Winning without Slavery?

[Jorunkun]

Out of curiosity I tried to play a game without using slavery. Moved down a level to Emperor and lost. Everything takes forever to build, and controlling population growth is a real headache.

So what's the highest level you can beat without using the whip? Is Emperor possible, and has anybody tried? What are key tactics and things to consider?

My main takeaway from the last game was to build cities in different locations than I normally would, paying more attention to an even distribution of hills in the cities' fat cross. Also, raising armies needs to be managed with much more foresight. In fact, pacing in general is quite different from a standard game.

Any thoughts? Anyone feel like trying this in a SG?

 

[shyuhe]

we're doing a harder variation of this. No researching bronze working.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=209385

It's on monarch (we did the first run on noble and it was pretty easy). I also know some other guys did a no civics challenge (can't change from the initial civics). I think they got all the way up to immortal on their variant. sorry I don't have a link to that one though.

 

[Harbourboy]

Very good question. Slavery is so ingrained as the "go to" civic that it would indeed be an interesting challenge to play the game as a benevolent civil rights leader.

For an even more challenging task, try a game with no slavery and no chopping. The Environmental Emancipator.

 

[Atlas]

It's on monarch (we did the first run on noble and it was pretty easy). I also know some other guys did a no civics challenge (can't change from the initial civics). I think they got all the way up to immortal on their variant. sorry I don't have a link to that one though.

I played in the immortal SG game.

We had no slavery, no hereditary rule, no drafting, etc.
Here is the link http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=192576

Tell me what you think

 

[jeremiahrounds]

I guess this explains why i play on monarch... I usually only whip in a wartime emergency (troops!). Never thought it would be anything but self defeating to whip buildings out.

 

[Harbourboy]

I find it is usually better to whip buildings than troops. You get more bang for your buck that way.

 

[uberfish]

If you set up a couple of specialized production cities you don't really need to whip. Basically you want to make sure your excess food is still working for you, whether this is by feeding mines, specialists, plains cottages or building workers/settlers. The main difficulty with not using slavery is the inability to whip defenders, which forces you to maintain a larger standing army.

 

[Jet]

^^^ No love for getting several of an important new offensive unit (axes, catapults, etc) at maximum speed?

 

[Dnomal]

I don't sue slavery in 99% of my games, when i do use it its after i am outnumbered and fighting multiple wars. It tends to work well, however since i play on Marathon slavery is less appealing, sacrificing 35 turns of growth!, and having massive unhappiness for a LONG time just dosen't seem worth it to me most of the time.

I am on monarch and won several of those games now, without ever using slavery (although it did save my ass in one of the games).

Persaonlly I far prefer Nationhood as a civic, lets you have units instantly, and has less of a cost, again only in emergenceies/jannisary beeline.

 

[lilnev]

When I started playing (and before discovering cfc), I hardly ever used Slavery. I'd generally go to Alphabet before BW, and only get into Slavery when I was making some other civics change at the same time. Basically I only whipped emergency defenders and starving unhappys in newly captured cities. Oh, how much I've learned, since those Halcyon days of yore. Emperor was hard, but I won some. Make sure every city has at least one hill, and use your food surpluses to support mines and plains cottages. It's harder to go to war early, but you can still build up to a good catapult offensive. On the upside, you get to work the maximum number of tiles all the time.

peace,
lilnev

 

[Harbourboy]

I whip all the time during the phase before you get all the big happiness and health improvers because otherwise my cities would be full of diseased rioters, vomiting and looting in my cities' streets.

 

[Jorunkun]

Read up on the "no civics" SG, excellent work there. Sounds like
no monarchy was probably the bigger issue than no whipping. Impressive.

Also liked the post game discussion about The Formula to beat Immortal, rings very true. In light of that, maybe a "no early war" variant would be an even tougher challenge?

 

[Stolen Rutters]

I would hate to play without monarchy. On monarch level, slavery isn't necessary much, but I am so used to using Hereditary Rule to raise my happy cap above my health limit, I think I am forgetting how to leverage slavery for production. Slaving shrinks my cities, and the larger the population in a city, the longer it takes to make up for the population hit.

Below your happy cap, slavery converts a working tile or specialist to 30 hammers. If you don't have enough surplus food to quickly grow that citizen back before you lose 30 ,, or worth of production, it's not much of a long term benefit. Slavery is a short term production boost . You need to have an immediate reason to do it (early rush, beating someone to a wonder, etc.)

HR basically allows you to raise your happy cap at the cost of a unit per happy. Since you invested a unit into each marginal citizen, you want to keep it around to recoup the investment. A large production city can keep your empire swimming in enough units to get the happy cap of your cities up to their food growth limits before later sources of allows you to move out of Hereditary Rule and keep your cities maxed out.

 

[sylvanllewelyn]

If you want a challange, rather than thinking of all these funny varients... try this: play deity. If and when you can beat deity more than a quarter of the time, then start thinking about these weird varients.

 

[jeremiahrounds]

Diety is a wierd variant.

 

[Harbourboy]

Actually, I'd rather play a "weird variant" on a lower level than Deity. I do not find Deity to be fun at all.

 

[InvisibleStalke]

I have a theory that Caste System is potentially a lot more powerful for a specialist/mine economy. Its about to be tested as I go to war with catapults to capture a much larger empire with longbows.

The logic:

- I have pyramids (representation) and am industrious (which is why I have pyramids). My research comes from settled great people, the great library and specialists when I want to run them. Due to a lot of wonders in my capital, my GPP is strong even when I am not running specialists.

- When I want production, I use mines. When I want research I use specialists. My first three cities are all production cities - currently building a quick army, but equally capable of running several specialists for max research.

- My next tech is drama, after which I declare war with a big stack of catapults.

- When I capture an enemy city, I don't have to whip its population into the dust to build a courthouse or theatre to grow the fat cross. Instead I will run the culture slider at up to 100%, granting 10 happy people, a very fast fat cross and cultural defense. A size 10 city that I capture won't need to get whipped and starved down to size 4 - it can immediately run maybe 4-5 merchants, bringing in 12-15 gold (offsets any maintenance problems easily) and 12-15 research.

- Instead of capturing a useless city that will take ages to regrow and will require a lot of effort, I get something that I can use immediately and is contributing significantly to my empire.

- I don't need monarchy any more - I can use the culture slider instead. And just work mines for production of buildings and units when I need to.

- I don't need to produce a lot of buildings - cities can just grow to the size their food sources support and then work specialists. I can produce science and gold immediately without any requisite buildings.

- Later as the war comes to an end, my core cities will pick up research again and I start on necessary buildings in these newly taken cities and drop the culture slider.

Whipping a courthouse costs 4 population and will save maybe 4 gold per turn. Compared to running 4 merchants which generate 12 gold, there isn't a comparison.

Thats not to say that whipping can't be incredibly effective - but its not the only way to succeed. Production from mines can be just as good, and caste system allows you to easily get specialists going without building any infrastructure.

 

[Atlas]

Read up on the "no civics" SG, excellent work there. Sounds like
no monarchy was probably the bigger issue than no whipping. Impressive.

Also liked the post game discussion about The Formula to beat Immortal, rings very true. In light of that, maybe a "no early war" variant would be an even tougher challenge?

Beating the AI at high levels is rather formulaic, just start fighting them early and never stop, it slows them down so much that you can keep up in tech if you take some of the tech short cuts- (Great Library, lightbulb Philosophy-trade it around, Liberalism (lightbulbing education to get there) etc. etc.)

Yep No Monarchy/Hereditary Rule is probably a bigger handicap since it is game long. I mean you don't really whip as much in the later eras, but HR is still important then.

The team went with a no great people variant (gifting all of the ones we got away). But I think a variant that is No early War might be interesting. Maybe I will start one of those once the semester is over.