Getting more slaves as Dark Elves?

[FiftyTifty]

With the latest update, they really borked slaves. It's impossible to maintain any sort of supply, especially as Crone Hellebron. With how costly it is to fight battles in late game, I'm at tun 75 and the thousand or so slaves per battle are quickly eaten up by the money buildings. Along with having to wait to replenish because the battles are costly, it's a struggle to just float around 1000 slaves.

How are we meant to keep the numbers up?

[Hex]

Reading tooltips of buildings might help you. Slave pens and Black Arks now generate slaves passively, and slave buildings increase the cap so you can have a lot of slaves.

[FiftyTifty]

Yeah except they provide ♥♥♥♥ all. Takes what, 20 turns to get a black ark? Then with a maxed out slave building (takes at least 10 turns to get), you earn 40 slaves a turn if the black ark is alive. Which is nothing; upgrade ports eat that up, and the money building at t2 as well.

[Velber]

Use mods

[Hex]

Originally posted by FiftyTifty:

Yeah except they provide ♥♥♥♥ all. Takes what, 20 turns to get a black ark? Then with a maxed out slave building (takes at least 10 turns to get), you earn 40 slaves a turn if the black ark is alive. Which is nothing; upgrade ports eat that up, and the money building at t2 as well.

You know you can build more than one slave pen building?

[FiftyTifty]

Obviously.

[Amereth]

you don't need slaves... for the most part their only use is to be sacrificed.

Look at your income when you have 700 slaves, 1500 slaves... it doesn't matter as long as you have a minimum of 100 slaves.


You do not want multiple slaves pens in the same province unless you really hate your life. slave pens give -2 control. 3 regions = -6 control. You don't want that.

1 slave pens per province is enough.


The only thing you need is slave capacity if you fight a lot and end up with 2k-3k slaves every turn.


So in other word use rituals, use edikt and keep that red bar full as much as possible. The slave job is to be a sacrifice for the gods.

[Amereth]

Originally posted by FiftyTifty:

Yeah except they provide ♥♥♥♥ all. Takes what, 20 turns to get a black ark? Then with a maxed out slave building (takes at least 10 turns to get), you earn 40 slaves a turn if the black ark is alive. Which is nothing; upgrade ports eat that up, and the money building at t2 as well.

take me less than 10 turn to get a black ark with Hellebron.

You have a free building slot at the beginning, create your slave pen with it.

as soon as you have 800 slave and your slave pens is completed you do the ritual for it, should be around turn 5-6.

After that you finish the orcs and take the port to the right. Then you create your black ark.

Recruit as soon as possible on that black ark because Be'lakor will declare war on you soon.

[Fendelphi]

Even without a single slave, Dark Elves have a pretty good economy, due to how Black Arks function.
Even without a single slave, your basic tier 1 economy building only cost 500 and provides you with 200 gold per turn.
Even without a single slave, your post battle and sacking income is very high as Dark Elves.

Slaves provides a boost in economy, but you should not aim to maximize your consumption of them, because frankly, there is no need to. You do not "need" to fully upgrade all your economy buildings, as the output of having four tier 1 buildings generate more than a single tier 3, for the same amount of slaves. 20 settlements with a tier 1 economy building consumes 400 slaves per turn, but also generates 6000 gold(at least).
By the time you have a consumption rate of 1000 per turn, you should have a cap of around 3000(or more), and able to generate 3000 per turn through battles.

If you want to use the slave economy as much as possible, pick a subfaction that makes it easy to do, like a certain raider that gets Black Arks very easily.
It is much more about the Cap, than actual consumption rates, as a high er cap allows for more abilities to be used per turn.

[identity]

You don't have to upgrade every income building or port you have. The cost in slaves is not worth the extra income you get.

[FiftyTifty]

There is one big caveat. I'm playing with the AI super buffed, and they 1 full stack on each settlement for free, two on each capital for free. The trouble is keeping the slave numbers high, because the economy needs to be turbo charged.

If you make a slave pen building in the first province within 15 turns or so, you're gimping yourself. That's an additional 5 units, which makes all the difference in a 1v2 siege.

[Amereth]

Originally posted by FiftyTifty:

There is one big caveat. I'm playing with the AI super buffed, and they 1 full stack on each settlement for free, two on each capital for free. The trouble is keeping the slave numbers high, because the economy needs to be turbo charged.

If you make a slave pen building in the first province within 15 turns or so, you're gimping yourself. That's an additional 5 units, which makes all the difference in a 1v2 siege.

oh you are playing with mods that boost the ai. I imagine it must be a different experience.

In vanilla, i don't need garrison, nothing is going to reach that city before i deal with them.

Valkia is the most dangerous and you should deal with her as soon as possible.

[Cacomistle]

Don't upgrade ♥♥♥♥, use all the money you save not upgrading things on military, and get loads of money (and slaves) from post battle loot and T1 econ buildings.

I put the (and slaves) in parenthesis because that advice is super strong on nearly every faction in the game, but dark elves in particular get higher slave drain from higher tier eco buildings, have super good post battle economy, and their T1 eco building already gives 350 income if you have slaves.

Your economy will be absolutely insane if you just don't waste money on stuff like upgrading your economy.

I think they really need to rework eco in this game.

[Amereth]

Originally posted by Cacomistle:

Don't upgrade ♥♥♥♥, use all the money you save not upgrading things on military, and get loads of money (and slaves) from post battle loot and T1 econ buildings.

I put the (and slaves) in parenthesis because that advice is super strong on nearly every faction in the game, but dark elves in particular get higher slave drain from higher tier eco buildings, have super good post battle economy, and their T1 eco building already gives 350 income if you have slaves.

Your economy will be absolutely insane if you just don't waste money on stuff like upgrading your economy.

I think they really need to rework eco in this game.

Artisan house level 1 : 200 income base + 100 from slaves

Artisan house level 2 : 300 income base + 200 from slaves

Artisans house level 3 : 400 income base + 300 from slaves



Your artisan house level 2 produce the same amount of money without slave than an artisan house level 1 with slaves.

I am not sure i understand your logic behind not upgrading those buildings...

[Cacomistle]

Originally posted by Amereth:

Originally posted by Cacomistle:

Don't upgrade ♥♥♥♥, use all the money you save not upgrading things on military, and get loads of money (and slaves) from post battle loot and T1 econ buildings.

I put the (and slaves) in parenthesis because that advice is super strong on nearly every faction in the game, but dark elves in particular get higher slave drain from higher tier eco buildings, have super good post battle economy, and their T1 eco building already gives 350 income if you have slaves.

Your economy will be absolutely insane if you just don't waste money on stuff like upgrading your economy.

I think they really need to rework eco in this game.

Artisan house level 1 : 200 income base + 100 from slaves

Artisan house level 2 : 300 income base + 200 from slaves

Artisans house level 3 : 400 income base + 300 from slaves



Your artisan house level 2 produce the same amount of money without slave than an artisan house level 1 with slaves.

I am not sure i understand your logic behind not upgrading those buildings...

Ok true, I have to be fair here and admit T2 is usually worth it. I was kind of including T2, because usually ai minor settlements are T3 so you get T2 settlements by default.

But even for T2, here's the thing. It costs 2000 (for most factions, to be fair I'm not certain off the top of my head if the same is true of dark elves) to upgrade a settlement to T2, along with usually like 1000 to upgrade the eco building, for around 3000 total.

You could instead invest like 6000 into military, take 1 settlement, get 3.5k in sacking/post battle, and then disband at that point, spend 500 on a T1 eco buiding, and end up with a larger increase in income and take away 1 settlement from the ai which lowers their income.

That means if you have the opportunity to take out an ai army/settlement by recruiting more, which you often do because the ai spams so many crapstacks at you, I think army is better than T2 settlement+ eco building.

My point is, the game right now imo across the board (not just for dark elves) feels incredibly geared towards just spamming armies. Its just too worthwhile, and too punishing when you don't (since the ai will just attack constantly and sack all your minor settlements if you don't go kill them first).

While I admit T2 is worth it, T3 imo is not worthwhile. Ignoring fun, I don't think you should ever upgrade a settlement past T2 unless it has a trade resource, and that includes capitals (just take a T5 from the ai and you've got a T4 for yourself, or T4 gives you T3, and its not like you need those anyways since shades are T2 and already beat near any ai army you encounter 1v1).

[Hex]

Until you need a Taurox minotaur stack that just runs over your shades in 2 seconds.

Anyways, I have no idea what you're doing to run out of slaves. I was never even close on Malus or Hellebron as there is an endless supply of meat in every direction. Just get the blue skills for slaves captured and Elven Healing so you can just keep going.