Newbie question. Slaves, what are their good and bad ?

[noirdelire]

Hi Everyone,

I just started this game a few time ago. I wonder about slaves. What are the advantages and disavantages of them ? I crawled the web about that, but I have been unlucky...

Thanks,
NoirDelire

[madrigal]

I think they're mostly a role-playing feature depending who you choose for your main species. Some species don't get along with the other ones, but like having slaves of other species. So it's an advantage to have slaves do jobs your main isn't good at. They aren't necessary because you can always buy the things your main doesn't make. In some scenarios, it might be an advantage to have slaves for service jobs. Afaik, you can't use them in your army.

If you get too many slaves, they can revolt, so that's a disadvantage. You do want happy slaves, so they need to be properly fed, clothed, housed, etc. When they die you have to buy new ones, so they can be expensive to replace if you have a lot of them.

Late game, prisoners of war can be enslaved and sold or traded. This may be distasteful to some species.

[noirdelire]

Thank you.

So, they can be good when playing non social species like Amevia. It's a way then to get a bunch of Humans and Cretonians to complement.

But, beside that, they don't realy have advantages. They eat as much as plebeians, and need the same furnish for confort.

Can't we breed them ? To get more ?

NoirDelire

[IlPalazzo]

They have much lower needs than regular citizens. You can almost disregard their happiness, as long as you don't have too many.
You can't breed them, but you can easily buy a whole bunch at once every ~4 years or so, when the slaver stops by (or enslave dozens of defeated foes in short order). This can be a great boon to your economy, esp. if your regular population is struggling to grow.
For Garithmis, they're almost mandatory, as you most crucially need humans for your labs, and slaves don't complain about living with Garithmis.

[noirdelire]

Thanks IlPalazzo,

I have seen the slaver. He's realy cheap. It depend the species, but I was surprised by the prices. They sounds very low.

What about the reverse situation ? Playing with Humans and/or Cretonians, and buying Garithmis slaves for the mines ? Do the other species accept them ?

NoirDelire

[IlPalazzo]

A good chunk of the game is checking each race(s) for their preferences and designing your city around them. Spend some time looking at the racial preferences, and decide whom you want to have as your main, if you want any secondary races, and which ones would be better as slaves.
Pay attention to which race likes which other races - if there's mutual preference, they're fine to have as citizens. Otherwise slaves might be preferable, unless your citizens strongly dislike having slaves around.
That is to say, you'll have to take a look at Humans/Cretonians yourself, as I don't remember how they feel about slavery and other races off the top of my head. I mostly play the bug men these days, you see.

[madrigal]

Originally posted by noirdelire:

Thanks IlPalazzo,

I have seen the slaver. He's realy cheap. It depend the species, but I was surprised by the prices. They sounds very low.

What about the reverse situation ? Playing with Humans and/or Cretonians, and buying Garithmis slaves for the mines ? Do the other species accept them ?

NoirDelire

I have this scenario with garthimi in the mines. The humans and crets like the slaves. The garthimis are fine with just bread for food, standard clothing and they like their shrines and humidifiers. I only have 20 of them because my serial killer keeps picking them off. I'm not sure what effect, if any, this event has. I also have guards and army. From the stats, I'm guessing I could have about 10% of the population be garthimi slaves before they are a problem.

[noirdelire]

Well, yes it looks from preferences that Garthimies can be slaved by Humans and/or Cretonians. So, I imagine it works, and I'll maybe give it a try later when I'll be more confident with the game.

There are so many informations everywhere, that I feel like someone who need to read all Wikipedia ! Hum... maybe not that much, indeed :)

Anyhow, thanks for your helps.
NoirDelire

[Rasho Macuin]

You run slaves in the industries you lack the skills for.

Humans for labs
Dondorians for crafting
Cretonians for farming
Garthimis for transports
Amevias for fishing
Tilapis for herding

You can keep a slave population up to 40% IF your entire citizen population has 50% military training.

This is why you should have Tilapi OR Dondorians as your only citizens since they get happyness from being military trained.

TLDR: Form a spartan society where every citizen is a soldier and all the work is done by slaves.

[Charlie949]

I used slaves as a bridge to develop my city's resource extraction in the mid game. then once i start cranking commodities from conquered neighbors i sell excess using exporter for cash. The cash is used to buy slaves. If I need more citizens due to lull between nurseries and retirees I buy slaves of the same race as my citizens and when they arrive i make a decree to release the same amount of slaves of my citizen race i just procured.

[Rasho Macuin]

Originally posted by Charlie949:

I used slaves as a bridge to develop my city's resource extraction in the mid game. then once i start cranking commodities from conquered neighbors i sell excess using exporter for cash. The cash is used to buy slaves. If I need more citizens due to lull between nurseries and retirees I buy slaves of the same race as my citizens and when they arrive i make a decree to release the same amount of slaves of my citizen race i just procured.

This produces unhappyness due to the "Former Slave" debuff.

Instead you should capture POW and then Pardon them mannualy once they arrive at your city.

There is no automatic way to do this. You have to click each prisoner and execute the pardon one by one.

This, however, increases happyness instead of decreasing it, plus its free.