Are thrall worlds... kinda bad?

[Daan-B]

So i've been doing an authoritarian spiritualist empire, and the thrall world tech didn't show up until, a bit to late. I had stratified economy and such and had already build multiple slave worlds (rural worlds + slaves). One of the slave species i decided to make battle thralls, they served as my officers. The other was chattel slavery. Since i didn't have a full citizenship species that shared the habitibility of my slave species i couldn't get (cheap) entertainers and thus had some problems with amenities.

However i found out that servants produce 4 (+5 with pleasure seekers) amenities. Thus i took it as my third civic and switched over the chattel slavery species to domestic servitude, gaining practically upkeepless entertainers (9 amenities for no upkeep). '

This combined with some stability bonusses, high ethics attraction and the aforementioned startified economy allowed me to have very high stability on all of my slave housing worlds. I should mention that this was before i got the slave processing facility (got that late aswell).

When i finally unlocked the thrall world, it was kinda underwhelming. Less building options, Couldn't make city districts (which are nice with fortresses) so i had to use building slots to get housing. Couldn't do anything for non-slave pops, couldn't construct temples for spiritualist ethics atraction. And toiler is prioritised over servant but in my case this produces less amenities. The slave overseer is just kinda meh, because happiness wasn't a problem in the first place. In fact, the thrall world was less stable then my regular slave worlds. Am i missing something?

Yes, i know you get 50% growth speed, but that's to little to late. I'm already at the stage where it is about tech, consumer goods for tech and alloys exclusively (traditions have been finished, massive surplusses on base resources). I don't really need my slaves to breed like rabbits at this stage.

So what are they good for? Are they just good if you can get them early?

[ScreamCon]

Thrall world was implemented before the pleasure seekers civic. So the amenity efficiency gain from pleasure seekers will outpace the thrall world on amenity production. If you using domestic servant slaving without this civic thrall world shouldn't be too bad of reduction. It would also free up a civic slot.

For builds that don't pick pleasure seekers the amenities is probably fine. I've never used them myself but from looking over the wiki they look like lower grade planets just meant for creating pops and putting them to work. If you don't need this you don't need the planet type.

They likely thematically go with stratified economy, authoritarianism, slaving. +50% growth speed is a very strong bonus but reason it feels weak is the timing of when you can make the planets.

Their probably best late game for trying to overcome the growth slow sacrificing a planet. If you only have 5 planets you won't want to do this but late game planets will fill slower and slower. Meaning the more planets you get the easier it gets to designate one as a thrall world due to not filling all districts for jobs.

[adobo]

It's good for big resource worlds. Like you said, late game is all about efficiency output. Which means you can just grab a few ecumenopolis and turn everything else into resource planets

[jackhickman999]

I've not used thrall worlds since early stellaris. They're definitely outdated and basically just flat-out bad these days.

[Ryika]

Originally posted by Daan-B:

However i found out that servants produce 4 (+5 with pleasure seekers) amenities. Thus i took it as my third civic and switched over the chattel slavery species to domestic servitude, gaining practically upkeepless entertainers (9 amenities for no upkeep). '

This combined with some stability bonusses, high ethics attraction and the aforementioned startified economy allowed me to have very high stability on all of my slave housing worlds.

All of those require investments. Thrall Worlds are mostly relevant when your empire focuses on conquering the galaxy over trying to improve the stability of your nation. And they do a fantastic job at that, essentially combating all of the negative effects of having slaves for you, at the cost of some general efficiency.

Originally posted by Daan-B:

Less building options, Couldn't make city districts (which are nice with fortresses) so i had to use building slots to get housing. Couldn't do anything for non-slave pops,

I mean yeah, that's the point. It's a world for slaves that produce resources for you, nothing more nothing less.

Originally posted by Daan-B:

couldn't construct temples for spiritualist ethics atraction.

Slaves don't join factions, so that would be a waste anyway.

Originally posted by Daan-B:

And toiler is prioritised over servant but in my case this produces less amenities. The slave overseer is just kinda meh, because happiness wasn't a problem in the first place. In fact, the thrall world was less stable then my regular slave worlds. Am i missing something?

Yes, you're missing the fact that you've already invested into fixing the problems, so of course thrall worlds that are also meant to fix these problems in a simpler, but somewhat less efficient way, aren't going to do anything for you.

By running Servants alone, you're already giving up 10% Productivity from not running Chattel Slavery for example, and you've had to pick a very specific Civic to even get Servants to be borderline usable. You also have lots of micro in front of you, because Servants don't auto Migrate and will be very inefficiently gather in places where they'll just be producing way too many amenities, etc.

Overall, slave worlds are a very simple solution to keep worker-level slaves in check. It's a pain to unlock, and annoying to destroy all districts and buildings just so you can enact it, but when used for its purpose, it's still a very good option.

[Yhvh10]

Thrall worlds are great for conquest specific nations. As the poster above me outlined. There's really not much more I can say except...

Thrall worlds are not meant to be super efficient. They are meant to make the headaches the large slave-occupied resource worlds easier.

[Garatgh Deloi]

With a bit of luck and knowing how to aim for a specific tech you can get thrall worlds somewhat early and that +50% is then quite impactful.

[Daan-B]

Originally posted by Ryika:

Originally posted by Daan-B:

However i found out that servants produce 4 (+5 with pleasure seekers) amenities. Thus i took it as my third civic and switched over the chattel slavery species to domestic servitude, gaining practically upkeepless entertainers (9 amenities for no upkeep). '

This combined with some stability bonusses, high ethics attraction and the aforementioned startified economy allowed me to have very high stability on all of my slave housing worlds.

All of those require investments. Thrall Worlds are mostly relevant when your empire focuses on conquering the galaxy over trying to improve the stability of your nation. And they do a fantastic job at that, essentially combating all of the negative effects of having slaves for you, at the cost of some general efficiency.

Originally posted by Daan-B:

Less building options, Couldn't make city districts (which are nice with fortresses) so i had to use building slots to get housing. Couldn't do anything for non-slave pops,

I mean yeah, that's the point. It's a world for slaves that produce resources for you, nothing more nothing less.

Originally posted by Daan-B:

couldn't construct temples for spiritualist ethics atraction.

Slaves don't join factions, so that would be a waste anyway.

Originally posted by Daan-B:

And toiler is prioritised over servant but in my case this produces less amenities. The slave overseer is just kinda meh, because happiness wasn't a problem in the first place. In fact, the thrall world was less stable then my regular slave worlds. Am i missing something?

Yes, you're missing the fact that you've already invested into fixing the problems, so of course thrall worlds that are also meant to fix these problems in a simpler, but somewhat less efficient way, aren't going to do anything for you.

By running Servants alone, you're already giving up 10% Productivity from not running Chattel Slavery for example, and you've had to pick a very specific Civic to even get Servants to be borderline usable. You also have lots of micro in front of you, because Servants don't auto Migrate and will be very inefficiently gather in places where they'll just be producing way too many amenities, etc.

Overall, slave worlds are a very simple solution to keep worker-level slaves in check. It's a pain to unlock, and annoying to destroy all districts and buildings just so you can enact it, but when used for its purpose, it's still a very good option.

Very good points overall. I think i'm seeing the point!

Though i would like to say that the 10% productivity loss from not having chattel slavery is offset by the 10% to worker jobs from rural worlds or 25% if you specialize to a specific resource. And the ethics attraction is for my rulers and the possible free pops, to make them stay spiritualist.
I will admit that the servants need some tinkering, but the servant job is a replacement for unemployment so making more jobs fixes the overproduction issue, and i don't let my slaves migrate in the first place (they have no rights).

But alright, all the post above have enlightened me to the benefits. It gives a comparable result while requiring much less investment from what i did. It's simple, so it's a convenient option when going around on a conquering spree. And when you get them early the pop growth is a considerable boon.