Slaver Guild Questions... Free Enslaved Founder Species?

[EddyExx]

Not brand new to Stellaris but still learning new things every day. My Issue is as such:

My current playthrough empire has the Slaver Guild civic, is Authoritarian with the Syncretic Evolution origin, and synthetics are outlawed, so my entire population is organic. At first I was surprised/confused in early game when some of my founding species were slaves in addition to the secondary subservient species, but I learned of the 40% required slave threshold (per planet?) so then it made more sense. As I conquered other empire planets and new species were added, they would have their rights automatically set to Indentured Servitude slavery, which made sense due to my civics/ethics (even pops added via migration treaty would automatically become enslaved which was strange). However now that I am reaching mid to late game, I am suffering more and more from an increasing imbalance in free pops to enslaved pops throughout my empire. I do not know how to check 100% but I have roughly 1200 pops and only about 200 are designated to a faction, which would lead me to believe that the remaining 1000 pops are some type of slave. So right there it seems I have about an 83% slave pop ratio. I have been operating rather effectively like this, however, but the two issues I am running into most now are as such:

1) I cannot get enslaved pops (designated as military thralls) to take on enforcer jobs on any planet. Therefore all of my newly conquered planets (for which now have an over abundance of slave population) have perpetual 50% or higher crime rates and the negative events that come with those high crime rates. I have tried moving non-enslaved enforcers/specialists of my founding species to these planets with open enforcer jobs but they just never take those jobs, even when enforcer is set as the priority and there are no other available specialist/ruler jobs. It seems sometimes they just somehow promote to Ruler stratum and I can't get them to demote down to specialist. Also, free founder species pops almost never spawn anymore, which I just recently read that you can somewhat control so I will start fiddling with that.

2) There is no way that I can tell to "free" enslaved pops from my founder species. I have resettled them to planets with available jobs and an over-abundance of slaves to hit the slave quota and this does not seem to solve the issue. I obviously do not want my own species to be enslaved, and it is hindering filling specific specialist/ruler roles on certain planets. Also, since I cannot alter the species rights of my founder species, I cannot fully control what to do with these "founder slaves" i.e. make them military thralls, change their resource output, etc. I have 320 Founder species pops, and again, only 200 dedicated to factions. So I am right around the 40% slave ratio, which may or may not make sense. It also doesn't help that available governors with the "Righteous" trait just stopped spawning (re-rolled over 100 times and one never appeared).

So in summary, I have too many slaves, can't fill my enforcer jobs, and I want to free my founder species slaves if possible. I haven't tried just removing the SG civic, but I'd rather not do that unless absolutely necessary. I also have some thrall worlds set up and a penal colony, but those aren't enough. Just wondering if these are known bugs/issues with the AI that I just have to work around/live with or are known workarounds that other have exploited in the past to help somewhat fix these issues. (This is also my first post to the forums, so let me know if this is not the proper place/format).

Thanks!

 

[rubert]

From what I understand the Slaver Guild ratio is per species. If you have slaver guilds and you are also enslaving entire species it might cause you to have excess slaves which can't work on specialist jobs.

You can switch slavery type to Indentured Servitude which allows the slaves to work in specialist jobs, too (including enforces) or Battle Thralls which allows worker + enforcer, soldier and duelist jobs.

 

[EddyExx]

From what I understand the Slaver Guild ratio is per species. If you have slaver guilds and you are also enslaving entire species it might cause you to have excess slaves which can't work on specialist jobs.

Is this true though? I have seen a lot of mixed responses on whether the 40% ratio is per species, per empire, or per planet. My understanding was the consensus was that the ratio was actually per planet, not per species. Is there some confirmation of this? Honestly, having it be per species probably aligns best with the issues I am seeing, but is the most counter-intuitive application of the ration between species, planet, and empire, IMO.

 

[rubert]

Honestly, I am not sure. I very rarely play with Slaver empires as I find managing them to be awkward at best. The few times I have played with Slaver Guilds I have just given every species least residence citizenship and indentured servitude as the slavery type so I don't have to micro the pops.

 

[FluffyVanguard]

Is this true though? I have seen a lot of mixed responses on whether the 40% ratio is per species, per empire, or per planet. My understanding was the consensus was that the ratio was actually per planet, not per species. Is there some confirmation of this? Honestly, having it be per species probably aligns best with the issues I am seeing, but is the most counter-intuitive application of the ration between species, planet, and empire, IMO.

I use Slaver Guilds pretty much every game, so I can say with certainty that it is 40% of each species on each planet planet. The only way to free your founder species (or any other species) completely, is to remove the Slaver Guilds civic. To solve your specialist shortage, you could also try to set some species to Indentured Servitude.

In my experience, Slaver Guilds doesn't pair well with fully enslaved xenos, because of these issues you're having now. I find it best for mono species or xenophile slaver empires.

 

[Ryika]

An easy way around it is to use population controls on all species that you conquer, or if you're open to some more micromanagement, set planets where your main pops have high habitability to force-grow them. That way, the number of pops that can work the ruler and enforcer jobs stays in manageable territory, even if you're on a large conquest spree. If you just let them grow naturally, you'll find yourself in a lot of trouble.

I think it's definitely not a good combination though, since whatever solution you implement is going to undo a lot of the strength that you gain from slavery.

 

[Greykrest]

An enslaved pop normally can't be an Enforcer. Even though it says Indentured Servitude lets slaves work specialist jobs, they don't actually have access to every specialist job. Pops still need to be non-slaves to work as Enforcers and, I think, Entertainers. The only way is to switch your founder species slavery type to "Battle Thralls" - which you don't want to do because then they can't do anything but Enforcer and Soldier jobs (or worker jobs, but you've got your servile species for that).

While Slaver Guilds paired with Syncretic Evolution seems like a no-brainer, I don't think they actually mesh well together. If you've got 20 servile slave pops and 3 founder pops on a planet, one of those founders is still going to be a slave. Doesn't matter there's already tons of slaves, because Slaver Guilds works on both a per-planet and per-species basis.

Your servile species will always be full chattel anyway, leaving your founder species to do everything else, but 35% of them are going to be enslaved too. Depending on your demographics, around 60% of your population is going to be slaves; way too much. Even if a pop grows that isn't from a chattel species, there's still a chance they'll end up enslaved anyway.

If you're an authoritarian species with slaver guilds who has both incorporated other species into your empire and also doesn't share power, odds are what few founder pops that grow will be used to fill the ruler jobs, leaving few to none for anything else - that is if they grow at all and don't spawn as slaves. Basically exactly your scenario. It just causes a lot of headaches to run both civics in one empire. Best to pick one or the other.

Oddly enough, the Slaver Guilds civic works best if there's no species-wide chattel slavery in the empire and where anyone can be a ruler - meaning an empire that is fiercely authoritarian with regards to class but highly egalitarian with regards to race.

 

[theBigTurnip385]

Slaver Guilds doesn't work well with Syncretic or Necrophage.

You already have a slave-able second species so why do you want to enslave 35% of your primary species and lock them out of being leaders.

 

[EddyExx]

You already have a slave-able second species so why do you want to enslave 35% of your primary species and lock them out of being leaders.

The problem was when I started this particular campaign I had never used the slaver guild civic, so wasn't 100% sure how it worked. Then when I researched I had found conflicting info about the required slave ratio, not thinking it was species based. From an RP perspective, I would be actually really happy with my current empire slave to pop ratio (about 85% slaves right now) IF my founder species could be 100% free and assume all of the Ruler/enforcer jobs, essentially doubling down on my authoritarian ethics.

If you've got 20 servile slave pops and 3 founder pops on a planet, one of those founders is still going to be a slave. Doesn't matter there's already tons of slaves, because Slaver Guilds works on both a per-planet and per-species basis.

Unfortunately, did not know this going in and thought that once I had build my xenos slave pop enough that my founder species could be re-settled and effectively "freed" from forced slavery. Alas.

An enslaved pop normally can't be an Enforcer. Even though it says Indentured Servitude lets slaves work specialist jobs, they don't actually have access to every specialist job. Pops still need to be non-slaves to work as Enforcers and, I think, Entertainers. The only way is to switch your founder species slavery type to "Battle Thralls" - which you don't want to do because then they can't do anything but Enforcer and Soldier jobs (or worker jobs, but you've got your servile species for that).

Again, didn't fully understand this going in as an enforcer is still a "specialist" job, had to re-read the tooltip to realize the Battle Thrall designation was required. At the time of my posting of this thread, I had switched the rights of one of my larger xenos slave species from "Indentured Servitude" to "Battle Thrall", but they still were not filling the enforcer jobs, hence my first bullet point in the OP. Since, I was able to somehow fix this issues by resettling multiple times until they finally DID fill the enforcer roles. So that was probably my biggest LOGISTICAL issue that I was able to solve (high crime rates on a bunch of planets). However, I am still pretty bummed about having to force my founder species into slavery, but thinking about it now I was only taking a xenos-based stratification in mind, where a lot of players/playthroughs would also benefit from just a class based stratification system, which I had not thought of.

Ultimately, this was very helpful and I thank all of those who responded. Always something new to learn with Stellaris.

 

[Greykrest]

The problem was when I started this particular campaign I had never used the slaver guild civic, so wasn't 100% sure how it worked. Then when I researched I had found conflicting info about the required slave ratio, not thinking it was species based. From an RP perspective, I would be actually really happy with my current empire slave to pop ratio (about 85% slaves right now) IF my founder species could be 100% free and assume all of the Ruler/enforcer jobs, essentially doubling down on my authoritarian ethics.

Yeah, like a lot of things, the game doesn't explain exactly how Slaver Guilds works (or Indentured Servitude, for that matter). Often even experienced players aren't aware exactly how Slaver Guilds works, enslaving 35% on both a planet and species basis.

 

[theBigTurnip385]

If you run a pleasure seeker/ death cult -> syncretic origin.

You can run slave only worlds from the start of the game.
You can have a mining world that only has slaves on it.

if you set your slaves to be domestic servants and decent living standards your slaves are only at 30% happiness.
They have servile which gives them +10% happiness

Death Cult can give them 20-30% happiness

And if you want to run pacifist you can give them another 10% happiness.

That means those domestic servants are sitting at either 60%-70% happiness.

They will no longer lower the stability on a planet and will instead be raising it by 6-12

the domestic servants provide 9 amenities which means you can build mining worlds, energy, food worlds without any leaders and 0 housing districts from the start of the game.

eventually you can build science worlds exactly the same again with 0 free pops.

 

[The Founder]

Basically: You have to rid of the Slaver Guilds Civic.
Slaver empire usually have the issue that there will not be enough free people to work the Specialist+ jobs.

The Slaver Guild Civic + Specieswide slavery simply makes those issues worse.
Drop the civic. Maybe turn some slaves into battle-thralls or lessen some species opression down to Residency.

 

[Franton]

but they still were not filling the enforcer jobs

I've been playing with Slaver Guilds for some time now, and I've found some oddities of automatic job assignment, that can lead to pops not being assigned to specific jobs, even if they were allowed to take it. In some cases I found I could fix this by setting focus on enforcer jobs (after reducing the job count to the desired number).