Changing Slavery Tolerance

[ChaChaLoco]

Just to be clear I'm not advocating slavery in real life or anything, slavery is morally abhorrent. I'm just talking about it in terms of game mechanics and balance.

In the game right now the default attitude towards slavery from your pops is negative, i.e. if your pops don't have any traits/ethics which have modifiers for slavery tolerance your pops will be unhappy about your slavery (provided your government type doesn't have any slavery tolerance modifiers either). They will be 1.5x as unhappy if they are Individualists, and 2x as unhappy about it if they are Fanatic Individualists. On the other hand, Collectivists will only be 0.5x as unhappy about slavery and Fanatic Collectivists will merely be neutral towards it. Xenophobes will be 0.5x as unhappy about alien slavery and Fanatic Xenophobes will be neutral towards it.

Don't all these calculations seem off to anyone else? I mean fine, Paradox, I understand if you want to say that by default everyone dislikes slavery, maybe you can argue along the lines that no reasonable race that gets to the space age will be neutral towards slavery by default. Although I feel compelled to mention that on Earth, against members of our own species, slavery was the norm for very long periods of time.

In any case it seems to that the calculations I propose are far more reasonable, realistic and useful in terms of slavery tolerance, I'm going to run through how each ethos should be changed first (government types/traits should be rebalanced accordingly, but I'm going to focus on the relevant ethos here).

Pops that are Collectivists:

1. Should be neutral towards the slavery of other pops, including aliens as long as you aren't ONLY enslaving aliens.
   • 'Only enslaving aliens' should be a percentage calculation of the demographic of your total slave population, e.g. if more than 60% (75%?) of your total slave population are aliens then your primary species pops should get unhappy about the enslavement of a disproportionate amount of aliens.
2. Should be 0.75x unhappy about their own slavery.

Pops that are Fanatic Collectivists:

1. Should be 1.25x happy about the slavery of others (including aliens in accordance with what was said above).
2. Should be neutral about their own slavery.
   • In practice, this means you get a small happiness bonus for your pops by using slaves, as they will be happy about the slavery of others and neutral to their own.

Pops that are Xenophobes:

1. Should be neutral towards the enslavement of alien species.
2. Should be 1x more unhappy about the enslavement of the primary species.
   • The thinking here is that xenophobes would detest members of their own species being put on the same level as species they consider inferior.

Pops that are Fanatic Xenophobes:

1. Should get a 1.25x happiness bonus from the enslavement of alien species.
2. Should be 2x more unhappy about the enslavement of the primary species.

Just to be clear these happiness benefits and detriments are only planet-wide, not Empire-wide.

This seems more reasonable to me in terms of game balance? Maybe this makes slavery too powerful? What do you guys think? It just seems weird to me that collectivists will still be pissy about others (including aliens) being enslaved and actually get happier if you enslave them too (because that gets rid of all the modifiers of them being unhappy about others being slaves).

P.S: @Wiz, what do you think about making changes like this?

 

[BrokenSky]

Just to be clear I'm not advocating slavery in real life or anything, slavery is morally abhorrent. I'm just talking about it in terms of game mechanics and balance.

In the game right now the default attitude towards slavery from your pops is negative, i.e. if your pops don't have any traits/ethics which have modifiers for slavery tolerance your pops will be unhappy about your slavery (provided your government type doesn't have any slavery tolerance modifiers either). They will be 1.5x as unhappy if they are Individualists, and 2x as unhappy about it if they are Fanatic Individualists. On the other hand, Collectivists will only be 0.5x as unhappy about slavery and Fanatic Collectivists will merely be neutral towards it. Xenophobes will be 0.5x as unhappy about alien slavery and Fanatic Xenophobes will be neutral towards it.

Don't all these calculations seem off to anyone else? I mean fine, Paradox, I understand if you want to say that by default everyone dislikes slavery, maybe you can argue along the lines that no reasonable race that gets to the space age will be neutral towards slavery by default. Although I feel compelled to mention that on Earth, against members of our own species, slavery was the norm for very long periods of time.

In any case it seems to that the calculations I propose are far more reasonable, realistic and useful in terms of slavery tolerance, I'm going to run through how each ethos should be changed first (government types/traits should be rebalanced accordingly, but I'm going to focus on the relevant ethos here).

Completely agree.

Pops that are Collectivists:

1. Should be neutral towards the slavery of other pops, including aliens as long as you aren't ONLY enslaving aliens.
   • 'Only enslaving aliens' should be a percentage calculation of the demographic of your total slave population, e.g. if more than 60% (75%?) of your total slave population are aliens then your primary species pops should get unhappy about the enslavement of a disproportionate amount of aliens.
2. Should be 0.75x unhappy about their own slavery.

Pops that are Fanatic Collectivists:

1. Should be 1.25x happy about the slavery of others (including aliens in accordance with what was said above).
2. Should be neutral about their own slavery.
   • In practice, this means you get a small happiness bonus for your pops by using slaves, as they will be happy about the slavery of others and neutral to their own

Agree, but "only enslaving aliens" needs to take into account the proportion of your empire which is aliens, as well as the different species traits (e.g. Mentalons are all intelligent and natural physicist. The Manulons are strong and industrious. I have lots of Manulon slaves because they are naturally good at minerals, but few Mentalons because they are mostly scientists. My pops should be ok with that.) Given the complexity of this, however, I think it would be better in terms of benefit/work to make it so collectivists tolerate all slavery, even if you're only enslaving aliens.

Pops that are Xenophobes:

1. Should be neutral towards the enslavement of alien species.
2. Should be 1x more unhappy about the enslavement of the primary species.
   • The thinking here is that xenophobes would detest members of their own species being put on the same level as species they consider inferior.

Pops that are Fanatic Xenophobes:

1. Should get a 1.25x happiness bonus from the enslavement of alien species.
2. Should be 2x more unhappy about the enslavement of the primary species.

Just to be clear these happiness benefits and detriments are only planet-wide, not Empire-wide.

This seems more reasonable to me in terms of game balance? Maybe this makes slavery too powerful? What do you guys think? It just seems weird to me that collectivists will still be pissy about others (including aliens) being enslaved and actually get happier if you enslave them too (because that gets rid of all the modifiers of them being unhappy about others being slaves).

Completely Agree.

 

[ChaChaLoco]

Agree, but "only enslaving aliens" needs to take into account the proportion of your empire which is aliens, as well as the different species traits (e.g. Mentalons are all intelligent and natural physicist. The Manulons are strong and industrious. I have lots of Manulon slaves because they are naturally good at minerals, but few Mentalons because they are mostly scientists. My pops should be ok with that.) Given the complexity of this, however, I think it would be better in terms of benefit/work to make it so collectivists tolerate all slavery, even if you're only enslaving aliens.

Yes, that certainly might be easier in terms of getting the system to work well. I'd be okay with that personally, but the reason I added the proportional thing in is because the worry would be the Collectivist ethos would be much better than the Xenophobic ethos. If Collectivist was changed as suggested you would get neutral slavery tolerance towards the slavery of others including aliens PLUS the food bonus, which would make it clearly better than the Xenophobic ethos which would only get you neutral alien slavery tolerance (same as Collectivist) and a penalty to diplomatic relations. So if they do it the way you've suggested then some other benefit would need to be added to the Xenophobic and Fanatic Xenophobic ethos. Perhaps a 5%/10% boost in production with alien slaves, respectively?

One last thing that I forgot to mention in the original post, it's currently not possible to use the Decadent trait if you don't have Collectivist/Fanatic Collectivist ethos but do have Xenophobic/Fanatic Xenophobic ethos. Please change this so you can use the Decadent trait as a Xenophobic/Fanatically Xenophobic people.