Is slavery as an economic thing worth it?
I tried turning a province of mine into a slave.. uh.. I dunno... cage? Pen? Anyways, my goal was to get the most out of them and to see if it is useful to replace some other economy with it or just as something to bolster the already in place one and I wasn't very amazed about the results.
To me, it seems a little gimmicky at the moment, kind of like having client states that pay you 30 gold a turn while you could have 300 from just taking their town/s.
Re: Is slavery as an economic thing worth it?
One characteristic of slavery is that, as far as I can tell, its effects cannot be localized to just one province. If you loot a settlement or enslave captives from a field battle, then the slave population increases across all the provinces of your empire, although closer provinces will get more of a bump than farther ones.
The overall economic boost isn't insignificant. The public order penalties, however, are substantial...and lingering. If you do get into public order problems due to too high a slave pop, you can't merely correct it by freeing some slaves. The slave population does slowly decay over time if one stops enslaving and looting, but it takes a while (kinda like provincial unrest).
Like you, I went on a tear of enslaving all captives when I invaded Africa, topped off by looting first two settlements in Libya. The treasury folks enjoyed it, but public order started dropping across all my provinces. Africa was most affected, but slave populations had markedly risen in places like Provincia and Cisalpina as well. I stopped taking slaves right at that point (about 180 turns ago maybe?), haven't taken a slave since, and have quite a robust economy with a total absence of slave pop (i.e., I could pretty much win an economic victory at any point right now simply by bumping taxes from "Low" to "Normal". And that's with 15 20-unit armies).
I do think that with some prudence, slavery can juice the economy a bit without becoming a problem if one keeps an eye on it. But it's certainly not necessary, and economic management is streamlined by simply not including it. Public order surplus, I think, can be spent in better ways.
Re: Is slavery as an economic thing worth it?
It doesn't seem to be worth it in any situation, because the ROI on the public order is way too low compared to higher tech structures. Slaves are a % increase, so theoretically they are worth it as the game progresses, but even 175 turns into the campaign they are still not worth the public order penalty. Maybe as Sparta? Haven't tried a Sparta-campaign, but even with their faction trait I still dont see how it can be worth it in the game's current state.
Sadly this has lead me to kill off pretty much every single survivor of my battles since turn 10. What a waste of resources.
Re: Is slavery as an economic thing worth it?
You can free them for diplomatic bonuses. They wont return to their armies anyways.Originally Posted by Jarmam
Re: Is slavery as an economic thing worth it?
True, but it's no free lunch. You get a diplo bonus with the enemy and its allies, but take a diplo hit with its enemies (who are often your own allies). Killing off captives, somewhat unfortunately, I've found to be the most logical choice in most cases. Sometimes I might free captives after a battle if the war in question is mainly because I want a specific region, and would be happy to make peace with the faction once I've gained it.
Re: Is slavery as an economic thing worth it?
http://cloud-3.steampowered.com/ugc/...FF53DD91547B7/
Here it is what it is looking like at the moment. It's not too bad an income but I have been enslaving everything in the last 15 or 20 turns (everything I captured while conquering Spain). I can't say I am having public order problems because of it, at least no more than I would have anyways by building silly things =P
Re: Is slavery as an economic thing worth it?
I'm not so sure that you aren't having a bit of a P.O. problem. You've got your taxes dialed down as far as they'll go...yet still experiencing -7 public order trend in your oldest, most important province. In addition, while 11K per turn is comfortable enough, it's far less than a 15 or 16-province empire could be pulling in (I'm thinking 20-25ish range). I would suspect the reason is that you've had to drive taxes into the dirt to deal with public order, a problem to which rising slave pop has certainly contributed (not necessarily saying it's primary factor).
I could be wrong, just what appears to me from looking at the info available in the screenie.
Last edited by Bramborough; 09-21-2013 at 19:15.
Re: Is slavery as an economic thing worth it?
Italy has kind of been in the sh*ts since the civil war =( It's actually worse in Magna Graecia but I just beat down a rebellion there.
-E- I know how that sounds but it's actually kind of nice.. it's keeping the game interesting XD Rebellions and all that in the home provinces after I've been off conquering elsewhere bla bla. The AI for the most part is more like a punching bag than an enemy, so I'm just gonna keep playing Rome 2: Total Internal Politics and Civil Wars.
Last edited by Sp4; 09-21-2013 at 19:41.
Re: Is slavery as an economic thing worth it?
So wait, you're inflating your coffers by taking massive PO hits and just dealing with rebellions as a way to make gameplay more interesting?
That's... kinda cool. I wonder if you can make enough money in a province to justify parking entire armies to negate the PO hits and just roll with having "Home" legions.
Re: Is slavery as an economic thing worth it?
That's what I am doing in Italy currently, which seems sort of odd. Culturally and happiness wise, I think my capital shifted to somewhere around Massalia. It really does make the game more interesting when you go to war with the rest of the map and have to juggle your own public order and happiness. Magna Graecia right now is going into a revolt every now and then, which I allow to build up, until the happiness in the province goes from -100 back to 0 only to then drop a legion on the shore and smash it. Being limited on the amount of troops and armies you can send off conquering actually makes the whole conquering bit rather interesting instead of just capturing entire provinces in a single turn by parking armies next to every settlement.
Right now, war between me and the entire east of the map broke out as I was trying to 'land' a legion in Arabia and conquer that for my current campaign goal and my client state dragged me into a war with the Suebi and the Lugii, who are all that's left of 'hairy barbarian' central Europe. In Britain, a confederation has formed and they declared war on me and now my single legion there is struggling to keep it all together while I keep sending troops south east to keep the flood of Arabs and Greeks out of Illyria and Pannonia. Egypt just had a rebellion, so they're gonna be quiet for a bit. Maybe I can pull some legions out of North Africa and send them to go and rampage around the Black Sea since that's where my most trouble is currently coming from.
The public order thing is not a problem anywhere outside of Italy but I still feel a bit like the rebels/military dicatorship the Senate called me when they started the civil war, who is trying to hold on to Italy, simply so I can call myself the -Roman- Empire although if I lost all of Italy, my deathgrip on the Mediterranean would probably end up getting broken and that would not be good for the rest of the empire, which is actually doing fairly well. For all intents and purposes and the bit of RPing I do while playing games like this, I kind of see Medlahn as my capital rather than Rome but Rome is the official PR capital
So once in a while, I have to send some legions to whack around some rebellions in Italy, so no one gets any ideas about me not actually being the Roman Empire. Economically, the place is not even in my top 5 anymore.
Re: Is slavery as an economic thing worth it?
Seems like a good way to earn an economic victory... large home based armies, high taxes, and buying everyone off
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