Is slavery broken? Or is just the 2 pop whip trick?

[Qwack]

well saving one unhappy face doesn't seem to make this a bug or exploit to me.

Trust me it is

If your looking at the issue as if you will only whip one time and thats that, then your right, the 1 extra unhappiness wont make a difference. But early in the game, when you want to whip everything (Units and buildings) 1 happiness means 1 less whip, or 60 less hammers. You want to try to whip things every 10 turns in the early game, and whipping 2 population at a time gives you a 100% increase on the amount of hammers you can get from whips, at the cost of 1 extra population obviously. 1 pop this early in the game is nothing though, because growing at small sizes is very easy.

[VoiceOfUnreason]

It's a micromanagement detail that can be gamed in the player's favor, but I'd hardly call it broken. IMO, it's not even worth the burden of RBCiv legislation. In the new Warlords patch, the AIs even use it. Blake has coded the AI to be aware of anger duration when considering whipping, being more inclined to whip when the item will cost 2 or more population.

More discussion of Slavery and Happiness

I simply refuse to whip my cities endlessly, to the point where building something naturally becomes a "variant." That was never supposed to be the point of whipping, or Slavery civic. If that's where we are now, then game balance is in bad, bad shape.

I'm inclined to agree (looking at the game from the outside, with no special insight into the design), in so far as the conversion of food to hammers, combined with the overloaded economic vector, is pretty silly.

[sooooo]

In my opinion, the only problem is the 2-pop whip, and that is only a problem in the early game (axes etc). So a good solution for me would be to have more games which limit early war declarations. This was done in epic 8, where we could not declare until 1000 BC. This could be extended to 500 AD or something. The other option is something similar to adventure 11, where we could not declare on people on our own continent. Since adv 11 was my favourite RB event so far, I would like to see more of these games too.

[Atlas]

You put 4 hammers into a axeman on the first turn, meaning it needs 31 more to be completed, since whipping only gives 30 hammers, you would need to whip 2 population to complete the axe, but this also gives overflow of 29, which you put into another axeman, and finish it off using regular production. The only thing you need to use this tactic is size 4 cities, 3 size 4 cities can create 6 axeman in 3-4 turns.

Maybe the problem is Axemen , all kiddng aside, maybe the solution is as simple as the chariot bonus v. axes and the protective trait (in Warlords). Some slaveryless variants might be nice.

Who can slave their cities the best? I hope this is not what RB comes, but I don't think it will since it has not already. And BTW, if you want to know who slaves their cities best? The answer is Speaker and some of the the other RaY player over at the ladder. In MP slaving is crucial in the first half of the game so that you can more or less produce normally in the second half.

[Blake]

Of course it's broken.

The main problem is how to fix.

I've been toying with the idea of making the 1 pop whip 1 pop for 40h (normal speed) to eliminate the free-lunch factor of killing 2 pop - you trade off happiness for hammer efficiency, the "Free" 10 hammers is justified as being the amount that a grassland forest worker would produce during the angry time.

So how it would work is, if the build can be completed as a 1 pop for 40h whip, it will be. Otherwise it'll use the normal calculation. This quite cleanly eliminates the most exploitive double-whips, leaving only praets double-whippable and since they only bring 15 overflow it's not much of a doublewhip.

[uberfish]

The root imbalance isn't the overflow mechanic, it's that the happiness penalty doesn't scale up for killing more people with slavery. You can also 2 pop whip granaries, libraries, or whatever in high food cities for the same benefit. I'm surprised that given Firaxis' willingness to tinker with everything else in patches, they've never touched this.

My rule of thumb is that if citizens are working non-resource farms/forest/coast in the early game and the city has high food I try and whip them, if they're working resources/mines/cottages I avoid whipping and instead run specialists to use up excess food at population cap.

[LKendter]

The root imbalance isn't the overflow mechanic, it's that the happiness penalty doesn't scale up for killing more people with slavery.

I agree with this 100%. Whipping cities with miserable people is efficient with this scheme as come ahead in your cities happiness picture. The whip memory is long gone by the time you grow that large again.

Having whipped things like Globe Theater, forbidden palace, and large chunks of a wonder I can tell you the 1 miserable person for infinite population is very powerful.

[MJW (ya that one)]

The root imbalance isn't the overflow mechanic, it's that the happiness penalty doesn't scale up for killing more people with slavery.

That is right. The reason why the two looks pop whip trick is most broken is that slavery is most imba in the early game when you have to use the 2 pop whip trick becase projects are not big enough. At higher levels this most imba time is the only time to rush. Fixing the 2-pop whip trick would balance the game at higher levels (where you can still rush) but at lower levels one would just wait untill the big miltary projects (like it matters-everything is broken on lower levels). That is what I meant to say first. I would also like to note that if something is balanced on purpose to the overpowerside (Sirian said he did this...) normally then if you add more things that make it even better (forges, graineries) it becomes broken. The same thing happends with the pryimaids + rep abusing the balanced Great Libary and getting the B big earlyeir . This causes 90% of the brokeness in this game. Along with the overload $ vector.

Fixing the 2 pop whip trick will take out the time where slavery is the most abuseive. But slavery would still be way to good when you are only trading one pathetic pop for 30 shields. But then it gets even better (or worse). I wonder if the whip bug is a bug or a feature. It is about as overpowered and abusive and Trix.

Originally Posted by T-hawk
But consider the granary factor. With a granary, the whip converts ~15 food to 30 hammers. That's definitely more efficient than working mines. And don't forget that the whip bug still exists in vanilla; with Org Rel or a forge, you can often convert that 15 food to 60 hammers, which is a spectacular payoff. Finally, a smart player can manage whip applications to always kill two population at once while incurring only one 10-turn happiness penalty, which will wear off by the time the city grows back. So there's virtually no downside to whipping, and a huge upside payoff.

[uberfish]

As for the "economic vector" being broken I disagree. Focused strategies are just inherently better than unfocused strategies in civ4 because they are the best way to get an advantage in the face of the AI bonuses. Going for low economy and heavy early military and catching up on research later is just as powerful as the other way round. Heavy religious/diplomatic strategies also win games effectively.

If you're playing just above your comfort difficulty level and try and do everything at the same time, you'll just end up behind in all sectors and lose because that's what the AI does and it has bonuses. To win at high levels or in difficult variant games you have to break the symmetry by picking an area to focus most of your effort in to create the edge that you need, and it is enough to have an advantage in one area to win if you use it well. This is why a tough game like adventure 14 can be beaten with several different strategies.

In my opinion a large part of the reason the Oracle slingshot openings are strong is that they force you to use a focused strategy in order to pull the slingshot off, and once you have your slingshot tech you have a strong incentive to maximize its use.