Dark elves slaves broken?

[Mouse]

Just can't seem to get enough slaves to actually keep a surplus. Maybe its easy in late game when you have 10 armies constantly fighting, but seems pretty broken when you have only 1-2 armies and every building takes 60 slaves per turn.

[Amereth]

it isn't. Change how you perceive the mechanic.

You do not need any surplus. You don't need to be at cap.

You only need to have more than 100 slave at the end of the turn to be efficient.

Spend those slave like their are candies. It isn't worth it to try to have a lot of slaves.

Use them.

[Kapika96]

Raid more. Seriously, you can get way more slaves from raiding than anything else. During my current Malekith campaign I had an army raiding Valkia's capital, it was getting >600 slaves per turn for me. That alone was more than all my buildings were using. Just stick a couple low quality, but full, armies just within the borders of enemy cities and raid them. If you're only on the border you should be able to retreat out if they try to attack (if you can beat their army that'd be even better though!) and then you just have regular slave income.

[Zeek]

Dark elves are a highly aggressive faction. You should basically always be either raiding or sacking settlements for slaves.

If you manage your war fronts properly and avoid turtling you should have no issue keeping slave counts pretty high.

[leandrombraz]

You'll only have problems if you spam everywhere buildings that consume slaves. Build only as many as you can sustain.

I'll disagree with Amereth and say that it's definitely worth to keep a surplus, just not in early game. Having 10k Slaves will do wonders to your economy, but it will be hard to reach and sustain that early, and you'll struggle with the -6 control penalty.

[Amereth]

Originally posted by leandrombraz:

You'll only have problems if you spam everywhere buildings that consume slaves. Build only as many as you can sustain.

I'll disagree with Amereth and say that it's definitely worth to keep a surplus, just not in early game. Having 10k Slaves will do wonders to your economy, but it will be hard to reach and sustain that early, and you'll struggle with the -6 control penalty.

The game is essentially done when you reach that point....

But yeah, if you are in the endgame and keep sacking and raging war, You won't even be able to spend all the slaves you will acquire...

But if you can keep pumping slave into Edikt and some Rituals ( some of those can give more slave than they cost depending on the faction ) Example : Cost: 375 slaves, Cooldown: 40 turns, Duration: 15 turns.

Casualties captured post-battle: +25%
Casualty replenishment rate +20%
Income from slaves +15%
Slave decline rate +50%
Income from post-battle loot +50%
Army ability: Dark Conduit (all armies)


If you fight a lot that 25% is worth more than 375 slaves ( not sure if the wiki is updated, it is the source since i am not in game right now )

Edit : i forgot the income from post-battle loot, worth way more than keeping 400 slaves.

Edit 2 : something was screaming in my mind about the Ritual Cost, so i had to double check and the ritual cost 800. I still consider the Ritual to be worth it. It would need to cost a lot more to lose its value.

I don't normally use the wiki, but that thing is useless -.-

[Amereth]

Just to add to the topic...

Guild hall 400 income without any slave, it is pretty good... add 300 if you end your turn with more than 100 slave ( easy to do ) 700 income with a small downside of losing slaves...

Unless you stack a lot of +% income coming from rituals/Morathi's corruption/Skills and other sources im forgetting, having 10k slave won't do you any good ( im exaggerating you get a nice bonus to your construction cost... )

[them4pples]

you want to be fighting a battle every turn or so to keep the slaves coming. don't upgrade economy or port settlements if you're already at a huge deficit of slaves per turn. the slave building that increases slave cap also gives passive slaves per turn. black arks also have a building that gives passive slaves per turn.

play morathi since her slaanesh corruption gives po bonuses, slave cap and passive slaves per turn. rite of khaine early game lasts like 15 turns and gives good bonuses, so use that if you have the slaves for it and get a black ark asap

the mechanic is alright, but i do hope they rework it at some point. it could be better.

[Amereth]

Originally posted by them4pples:

you want to be fighting a battle every turn or so to keep the slaves coming. don't upgrade economy or port settlements if you're already at a huge deficit of slaves per turn. the slave building that increases slave cap also gives passive slaves per turn. black arks also have a building that gives passive slaves per turn. play morathi since her slaanesh corruption gives po bonuses, slave cap and passive slaves per turn.

the mechanic is alright, but i do hope they rework it at some point. it could be better.

you forgot Khainite assassin, they give slaves too.

[SomeGuy1]

Originally posted by Amereth:

Originally posted by them4pples:

you want to be fighting a battle every turn or so to keep the slaves coming. don't upgrade economy or port settlements if you're already at a huge deficit of slaves per turn. the slave building that increases slave cap also gives passive slaves per turn. black arks also have a building that gives passive slaves per turn. play morathi since her slaanesh corruption gives po bonuses, slave cap and passive slaves per turn.

the mechanic is alright, but i do hope they rework it at some point. it could be better.

you forgot Khainite assassin, they give slaves too.

Edit: went to double check in game, you use mods. Morathi's corruption only give % income from slaves., unless im missing something somewhere.

nope, it also gives increased slave capacity (250 per province at 100 corruption) and slaves per turn (15 per province at 100 corruption). and public order.

[Amereth]

Originally posted by SomeGuy1:

Originally posted by Amereth:

you forgot Khainite assassin, they give slaves too.

Edit: went to double check in game, you use mods. Morathi's corruption only give % income from slaves., unless im missing something somewhere.

nope, it also gives increased slave capacity (250 per province at 100 corruption) and slaves per turn (15 per province at 100 corruption). and public order.

Thx im dumb, forgot my corruption wasn't at max.

[leandrombraz]

Originally posted by Amereth:

The game is essentially done when you reach that point....

But yeah, if you are in the endgame and keep sacking and raging war, You won't even be able to spend all the slaves you will acquire...

But if you can keep pumping slave into Edikt and some Rituals ( some of those can give more slave than they cost depending on the faction ) Example : Cost: 375 slaves, Cooldown: 40 turns, Duration: 15 turns.

Casualties captured post-battle: +25%
Casualty replenishment rate +20%
Income from slaves +15%
Slave decline rate +50%
Income from post-battle loot +50%
Army ability: Dark Conduit (all armies)


If you fight a lot that 25% is worth more than 375 slaves ( not sure if the wiki is updated, it is the source since i am not in game right now )

Edit : i forgot the income from post-battle loot, worth way more than keeping 400 slaves.

Edit 2 : something was screaming in my mind about the Ritual Cost, so i had to double check and the ritual cost 800. I still consider the Ritual to be worth it. It would need to cost a lot more to lose its value.

I don't normally use the wiki, but that thing is useless -.-

The rituals are definitely worth doing anytime it's available, mostly considering that their cooldown is really long, so it won't consume too many slaves on a campaign. Same for the two edikts that seem to have a global cooldown (+20 control and +50 growth). At least as Malekith (I didn't play the other factions yet), the only things that you can spam and consume a lot of slaves are the edikt that give 1k gold and +2 control, which seems to have local cooldown, commandments and buildings, which are the main things that you need to consider if it's worth spending slaves on. 1k gold and +2 control for 600 slaves is a bit underwhelming, but it's a great source of gold if you really need to build/recruit at the turn you're in. The growth commandment is great early, so you can unlock late game stuff faster, but there's no need to spam it everywhere, and there are good commandments that don't consume slaves. Buildings is what will really eat up slaves, and early you just can't afford to build many of them, since you want to keep at least 100 slaves. You also want to keep at least some surplus, so you can go a turn or two without getting any slaves, which happened a few times in my game (recruiting, moving through my own territory, using ambush or channelling stances).

The bonus for 10k is +20% income from buildings, -25% construction cost and -4 construction time, so you basically build most things in 1 turn. That discount is pretty great, and you can get a settlement up and running pretty fast. I started keeping a 10k surplus around turn 50, so it was still far from endgame (I was still taking over Naggaroth and preparing to counter attack against the Asur).

I took a screenshot of the rituals, for accurate numbers (playing as Malekith): https://imgur.com/a/VR1gOMC

[Amereth]

Originally posted by leandrombraz:

1k gold and +2 control for 600 slaves is a bit underwhelming,

Yeah 1k seem a bit low. But we need to consider other elements.

What are you fighting and how many slaves you get from them ?

How much money you get after battle if you don't take slaves ?

Lets say we fight Skaven. We get what maybe 2000 slaves if we are lucky they will bring more than 1 army ( happens often with the Skavens )

We know those slaves are worth at least 3k and we are left with 200 slaves.


Now the question we need to ask ourselves, how much money we get if we don't take the slaves at the end of the battle.

I doubt it is going to be close to 3k, at least from personal experience it is most of the time better to take the slaves unless you are at cap and can't spend those slave on the edikt.


The edikt do indeed have a local cdr . But you can use it once per province as long as you control 1 region in the province, you don't need the whole province.

Originally posted by leandrombraz:

I started keeping a 10k surplus around turn 50, so it was still far from endgame (I was still taking over Naggaroth and preparing to counter attack against the Asur).

I took a screenshot of the rituals, for accurate numbers (playing as Malekith): https://imgur.com/a/VR1gOMC

Nice, 10k at turn 50, I rarely play Malekith, it seem to be easier to maintain and gather slaves with him compared to the other lords. His personal skills are really nice for that.

Good points all around, I will try focusing on cap and see if keeping those slaves up is better, but i doubt it is going to be more efficient than spamming edikt and rituals.

Thx for the screenshot btw, i will avoid the wiki in the future, that thing is clearly not updated.

[SomeGuy1]

I typically only consider diktats if I'm close to my slave maximum and about to fight more battles. Then they get some value instead of just wasting the captures with overflowing. Otherwise, they're much less efficient than having your structures use them.

[Fendelphi]

Originally posted by SomeGuy1:

I typically only consider diktats if I'm close to my slave maximum and about to fight more battles. Then they get some value instead of just wasting the captures with overflowing. Otherwise, they're much less efficient than having your structures use them.

That, or if you need a small boost in Control etc.. They are a nice option to have.

Speaking of structures, one of the great benefits of a high surplus is much faster building times. You develope and fortify new areas incredibly fast once you are above 5k surplus.

I have tried 3 LL were getting slaves and a high surplus is rather easy/natural. Malekith, Morathi and Lokhir. So if someone wants to learn to play Dark Elfs, they should probably pick one of those 3.

[CrucialEnd]

I would agree that its not a good system. I hope we get something better when the Chaos Dwarfs are released as they use a lot of slaves too. Dark Elfs used to be my favorite faction but now I dont play them anymore. I rather have no slaves and only economic buildings than the current slave system tbh.