Teach me how to slave, please!

[The Grumpy Buddha]

My preference is definitely for tall/mega-Unity/tech empires, sometimes pacifist, sometimes purgey-expansion, so I haven't really tried slavin' in awhile, and never in 2.2. FWIW, I also just bought MegaCorp.

Can someone suggest a MegaCorp/slavey combo to try out? I'm not looking for something OP, but also don't want something completely gimped. More importantly, what are the ins and outs of running a slaver empire? It looks like all regular citizens take a -10% hit to happiness, which kinda sucks. Looks like Raiding is a good way to get some free pops? Any other tips? Game-mechanic wise, is there a best slavery type? And what am I forgetting to ask?

 

[Nussor]

Slaves have a bunch of downsides. They bring down approval and cause government ethics attraction to fall, so you'll end up with less Influence than usual, especially when your empire grows. Also, raw resources aren't that useful. You want max Research and Alloys and just trade for what you need on the market. Instead, slaves will indirectly gimp your economy. At least they don't cost consumer goods.

So the best way to use slaves is probably to herd them all onto one Thrall World and let them produce all the raw resource that you'll ever need, while keeping them out of your other worlds. Raiding can indeed be a nice source of extra pops, but they won't be of too much use until you unlock Thrall Worlds. Taking Expansion first is probably a must here.

 

[Matoro_TBS]

Some miscellanous tips:

Don't take Slaver Guilds civic. It causes 40% of planets population be enslaved. Basically that means you cant specialize planets, like having main-species only science worlds.

Authoritarians can now enslave xenoes, so if you don't want to be hated xenophobe you could be just authoritarian.

Best way to get slaves for me is conquering couple primitive worlds. You could use raiding, but I haven't tried that.

Slave-minmaxing:
-one slave species with strong or industrous to do all basic worker stuff. You need them a lot.
-one charismatic species in domestic servitude. Domestic servants don't need jobs: they create their own "servant" jobs which produce amenities. Aim not to make a single amenity building, but instead using domestic servants. You can use saved building slots for something more useful. Remember amenities buff stability, and over 70% stability gives damn good bonuses for everything. So get those domestic servants.
I haven't tried battle thralls.
Livestock is good! It can optimally produce a lot more food than farming would.
Slaves produce a lot of crime, so have prectinct building on every planet.

Remember you can control which species grows on planet by clicking the growing- portrait.

 

[ArmChairAttila]

This guy is wrong on so many levels. Thrall world's are great though, it's about the only thing I agree with him. First thing slavers tend to be market focused. All those useless energy, food and minerals you have a abundance of is actually very useful on the market and with the plantary buffs and edicts. My last dispoler game I was trading so much resources to the market I WAS NEVER SHORT ON ANYTHING BUT UNITY AND INFLUENCE. So my advice is learn how the market works when using slavers. Bio Ascension synergies well with slavers. If you set one species as a slave race your primary species will auto promote to the good jobs. This means you can erudite your primary and nerve staple your slaves without worry the pop job assignments will mess them up to much. You can also acquire slaves through conquest or make some yourself and sell them on the market. The AI loves the slave market and you will make bank there. You can even screw over the AI by modding the selling slaves with fertile and devious, they will still buy them in droves lol. Slave processing center alleviates a lot of the political pressure early in game. Slaves don't use much housing or CG's so that's not really a issue either. Slaves make great clerks also, wich is a cheap way to power your trade even more.

Edit: a lot of people are going to tell you that slavers guild is bad. It's actually very good for a early game civic. You will want to replace it when you can for aristocratic elite and something else after you acquire a second species as slaves. Keep a eye on the slave market, I have had a couple of peaceful games where I found a good slave species on the market without resorting to conquest.

 

[yerm]

Slavery is pretty good at the moment. Ignore the haters. They consume less resources and lack political power, so as long as you manage them well to circumvent their unhappiness impact, they can be considerably superior to free pops in the worker slots.

Barbaric is arguably the most OP route to take. This will let you multiply your population without pummeling your empire size or suffering the more severe drawbacks of a formal conquest. Short of a total all in cheese play (eg gaia start into corvette rushing) it is one of the strongest openings.

Consider aristocratic elite as an all around handy balance for your slave empire regardless of what path you take. Flat bonuses to stability can really glue together what might otherwise be an unhappy planet. Alternatively, since you mention liking unity, the alternative is to take byzantine civic and stratified (or similar) living standards. This throws you extra ruler class pops which add amenities while flat reducing their net use, so while you end up with less raw stability you still get a decent bump due to a large number of quite happy and politically-empowered rulers, now with extra unity from admins rather than lost from noble swaps.

Corvee is a headache saver. Great but not totally necessary. Since you now have more defined tiers of pops, you will probably shuffle pops more than your tall pacifism play. Moving incoming rulers into a conquest, or spreading the raid-earned slaves off the arbitrary world they all got put in.

Slaver guilds is a trap. Don't bother with it IMO. This expansion made economy all about specialization and this civic is the total opposite effect - even the heaviest slaver will want some of their worlds to be free planets/habitats focused on specialist roles.

 

[The Grumpy Buddha]

Now we're slavin'!

How much does slave unhappiness affect their output/the output of the other folks on the planet? I'm not familiar with hardly any of those civics/traits, I'll check 'em out.

 

[Livigy]

Bio with Slavery can be ridiculously strong. Especially if you take Barbaric despoiler/xenophobe for the livestock and adaptability tree.

Bio and slavery work well together so even though most of what I will mention relates to slavery bio ascension is essential to make it work effectively through tailoring species and nerve staples. The main complaint people are making with bio/slavery is the micro but there are some tools to help with that. Although I would still personally shy away from slaver guilds at least until after you get your third civic or have a conquered servant species and maybe have thrall worlds.

The first tool is utilising different slave types, this is where some of the bigger advantages are- Don't just make all slaves chattel.

Biomodded livestock and servants are ridiculously efficient by lowering the needs of housing consumer goods and building/districts. Which has a major snowball effect over the course of the game. One livestock can get over 14 food -this is still lower than actual farmers. But live stock use minimal or no consumer goods, don't require districts (which helps empire sprawl), don't require power to run districts or buildings and use minimal housing such as 0.2 housing per pop

Now if you fill an ecumonoplis with livestock you will have amenities problem..

Which is solved by servants. Who also require no buildings, minimal housing and minimal/no consumer goods. Servants are also able to take on other jobs such as clerks or even mine and farm etc so they are great to have as an all rounder. When a better slave comes along they will demote into the servant role so they are never unemployed and will keep your amenities high on any world. They are also great to put on new worlds to help unlock building slots and hit the first 10 pops to get rid of the new colony debuff, especially as they add to amenities and require next to no housing.

In the early game you should consider conquering a neighbour and turn them all into servants and dispersing them to your planets - give them decent living conditions to help your stability/crime for a measly 0.05 consumer goods. You will still have to feed your new 'friends' but you wont suffer a huge swing in consumer good demand and your new specialist buildings will become inactive so you can slowly rebuild the world rather than suffering a huge economic adjustment - your servants will still work the basic districts though so generally there shouldn't be major food issues.

The other major tool is Thrall worlds. Thrall worlds spawn the type of slave you want (they only spawn slaves currently on the world) so you can stockpile slaves and move them as necessary. Slaves by default are cheaper to move and when on a thrall world they don't become unemployed they just 'toil' - they are essentially awaiting distribution. If you have enough slave housing you can stockpile for quite a while then instead little population movements every so often (which is micro intensive) you can set up a new world and move large amounts of stockpiled pops. I recommend Thrallworlds on a planet with growth bonuses or a world with decent mineral districts or any small world that has unique resources. Also the world does not need to be trade route accessible so the fringe worlds are great for thralls. If you are heavily slaving consider forgoing most or even all your normal mining/rural worlds in favour of thrall worlds. If you have livestock you don't need agriworlds and the 5% mineral bonus doesn't compare against the slave growth and functionality of stockpiling slaves without issue. You can't convert already established worlds into thrall worlds though but if the world is small and useless consider tearing it down and rebuilding.

If you don't go xenophobe for livestock thrall worlds typically have additional building slots if you cram them with servants so you can use those building slots for hydroponic farms to avoid agri districts and empire sprawl.

The last major tool to help with the micro is stopping species breeding.
Don't be afraid to stop species from breeding to get your balance right, at some point you should want to stop the food/mineral slaves breeding even if it is just a 10 year break as you want other pops breeding - typically your non slave species. Some of the micro you will face is dealing with pops you no longer really need, so stop them breeding early and let servants fill the gaps until you are sure you need more of a particular slave.

Now biomodding aside from the obvious tailoring of slaves to certain professions has some additional benefits for slavers. Delicious is great if you are a xenophage but the really useful trait is the nerve staple. This reduces crime and other issues to the baseline default of one. At 0% happiness a pop produces 2 crime and instability, a nerve stapled pop will default to one and really happy pops have less than one. If you have a lot of slaves and slavery tends to make unhappy pops, nerve staples are key to keeping your empire stable as it basically halves the downside of happiness penalties.

 

[nuyu]

Use your 8 tentacles to whip them. BTW, slaving is bad.

 

[Tyro]

Bio with Slavery can be ridiculously strong. Especially if you take Barbaric despoiler/xenophobe for the livestock and adaptability tree.

Barbaric Despoilers kind of suck though. Adaptability is nice, but not worth the civic slot. Maybe good for fanatic purifiers? I'm not sure if they can have syncretic species or enslaved robots.

Bio and slavery work well together so even though most of what I will mention relates to slavery bio ascension is essential to make it work effectively through tailoring species and nerve staples. The main complaint people are making with bio/slavery is the micro but there are some tools to help with that. Although I would still personally shy away from slaver guilds at least until after you get your third civic or have a conquered servant species and maybe have thrall worlds.

Just avoid slaver guilds period; xeno slavery is far superior. Otherwise I agree.

The first tool is utilising different slave types, this is where some of the bigger advantages are- Don't just make all slaves chattel.

Biomodded livestock and servants are ridiculously efficient by lowering the needs of housing consumer goods and building/districts. Which has a major snowball effect over the course of the game. One livestock can get over 14 food -this is still lower than actual farmers. But live stock use minimal or no consumer goods, don't require districts (which helps empire sprawl), don't require power to run districts or buildings and use minimal housing such as 0.2 housing per pop

How do you get livestock to 14 food? 4 base, +2 Delicious, what else?

Now if you fill an ecumonoplis with livestock you will have amenities problem..

Which is solved by servants. Who also require no buildings, minimal housing and minimal/no consumer goods. Servants are also able to take on other jobs such as clerks or even mine and farm etc so they are great to have as an all rounder. When a better slave comes along they will demote into the servant role so they are never unemployed and will keep your amenities high on any world. They are also great to put on new worlds to help unlock building slots and hit the first 10 pops to get rid of the new colony debuff, especially as they add to amenities and require next to no housing.

In the early game you should consider conquering a neighbour and turn them all into servants and dispersing them to your planets - give them decent living conditions to help your stability/crime for a measly 0.05 consumer goods. You will still have to feed your new 'friends' but you wont suffer a huge swing in consumer good demand and your new specialist buildings will become inactive so you can slowly rebuild the world rather than suffering a huge economic adjustment - your servants will still work the basic districts though so generally there shouldn't be major food issues.

Some really good advice here, thank you

The other major tool is Thrall worlds. Thrall worlds spawn the type of slave you want (they only spawn slaves currently on the world) so you can stockpile slaves and move them as necessary. Slaves by default are cheaper to move and when on a thrall world they don't become unemployed they just 'toil' - they are essentially awaiting distribution. If you have enough slave housing you can stockpile for quite a while then instead little population movements every so often (which is micro intensive) you can set up a new world and move large amounts of stockpiled pops. I recommend Thrallworlds on a planet with growth bonuses or a world with decent mineral districts or any small world that has unique resources. Also the world does not need to be trade route accessible so the fringe worlds are great for thralls. If you are heavily slaving consider forgoing most or even all your normal mining/rural worlds in favour of thrall worlds. If you have livestock you don't need agriworlds and the 5% mineral bonus doesn't compare against the slave growth and functionality of stockpiling slaves without issue. You can't convert already established worlds into thrall worlds though but if the world is small and useless consider tearing it down and rebuilding.

If you don't go xenophobe for livestock thrall worlds typically have additional building slots if you cram them with servants so you can use those building slots for hydroponic farms to avoid agri districts and empire sprawl.

You can't build mineral purification plants or energy grids on thrall worlds, though. I'd say the best thrall world is probably agrarian; they seem to be designed for it. Livestock definitely have advantages, but there's no reason you can't do both, and having a livestock species requires you to dedicate a species to livestock production. Maybe a subspecies? I'm not sure if you can change subspecies rights separate from parent race in that category.

The last major tool to help with the micro is stopping species breeding.
Don't be afraid to stop species from breeding to get your balance right, at some point you should want to stop the food/mineral slaves breeding even if it is just a 10 year break as you want other pops breeding - typically your non slave species. Some of the micro you will face is dealing with pops you no longer really need, so stop them breeding early and let servants fill the gaps until you are sure you need more of a particular slave.

Now biomodding aside from the obvious tailoring of slaves to certain professions has some additional benefits for slavers. Delicious is great if you are a xenophage but the really useful trait is the nerve staple. This reduces crime and other issues to the baseline default of one. At 0% happiness a pop produces 2 crime and instability, a nerve stapled pop will default to one and really happy pops have less than one. If you have a lot of slaves and slavery tends to make unhappy pops, nerve staples are key to keeping your empire stable as it basically halves the downside of happiness penalties.

Lots of useful stuff here, thank you <3

 

[Beyond Disbelief]

*looks at title*
Sir, I think you just tripped several alarms at the PITF for Human Trafficking.

r/shitstellarissays

 

[Slynx]

Can someone suggest a MegaCorp/slavey combo to try out?

authoritarian-. militarist for doctrines and better chance of getting tech(which will lead to easier conquering), also buffs. spiritualist if you want ethics attraction, otherwise whatever you want
no slave civic(it's crap, you can't control if the person you need will be a slave or not. better get xenos to be slaves. also you don't want to sell your pops. so this civic is useless or outright bad). other civics are anything, but I guess +trade power and +empire size\colony ships are the best for megacorp.

then the simple part - you conquer. you set their rights to slaves (slaves\decent\no migration\no growth) and resettle them to your worlds. you may even resettle the last one to get rid of unneeded planet

usually I dont' care about slave types. cuz I handle armies and stuff with different methods. but you can select srong as battle thralls. and useless species as domestic slaves

 

[Sinister2202]

Nihilistic Acquisition is very fun if you want to become an aggressive slaver.

It's also beneficial to have biological ascension if you want the most out of your slaves. Slaves with positive traits sell high on market.

It's good to label slave species names to organize. Have at least one or two species to be domestic servants as well with decent living conditions. But they might take yer jobs.

Another tip... which I don't think all would agree, but I tend to keep my own species free and well fed. I play as egalitarian xenophobe most of the time and I only strictly enslave xenos. If xenos are in my empire, they are most likely unhappy anyways (since conquered), might as well just enslave.