if you got pyramids) and u obviously cant wait on super critical buildings like lighthouse. But anyway, if u skip slavery, then serfdom is gonna be more improtant, cause u got a bunch of tiles that are currently not working at their *full* potential.
Anyway, i havent done the math, im estimating. Production from slavery is ultimately not worth the faster growth, if and only if the growth is nto hindered by other factors besides. If you have a cap from health/happy...then rather than slavery being the obvious choice, if your are philosophical especially, u simply halt growth with specialists.
Besides, slavedrivers are big meanies.

 

[scy12]

I see whipping as something you may just have to do . You may just don't have the time to wait before enemies troops will destroy into your cities or you may need to create-reinforce an army before the enemy either updates or has a larger army than you can handle. What slavery do is to buy you time that can be extremely important in your war conqest , defending , and it is very useful if you lack a more patient style . It's direct aproach (buying you time) lets you to have a plan b even if you can not predict your enemies moves. And it can also be used on low production cities ...

 

[popejubal]

Theoretically I am isagreeign with all of this.

Optimally, you never whip. If you had to whip, then it might be a sign that our werent building flexibally enough earlier. You cannot rush population. Optimally, u get a city working all useful tiles as soon as feasably possible. And if a city is growing faster this way, then serfdom is more important...obviously...the two would not mix well.

Untrue. You can rush population. Just whip a granary and see how much population you have after 20, 30, 50 and 100 turns if you whip a granary as soon as possible and how much population you have after that number of turns without whipping a granary.

Also, you can whip productive population when you are at or near your happyness cap.

If you're running at 20% culture, you get 2 happy faces free. Whip a Theater and you get 2 more happy faces - and you lose population which also equals less unhappyness.

It generally doesn't cost you anything to whip happyness-generating buildings when you are at your happy cap and about to go over or already over your happy cap.

Finally, think about what you'll do when you take over enemy civ cities with large populations. They're going to starve since they have no temples, theaters or the like. Also, they're going to need culture to expand their big fat cross. A quickly whipped Theater will let you run 2 artists and will generate extra happy. Both of these together will keep your city from starving. Also, the whipped population will not eat food since they are now dead. That also increases the number of remaining people who get to survive. It's win-win for everyone (except for the dead slaves).

Finally, think about what tiles you are not working even if you are going to lose productive population. Is it a plains hill without a mine? Is it a simple plains forest? You're really not getting much from them anyway. Why not take the 30 hammers today and get a quick return on investment that will often continue to generate more for you than that population would have even if it were working one of thoes remaining low-value tiles.

Anyway, i havent done the math, im estimating. Production from slavery is ultimately not worth the faster growth, if and only if the growth is nto hindered by other factors besides. If you have a cap from health/happy...then rather than slavery being the obvious choice, if your are philosophical especially, u simply halt growth with specialists.
Besides, slavedrivers are big meanies.

There are several threads where people have done the math. Whipping the right buildings (granary almost always, theater and library under appropriate circumstances) is almost always worthwhile. Whipping appropriate units under hereditary rule is often worthwhile.

Whipping too much is bad. Not whipping at all can be much worse.

 

[Idlenessss]

well quite often granaries are the absolute 1st building i construct in a new city. Optimally, u stop growth later, when appropriate, by building settler or worker, and armies I build very early as well, and as long as I can afford to keep them modernised, I have faith that they will defend perfectly well. If you have decent production everywhere i think you can time everything jsut right that you dont need slavery, but this is not easy, its just an optimum to go for. But my basic point I think still simply agrees with common sense...if you dont use slavery, then serfdom becomes more attractive, as you need to work more tiles and quicker.
and just personally, I do not bother taking over other civ cities much. slavery or not, culture just makes it unapealing. Only if its some city already feeling some of my cultural influence, perhaps. Further, buildings u might need to make quicker can be rather rushed with chopping...again..serfdom is nice...
In your example, ok even if you are jsut working an unimproved hill, a single hammer is better than nothing, and a city that never ran slavery is going to reach important high populations far sooner than a city that did...
ok HOW MUCH faster is an important question. For example, a city with grain and 2 fish resource in its radius...is not going to feel the effect of slavery very much, a good slavery city. If you are in some area that every single tile is offering 2 or 3 food however, definately strain to avoid slavery, in my opinion.

 

[bardolph]

Untrue. You can rush population. Just whip a granary and see how much population you have after 20, 30, 50 and 100 turns if you whip a granary as soon as possible and how much population you have after that number of turns without whipping a granary.

You can also build a granary, without whipping. Working 2 grassland mines (yielding 2F/6H) will get you a Granary in 10 turns. Or, you can chop forests (2 chopped forests = 1 granary). Remember, whipping is not the only way to get things built!

Also, you can whip productive population when you are at or near your happyness cap.

This is a good idea when you have a food surplus, but not so great when you're eating most of your food.

Finally, think about what you'll do when you take over enemy civ cities with large populations. They're going to starve since they have no temples, theaters or the like.

If you're running Hereditary Rule, you can make citizens happy by parking your army in newly captured cities once the war is over. If they're still starving, consider building farms and mines (and workshops), and build those theaters. Or, if they have any forests left, chop those theaters.

And if you're running the culture slider, just work cottages. Those cities will be pumping culture and should have their fat cross running fairly quickly, anyway. If you're not running the culture slider, bring a missionary.

I know that the whip button under slavery is awfully convenient, but, really, there are ways to get cities up and running without the whip.

So, to summarize, you can get conquered cities up and running even under Serfdom, using the following techniques:

1. Garrison Troops (under HR).
2. Farms/Mines/Workshops (built at 50% bonus).
3. Chopping forests.
4. Culture Slider (for culture).
5. Missionaries (for culture).

Using this strategy, you can actually allow your cities to grow while you are building their infrastructure, instead of whipping them down nothing first.

Finally, think about what tiles you are not working even if you are going to lose productive population. Is it a plains hill without a mine? Is it a simple plains forest? You're really not getting much from them anyway. Why not take the 30 hammers today and get a quick return on investment that will often continue to generate more for you than that population would have even if it were working one of thoes remaining low-value tiles.

Or you could have improved those tiles and gotten better yields in the first place. A plains hill with a mine yields 4 hammers/turn. Whipping population off of that mine for 30 quick hammers may give a short-term benefit, but unless it's an emergency, it's probably going to hurt you in the long run, especially when your happiness caps are fairly high.

 

[popejubal]

Or you could have improved those tiles and gotten better yields in the first place. A plains hill with a mine yields 4 hammers/turn. Whipping population off of that mine for 30 quick hammers may give a short-term benefit, but unless it's an emergency, it's probably going to hurt you in the long run, especially when your happiness caps are fairly high.

I agree with the need to improve the tiles quickly so that you can start working improved tiles instead of unimproved tiles. That's a very good reason to whip workers.

Also, whipping Work Boats will greatly improve your city's rate of growth since you'll be wanting to work those fish tiles as quickly as possible.

Whipping Settlers is a tremendous boon since you can then burn off your unhappy population and get back to growing so that you are actually taking advantage of those farmed Wheat and Rice tiles.

Is whipping the end-all, be-all strategy that wins every game in Civ IV? Obviously not. You have to look at not only the cost of population, but also the opportunity costs of what you could be building instead.

Your religious shrine city has 8 population and is producing 20 gold per turn from the shrine because you've been spreading the One True Faith like a good little zealot. You discover Banking. You have 8 production in that city (decent production for a money city, but not the most bestest production ever), so it will take you 25 turns to build that bank. With population producing 30 hammers per person (37.5 hammers per turn after you whip a Forge), you can get 120 hammers from your 4 population. That means you can get that bank up and running in just 10 turns with the whip vs. 25 turns without. That's an extra 10 gold per turn for those 15 turns PLUS you can spend those other 15 turns building SOMETHING ELSE! It's almost as if you could turn your population DIRECTLY INTO PRODUCTION!

Now, since it takes so very much less food to grow from 4 to 5 and 5 to 6 than it does to grow from 8 to 9, you can count on getting 2 population back in about 10 turns vs. the 20+ turns it will take you to go from 8 to 9 population (especially considering the fact that you probably have a food resource or two so the first 2 tiles are 4-5 food while the 7th and 8th tiles are almost certainly only 2 food).

Also, consider the promise of whipping wonders. Wonders come with a 33% surcharge to whipping costs, so why would you possibly want to whip a wonder? ...why to actually GET the wonder, of course.

How many times have you missed the Great Library by 2 or 3 or even 5 turns. I'd bet that the city that is building the Great Library could whip it 5 turns before it is completed so that you'll actually get the wonder instead of the 332 gold that you'll get for failing to complete it.

Hmmm. Great Library or 300 and something gold. Which would I rather have? I'll go ahead and say "What is the Great Library, Alex!" I won't even give up all that much population when I whip it since I get two of my dead slaves back as Scientists. In fact, those dead slave scientists don't even eat any food, so I get 2 population back and I get to grow so very much faster than I would have.

I also get my next Great Scientist about twice as fast as I was going to since I'm now running 4 Scientist specialists instead of 2 and I'm getting GPP from the Great Library. I also don't have to worry about polluting my great person pool with anything besides the Engineer that I'm running from the Forge that I whipped.

Hey, is that 6 population border city costing me 12 gold per turn? Whip up a Courthouse and you'll have a 6 gold per turn cost that goes along with the 2 gold income that you're getting from having another [your religion here] city feeding the shrine with that bank you whipped.

Want the benefits of Serfdom without losing the flexibility of Slavery? Whip up a few more Workers. That'll increase the number of tiles per turn that you can improve. I'm not saying that Serfdom is bad. I'm only saying that Slavery is often a more powerful tool when used correctly.

 

[popejubal]

[*]Garrison Troops (under HR).

One more thing: Why are you going to garrison troops when you can just whip a Courthouse to get rid of the unahppy population and then send those garrisoned troops to capture another city where you can whip a courthouse (to avoid the population loss from starving due to unhappy people wanting to eat) and continue expanding.

The "number of cities" cost per city is capped at 6 gold in all of the games I've been playing, so go conquor yourself a few neighbor cities and then whip up a Courthouse to make the city pay for itself the turn after its insurgency ends.

 

[sooooo]

I use serfdom in these situations:

1. Any start after ancient start. On medieval it's nice to start research with feudalism and revolt straight to serfdom.

2. Highlands map. Plenty of production, lots of cottages/mines to build.

3. Spiritual civ in the middle ages with low-food cities.

But warlords seems to give more ridiculous seafood starts than vanilla. Fractal map with warlords gives you 3 seafood start a lot of the time. With this kind of food, obviously serfdom doesn't get used. I much prefer the vanilla start generator.

 

[bardolph]

One more thing: Why are you going to garrison troops when you can just whip a Courthouse to get rid of the unahppy population and then send those garrisoned troops to capture another city where you can whip a courthouse (to avoid the population loss from starving due to unhappy people wanting to eat) and continue expanding.

The "number of cities" cost per city is capped at 6 gold in all of the games I've been playing, so go conquor yourself a few neighbor cities and then whip up a Courthouse to make the city pay for itself the turn after its insurgency ends.

Once you've passed the "number of cities" cap, the game is essentially won. The only way you can lose is if you sit back and wait for the AI to get to space. It doesn't matter much how efficient you are in any respect.

During the phase when you haven't yet hit that cap, it is quite common to see the capture of a few cities, then a peaceful rebuilding phase before the next war. During that rebuilding phase, you might as well use your army for garrison.

Certainly, you can "whip away" unhappy citizens, but if you instead make them happy with garrison units, then they become productive without having to whip them away.

Don't get me wrong. I think slavery is extremely useful. However, if you don't have a large food surplus during the mid-game phase (meaning: your happiness caps are high and you're mostly working cottages and mines instead of farms), the whip can really hurt your population, which can take quite a long time to grow back.

And if you don't have useful things for your workers to do then obviously Serfdom is a silly choice. But if you need to improve lots of tiles, I think Serfdom is better than spending time and resources building lots of workers. First of all, workers are expensive. Second, you have to maintain them. Third, they don't become productive until you're done building them, whereas Serfdom gives you an instant multiplier to your entire workforce.

 

[popejubal]

Once you've passed the "number of cities" cap, the game is essentially won. The only way you can lose is if you sit back and wait for the AI to get to space. It doesn't matter much how efficient you are in any respect.

During the phase when you haven't yet hit that cap, it is quite common to see the capture of a few cities, then a peaceful rebuilding phase before the next war. During that rebuilding phase, you might as well use your army for garrison.

Certainly, you can "whip away" unhappy citizens, but if you instead make them happy with garrison units, then they become productive without having to whip them away.

Don't get me wrong. I think slavery is extremely useful. However, if you don't have a large food surplus during the mid-game phase (meaning: your happiness caps are high and you're mostly working cottages and mines instead of farms), the whip can really hurt your population, which can take quite a long time to grow back.

And if you don't have useful things for your workers to do then obviously Serfdom is a silly choice. But if you need to improve lots of tiles, I think Serfdom is better than spending time and resources building lots of workers. First of all, workers are expensive. Second, you have to maintain them. Third, they don't become productive until you're done building them, whereas Serfdom gives you an instant multiplier to your entire workforce.

Okay, this I agree with entirely.

I just saw people saying things that looked like "Slavery bad. People say slavery good, but it really bad." ...and that bothered me (even though I'm not at all a fan of slavery in real life). There are absolutely times that Slavery is bad. There are absolutely times that running at 40% science is a terrible idea. Using either (or both) to allow you to expand your empire more rapidly than you would otherwise be able is a very good idea as long as you have some plan that allows you to stop using either/both of those as a crutch.

Having people working tiles is absolutely better than having people not working tiles. I just think that it's sometimes (often) woth losing those people for the gain that you get in exchange.

 

[bardolph]

Well, I think the bottom line is that Serfdom is weaker than Slavery in the vast majority of cases. The convenience of "I want it now" can be extremely helpful in times of emergency, and can even provide long-term benefits if you're whipping the right things.

I started this thread because I thought Serfdom was underrated, and has benefits under certain circumstances. I still believe this is true, but those circumstances are fairly rare, and only come up with certain play styles. For me, it takes:

1) Cottage Economy
2) Hereditary Rule
3) Lots of war, lots of pillaging (or just lots of jungle)

As it turns out, Victoria (Financial/Imperialistic) is a good fit for Serfdom. Financial lends itself to a cottage economy, and Imperialistic for warmongering. I imagine Ragnar (Aggressive/Financial), Hannibal (Charismatic/Financial), and Civs with 2-move UUs (for extra pillaging) could benefit from this approach as well.

 

[Harbourboy]

What on earth are you all doing with all those workers? My workers run out of things to do long before the advent of railway. And when railway comes along, they awaken again and build tracks but even then they are unemployed again pretty swiftly. I must be missing some vital worker-based tactic that is preventing me from reaching Immortal success. The only way I can see that you can keep your workers so busy would be if you are continually wallpapering over existing improvements to eke out every last bit of efficiency out of your cities, which is something I hardly ever do.

 

[bardolph]

What on earth are you all doing with all those workers? My workers run out of things to do long before the advent of railway. And when railway comes along, they awaken again and build tracks but even then they are unemployed again pretty swiftly. I must be missing some vital worker-based tactic that is preventing me from reaching Immortal success. The only way I can see that you can keep your workers so busy would be if you are continually wallpapering over existing improvements to eke out every last bit of efficiency out of your cities, which is something I hardly ever do.

My workers are rebuilding the smoldering lands of my enemies, after I pillage and conquer them.

If you don't pillage much, then you don't need many workers, and you certainly don't need Serfdom. But if you pillage as much as I do, you'll find you never have enough workers.

 

[Wodan]

I get the feeling that most people build more workers than they really need to. For example, if your cities are size 5, how many tiles do you need to improve? 5 per city. Maybe 1 or 2 more so that you can switch tiles when you reach the cap.

Still, my point is that it's human nature to keep on improving. However, STOP and take a look at city sizes before you do it. A good tipoff that you have too many workers is that your workers become idle at some point. As long as your cities are always working improved tiles, what do you need them for?

Thing is, if you're running slavery and whipping, you need only a few workers, because you're constantly working the highest food tiles.

Serfdom allows a non-Slavery empire to keep up without building a zillion more workers.

At that point, it becomes a comparison of commerce between the two, and production between the two.
-- Commerce: the serfdom (non-Slavery) empire will blow away the slavery empire.
-- Production: the slavery empire will be better early on, but once the serfdom empire gets up in city sizes it will match and then surpass the slavery empire, as the serfdom empire has the pop to work more tiles (getting the odd hammer here and there, plus a mine or two), and as the slavery empire has whipped all the cheap buildings and now has to pay 3, 4, 5, or more citizens.

Wodan

 

[bardolph]

I get the feeling that most people build more workers than they really need to. For example, if your cities are size 5, how many tiles do you need to improve? 5 per city. Maybe 1 or 2 more so that you can switch tiles when you reach the cap.

Still, my point is that it's human nature to keep on improving. However, STOP and take a look at city sizes before you do it. A good tipoff that you have too many workers is that your workers become idle at some point. As long as your cities are always working improved tiles, what do you need them for?

I agree with this statement. I definitely like having 1 or 2 extra tiles per city (mines, plains cottages, or workshops) to drain off extra food at the population cap.

I usually end up with too many workers if I build "enough" workers to improve my tiles, then end up capturing large stacks of workers during war.

Thing is, if you're running slavery and whipping, you need only a few workers, because you're constantly working the highest food tiles.

I believe this is one reason why slavery advocates don't understand why someone would even want lots of workers!

Serfdom allows a non-Slavery empire to keep up without building a zillion more workers.

It also allows you to pillage freely during war, since you have the workforce to rebuild the land when you're finished.

At that point, it becomes a comparison of commerce between the two, and production between the two.
-- Commerce: the serfdom (non-Slavery) empire will blow away the slavery empire.
-- Production: the slavery empire will be better early on, but once the serfdom empire gets up in city sizes it will match and then surpass the slavery empire, as the serfdom empire has the pop to work more tiles (getting the odd hammer here and there, plus a mine or two), and as the slavery empire has whipped all the cheap buildings and now has to pay 3, 4, 5, or more citizens.

Agreed. There's also a good argument for "running slavery, but using the whip only occasionally." At the very least, this strategy would save you the turns of anarchy it would cost you to switch out of slavery. If you aren't expecting to run a specialist economy, and if you usually capture your cities whole (without much pillaging), then it's probably best to stick with slavery and just exercise some restraint with the whip.

 

[DaviddesJ]

Also, if you rarely run or use Slavery, you're probably going to tend to have more workers, just because building workers is something you can do with your food surplus, so it's "cheaper" for you to make workers than other kinds of units. While, if you're using Slavery a lot, it's often hard to squeeze in worker construction (except by using Slavery to whip them, which is often not a bad idea).

 

[Wodan]

I usually end up with too many workers if I build "enough" workers to improve my tiles, then end up capturing large stacks of workers during war.

But don't you pretty much know that you're going to be going to war? In fact, you probably can predict almost exactly when you're going to war, too. Planning on success (which is not that hard against the AI), you thus know that you're going to capture "large stacks of workers". With that in mind, building less of them (and building more military or infrastructure) would be a good idea.

There's also a good argument for "running slavery, but using the whip only occasionally."

Not sure I buy that. IMO:
--whipping (post patch) is awesome when the city is small and you have 2-3 food resources or farmed floodplains
--whipping is great when you have reached the health cap
--whipping is ok when you have reached the happy cap (if you do it intelligently)
--whipping is a losing proposition otherwise

"Whipping occasionally" is not something that I would think would be a good idea. Unless you know something I'm not thinking of. It's either whip as much as happiness and pop will allow, or don't whip at all.

Wodan

 

[Wodan]

Also, if you rarely run or use Slavery, you're probably going to tend to have more workers, just because building workers is something you can do with your food surplus, so it's "cheaper" for you to make workers than other kinds of units. While, if you're using Slavery a lot, it's often hard to squeeze in worker construction (except by using Slavery to whip them, which is often not a bad idea).

Hmm. Maybe.

For the no Slavery case, they don't necessarily have "surplus food". Surplus food doesn't depend so much on city size. It depends on whether you have surplus food, period. In fact, a larger city will tend to have less surplus food, because the governor will work some mines automatically; heck, a human will work some mines. Production is a Good Thing(tm).

OTOH, when the city reaches the cap, making a worker or settler is often a great way to "freeze" the city in size. So, I agree there.

For Slavery, IMO building a worker is a great thing to do while you're waiting for the city to recover from the whip happy penalty.

Wodan