Slaves, Hostages and Prisoners of War

[MagnusIlluminus]

Are there any boats that will carry workers and that can travel through enemy waters without Open Borders? I don't believe so.

Yeah, I don't think so either. Unless one can add the '+1 cargo space' upgrade to a pirate ship (can't remember the name of the hidden nationality ship unit for that era offhand) and send that over. Of course, that runs the risk of them attacking it with their entire fleet.


@Thunderbrd. Wow. That sounds like it would solve many problems. Could be an interesting play mechanic.

 

[Koshling]

Could be an interesting mechanic... would take some direct programming to handle that. When I consider the AI on that project I can take a look at this too.


Ok, so,
@ALL:
I've been thinking deeply on the subject of Slavery in general. Many of us are frustrated with the slave mechanic (but don't get me wrong, its way more advanced and improved over the old one!)

The frustration mainly amounts to the specialist assignment mechanism not playing well with a specialist type that has such a strong positive but also some rather powerful negatives. Seeing the positives in a stronger light than the negatives, the system is all too willing to automatically override the player's better judgement round after round, resetting previous specialist assignments to stock up on slaves that do produce a lot but also overwhelm the city in crime, disease, unhappiness and unhealth.

Ok, so there's some modders on the team with some good plans and ideas on what needs to be done to the specialist panel and the 'ai' from which the player cannot escape. Both of those things are probably important on a level beyond just resolving this issue and yes, they could create a solution to these frustrations.

But in our discussions, someone mentioned something that really struck me... slaves are pretty much a caste. A population of people don't just go into and out of slavery willy nilly. Once a slave, most of the time a slave spends the rest of his or her life that way. Once freed, they rarely ever return to slavery. Usually the situations that lead a person into slavery are fairly extreme in the first place. It is not very immerse into a slave mechanic to make the transition from citizen to slave and back so liquid in our cities.

Some have suggested limiting the amount of slaves to keep cities in line but the counter argument still stands pretty strong - cities of the Ancient and Classical ages had more slaves than free men, and Most citizens of the Medieval eras were Peasants which does not differ greatly from slavery. MOST human beings if you take stock of all history have been slaves. So drastically limiting them doesn't really fit a good model of Earth history.

Another problem we have currently is that when slavery is removed as a worldview, we get a LOT of collected slaves becoming 'Freed Slave' units that have no current ability to offer the nation outside of major support expense/ being upgradeable into worker units. They sadly end up being a big waste to the economy at the moment... offering regret to the one who would liberate them. Admittedly I assume that DH had some further work to do for them to give them more utility. Perhaps some of these ideas could help. Although I think its mostly the military captives that become the settled slaves that are then released to be these free slaves but perhaps some of these concepts can help nevertheless.

I have come up with some ideas that could provide us with a solution to all of this. A somewhat different approach. DH was saying he wanted to implement more slave types but as usual we're still up against the citizen panel limitations (for now.) And he's out for a bit and was wanting to hand this project off anyhow. So here's my proposed vision in mod steps:

1. Remove the Slave assignable specialist type.
   
   
2. Make upgradeable series of buildings that only captives (under slavery worldview) can auto-build.
   
   
3. Design a number of slave types for the 'free specialist' section. These would include Mining Slaves, Farm Slaves, Plantation Slaves, Servant Slaves, Cleanup Slaves etc... Each has its own strengths but they all primarily share the same sort of penalties generically. Keep the balance points pretty similar to the way they are now. We also keep the generic settled slave for the military slaves to become. I think those are well balanced to their 'psuedo 1/3rd population' consideration.
   
   
4. Each time one of the aforementioned buildings is built by a slave, a few things happen:
   • The building adds one population to the city (one shot non-removable.)
   • The building brings with it very minor benefits and penalties associated with the 'housing' of the slaves.
   • The building immediately 'employs' the population it just added.
   • The building gives a free slave of the above mentioned slave types.
   • Then when Slavery is no longer a worldview, these buildings go obsolete, leaving the population they added free to be reassigned to other tasks.
5. These buildings should have prereqs based on map vicinities and other buildings in the city. Some examples:
   • Mining Slave Camp 1: Requires 1 Mine in the city radius.
   • Mining Slave Camp 2: Requires Mining Slave Camp 1 and 2 Mines in the city radius.
   • Mining Slave Camp 3: Requires Mining Slave Camp 2 and 3 Mines in the city radius.
     
     
   • Obviously, the Farming Slave buildings and such of the like would follow similar patterns.
     
     
   • City Cleanup Slave Compound 1: Would be available after the initial Slave Market - offers a slave that brings improvements to unhealth, disease, water pollution.
     
     
   • Gladiator Slaves 1: Requires Arena or Fighting Pit - The slave from this offers new units an xp, the building itself perhaps offers access to a new Gladiator unit type that a Military Slave can be upgraded to if in this city. The slave brings +1 :Happy:.
     
     
   • More ideas would be welcome as we could build some extensive building chains and slave types here.

The real benefits here is that slaves introduced into the city as slaves stay slaves until slavery is released. At which point they become the population they added and subsequently employed until the building went obsolete. This takes them out of the sphere of assignable specialist and into something a bit more meaningful. Also, we don't have a limit to the # of definable 'settled type specialists'. Our current coding I believe can account for all of this so it becomes purely xml with a touch of graphics and adding the new autobuild options to the captives.


Any opinions?

Without having spent too much time in critical analysis, I think I rather like these ideas. Would certainly want to hear DH's opinion though.

 

[strategyonly]

Without having spent too much time in critical analysis, I think I rather like these ideas. Would certainly want to hear DH's opinion though.

Definitely, some good stuff there, nice!

 

[Faustmouse]

A word to the "AI only uses Slaves as specialists" issue:

I'm now in the early industrial age and build lots of wonders that add "+X Culture/Science, Hammer, etc per Specialit". Also, I have lots of Religions and due am able to have lots of priests. And basically ALL my specialists are Priests, Scientists, Engineers, Spies... but no Slaves.

So maybe it is just a problem of having only a few "allows one citizen to turn into a prioest/spie, etc... Building" in the early game?

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

....Another problem we have currently is that when slavery is removed as a worldview, we get a LOT of collected slaves becoming 'Freed Slave' units that have no current ability to offer the nation outside of major support expense/ being upgradeable into worker units. They sadly end up being a big waste to the economy at the moment... offering regret to the one who would liberate them. Admittedly I assume that DH had some further work to do for them to give them more utility. Perhaps some of these ideas could help. Although I think its mostly the military captives that become the settled slaves that are then released to be these free slaves but perhaps some of these concepts can help nevertheless.....

As per usual it takes some one to build a working proto type before the good ideas flow on a good solution. I will need to think more on the mechanics but the idea of buildings may provide a good solution. I should be back early next week.

 

[DRJ]

I'd say freed slaves become ordinary (grey) citizens. The ordinary citizens should have a wonder like the discussed Declaration of Human Rights that has +100% War Wariness with it. Building it might give all grey citizens +0,5 commerce and +0,5 science or something.

Fascist and Mindcontrol Wonders on the other hand might give +0,5 espionage and maybe also +0,01 Great General Points per turn to the ordinary grey citizens.

Actually quite a lot is possible to make them more attractive aside the +1 production bonus. And give them a own GP-Points class as well (is it hard to add another one of that?),

So in case you GP-Points pool is dominated by the new Great Citizens GP-points a Great Citizen like Great Lawyer, Great Statesman a Great Social Revolutionary or Great Community Organizer etc would be spawned. Upon use, they could for example be able to let you change one civic without causing anarchy [could use a modified gold age code]). Also some diplomatic actions might be able with them...?!

If possible, let slaves give -1 Great Citizens GP point per turn (I know there might be some issues with that fractional math regarding the GP points pool as well as the coding of GP points in total but I really think it could be done without much effort as long as the total GP points wouldn't drop below zero or if the citizens GP point bar would be seperated from thge other GP Points - which would require a little altered code of the original GP Points mechanism as well as some city screen interface changes - personally, I liked to see the Great Citizens inside the whole pool as well as the -1 slaves, would create a nice little social dynamic, I guess. And be incentive of getting rid of the slaves at one time, too)

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

I'd say freed slaves become ordinary (grey) citizens. The ordinary citizens should have a wonder like the discussed Declaration of Human Rights that has +100% War Wariness with it. Building it might give all grey citizens +0,5 commerce and +0,5 science or something.

Fascist and Mindcontrol Wonders on the other hand might give +0,5 espionage and maybe also +0,01 Great General Points per turn to the ordinary grey citizens.

Actually quite a lot is possible to make them more attractive aside the +1 production bonus. And give them a own GP-Points class as well (is it hard to add another one of that?),

So in case you GP-Points pool is dominated by the new Great Citizens GP-points a Great Citizen like Great Lawyer, Great Statesman a Great Social Revolutionary or Great Community Organizer etc would be spawned. Upon use, they could for example be able to let you change one civic without causing anarchy [could use a modified gold age code]). Also some diplomatic actions might be able with them...?!

If possible, let slaves give -1 Great Citizens GP point per turn (I know there might be some issues with that fractional math regarding the GP points pool as well as the coding of GP points in total but I really think it could be done without much effort as long as the total GP points wouldn't drop below zero or if the citizens GP point bar would be seperated from thge other GP Points - which would require a little altered code of the original GP Points mechanism as well as some city screen interface changes - personally, I liked to see the Great Citizens inside the whole pool as well as the -1 slaves, would create a nice little social dynamic, I guess. And be incentive of getting rid of the slaves at one time, too)

Interesting ideas. I was thinking of possibly allowing you to choose what each slave became rather than them just becoming a frees slave. Then I though it would just be easier to have them become a freed slave and then add missions to the freed slave that allowed them to become the various choices. I only got as far as the "upgrade to worker" action. I wanted an action that took a number of turns to complete to train them as units for example. I have a few ideas for actions that take a few turns to complete, maybe should ask for that ability.

Great Lawyer is Great Statesman Which reminds me we need better icons for the lawyer and great statesman. I was going to use ones from the Total War mod but none have the star required for the great Specialist. @Hydro do you have access to that mod and could you add the star to make these icons?

Although I think its mostly the military captives that become the settled slaves that are then released to be these free slaves but perhaps some of these concepts can help nevertheless.

It is only military and Neanderthal captives that can become settled slaves.

I have come up with some ideas that could provide us with a solution to all of this. A somewhat different approach. DH was saying he wanted to implement more slave types but as usual we're still up against the citizen panel limitations (for now.) And he's out for a bit and was wanting to hand this project off anyhow. So here's my proposed vision in mod steps:

1. Remove the Slave assignable specialist type.
   
2. Make upgradeable series of buildings that only captives (under slavery worldview) can auto-build.
3. Design a number of slave types for the 'free specialist' section. These would include Mining Slaves, Farm Slaves, Plantation Slaves, Servant Slaves, Cleanup Slaves etc... Each has its own strengths but they all primarily share the same sort of penalties generically. Keep the balance points pretty similar to the way they are now. We also keep the generic settled slave for the military slaves to become. I think those are well balanced to their 'psuedo 1/3rd population' consideration.
   
   
4. Each time one of the aforementioned buildings is built by a slave, a few things happen:
   • The building adds one population to the city (one shot non-removable.)
   • The building brings with it very minor benefits and penalties associated with the 'housing' of the slaves.
   • The building immediately 'employs' the population it just added.
   • The building gives a free slave of the above mentioned slave types.
   • Then when Slavery is no longer a worldview, these buildings go obsolete, leaving the population they added free to be reassigned to other tasks.
5. These buildings should have prereqs based on map vicinities and other buildings in the city. Some examples:
   • Mining Slave Camp 1: Requires 1 Mine in the city radius.
   • Mining Slave Camp 2: Requires Mining Slave Camp 1 and 2 Mines in the city radius.
   • Mining Slave Camp 3: Requires Mining Slave Camp 2 and 3 Mines in the city radius.
     
     
   • Obviously, the Farming Slave buildings and such of the like would follow similar patterns.
     
     
   • City Cleanup Slave Compound 1: Would be available after the initial Slave Market - offers a slave that brings improvements to unhealth, disease, water pollution.
     
     
   • Gladiator Slaves 1: Requires Arena or Fighting Pit - The slave from this offers new units an xp, the building itself perhaps offers access to a new Gladiator unit type that a Military Slave can be upgraded to if in this city. The slave brings +1 :Happy:.
     
     
   • More ideas would be welcome as we could build some extensive building chains and slave types here.

The real benefits here is that slaves introduced into the city as slaves stay slaves until slavery is released. At which point they become the population they added and subsequently employed until the building went obsolete. This takes them out of the sphere of assignable specialist and into something a bit more meaningful. Also, we don't have a limit to the # of definable 'settled type specialists'. Our current coding I believe can account for all of this so it becomes purely xml with a touch of graphics and adding the new autobuild options to the captives.


Any opinions?

"autobuild" is the wrong word it is just "build" ie a unit builds a building

I am a bit confused as to the usage above for where you mean a settled verses assigned slave so I will try and be clear in my response as to my assumptions and you can correct me where I assumed incorrectly.

I don't like the idea of getting rid of the assignable slaves, mostly because a turn is many generations. I do think that we need more buildings that allow them so that it is not so much an all at once assignment.

I like the idea of special buildings that the Citizen captive only can build since they represent a population. These buildings would adjust the output of all the assigned slaves in the city only. We don't have this ability as yet, buildings (wonders) can adjust the specialist output for the whole nation only. The Citizen captive would build the building, add one population but the building would consume/work that extra population until it goes obsolete when the world view is removed.

Buildings all require Slave market and can be built by the Citizen captive or in the normal manner. Each also adds 1 to the number of assignable slaves which means we can reduce the number assignable by the other buildings. These buildings allow Military Captives to be settles as special slaves. They can still be settles as generic slaves until these buildings are built or they are full.

• Slave compound allows
  • farm workers (2 per farm or food gatherer, 3 per orchard, grain farm or pasture) +
  • mine workers (2 per mine) +
  • tutors with Domus or better housing (1-2) +
• Civic Cleanup compound allows clean up crew requires; max 2, +2 with sewer, +2 with street cleaner
• Military support compound allows equipment maintenance; max 1; reduces time to build. More with barracks and other purely military buildings
• Entertainer compound requires fighting pit etc; max 1; as suggested.

When you have the building you can settle slaves as the various types of slave. We currently can't tell the number of improvements in the city vicinity so that bit will need to be done in the python.

 

[Nimek]

Small bug how AI gov handle slave specialists.
It set a lot of them in the city without care about unhappines they make so the city can become very unhappy and revolt easily.

AI city gov should set slave specialist only when it won't take city to unhappy stage.

 

[Hydromancerx]

@Hydro do you have access to that mod and could you add the star to make these icons?

I don't know how to make icons for Great people.

 

[Thunderbrd]

I don't like the idea of getting rid of the assignable slaves, mostly because a turn is many generations. I do think that we need more buildings that allow them so that it is not so much an all at once assignment.

Part of the problem with assignable slaves, and I think you're catching my drift just fine - population can be 'assigned' to become them, is that they are a super pain in the arse the way our specialists currently auto-assign so often by an AI specialist assignment manager that doesn't have a clue how to consider what you value as a player. Finding a way around that is simply easiest if the 'assignable slave' is removed. I realize you have some great plans on how to rework the specialist panel so perhaps that serves as a sufficient alternative.

I like the idea of special buildings that the Citizen captive only can build since they represent a population. These buildings would adjust the output of all the assigned slaves in the city only. We don't have this ability as yet, buildings (wonders) can adjust the specialist output for the whole nation only. The Citizen captive would build the building, add one population but the building would consume/work that extra population until it goes obsolete when the world view is removed.

Apparently you didn't read all the things I've done for your projects in my last team update thread... We now have

LocalSpecialistYieldChanges: By indicating a specialist type, and a yield volume, you make all local specialists of the defined yield adjust their yields based on the presence of this building.

We've had this on a national level since I have no idea when but the difference here is LOCAL - so it only affects the city in which the building is built. I'd have preferred to rename the tag we already have so that it states National but that could have a lot of unforeseen consequences now that its put in use in a number of places already so I broke some naming convention and simply indicated 'Local' for this tag, which should be the default anyhow.

I suppose we'll also need LocalSpecialistCommerceChanges as well huh? Shouldn't be too difficult. Note that the AI on these tags is not in place yet but adding some is certainly 'on the list' at a fairly high prioirity. Problem is I don't know how yet.

That said, wouldn't it be easier to then give a 'free' slave specialist of the building's slave type once the building is 'employing' the slave (permanently until the building is obsoleted)?

Each also adds 1 to the number of assignable slaves which means we can reduce the number assignable by the other buildings.

By doing this we're allowing that population to NOT be used as a slave as well right? Does that seem quite correct? Shouldn't the slave not have the option to be anything but a slave (thus be a 'settled' rather than 'assignable' style specialist)?


BTW, basically I'm not suggesting that the military/neanderthal captives would work any differently at all from how they do now. This only deals with citizen captives. If you wish to slave your own people, I'd suggest making it possible to build a slave unit (when built reduces your city's pop by 1) which can be used in the same way as the citizen captives but ONLY for the slavery enabled 'missions'. Having them willy nilly as assignable as scientists or priests just feels too liquid for the concept of a slave doesn't it?

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

OK, we are talking at cross purposes. Also I had not read the SVN thread when I had posted.

1) population assignable slaves - as they are now but rather than the Slavery and Slave Market building allowing 6 they only allow 3 and 2 respectively with new buildings below allowing more. The AI for assigning population to specialists needs work anyway to take into account happiness, healthiness and all the properties. These are the extra things we have added into C2C which have had no work done in the AI.

2) Citizen captives: add 7 new buildings that they can build in addition to their current actions. Each building allows the assigning of one extra population to the slave specialist. See buildings below. Building the building adds one to the city population but also employs that population point. When the building goes the population stays but is now free to be used elsewhere.

3) Military/Neanderthal captives: same as now plus they can be added as new specialist types based on the new buildings and existing improvements in the region of the city. They count as 1/3 of a population point for the purposes of costs and production. All get freed as "Freed Slave" when slavery is renounced.

• settled slave - similar to now (unlimited)
• farm worker - increased production reduced and
  requires building Slave Compound and farms, and orchards etc. in city radius
  allowed 1 farm worker per hunting camp plus 2 per farm or food gatherer plus 3 per orchard, grain farm or pasture
• plantation worker - increased production reduced and
  requires building Slave Compound and plant gatherer or plantation. in city radius
  allowed 1 farm worker per plant gatherer plus 3 per plantation
• mine worker - increased reduced and
  requires building Slave Compound and mines or quarries etc. in city radius
  allowed 1 per stone workshop or special stone workshop plus 3 per mine or quarry
• tutor - increased reduced , and
  requires Slave Compound and Domus or better housing
  allowed 2 plus 1 for scribal school and 1 for library
• cleanup worker - reduces disease and pollution
  requires Slave Cleanup Compound and at least Village Admin
  allowed 2 per level of Admin building
• military worker - reduces time to train units
  requires Military Slave Compound
  allowed 1 plus 1 if have Military Training building.
  if have Military Training building allows captive to build Fighting Pit or Arena etc.
• factory worker
  requires Factory Slave Compound
  allowed 1 plus 1 per metal smelter plus 1 per metal equipment maker (copper, iron, bronze, steel, stone and obsidian only)

4) Buildings

• Slave Compound - +2
• Cleanup Slave Compound - +1
• Military Slave Compound - small reduction (5%) in military unit construction time
• Factory Slave Compound - +2

lost my train of thought...

edit

I don't know how to make icons for Great people.

They are "just" buttons with transparent background.

 

[Hydromancerx]

[*]tutor - increased reduced , and
requires Slave Compound and Domus or better housing
allowed 2 plus 1 for scribal school and 1 for library

I don't think it should reduce since that influences . However is fine since that doesn't mess with .

edit
They are "just" buttons with transparent background.

Yeah I have been having problems with transparent buttons.

 

[martinuzz]

Erm.. How do I get worldview slavery?
And where is the slavery civic?

I don't get an option on any captives, either military or civilian, to build worldview slavery.
I've browsed through the entire list of civics, but none of them is called slavery.
I do have the slavery tech( long time already, I'm in the ancient era, all prehistoric techs are already researched). What am I missing?

 

[Thunderbrd]

The WorldView slavery doesn't ONLY require the Slavery tech... can't recall the other one off hand - which is a big part of why I really would prefer it if it only did require that tech. I found that a bit frustrating as well.

@DH: OK, can't blame you for sticking to your guns. Sounds like you've taken some of the concepts proposed anyhow. I was just hoping to be able to get rid of the assignable ones because they're a pain. (Enough to have my wife avoiding the Slavery Worldview like the plague regardless of how beneficial it can be if well maintained.) And I'm not sure how long it will be before anyone can address the AI side of that issue.

I DO need to take a bit to work out the Specialist AI myself for some of the new tags I gave them so PERHAPS I can work out a solution to the issue there at the same time if Koshling hasn't been able to address it yet.

 

[martinuzz]

According to the pedia, the other skill required for slavery is barter. Which I also have.

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

Erm.. How do I get worldview slavery?
And where is the slavery civic?

I don't get an option on any captives, either military or civilian, to build worldview slavery.
I've browsed through the entire list of civics, but none of them is called slavery.
I do have the slavery tech( long time already, I'm in the ancient era, all prehistoric techs are already researched). What am I missing?

I think you have to build it in your capital at the moment.

@DH: OK, can't blame you for sticking to your guns. Sounds like you've taken some of the concepts proposed anyhow. I was just hoping to be able to get rid of the assignable ones because they're a pain. (Enough to have my wife avoiding the Slavery Worldview like the plague regardless of how beneficial it can be if well maintained.) And I'm not sure how long it will be before anyone can address the AI side of that issue.

I DO need to take a bit to work out the Specialist AI myself for some of the new tags I gave them so PERHAPS I can work out a solution to the issue there at the same time if Koshling hasn't been able to address it yet.

Well as soon as we add happy/unhappy to any of the other specialists we are going to have the same problems. Same with health/unhealthiness. Those are just not supported by the AI as far as I know.

 

[martinuzz]

I think you have to build it in your capital at the moment.

I can only build the worldview cannibalism, but not the worldview slavery in my capital.

Also, there is no such thing as a 'slavery civic' in my civics menu. I'm using version 29, I didn't get the 8 may release of version 30 yet.

EDIT: additional info: I'm playing with minor civs on. I'm still a minor civ. My capital's size is 8.

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

I can only build the worldview cannibalism, but not the worldview slavery in my capital.

Also, there is no such thing as a 'slavery civic' in my civics menu. I'm using version 29, I didn't get the 8 may release of version 30 yet.

EDIT: additional info: I'm playing with minor civs on. I'm still a minor civ. My capital's size is 8.

You need the tech Slavery and any captive in the city with your Palace. The button is the same as the slave market button.

 

[martinuzz]

I have slavery already. I have all prehistoric techs, and am way past sedentary lifestyle.
Slavery is a prehistoric tech, it only requires barter and warfare.

 

[martinuzz]

Upgrading to version 30 fixed it, I can build worldview slavery now