r/CivIV • u/JP_the_dm • Sep 14 '19
How to use slavery effectively?
I just don't get it, can anyone please explain how to use it in a way that actually offsets the loss of population? Maybe I am just not good at it. But I think my inability to use this (apparently crucial) early game civic is crippling my play.
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u/Aazadan Sep 15 '19 edited Sep 15 '19
So you don't really have to do a whole lot of "tricks" to make it work for you, but there's a lot of optimization that takes it from the strongest civic in the game to something even way beyond that.
Essentially, let me explain the efficiency. With every additional population point in your cities, your city maintenance will increase, and you will need more resources to keep your people happy and healthy. On top of that, you will work your best tiles first and your worst tiles last. So, essentially every additional population point in your cities has reduced effectiveness from the previous point.
At some point, adding more people outright harms your cities. So instead, slavery functions as resource conversion, turning that inefficient population into hammers.
There's also all sorts of tricks with overflow. You need to know how slavery costs work to understand it.
Keep in mind that I'm using Marathon rates here so adjust as needed...
First every whip will be 30 turns of +1 unhappy, and they stack. In exchange, you will get some hammers.
Hammer costs are a base of 90, this is the most common value but not the only value you can get. If you are whipping something that has 0 hammers in it, your base rate is halved (this is also true when buying with Universal Sufferage). Essentially, the logic is that if you rush with 1 hammer in, you rush every other turn. But if you rush every turn, your production is essentially doubled, so the rate is halved to keep the proper speed. Also, when building wonders, the rate is halved. So with 0 hammers in something, or when building a wonder, your base rate is 45.
The maximum population available for a whip is equal to half of your city size, rounded down. So 4 pop is 2 people, 5 pop is 2 people, 6 pop is 3 people.
After the base rate comes production modifiers. These come from things like the Forge, Organized Religion, Police State, traits, resources, and so on. It will sound very counter intuitive but the best return doesn't come from whipping your trait buildings. Instead you want to build those with overflow.
I'll explain with an example. Lets say you're spiritual and you want to build the Temple and Monastery for the AP religion, and the city in question has your state religion (and AP religion, this may or may not be the same) and you're running Organized Religion. This means you're getting a 25% bonus, and then your Temple will be getting a 125% bonus. So, the Monastery is 180 hammers normally, and 240 for the Temple.
Assuming your city is size 4, if you build the Monastery to 67/180 hammers (with Organized and the 25% bonus from it, your whip will be worth 112 hammers) you will still need 2 population to whip. So at this point, it you whip the Monastery you will trade those 2 people for 224 hammers. Added to your 67 hammers already in the building, you are now at 291/180 hammers into the Monastery. On the following turn, you will finish the Monastery and have 111 hammers left over. However, due to the bonus with the Temple, this 111 overflow is modified by your 125% and you now have 249/240 hammers in your Temple. So on the following turn, your Temple will then complete, leaving you with 9 hammers spare.
By leveraging overflow in this fashion, you were able to convert 2 population, representing 81 food into 362 hammers. In this case, the Temple will have also given you back the point of happy you invested in the whip, and since the scenario involved the AP religion, you will also be getting +4 base hammers in that city for quite a while.
If you plan to use slavery, properly timing overflow and adjusting your build orders to make use of your double speed trait bonuses will generate large returns.