Slaves, Hostages and Prisoners of War

[Dancing Hoskuld]

I added this;


12 seems too much imo. These slaves are such a nuisance..
You could keep it as 12 but the initial 6 isn't unlocked until city reaches size 18 or something.

You get 14 or more of all the others, and anyway I am looking at splitting those 12 up into 5 different types.

 

[Thunderbrd]

I added this;


12 seems too much imo. These slaves are such a nuisance..
You could keep it as 12 but the initial 6 isn't unlocked until city reaches size 18 or something.

That doesn't strike me as the best way to address the problem. Not saying there isn't one but arbitrary limitations are also a pain in the arse. I'm patiently looking forward to being able to help with generating a way for players to more easily prioritize the specialist assignments.

 

[Sgtslick]

Bah, slaves are still OP then (or there is a bug with the AI, but I suspect the former). Maybe making them consume more would balance them more.

In the current game slave specialists give +1 , I personally have changed it to -1 in my game. Been playing this way for the last week or so and the AI auto-selection still loves them

*probably should move this conversation to the slaves thread and not hijack the civics thread.. sorry about that.

 

[Thunderbrd]

The idea behind should be: you have to feed your slave.
A citizen consumes three food so a slave should at least consume two food, maybe even three.
Thinking about it, the other specialists do need food, too....

Citizens already are consuming food, 3 to be precise, as they are a population that has been assigned. Only in the case of a free specialist are you getting this without the added food support, added unhappiness from overcrowding, added unhealth from overcrowding, added crime and disease based on the difficulty level setting for crime and disease/population. The reason the slave gives +1 food as a specialist is because a) they are fed less, and b) they may be working to help generate some food.

DH is planning on splitting up slaves into differing types of slaves, those that are set to work doing differing things. That should be pretty cool and I'm looking forward to that.


If the AI is still selecting them it may or may not mean they are truly OP. It may mean that the evaluation isn't quite accurate to the effect in play, which my limited experience in AI evaluating lends me to believe is very easy to end up with. If Crime and Disease aren't valued strongly enough in comparison to the yields they are bringing in, then that's an issue.

IMO, most of the time I think yield types really do equal each other in game impact. Yes, its a bit of comparing apples to oranges between them but they do seem to balance to each other. Whereas commerces still don't yet. In a vanilla or most options at default game, culture is next to worthless compared to research. Even Espionage has a very hard time being equally as valuable. The best measure of what is valuable and what is not in comparing these may be truly measured by a very good player's use of the slider. Once we have everyone wanting to put those sliders at equal across the board throughout most of the game, we've made all commerces of equal value. Probably won't ever happen though.

But slaves aren't about commerces, they're about yields. Yields in and of themselves are worth roughly double what a commerce is. I'm not sure how he's valuating those.

It's also about the crime and disease factors. Here's where it gets complex. What's the value of a pt of crime every round? Or disease? I think the way Koshling has set this up, that value will vary by how many and how severe our crime and disease penalties are that letting those values go can bring us - how strong the consequences are basically, how on top of those factors we are in those cities, and how much room we have to let things go for a bit - which for a player would be disconcerting as the player will want to stay more on top of things than an AI that always has full awareness of every value and process taking place in all of its cities every round. (Players have a developed paranoia that stems from not wanting to always have to look deeply into their numbers every round so they want to create a margin of error that the AI doesn't feel is necessary for optimal performance.)

And I've wondered aloud before how much the AI is putting weight into the GP pts that other specialists offer but slaves do not. In cities where you want to plug out GPs, slaves are a very bad choice even though the immediate yield benefits are greater.

My point is, at the moment, the AI is currently feeling that the benefits outweigh the penalties. Do they? They might. If you staff TW to counter them, they do profit you. However the disease is uncontrollable. This is a big motivator to push again for a healer accessed promo line that can reduce disease values like the TW promo lines reduce crime. BUT right now a completely out of control disease level offers maybe 6 or so unhealth at worst. Thus its NOT really impacting that much - will ensure you have unhealthy cities with slowed growth but that's about it. Down the road that will be problematic, but then again down the road the AI structure he developed may react to the intensifying of the consequences of having an out of control disease level.

Anyhow... its a work in progress like everything else here

 

[DRJ]

@TB
Good analysis regarding the relations of properties and yields I really must say;
also having had thought about this recently , while realizing in my current game that I was once more (like in all last games) able to reach the #1 AI values in GNP and even food in the demograhics screen, while at that time I was only reaching 1/4 to 1/2 of its production values.

This led me to the conclusion the AI maybe overweights production and as slaves gurantee a lot of production it likes them so much?

I try to use the little production I have efficiently, specializing on the food/science and culture chains, building only buildings I really need, sometimes setting my cities on producing wealth for quite some time just to be able to settle another city while at the same being able to remain my tech rate just so to reache a rewarding tech in time to then get my budget fixed slowly --

and thus being able to catch up a bit or at least not fall too far behind in the tech race (GEM, minor civs, full deity start). The AI, however builds all buildings and units in no time but somehow I can compete with just a third of the production?!... How can that be adjusted? I know on deity AI has major boni but how can it be that they are wasted so much? Maybe there is a point where we should adjust some mechanics: nerf the AIs lust for hammers/production?

Btw.

Have we ever thought about assigning negative GP points to slaves? If a slave would cost -1 GP maybe the AI would be able to weight it better?

 

[DRJ]

.....

 

[Sgtslick]

@DRJ - The AI is getting better and better though. Its like 20-30% harder on deity than it was like a month ago I reckon.

 

[Thunderbrd]

Interesting idea to have a -1 GP pt... not sure the code is prepared for that though. There may be a minimum 0 limiter on that so if we try it we'd have to check on that. Plus it might do some interesting things with the GP Type % likelihood that would be birthed next evaluation since it wouldn't have a type associated with it. May not even work without a type association tagged along with it - I can't recall offhand the details of the coding on that but I know enough to realize there could be some unsuspected implications in such a setting.

 

[DRJ]

Interesting idea to have a -1 GP pt... not sure the code is prepared for that though. There may be a minimum 0 limiter on that so if we try it we'd have to check on that. Plus it might do some interesting things with the GP Type % likelihood that would be birthed next evaluation since it wouldn't have a type associated with it. May not even work without a type association tagged along with it - I can't recall offhand the details of the coding on that but I know enough to realize there could be some unsuspected implications in such a setting.

So, if I understand you right, once the city GP points treshold comes down to 0, due to lets say 1 working slave with -1 GP per turn, it would - like the food bar in a starving size 1 city - not become negative, right?

As for what type of -1 GP it would be: why not establish a "citizen GP points" for that matter?

a ordinary "citizen" specialist (the grey one) not only gives +1 production but also +1 (citizen) GP. Slaves produce -1 (citizen) GP.

if a great citizen is born he could be sort of a "Joker" GP, not able to start an golden age but being able to settle down in a city as a honorary citizen, essentially, similar to a settled prophet, giving benefits without - GP (but it will generate no + GP points either)

Great Citizens also could change worldviews, so you haven't had to use a general or another great person to do that.

You would now, from time to time, have the incentive to invest in breeding of great citizens by employing ordinary citizens instead of using the more effective slaves for example to avoid crime if youre full of it for the time being and also if you want to farm great citizens to exercise the actions I pointed out above.

Maybe Citizen GP should have a different bar than the rest GP and also a lower treshold so more of them can be generated.

 

[DRJ]

.....

 

[Thunderbrd]

So, if I understand you right, once the city GP points treshold comes down to 0, due to lets say 1 working slave with -1 GP per turn, it would - like the food bar in a starving size 1 city - not become negative, right?

As for what type of -1 GP it would be: why not establish a "citizen GP points" for that matter?

a ordinary "citizen" specialist (the grey one) not only gives +1 production but also +1 (citizen) GP. Slaves produce -1 (citizen) GP.

if a great citizen is born he could be sort of a "Joker" GP, not able to start an golden age but being able to settle down in a city as a honorary citizen, essentially, as a slave, giving benefits without - GP (but it will generate no + GP points either)

Great Citizens als could change worldviews, so you hadn't use a general or another great person to do that.

You would from time to time invest in ordinary citizens instead of slaves, for example to avoid crime if youre full of it for the time being and also if you want to farm great citizens to axercise the actions I pointed out.

Maybe Citizen GP should have a different bar than the rest GP and also a lower treshold so more of them can be generated.

Well, I'm not sure if it would actually remove GP pts from the bar if the - exceeded the positive on GP pt earnings in a city or if it simply would count all specialist GP pt sources as having a minimum of 0 thus no negative is even possible. Without further coding anyhow.

The Specialist Type association would be tough to handle in the negative because how is that supposed to influence the type of GP you'd get when you're going into negative chances unless the negative chances could produce something like a random anything? This is hard to communicate about this stuff actually... you'd probably just have to understand the coding process on that to see why it could be problematic. Civ4 designers never intended for that GP pt accumulation to ever go into the negative and programmed upon that assumption.

Various alternative types of GPs have been discussed, including some ideas on what citizens and slaves could offer but that would be a big project in its own right.

 

[Johnny Canuck]

I agree with Sgtslick about needing the ability to 'lock' slave specialists so the AI doesn't keep assigning them. But more generally, I don't think it really makes sense to be able to constantly switch citizens between slavery & non-slave occupations. That's not really how it worked historically, is it? Wouldn't it be more of a 'slave for life' situation in most cases? IMHO, moving a citizen into slavery should be permanent, & obviously not done by the AI for player-controlled civs. My suggestion would be something along the following:

1. The Slavery Worldview allows for captives to be settled as slaves, but that's it.
2. The Slave Market gives +1 Settled Slaves, and allows for a certain % of the population to be permanently assigned as Slaves (perhaps 1 for every 10 population).

This way, you aren't constantly shuffling civilians between slavery & non-slave occupations, thus removing a degree of micromanagement.

 

[DRJ]

I agree with Sgtslick about needing the ability to 'lock' slave specialists so the AI doesn't keep assigning them. But more generally, I don't think it really makes sense to be able to constantly switch citizens between slavery & non-slave occupations. That's not really how it worked historically, is it? Wouldn't it be more of a 'slave for life' situation in most cases? IMHO, moving a citizen into slavery should be permanent, & obviously not done by the AI for player-controlled civs. My suggestion would be something along the following:

1. The Slavery Worldview allows for captives to be settled as slaves, but that's it.
2. The Slave Market gives +1 Settled Slaves, and allows for a certain % of the population to be permanently assigned as Slaves (perhaps 1 for every 10 population).

This way, you aren't constantly shuffling civilians between slavery & non-slave occupations, thus removing a degree of micromanagement.

I think your ideas are good and we should stick to them.

One thing though: In history, often people within a culture have been enslaved by others.
For example people who weren't able to pay their debts etc.
Also, in game terms there are some situations where isolated players can't get slaves by fighting as they have no enemy in reach yet. So I think there should be a mechanism to get slaves without assigning them manually like of now which as you said should become impossible

But what about being able to "build" slaves in city? Call it "debt bondage" or something. You can then only assign them as permanent specialists (or in the case of debt collecting as a semi-permanent specialist who vanishes after a few 100 turns maybe)?

The "build slave" option could be tied to slavery and building a slave would temporarily have -2 for the city that produces it (the slaves family and the other people being afraid of also being enslaved). So you couldn't build one too often but if you use different cities you could pop one from time to time.

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

I built it this way based on an earlier mod that was in c2C however I ended up completely rewriting the code. I thought it would be an interesting game play mechanic but I find that it is completely irrelevant to my play style. I just don't get any captives. So for the time being at least I am not working on this any more. Anyone who wants to take it over is welcome to it.

 

[DRJ]

I just don't get any captives. So for the time being at least

You see, my idea was to allow players who don't get captives to "build" captives via a 'debtor' unit buildicon that functions as if a producing a military captive' unit .

Or what about this: via a new building called "paupers prison"
a debtor isunlocked for unitbuild and when completed , a settled slave debtor is assigned to forced labour,

It has nearly same stats as a settled slave BUT is only active for like XX turns before vanishing (his punishment ended or he died in there).
The number of buildable and assignable "debtors" would be depending on the cities size.

Debtors give more unhappyness than settled slaves as their family often still are angry free citizens, influencing the populations opinion more than slaves with no ties to even small power.


Conclusion: this way people who like to spend their production and maintenance on stuff like Dance Hut, Music Hut, Playing Field etc can instead of investing in military to capture a large number of captives also get a production boost by luring in debtors into the forced labour prison system.

Or in another case squeeze the slightly aristocratic into having them rot in the paupers prison until someone ifrom family or nfluencal people pay for them -> event could ask the player from sometimes randomly if the debtor can be bought free for like 100 gold, 250 or seldomly even 1000 if you're lucky. You would of course lose the production but you might be able to speed up tech with that money and the debtor would maybe vanish soon anyway (alive for random times)

 

[Thunderbrd]

I built it this way based on an earlier mod that was in c2C however I ended up completely rewriting the code. I thought it would be an interesting game play mechanic but I find that it is completely irrelevant to my play style. I just don't get any captives. So for the time being at least I am not working on this any more. Anyone who wants to take it over is welcome to it.

Are you at least going to plug the modifiers I put in for the capture/resist mechanism? You know... with those, you can certainly improve your captive returns.

BTW: I'm in the Classical era and my capital staffs over 60 military captives converted to slaves on my current game. You must really play peacefully to not be getting any of these!

 

[Sgtslick]

Could I tweak
Captives_CIV4BuildingInfos.xml
BUILDING_WV_SLAVERY
to
<SpecialistCounts>
<SpecialistCount>
<SpecialistType>SPECIALIST_SLAVES</SpecialistType>
<iSpecialistCount>2</iSpecialistCount> (currently it allows 6 in every city)
</SpecialistCount>
</SpecialistCounts>

But Keep the slave market at 6?

Personally I would also like to change
<Type>SPECIALIST_SLAVES</Type> to
<Yields>
<iYield>-1</iYield> (currently it gives 1 food)
<iYield>3</iYield>
<iYield>3</iYield>
</Yields>

Not sure if people would agree with this one though and I don't feel as strongly as I do with reducing the WV slavery down to 2 specialists.

 

[Faustmouse]

BTW: I'm in the Classical era and my capital staffs over 60 military captives converted to slaves on my current game. You must really play peacefully to not be getting any of these!

Yeah, I just got in the medival era and I have over 200 Captives. I usually "farm" them. I just go from one city to the next, kill so many units that only one defender is left and then move to the next.

 

[DRJ]

It surely has been adressed but I didn't see it yet -
Is there a way that a city doesn't assign slaves to your cities?
I really liked a game option like "Automated Workers Leave Old Improvements"
"City Governors don't auto-assign Specialists"

Right now, I see my cities which I carefully managed to be "happy" turning red every few turns. As it seems when a new building started, City Gov (which I don't have even activated!!!) "decided" that more production was needed to finish it faster.
Well now I have less production due to the unhappiness and more rebellion.

When I tried to reset the specialists manually, even then sometimes a slave is assigned without me clicking on it. Really strange behaviour. I can only get rid of the autoassigned slaves by clicking on "+citizen" and then assigning the citizens on the tiles or other specialist slots.

After some time I have to do it again and it's pretty annoying to think everything is just fine just to see your cities getting red out of nowhere cause unassigned slaves put you over the 300 crime/tile treshold or something. Can really mess up some critical calculations for city growth/building

EDIT: On a side note, another behaviour I recognized is that when my city is unhappy, it assigns the tiles a new, also with no AI Gov activated by me. The ghostly AI Gov tries to avoid the city growing further so not more unhappiness will produce a useless citizen when the tiles not concentrated on food but production could make a it so that a new citizen would become valuable once the production has enabled more happiness by buildings (or new techs with new buildings if production went into research)

So to make it short: I like to grow my cities even in unhappiness

Spoiler :

(because I sometimes "time" to complete buildings that give like 2 the turn the city grows and would give a secound just to be in balance after the grow)

and don't want "autoassign food to production if city unhappy" automatically enabled.

I also would like to request an option that enables the rule to be active that each available and new citizen is always put on land tiles (as far as there are enough to work). Each available or new specialist is never a slave. It can always become a citizen as they are unlimited. "Always work tiles first" and "No autoassign of slaves"


Maybe all these rule change proposals could be unified under one option called "No hidden AI City Gov" ?

 

[Thunderbrd]

It surely has been adressed but I didn't see it yet -
Is there a way that a city doesn't assign slaves to your cities?
I really liked a game option like "Automated Workers Leave Old Improvements"
"City Governors don't auto-assign Specialists"

Right now, I see my cities which I carefully managed to be "happy" turning red every few turns. As it seems when a new building started, City Gov (which I don't have even activated!!!) "decided" that more production was needed to finish it faster.
Well now I have less production due to the unhappiness and more rebellion.

When I tried to reset the specialists manually, even then sometimes a slave is assigned without me clicking on it. Really strange behaviour. I can only get rid of the autoassigned slaves by clicking on "+citizen" and then assigning the citizens on the tiles or other specialist slots.

After some time I have to do it again and it's pretty annoying to think everything is just fine just to see your cities getting red out of nowhere cause unassigned slaves put you over the 300 crime/tile treshold or something. Can really mess up some critical calculations for city growth/building

EDIT: On a side note, another behaviour I recognized is that when my city is unhappy, it assigns the tiles a new, also with no AI Gov activated by me. The ghostly AI Gov tries to avoid the city growing further so not more unhappiness will produce a useless citizen when the tiles not concentrated on food but production could make a it so that a new citizen would become valuable once the production has enabled more happiness by buildings (or new techs with new buildings if production went into research)

So to make it short: I like to grow my cities even in unhappiness

Spoiler :

(because I sometimes "time" to complete buildings that give like 2 the turn the city grows and would give a secound just to be in balance after the grow)

and don't want "autoassign food to production if city unhappy" automatically enabled.

I also would like to request an option that enables the rule to be active that each available and new citizen is always put on land tiles (as far as there are enough to work). Each available or new specialist is never a slave. It can always become a citizen as they are unlimited. "Always work tiles first" and "No autoassign of slaves"


Maybe all these rule change proposals could be unified under one option called "No hidden AI City Gov" ?

I think we're all a bit frustrated with this. DH has some plans to address it, Koshling may be working on the AI side of it, and AIAndy has said that you can emphasize a particular specialist type by clicking on it, although there is no graphic element to let you know that the specialist has been emphasized, but in all the testing I have done on that, it does not seem to deny this effect either.

So I think primarily DH's efforts there are what we'll be waiting on for a solution. He's looking to make it possible, at least, to instruct to add no further specialists of a certain type, and in this case, telling the city to hold off on more slaves is necessary.

That said, happiness is where I personally find is the best to draw the line as long as:
a) the city is not intended to pump out GPs, in which case that city is best served by reassigning all slaves to the GP type you're trying to obtain and keeping up on the slave autoassignments is then a bit challenging there right now.

and

b) you have enough production from a highly promoting city to pump out Town Watchmen in volume enough to keep the massive amount of crime in check. Disease is pretty much just something you'll have to deal with.

following these two rules, from maintaining lots of slaves in most cities, I'm able to get a pretty strong amount of production, but more importantly a fairly strong amount of commerce that pours into research.

But yeah, when it starts pushing into unhappiness, it can be difficult to work the screen to get it off the slaves because there's a loop you enter into when you take a slave off the angry citizen gets happy and is then immediately auto assigned which invariably means it becomes another slave which then immediately removes whatever else you'd just assigned the first slave to do as it becomes an angry citizen again. To break that loop you need to just reduce slaves to citizens repeatedly until you have a bit of a happiness margin, THEN assign the citizens.