How well does a slavery empire work?

[Fenris_SE]

I know this question has been asked dozens of times, but all of the information I can find seems to be before the slavery nerfs. I'm still new enough to Stellaris (50 or so hours) to not know which info is still good and which is outdated.

In short I'm thinking of running an empire that uses core systems for energy, gathers most of their science from exploring enemy wrecks, and minerals from conquered worlds.

I'm not looking for an "I Win Button", just a pirate-like RP experience. From what I've read about past games, the slavery-type empires were OP. I am hoping for a game that is not consumed with micro-managing slaves, so if that's the case I'll come up with a different play style.

I'm wondering if this type of empire would work for what I'm thinking of:

Any thoughts or advice on this? Basically I don't want to get 40-50 hours into a game and realize I have created an empire that just will not work. If I lose because I didn't do well that's fine, I just don't want to create something that is impossible to play.

Thanks,

 

[The Founder]

Sector AI is bugged when slaves are concerned. Best to enslave beforehand, then give it to sector without slavery rights.

Faction Supression cost is capped a 2 Influence. With the Collectivist bonus afterwards. So that is how hard it will be to supress malcontent slaves.
You can run unregulated in the early game using supression, but later on you should regulate. And propably use Share the Burden.

Individualist pops will be a big issue. If you use slavery, they are at 0% happiness all the time. It applies to some degree to Xenophiles too.
They will either be malcontent slaves or in the emancipation faction. Choose the former if you supress those already.

One thing to focus on in social research are Frontier Comissars and Ministery of Benevolence. They carry the entire Ethics divergence for the Collectivists.

 

[mudcrabmerchant]

I don't think you can rely on pillaged technology. That alone is hard enough to be its own campaign theme, it doesn't need more artificial handicaps added on to it.

Assuming you need your own research, you can either focus your core worlds towards research (gimping your credit income), or rely on small free populations in sectors to do research. The problem with those is that when you get big and ethics diverge, some of them will join emancipation factions, requiring more influence to suppress.

I really like the idea of keeping every sector pop permanently enslaved, however, economic consequences be damned. What you could do is balance research and credits on your core worlds, until you find a merchant enclave. Those guys will always sell you credits at the price of 2 minerals per credit, and once you have a secure source to trade minerals for credits, you can probably ignore focused credit production of your own.

 

[iniudan]

I don't think you can rely on pillaged technology. That alone is hard enough to be its own campaign theme, it doesn't need more artificial handicaps added on to it.

Assuming you need your own research, you can either focus your core worlds towards research (gimping your credit income), or rely on small free populations in sectors to do research. The problem with those is that when you get big and ethics diverge, some of them will join emancipation factions, requiring more influence to suppress.

I really like the idea of keeping every sector pop permanently enslaved, however, economic consequences be damned. What you could do is balance research and credits on your core worlds, until you find a merchant enclave. Those guys will always sell you credits at the price of 2 minerals per credit, and once you have a secure source to trade minerals for credits, you can probably ignore focused credit production of your own.

Personally I put colonized sector close to the capital into research or energy (usually only researsh sector converted into one, if I'm really in need of energy, as research are by far the most efficient sector) production without slavery (if there is slave it usually native that were enslaved when I landed =p), while sector colonized outside of divergence limit are basically forced labor camp. Conquered system sector are always mineral production with slavery, as it reduce the number of faction to deal with. But if a specie as interesting trait and ethic I might go for an integration and treat them like colonized world instead.

 

[Aries666]

One thing about sectors that was recently revealed that seemingly no one knew was that the collectivist sector AI will only enslave food and mineral workers plus unhappy pips but the xenophobe AI will enslave all. I haven't played much recently so can't confirm but may be worth choosing your ethics based on which behaviour you would prefer.

 

[Seryss]

Don't enslave your own pops after your first couple of invasions (or emancipate them when you have plenty of aliens to do your mining) Enslave all aliens prior to throwing them into a sector, and immediately turn of slavery for the sector, or it's going to randomly enslave your pops that you add to that sector in the future. In the beginning pre-sectors it's worth the influence cost to cheese the faction mechanic by enslaving/emancipating all pops to remove, and reset a faction - late game you just eat the influence cost til at 0 let it rise to 30% and suppress it again. It's not hugely micro intensive but you do have to keep an eye on your pops/factions unlike say fanatic individualists.

In general i would advise against Fanatic collectivist, and stick solely with basic collectivist. 10% less food is a slight increase to growth, but afterward may not even be enough to gain a free tile with once all of your pops are grown. You could make an argument for decreased faction support cost but at max its a .4 influence/month difference. Comets will give you a -10% happiness debuff not the end of the world, but it happens frequently enough that you're really going to hate comets by the end of your game. The Fanatic edict is an additional -5% ethics divergence so nothing to write home about. Basic collectivist gives you all you really need - 100% slavery tolerance, purge, ministry of benevolence, and frontier commissars.

As far as traits go you're going to want your pops to focus on energy/science, while using all of the enslaved alien pops to gather minerals, and to a lesser extent energy. You should tailor your traits to that end. I see you heavily focused on leaders; enduring, and fast learners is a good combination (maybe not ideal but good in general), but talented even alone is pretty meh, and with the other 2 traits complete overkill. Sedentary is an easy free point, but slow breeders is a little iffy. Personally i'd choose repugnant over slow breeders, a slavery empire isn't going to make many friends.

Conformists is honestly one of the best traits for a slavery empire. Controlling divergence is absolutely critical to a collectivist. It's a long time before ministry of benevolence, and commissars show up as tech options, and you will likely see 10-20% divergence on several of your worlds before then equaling wasted pops due to purging (try to check your 10%+ worlds semi-regularly for divergence, and purge before it gets out of hand). Conformists is good at the starting (depending on how far some of your colonies are), middle, and end game, it effectively increases the area where you can safely leave pops un-enslaved. Avoid adaptive traits, (they're more for fanatic individualists/spiritualists) +mineral traits +15% science traits, communal (Unless you have another source of happiness from your ethos communal isn't that great)

Missiles overall aren't the greatest weapon tech, and you'll get more frustrated with them as you go along, but you can still win with them, you can win with anything really just some things offer a lot less resistance to that end. Warp as an ftl is okay'ish never really great, but never completely bad.

In a military dictatorship you want your leader to die often, so enduring is kinda the opposite of what you're going for. I think autocratic governments aren't that great anyway honestly. In the election governments you have some options to influence who you want to lead instead of being handed one that may not be very good. Science directorate is my go to, but that requires at least basic materialist, but you don't have to run that setup to be an effective slavery empire.

 

[mudcrabmerchant]

Conformists is honestly one of the best traits for a slavery empire. Controlling divergence is absolutely critical to a collectivist. It's a long time before ministry of benevolence, and commissars show up as tech options, and you will likely see 10-20% divergence on several of your worlds before then equaling wasted pops due to purging (try to check your 10%+ worlds semi-regularly for divergence, and purge before it gets out of hand). Conformists is good at the starting (depending on how far some of your colonies are), middle, and end game, it effectively increases the area where you can safely leave pops un-enslaved.

Conformist is actually almost useless for the type of game he plans on running - as I understand it, he's going to keep his core worlds free, and enslave everyone in conquered land placed under sectors.

That means that almost all of his enslaved pops are going to be of other species. That's why he went heavy on leadership - his founding pops are only going to be important on 5 planets.

The most important trait for this run is either thrifty or intelligent, depending on whether he specializes his core worlds for credits or research. After that, it makes sense to go for good leadership stats.

Even in autocracies, it's debatable whether or not shorter lifespans are good. Long lifespans affect all leaders, short lifespans hurt all leaders, and don't really give you all that much benefit: your super BBs will always be a small part of the fleet, and are targeted first in battle so die fast; how important is one fortress in a fort flower formation?; assault armies are useless; and you MIGHT get 10% happiness or ethics divergence on every important world, but this isn't all that big and requires micromanagement with sectors.

IMO autocracies are mostly useful for their constant bonuses, which can be pretty damn good.

 

[Seryss]

Conformist is actually almost useless for the type of game he plans on running - as I understand it, he's going to keep his core worlds free, and enslave everyone in conquered land placed under sectors.

That means that almost all of his enslaved pops are going to be of other species. That's why he went heavy on leadership - his founding pops are only going to be important on 5 planets.

IMO autocracies are mostly useful for their constant bonuses, which can be pretty damn good.

Eventually... I think he'll get fed up with it taking 1/2 a decade or more to research one tech, and will start colonizing, but maybe if it's a small map, and they snowball very quickly, it's possible to stick with only 5 science/energy worlds.

The constant bonus can also be pretty bad, and can end in 70 or more years of nervous, and space miner. Although they could change governments if they got a particularly young, and underwhelming leader.

I can understand why they went down that particular route, it's just when you have 5 science/energy worlds and even 15-20 enslaved worlds your tech is going to grind to a crawl. So i guess i could have said yes it will work, but you're going to tech slowly, and then very slowly, and maybe get stuck with really bad govt leaders for a really long time, or a good one - who knows.

 

[iniudan]

Avoid [...] +15% science traits [...]

Will have to disagree on that one. Those trait are probably best with conformist collectivist, as it is possible to combine intelligent and a +15% trait, if you take non-adaptive and one other negative trait, on top fanatic materialist, for the ultimate scientist species.

Well except for uplifted natural intellectuals to who you give intelligent and natural socialists, while been fanatic materialist.

 

[rittstar]

I know this question has been asked dozens of times, but all of the information I can find seems to be before the slavery nerfs. I'm still new enough to Stellaris (50 or so hours) to not know which info is still good and which is outdated.

In short I'm thinking of running an empire that uses core systems for energy, gathers most of their science from exploring enemy wrecks, and minerals from conquered worlds.

I'm not looking for an "I Win Button", just a pirate-like RP experience. From what I've read about past games, the slavery-type empires were OP. I am hoping for a game that is not consumed with micro-managing slaves, so if that's the case I'll come up with a different play style.

I'm wondering if this type of empire would work for what I'm thinking of:

Any thoughts or advice on this? Basically I don't want to get 40-50 hours into a game and realize I have created an empire that just will not work. If I lose because I didn't do well that's fine, I just don't want to create something that is impossible to play.

Thanks,

i recommend not using talented, quick learners AND enduring all together.. if you want level 5 leaders, one of them is enough and that would be enduring, takes longer, but they get 5 stars anyway and live a long life with that.. but in any case, i suggest spending all of these trait points to something else or get rid of your negative choices there

if you want to play as slaver, collectivist is more than enough, it has 100% tolerance too and i suggest further to choose fanatic spiritualist instead, to keep your pops in line with slavery policies


example:
FSpiritualist the best ethic divergence combined with faster growth
Collectivist, 5% lesser food consumtion = more food and more food means allways more growth too
government divine mandat, more ethics divergence

base +2 traitpoints

nonadaptiv +2 traitpoints
decadent +1 traitpoint
thrifty -2 traitpoins (must have IMO in any case)

intelligent/agrarians (agrarians more food=faster growth) -2 traitpoints, it depends on playstyle, you probably conquer or find pre ftl with collectivist ethos, that are somewhat researchers or agrarians to take advantage of it.. probably you find usefull xeno researchers more often (which can live other climates and research for you) then an agrarian species of your climate to live together on the same planet

rapidbreeders -1 traitpoints faster growth

butsall your choice, just give you an idea as your not that long into the game yet

 

[Wyrm]

It's a pain to have slaves after a while for several reasons. My main 3 is:

#1: It costs influence to move slaves to another planet. This is just silly and is probably my main issue with slavery at the moment.

#2: Drifts not always making sense - I have decadent trait and still my pops drift into traits of individualism and xenophilia, meaning they flip out about slavery despite them requiring slaves. I have tonnes of 0-happiness pops because they don't approve of slavery and no way to handle it since I have almost no influence left for anything..

#3: Slaves doesn't give that large an advantage. They give a small bonus to mineral and food output and have no production penalties from happiness. On the other hand, they spawn factions that bleed your influence unless you want heaps of problems from them.

 

[KlinkerFyren]

Do all the enslavement before handing control over to sectors. Also remember to set your sectors to slavery. Otherwise they will liberate the xenos.

I wish there where a series of policies for sectors, like for instance something like:

"Enslavement of all xenos!" - Does what it says, forces all sectors to enslave non-primary race.
"Enslavement of troublemakers and xenos!" - Enslaves all non-conforming pops and xenos.
"Enslave of troublemakers!" - enslaves only the non-conforming pops.

Although these might make the game too easy? Dunno.

 

[Seomis]

Do all the enslavement before handing control over to sectors. Also remember to set your sectors to slavery. Otherwise they will liberate the xenos.

Turning off slavery in sectors makes the sector AI neither enslave nor emancipate.

Anyway, Use Enslavement Protocols to have economically viable slaving sectors.

 

[rittstar]

#2: Drifts not always making sense - I have decadent trait and still my pops drift into traits of individualism and xenophilia, meaning they flip out about slavery despite them requiring slaves. I have tonnes of 0-happiness pops because they don't approve of slavery and no way to handle it since I have almost no influence left for anything..

decadent trait did not mean your pops will more likely stay tuned with slavery and did not change their mind/ethos (ethics divergence is your real problem here, solve that issue and have fun with stay tuned pops), decadent gives you just an alternative negative trait if you dont want the others, in case you need a negative for your setup, but for that yeah you need the slaves of course on that particular planet your main species live on, conquered species without decadent dont get a malus without slaves

still you could play slaves without decadent, as it gives you no production, nor happiness, nor whatsoever for picking decadent, JUST A TRAIT POINT and a big impact if you did not handle it the right way

with decadent, it is more or less necessary essential to have a lot of ethics divergence into the green through your empire to keep everyone slavery tolerated

i strongly recommend only play slaves, especially more with decadent, only if you know everything about ethics divergence

for example, i have a game where i have over 90% ethics divergence on planets near the capitol, it is possible, if you know how to use it right

 

[KlinkerFyren]

Turning off slavery in sectors makes the sector AI neither enslave nor emancipate.

Didn't know that. Thanks for the info.

 

[nfmarque]

Op, any combination will work.
I had a game with more or less your combination and it was one of the most fun because it surprised me, the empire was not static, it evolved from tyrannic slaving despot to free, because of the problems created by slaves and malcontents.
As the game progresses adjust your empire policies and enact edicts to curl the situations that you get, and you will see your empire evolve.

Remember 0% happiness pop gets -25% to research while a enslaved one gets -75%

 

[elitesix]

Slavery doesn't work in Sectors (sad but true, this long after release). Enslavement protocol mod is probably a good answer, assuming it works.


If you want to play stock and go for the best slaver empire despite sector AI issues, the best non-handicapped slavery bid is probably some combination of pacifist and xenophobe or collectivist so you can nab the middle pacifist government type that gives you +5 core worlds (+10 in the advanced government form). That would let you play tall and ignore the slavery sector issues.


Or you could play a 'viable' SP slaver empire in whatever form in the stock game. It's not like the computer AI will destroy you even if you're self-handicapping yourself by running a slaver empire that can't properly utilize slavery in its sectors.

 

[Madzai]

Slavery doesn't work in Sectors (sad but true, this long after release). Enslavement protocol mod is probably a good answer, assuming it works.

Well, if this Mod really work as described, or at least somewhat close to it, it's a hard slap in the face of those who doing Sector AI in Stellaris. Because if one could achieve such results with limited modding tools, well...
And i'm also tired of BS argument "players themselves don't know that they want with slaves, so it's impossible to satisfy everyone". Well, duh, you created the slavery the way it is, so you already calculated all possible application of slavery and how AI should react before putting it into the game, right?

 

[Secret Master]

Slavery ain't a bad way to go.

You know who cares about factions in a slave empire? Not me.

When you can just shoot slaves that revolt, there is little reason to spend heaps of influence suppressing Malcontent slaves. Suppressing Docile slaves should stop the efficiency reducing events, but that's not even required.

If the only factions of any note in your empire are slave factions, either pay the influence or garrison your worlds adequately and just shoot them. 60 planets in revolt at the same time seems to be a problem, but when slave armies are themselves incredibly cheap, who cares? You get bonus style points in my book if you conquer a species great at fighting (strong/very strong and resilient), turn their world into a hellhole with almost no food production, and then use them to suppress all the other slaves in your empire. Who said the Sardaukar were the best troops in the Known Universe?

Consider a few things other things:

Slaves are bad at energy, but they are better at it than really unhappy POPs. You might not have as many energy credits per capita as a happy fun empire, but you can certainly make up the difference in volume via conquest.

If you put effort into colonization, there's no reason you can't have enough planets with enough tiles dedicated to research to ensure mediocre rates of research. Even if 80% of your population throughout the empire is enslaved, the rest can do science on worlds where it makes sense.

Since food affects happiness, but POPs never starve to death, planets with max POPs and completely enslaved can have all farms removed (besides the capital) and replaced with whatever else needs to be produced. That can open a significant number of tiles (and do away with orbital hydroponic farms to open a module). If you lose a POP for some reason, just resettle from a breeder world.

Since happiness is also affected by habitability, but slaves don't have a happiness issue, you can also colonize planets with the bare minimum of habitability with whatever species is best. No need for anything on the planet to increase habitability.

Something else to consider: slavery can be temporary. I've got a game where I would generally enslave species initially, but I'd work their ethics to the point where the POPs would be happy with my rule. Then I'd start emancipating them. Only criminals and political dissidents were enslaved, leaving me plenty of POPs on plenty of worlds free to make energy or research.

Just to remind everyone: slaves don't join other factions besides slave factions. With sufficient oppression, you can end up spending zero influence on faction suppression, and just end up shooting slave revolts every decade or so. That influence can then be used to either increase production on planets via edicts, or to colonize distant worlds. Or invade distant primitives. Or run empire edicts. Or whatever you want. This might be a good time to point out that the more slaves you have in the Malcontent faction, the fewer that will be in the Docile faction firing the "-20% to production" planet event. This should make that faction cheap to suppress or not be relevant.

Sectors work badly with slaves, and I echo the sentiment here where you enslave POPs before adding to a sector not allowed to enslave (or purge).

 

[Fenris_SE]

Thanks for all the answers everyone, I've learned a lot in this thread.

I think for now I'll hold off on my slavery empire until I don't suck so much at this game. I'm not too worried abut sucking right now, I suck at every 4x game when I initially start playing it. Right now I'm running into the problem of figuring out a decent balance on how to grow my empire, I end up doing too much science and my fleet size is too small, or I have a large fleet of weak ships and no science, or I get my max on core worlds and have no resources left for anything else. Then I get crushed by 6k fleets when I can only counter with 2k fleets and planets with no defense. I don't think I've had an empire last more than a 100 years yet . It also seems as though every empire near me always starts with the exact opposite traits as mine, don't know if this is just bad luck or by design.

Anyway, I will do a slavery empire sometime soon, but it seems as though without a better understanding of the game it just will not be a fun experience.

Thanks again,