Slaver Unit Overpowered

[Velociryx]

Just a general observation on my part, but YOWZA!!!! What a totally overpowered unit! It'd be one thing if troops cost points of pop....in that case, capturing those lost pop points when you have a slaver in an army would be one thing, but with troops not costing points of population, and slavers able to "convert" fallen enemy soldiers into pop points as slaves for your empire, it *really* hyperinflates population growth!

Cradle has done some to address this imbalance by splitting the functionality (slavers that can only impact cities, and slavers that can capture enemy troops and convert to pop).

The city part is, IMO, relatively balanced. It requires a fair amount of time and patience to get a slaver over into enemy territory, sidle up to unsuspecting towns, and let the harvest begin!

Not so with slavers in the army tho....BAM! one battle, quick and dirty, and you net yourself 12 pop points. Rinse and repeat as desired.

Given how long it takes for cities to grow on their own, I'm thinking this is WAY overpowered. It'd be one thing if slavers converted captured troops to X amount of PW or something (makes sense, assign captured troops as work crews makin' yonder road or something), but to give them full "credit" as a full point of population (representative of 10,000 citizens) is IMO, far, far too much.

Thoughts?

-=Vel=-

[centrifuge]

Well, I agree that in battles the slaver is very powerful... add to this the ability to enslave the captured city, and poof you have a huge pop. without the hard work... One redeeming aspect is the abolitionist... and the wonder emancipation act, which frees all slaves and causes slave holding cities to go into revolt. Also the use of lots of slaves requires the use of a lot of "guards." Without, the use of large slave guarding stacks in your towns, the towns will revolt and form new civs... This can be a huge disadvantage, by screwing up your immediate plans...however, as I found out in the 2nd SP tournament, when it comes to the final score it creates a huge almost unfair/cheat-like advantage.

So, I guess what I'm trying to say is that, I agree . That it is overpowered, but after a certain time period (not sure if this holds for cradle???) the effect can be countered, often with devastating effects... if you aren't prepared.

[Mongoose]

Originally posted by Velociryx

Not so with slavers in the army tho....BAM! one battle, quick and dirty, and you net yourself 12 pop points. Rinse and repeat as desired.

-=Vel=-

Is this true in Cradle? I thought you garnered one pop point per battle regardless of the size of the defeated force. That's the way I recall it with the standard game and with SAP2, anyway.

[Velociryx]

Hmmm....that's a good point, Mongoose, and perhaps I just misunderstood the way Slavers worked in an army, but in that case, that's actually even more dangerous, because it's weighted toward small unit engagements (a slaver in a group attacking a lone barb will net you one pop point, so the optimal use would be to cause barbs to scatter (use Nomad decoys inside your own turf to pull them different directions), and ping them every round. I like the concept, especially as it relates to cities, but with armies not counting as pop points, it really comes close to unbalancing the unit.

True, Abolitionist and the Emancipation wonder puts the brakes on it, but in general, the game's won or lost in the ancient era. Do well there, and you'll prolly be the one to control when that wonder gets built (well, perhaps not in Cradle on impossible, but in general! ). It's a good balancing factor, but one that comes too late, given the power such maneuvers in ancient times gives you. Huge amount of leverage.

-=Vel=-

[hexagonian]

You should be getting 1 slave per event - battles with twelve-stacks yield 1 Slave irregardless howe many slavers you have in the stack.

In Cradle, there are some balancing factors...

One, with the military slaver unit, the AI will now use that unit to enslave. It rarely stacks the normal slaver with a military stack. So the AI does keep up to the player in that department - maybe not to the extent of the human player, but a whole lot better than in the default game.

Two, the Plaque code in Cradle has a nasty little habit of pruning your cities from time to time...

[Velociryx]

Coolio....thanks for the clarification there Hex....and yes! I sure have noticed the "pruning effect" of plague....sheesh....I'm feeling like an over-pruned bonzai tree....

-=Vel=-
(but loving it! The game setup in CtP is fantastic, especially with the changes to combat cradle makes! There's no way a player can do a civ-style steamroll conquer-the-world play....just can't happen. Oh sure, you can get a lot of mileage out of early attacks, but you go much over the Tyranny city limits and you shut yourself down. You enslave too many towns, and that comes with its own brand of problems....so huge maps are truly interesting challenges! I'm loving it!)

[hexagonian]

Originally posted by Velociryx
The game setup in CtP is fantastic, especially with the changes to combat cradle makes!

...a community-wide effort made possible by a lot of people here. I just put the package together.

Keep your eyes open for Dale's AOM Mod - that will be the next-gen in the CTP2 Modding community. Very interesting stuff going on with that one...but I'm not saying what

[Dale]

Originally posted by hexagonian

...a community-wide effort made possible by a lot of people here. I just put the package together.

Keep your eyes open for Dale's AOM Mod - that will be the next-gen in the CTP2 Modding community. Very interesting stuff going on with that one...but I'm not saying what

Like Dave says, it was only a massive community effort by the likes of Locutus, Dave, Peter, Ben, Martin, Player1, Pedrunn, myself and others that have allowed us to make CTP2 bigger, brighter and better.

Oh, and I ain't saying anything about AOM either. There's quite a few surprises in it for the unsuspecting Civ-TBS player. Though I will say one thing, there has never been a Tech Tree so detailed...... about 100 techs for the first 550 turns.

[Hermann the Lombard]

OK, more mid-game questions: how do you wean your economy off dependence on slaves? Any way to selectively emancipate? What happens if YOU build the Emancipation Proclamation; do your own slaves revolt?

[Mongoose]

If YOU build EP, your slaves are peacefully assimilated into your cities as regular citizens.

There IS a way to selectively emancipate, as it were...allow the city to revolt, then recapture it. All the former slaves are now normal citizens. Might lose some infrastructure this way, and some units.

[Hermann the Lombard]

Originally posted by Mongoose
There IS a way to selectively emancipate, as it were...allow the city to revolt, then recapture it.

That is the method I have used so far. Discovered it accidentally, of course. Thanks for the info.

[Chemical Ollie]

I miss the possibility to choose the city where the slaves are added. Now it gets very unbalanced, with perhaps 7 slaves in one city and 0 in another.

[Hermann the Lombard]

Originally posted by Olaf Hårfagre
I miss the possibility to choose the city where the slaves are added. Now it gets very unbalanced, with perhaps 7 slaves in one city and 0 in another.

Well, you can do it, but it requires a tedious garrison fan dance...at which point the slaver gets caught and you moved all those garrisons for nothing. Forgetting to move one back is a good way to emancipate, accidentally.

[child of Thor]

Yeah in a single player game maybe the slave unit in battles does become too powerfull a tool. Still in MP just you try to slave someone else and that's basically a never ending war you've just started! Maybe if the regard-loss felt by the AI could be increased(and for neighboring civs too) and kept very low for a very long time, producing longer wars - this would make the player think very carefully before giving it a try? It's a nice and logical function to have(slave were taken from battles), but a bit of tinkering could tone it's advantages down. How about a hike in the unrest it causes in the cities they go to(with a multiplyer for componded slave placement), it is a bit unrealistic when the cities population is made up of far more slaves than freemen(and women).

[Zaphod Beeblebrox]

well, i still wonder how slavers make slavepop from defeated units which didn't consist of pop

what i really hate though is there is no good way to react against slaving raids (and other unusual attacks):
you can compell the attacker which will only lead to having him come back a few turns later (and then maybe unspotted before its too late) or by attacking him and so going to war with all disbenefits in respect from other civs.

i think you should be able to execute foreign units like slavers, spys etc inside your borders without getting into warstate

[mapfi]

you can always build city walls but I agree to keep special units away can be a nuisance - but hey, that's the main reason behind them...

[Zaphod Beeblebrox]

thats the main reason yes, but in history they were just executed if caught in the act (goes especially for spies), thats it. other country declaring they don't know that person. no war.

[mapfi]

Play with the death chnace of the attack in the units.txt. The way I understand it if you set it to 1 your slaver will be executed if it fails to catch a slave. Haven't tried this though. But then whatabout a slaver just retreating without catching a slave because someone spotted him and he just ran off? The game functions rather reasonable in that sense.

[Zaphod Beeblebrox]

well, thats not what i mean, what i mean is:
my spies or whatsover spot somebody elses spies or whatsoever on my grounds:
i want a chance to get rid of them without going to war or having him back 2 rounds later

[mapfi]

What you could do is adjust the expel order for special units ( but of course not include diplomats and settlers) and have it kill the unit instead of expel it. That's what you'd want, isn't it?

[Zaphod Beeblebrox]

yes, i think, thats what i want, have to think about it