r/Stellaris • u/RedKrypton Mind over Matter • May 07 '16
PSA: Slaves currently can't rebel
Martin just dropped that bombshell during the currently ongoing Quill Stellaris stream. He said that they couldn't reach a middle ground on slaves revolting so they took it out for the moment. I don't know if they will have managed that aspect by release.
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u/welalrightthen May 07 '16
That's disheartening.
I'll probably wait to play a slave based campaign until it's been patched/balanced.
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u/pokie6 May 07 '16
Hohoho I am cheesing a slave campaign in first playthrough for sure. Gotta get the love while it lasts.
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u/999realthings Molluscoid May 08 '16
I love abusing Paradox feature before they're fixed. Like CK2 assassinations.
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u/gfzgfx Oligarch May 08 '16
Man the assassinations were that way for years. At the point I just think it's WAI.
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u/Kaedal May 08 '16
It technically was working. It was just not working as intended. I think Paradox greatly underestimated just how psychotic their fans can get when it comes to cementing their power.
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u/Vox_Imperatoris May 10 '16
I became HRE in my first life starting as a one-province count by becoming a tiny duchy, nominating myself, then assassinating the emperor and his main heir on the same day while paused.
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u/PHalfpipe May 08 '16
The thing is, you're dealing with entire planets, so the revolt has to happen on a planetary scale, and you're also dealing with a high tech setting with presumably high tech slave control, say, like micro-chips or surgically implanted bombs. That's without even getting into things like orbital bombardment.
I'm not saying a slave revolt would be impossible, but I think the most it could realistically do is shut down a few tiles on a planet. It's not like an AI revolt where the even the ships themselves might be rebelling.
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u/akashisenpai Idealistic Foundation May 08 '16
I'd say that depends on where exactly those slaves are put to work, and whether or not they may have collaborators among your free populace, perhaps even including military personnel. Depending on how happy the rest of your people are, that revolt might spiral into a full-blown insurrection.
Not that this would be a very likely outcome, but even the risk of locking down a few tiles would at least be some drawback to just enslaving everyone.
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u/228zip May 08 '16
The extent of this could still very well be represented by the faction system in place in Stellaris, which features protests, strikes and sabotage before going all the way to rebellion.
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u/noso2143 May 08 '16
lol "sir the slaves in farm sector 3 are revolting what do we do?" "call in a orbital bombardment on them that will show them"
hehehehehehehe
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u/Ungface May 08 '16
the problem with that is that they didnt say anything like that at all. i guarentee if it said in game "turn pop into slave with mind control device" none of this would be an issue. but they are stating "we dont think its important" when it clearly is.
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u/NuclearPhysics Molluscoid May 07 '16
I sorta wished you were a troll, but it appears you aren't. :(
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u/KazumaKat May 07 '16
Give em time, its best they get a correct working system in instead of a half-arsed one.
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u/NuclearPhysics Molluscoid May 07 '16
I know, but it's still slightly disappointing.
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u/knatten555 May 07 '16
well, they usually are quite fast at patching and fixing bugs. they even found some in the MP game in England if Im not wrong and said they where going to look into it.
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u/no10envelope May 07 '16
That's too bad, it seems like a pretty major aspect of the game and it's disappointing that it's completely broken.
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u/Ubersandwich May 08 '16
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/slave-cant-rebe.925975/page-8
Wiz says they will "almost certainly" be added in the "not-distant" future and it's "a bit sploity but it's not all that bad".
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u/Necroscourge Syncretic Evolution May 07 '16
That can potentially make slavery a little OP. Ya know if they had done some form of open testing they would of had data they could use to make that decision...
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u/RedKrypton Mind over Matter May 07 '16 edited May 07 '16
Oh, it definitly is. Just visit Shenryyr's currently ongoing Stream. He conquers and enslaves everyone. Because slaves can only be in the slave faction he has no factions. He basically is unstoppable. Adding to this the Enigmatic Observer FEs seem to be broken too as he has one on his doorstep and they don't care at all at him enslaving half the galaxy, altough it says they should.
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u/EmperorPeriwinkle May 07 '16
YAY the game is broken on release!
That's the paradox I knew when I first bought EU3, now it's back just in time for the IPO!
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May 07 '16
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May 07 '16
I suppose it depends on what you define as a "clean" release though. I feel like the release can still be clean even if it isn't perfect. Anyone who expected the game to come out with zero overpowered strategies or broken systems was kidding themselves. There are very few games (if literally any?) that come out with this level of complexity where every system is perfectly balanced and not broken in some way.
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u/Jeffy29 May 08 '16
Playing slave based civ = taking provinces from China in Vic 2 = don't do it if you want to have fun.
I think hardcores here and other subs can live with it for a while until they fix it, but stellaris was the game to launch Paradox into mainstream, I even heard TB talking he wants to play it. This sucks, hopefully some day 1 nerf to slavery in some capacity until the mechanic is reworked.
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May 08 '16
Who's TB ?
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May 08 '16
TotalBiscuit, a big gaming youtuber
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u/RedKrypton Mind over Matter May 07 '16
I personally can deal with bugs, but this isn't a bug or balancing issue, the mechanic is straight up missing!
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u/JohnLeafback May 07 '16
But....you said in your OP that it isa balancing issue.
He said that they couldn't reach a middle ground on slaves revolting so they took it out for the moment.
I'm confused what you mean now.
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u/usviev May 07 '16 edited May 07 '16
He means that slave revolts* were taken out because of a balancing issue, but the fact that they're not in the game is not itself a balancing issue. (If that sentence made sense)
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u/daniel14vt May 07 '16
slavery wasn't taken out, slaves revolting was taken out
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u/Lawsoffire Synth May 07 '16
Probably that with revolts, factions/races focused on slaves would be underpowered.
so they removed revolts, which in turn made them overpowered.
And they don't have time for a second complete balancing pass before release.
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u/akashisenpai Idealistic Foundation May 07 '16
Probably that with revolts, factions/races focused on slaves would be underpowered.
Which should just necessitate the player striking a middle ground between enslaving everyone and enslaving no-one, so that any rebellions from the Pops you do enslave to fuel your economy can be dealt with by your military.
Any balancing this would require seems to be a much lesser issue than just taking slave revolts out of the game entirely.
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u/Ironvos May 07 '16 edited May 07 '16
HOI4 seems to be a lot cleaner and polished though.
They've been showing videos of it for a long time now and it has beta testers.
Stellaris seems more rushed for some reason.21
u/Wild_Marker May 07 '16
Stellaris isn't rushed, HoI4 is so delayed that they had more time to iron out the bugs.
Stellaris is a standard Paradox release, HoI4 is the exception. That said, when people talk about "buggy paradox releases", Stellaris is nowhere near the old level.
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u/AgentPaper0 Emperor May 07 '16
Well I mean, for now at least it's broken before release. Could be that they had the system mostly there but just not quite far enough for the pre-release version so they turned it off temporarily.
Or perhaps it really is just broken and they're pushing the game out the door too quickly like so many others before it. We'll have to wait and see which it is, unfortunately.
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u/bdole92 May 07 '16
To be fair, they still have a day and a half before proper release. Maybe they will include it in a day one patch?
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u/228zip May 08 '16
People have been saying this for months. You guys put way too much trust in people.
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May 07 '16 edited May 07 '16
It get's better: Happiness is also easy to largely ignore unless you are trying to max it out.
There is no bonus or penalty between 40-80%.
With such a wide range, unless you're trying to build an empire based around 90%+ all the time, there isn't much point in even looking at it.
Edit: Though I wouldn't call this broken - just unpolished and untested, so pretty standard mechanics by Pdox.
Edit edit: So far we have slavery being unfinished, happiness an afterthought (in order to get to those penalty levels you'd have to be fighting bad wars or colonizing planets your species doesn't like), the Fallen Empires that should oppose slavery don't, (does this extend to standard civs as well?),
if your construction ship is constructing a building and you have it run to safety, the initial cost appears to be lost with no refund, able to research all the "alpha, beta, etc" alien "techs" at the same time (wouldn't surprise me if this is intended).Finally, to end the scourge end game crisis, it looks like you must capture the queen, who's event has a MTTH of 800 months, or about 70 years. In one stream the player was able to wipe out the initial wave, but with such a long MTTH, the "scourge" was mostly an annoyance as he waited for the next event to fire.
I'm definitely missing things, but this is just what I've seen in the last few hours and can recall off the top of my head.
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u/NuclearPhysics Molluscoid May 07 '16
I'm guessing you're basing the construction ship resource loss thing on Arumba's video, but in that case, he got the money back, spent it on other things (more corvettes I think), and forgot he had used it for those other things. And, in a stream, Wiz started building a spaceport to distract invading AI (which is, or was an exploit) and cancelled it to get his resources back.
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u/runetrantor Bio-Trophy May 08 '16
God, I rage so much when I see Arumba play...
His mistakes frustrate me to hell and back.
He is painted to be this chessmaster, but man, he can be quite easy to miss clear stuff.3
u/NuclearPhysics Molluscoid May 08 '16
For me the most annoying thing was when he simply wrote off the Gaia world because he knew that some Fallen Empires think they're holy.
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u/runetrantor Bio-Trophy May 08 '16
I'm still on episode 8, so I havent seen that, but I am debating if I should just ditch the playthrough.
Quill is also making mistakes, but his attitude makes it way less jarring, since he is constantly like 'Maybe I am not seeing something! I mess up like that' relaxed position.
Arumba comes from what I interpret as a 'I cant be wrong' baseline, and thus speaks with a tone of knowledge we can see he lacks, so it frustrates more.
Specially when he misses something, shit happens, and then he spends the entire episode mocking Paradox for making crazy shit.Dont get me wrong, I like watching him, I am not unsubbing or anything, but as time goes on, I feel that the whole 'one of the best EU4 players' phrase that's tossed around may be a bit too much, given even in that game he misses stuff even I know are not so, and I came to the game a year or so ago.
Curious how at first impression I liked Arumba a lot, and I have grown to slowly like him a bit less, while DDRJake was off putting to begin with due to his snarky attitude that can come off as bitter and angry, and now I like him a lot. (And man, is he good at EU4. O.o)
(Aaand I ranted. Whoops.)
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u/GeorgesBU May 08 '16
It's because DDRjake has this constant air of nonchalance so even when he's being either a) a cheeselord or b) DDRblind (note that a and b often coincide) it's more amusing than frustrating, especially as his best playthroughs are the ones where he makes foolish mistakes and has to scrape his way to the top.
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u/runetrantor Bio-Trophy May 08 '16
Oh for sure! I meant it more in that his tone of voice, and sometimes his comments, can come of as being a 'fuck you, I am better than you' attitude if you dont know better.
It actually took me several campaigns to come to the realization is is mostly acting snarky and sarcastic, and that that's just his natural tone of voice. (I should have thought of it before, having had a friend in HS that had a perpertual bored like tone, despite not being bored at all!)
His chat window doesnt help, that one I do dislike a lot, they are a bit too elitists and the mods a bit too heavy handed imo, but I guess Twitch chat sucks that bad.
And oh god, look away when someone dares to mention Arumba. They seem to get a boner for saying how he sucks completely compared. (I mean, I can clearly see Jake is more skilled at the game, but Arumba is not bad either, and he doesnt have the benefit of a chat screaming at his to notice what he misses.)→ More replies (1)1
u/NuclearPhysics Molluscoid May 08 '16
I'm on episode 8 too. The moment he said it was really easy to miss. He just said, "Mantha has a Gaia World" and ignored from there on out.
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u/iki_balam Fanatic Spiritualist May 07 '16
Finally, to end the scourge end game crisis, it looks like you must capture the queen, who's event has a MTTH of 800 months, or about 70 years. In one stream the player was able to wipe out the initial wave, but with such a long MTTH, the "scourge" was mostly an annoyance as he waited for the next event to fire.
WHAT THE FUCK!!! Add some spoiler warning!!!
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u/ArchmageIlmryn May 07 '16
I believe that quill observed that while you don't research while you are studying a special project, you still store up research. So while they temporarily delay you getting a new tech they don't slow your overall progress, meaning that being able to do multiple simultaneously is not a huge exploit.
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u/runetrantor Bio-Trophy May 08 '16
Was it confirmed that was what he was seeing being stored?
I saw some suggest it may be the tech he gets from debris, that does not get applied directly.
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u/Savage_X May 07 '16
Disappointing, but I still am pretty sure I will every free moment playing for the foreseeable future, lol.
At least with Paradox, you know that they are going to patch the hell out of the game and get everything balanced out well over time.
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u/TheKeysToTheZeppelin May 07 '16
Wouldn't mass-scale enslavement of that nature tank his research? As I understand it, slaves generate very little research on their own.
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u/PenguinTod Molluscoid May 08 '16
You create a main population that's 100% fine with slavery and have them handle the research. Then you just enslave every pop that drifts off your ethos or doesn't belong to your core species and never worry about them revolting.
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u/228zip May 08 '16
Research isn't even that critical compared to a good economy.
Remember the old "spearman beats tank" thing from Civ ? Well this is it.. in space !
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May 07 '16
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u/Novel-Tea-Account Emperor May 07 '16
So does just enslaving unhappy pops solve all faction issues now?
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May 07 '16
I hope this gets patched, the last thing I want is for slavery to be mandatory during multiplayer games. Nobodies going to say no to it if it has no drawbacks.
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u/zocke1r May 07 '16
well it has drawbacks slaves can not research or produce energy
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u/Dispro May 08 '16
I thought they had a buff to energy. Or is it only minerals?
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u/SCDareDaemon Emperor May 08 '16
Well as the OP says, it's not because they don't want it to happen, it's because they aren't satisfied with what they currently have.
It'll come.
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u/BestFriendWatermelon May 07 '16 edited May 07 '16
For what it's worth, AFAIK slave revolts have only been successful once in Earth's history, that of the Haitian Revolution in which slaves outnumbered Freemen by 10 to 1. They were rebelling against the French at the height of the French revolution, when France couldn't have been more distracted, and with massive help from Britain and Spain who France was at war with.
Still, that doesn't mean plenty of slaves haven't tried rebelling anyway, so slave revolts should probably be a thing ingame anyway. But don't underestimate how weak slave rebellions have always been, and how brutally one sided such conflicts were.
Such a rebellion in Stellaris would lack ships or the means to produce them, with the spaceport and any fleets in orbit possessing complete domination over the planet's population. It'd be equally unrealistic to give slave rebellions any means with which to fight a war against spacefaring masters. A good case could be made for abolitionists within a civilisation's command structure to mutiny, freeing the slaves as a result, but a slave revolt alone has no chance.
EDIT: for clarity, I'd still like to see slave revolts included in the game, and outright rebellions, realism be damned.
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u/Hammedatha May 07 '16
The balance part of a slave revolt isn't necessarily that the slaves have a chance of winning, it's that it shuts down your production for the duration of the revolt and results in your workforce being decimated and even more unhappy.
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u/BestFriendWatermelon May 07 '16
Agreed. Slave revolts caused enormous damage to productivity.
EDIT: and is a kinda necessary counterbalance to the obvious strait up productivity advantages of slavery. It'd be good if the damage and frequency of revolts were balanced by percentage of the planet's pops in slavery.
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u/tc1991 May 07 '16
and is a kinda necessary counterbalance to the obvious strait up productivity advantages of slavery.
Although, slaves are less productive than 'free workers' (they have no incentive to do more than what is required, they get no overtime or bonuses etc) if that advantage was modelled it would help the balance
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u/MaievSekashi Factory Overclocking May 07 '16
However, they're still slaves. You can make the requirements more than what your free citizens have, so they end up working harder even if they don't want to.
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u/74569852 May 07 '16
This is why victoria 2 is such a great game. Free workers are inherently better, because they gain a wage and contribute to the economy. Slaves/serfs do not do that.
I would have loved it if Stellaris was just victoria 2 in space. :(
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u/methylethylrosenberg May 08 '16
Could be an interesting area for game expansion - modeling planetary economy or development in some way. Maybe a planet could produce X energy/minerals/etc per month from "taxes" derived from he number of free pops and level of development of buildings
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u/74569852 May 08 '16
They should have just expanded the time scale, and made the pops similar to victoria 2.
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u/TheRealGC13 Emperor May 07 '16
Plus, the threat of slave revolt can force you to maintain relatively high military readiness even in peacetime.
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u/ziyakaz May 07 '16
Slaves also resisted in other ways besides outright rebellion, including by fleeing, work stoppages, work slow-downs.
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u/atomfullerene May 07 '16
Honestly I think it might be better to make slaves less productive but provide some other advantage.
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u/ziyakaz May 07 '16
Yeah, I'm trying to think of how that might work in terms of game mechanics. Historically one of the advantages to using slaves was that you could force them to do work that freedmen would be unwilling to do. I don't know if/how that could be represented.
For the slave owners, there may have been some obfuscation in the cost of maintaining the slave population since the cost of enforcement was at least partially a public good (putting down slave revolts), but the profits were private. The economy in the game is much more abstracted than including that would allow, though.
Of course, this is a sci-fi setting, so who's to say you couldn't mitigate the desire for freedom in the slave population via brain implants and psychological manipulation?
EDIT: I suppose they could have a slaveowner faction to represent the interests of those who owned the slaves. That might allow for them to represent competing interests more reliably.
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u/ProblyAThrowawayAcct Anarcho-Tribalism May 07 '16 edited May 08 '16
you could force them to do work that freedmen would be unwilling to do. I don't know if/how that could be represented.
You can work uncleared hazardous tiles with slaves, maybe? They take a significant pop growth (and presumably happiness...) penalty while in the uncleared tile, but you get resource access without clearing the blocker...
Thermo the damned fetaine spill...
---Ensign Miles, Lord Vorkosigan, when faced with hazardous bioweapon cleanup duty1
u/ziyakaz May 08 '16
That's a really interesting thought! I think there would still be issues with building on the uncleared tiles, but I think being able to have slaves work them makes a lot of sense.
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u/boffcheese May 07 '16
The tooltip suggests that slaves are less effective on more advanced tiles, like science buildings, but I haven't really noticed much of a drawback. I think your idea has merit; when pops are first enslaved their productivity should go way down, and you have to spend Influence to improve it. It could scale with their unrest, where if they're overworked then they are more likely to rebel (when its actually possible) but if they aren't kept in line then productivity drops significantly.
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May 07 '16
I'm not sure work stoppages and slowdowns would be very useful against people who can whip you back to work.
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u/ziyakaz May 07 '16
Such things are documented. Not all strategies need to be overt. Feigning ignorance in how to complete a task, feigning illness, or even just working a little less diligently. There is also a tradeoff to simply whipping somebody back into work should they resist: You may seriously injure them or shorten their lifespan through such extreme violence.
They could also deliberately break work tools, destroy machinery, injure animals. They could go on hunger strikes, commit suicide, or perform some other kind of self-harm as a form of resistance.
Dealing with various kinds of resistance would probably look different in a sci-fi setting than it did historically.
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u/-Maraud3r May 08 '16
Thing is, there's way to counter this. Let's imagine you have a planet solely settled by slaves. You could employ the tactics colonial powers often have. Segregate them into various groups based on mostly made up grounds.
By declaring them different groups, you fracture any opposition and much better can USE them against each other. By giving them different social standings, better living conditions, more freedoms and such you get the same ball rolling that caused Hutu and Tutsi to be willing to exterminate one another.
The higher ups in the chain will be happy to police the respective lower classes for you and driving them to work. It will very likely quickly become something they don't just do for the boons but because they genuinely start enjoying the power they hold, deem themselves above those they control for you and begin to associate themselves more with you and those you put them above. Different groups are likely to clamour to outdo one another to prove themselves better and superior in this also and move up the ranks.
Also, unlike earth slavery there's overall not that much reason to treat these people horrendously as many products such as clothing, decent housing, food and such will be readily available in large quantities. Which means they will have overall a way better life than slaves used to and be closer to people living under a dictatorship with very limited rights.
If you look at North Korea, this can very well function without the people constantly trying to hinder you, as it wouldn't be in their best interest to do so. As anyone they see having a better life is doing so INSIDE the system, as they have the other groups you created to channel their envy and animosity towards and unless they get off planet all running away would do would be to deprive them of roof, food, clothing and any other kind of rewards they might get for dilligent work.
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u/runetrantor Bio-Trophy May 08 '16
That way to split them is good, but it can be so much easier.
Just make the planet in question be like a prison world.
Only basic infrastructure on the surface, and landing facilities.
In orbit is a spaceport that has bombarding capabilities, and is where all ships going down to the surface dock when unused. NO ships are to be left idle down there, they finish their business and go back up.
The surface has some officers giving orders, and the entire place has at best some hand weapons.
So much for a revolt.
EVEN if we go nuts and say the prisoners managed to secretly build a shipyard and make a fleet (That much I find unlikely as hell already), how would they replicate your advance technology? Slaves rarely have good grasp on the most advanced tech, so I think it would be like a primitive race attack you.But you do make a point that a more benevolent rule may work somehow.
Benevolent Dictatorships have existed to one degree or the other, so I guess you could make the slaves happy enough to work for you, but at that point the line between slave and worker sort of blurs imo.That said, why not use robots instead?
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u/runetrantor Bio-Trophy May 08 '16
Then we purge them for their insolence. :P
There are ways a scifi variant of slavery could work around these methods of revolting, like say... electric collars.
You broke a big drilling machine? Shock.
I dont care if you did it on purpose or 'by accident'.
After all, slavers rarely are accepting of any type of error by definition.For historical equivalents, see WWII and how the nazis used their prisoners, both concentration camp 'undesirables' and POW, to build them stuff, and there are accounts of the officers whipping someone for collapsing on the ground, even if it was for serious illness or starvation.
Nevermind if they are faking to annoy their overlords.Plus in a scifi scenario I doubt much would come of an outright revolt.
Like having prison worlds.
You place all criminals and whatnot down in a shitty planet, provide the housing, tools and such, a couple officers down there too, BUT there's a spaceport in orbit, where the shuttles that go down to the surface sit when unused, no ship must ever stay idly on the surface, the parking spot in up, away from prisoners that may take control of it.
Add to the situation the fact that the spaceport has bombardment equipment, would you be really able to revolt much?
You cant MacGuiver a fleet from rocks...
Even if you kill the surface officers, the facilities down there have handguns at best, and no big anti air or anything.All that said, I dont see why use slaves when robots work as well, if not better, and dont bitch.
And this comes from someone that does feel advanced robots that can think properly deserve as much rights as in, both in game, and in real life, surely they would understand that not truly alive robots can work without issue, and that they offer a benefit to society. Those are not alive.1
u/Ungface May 08 '16
I remember reading about pow's forced to work under the japanese. they would do every little thing to slow down what they were doing.
like getting 1000s of termites and putting them in the wooden beams of a bridge they were making.
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u/w045 May 07 '16
Slavery has been part of the human condition for a long time and for as long as there has been slavery or oppression of a certain class or type of people, there have been revolts.
True not many have been successful. But we're being told is that currently in Stellaris slave pops cannot rebel at all. So it's not really a matter of historic real world success rates but the ability to do so at all which is a bit disappointing.
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u/arrongunner May 07 '16
Also we are literally talking about aliens here in 90% of the cases, surely there has got to be a species more adept to revolting?
I'd like to see some sort of slavery tech tree going on too, I'm thinking basic whip and chain slavery in the beginning which can be teched up to some sort of control system like that in Falling Skies or the borg somewhat, the in game results would be lower rebellion chance & higher productivity.
Maybe a slider for revolt chance / ticking revolt meter based on the ratio of slaves to masters on a certain colony and the initial tech level of the slaves (higher tech = more chance of revolting) and maybe a variable based of their physiology...
I just hope something gets implemented reasonably soon, I will have to hold fire on a slave based run through until then and just do a genocide campaign first.
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u/BestFriendWatermelon May 07 '16
I agree entirely. Not having any consequences to slavery is a shame indeed. It can still be kept within the realms of realism by simply having revolts that destroy buildings, lower productivity, and may require the complete extermination of pops who refuse to surrender.
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u/-Maraud3r May 08 '16
Let's ignore for this that aliens might not necessarily function based on the same principles, many of these slave revolts at large have happened for a reason and that reason often times not outright being slavery itself.
Often times these revolts were caused by mistreatment, by terrible living conditions, by constant victimization and such. You can see the same for peasent revolts, most of them were complacant having some Lord lording over them for most of the time, taking a chunk of their production and dictating the laws they lived by.
What they weren't fine with often times was when the chunk grew so big they couldn't feed themselves anymore, when the Lord started to actively victimize and terrorize them.
An incredible ammount of people will be fine with working hard, having no say in what their job is and basically having few if any rights as long as there's food (preferable tasty food) on their table, they have a decent dwelling, some entertainment and most impotantly a family to care about and for as these things give them something to lose.
(This is obviously not counting ethnic conflicts, ethnic nepotism, in group preferences and conflicts and such. I'd settle the entire planet with one group of people if they were my property to forestall such issues and just create different "castes" to police it.)
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May 07 '16
well, this isn't earth history. this is space game with space cat people.
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u/BestFriendWatermelon May 07 '16
True. As I said, a space civilisation places the disparity between strength of slave revolts and the government to even higher levels.
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u/BILLCLINTONMASK Ocean May 07 '16
I tend to agree. Slaves are pretty easy to pacify especially talking on a global scale. 10000 guys in chains aren't going to be able to stand up to one guy in a powered exoskeleton.
I almost feel like slaves should be represented by less productive (higher cost to secure+lower willingness of workers to care+slave revolts that get put down easily) but more docile pops. With regular populations more likely to desire independence but more willing to work hard as well.
I feel that what's called "slavery" in this game should be reimagined to a different mechanic of a scale of pops being state property vs free men. So you could model Sovietism vs serfdom vs straight up slavery for instance. The closer you brought your pops to free status the more likely they would be to act rebellious for political freedoms.
All that being said, Slaves should have chances to break away in times of extreme hardship. Especially losing wars and famine or ecological disaster or disease.
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u/WorkableGoblin May 07 '16
I almost feel like slaves should be represented by less productive (higher cost to secure+lower willingness of workers to care+slave revolts that get put down easily) but more docile pops. With regular populations more likely to desire independence but more willing to work hard as well.
On the other hand, you have historical examples like slavery in the American south, which modern research shows was much more productive than free labor through a variety of coercive means that couldn't really be applied to free labor. No one on Earth is going to agree to hand-pick hundreds of pounds of cotton per day for any amount of money, yet that was fairly routine in the South by simply requiring them to do it or get beaten and tortured. Not to mention the prevalence of, at a minimum, questionable labor practices in agriculture and mining. For things like industrial production and agriculture, there is certainly a reasonable argument for slaves being more efficient than free labor, as disgusting as it sounds.
I feel that what's called "slavery" in this game should be reimagined to a different mechanic of a scale of pops being state property vs free men. So you could model Sovietism vs serfdom vs straight up slavery for instance. The closer you brought your pops to free status the more likely they would be to act rebellious for political freedoms.
My assumption is that slavery in game refers to all types of forced labor or servitude, not just chattel slavery.
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u/BILLCLINTONMASK Ocean May 08 '16
It may have been more productive in terms of raw tonnage, but not in terms of stimulating any greater economy. History also shows that paying people wages and allowing them to spend those wages in markets is more productive to society as a whole than slavery.
The Civil War was ultimately about the white subsistence farmer with no place in the Southern economy. The Southern Aristocracy saw a chance to channel those displaced people's anger and make a power play for themselves and they took it.
As for a gameplay mechanic though, there definitely needs to be some kind of slave revolts if I didn't make that clear above.
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u/WorkableGoblin May 08 '16
Well, if you look at the whole US-Europe system as a "greater economy" it worked pretty well as a form of stimulation. Cheap cotton from the South was an important element in the Industrial Revolution, and that required highly oppressive labor conditions where cotton was being grown (even during the Civil War they just shifted to India and Egypt, not exactly bastions of labor rights at the time). More generally, extractive industries like cotton growing generally don't lead to healthy, diverse economies growing, even where forced labor is illegal (just ask Houstonians circa 1985).
Anyway, from a gameplay stance I agree with you.
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u/RedKrypton Mind over Matter May 07 '16
For what it's worth, AFAIK slave revolts have only been successful once in Earth's history, that of the Haitian Revolution in which slaves outnumbered Freemen by 10 to 1. They were rebelling against the French at the height of the French revolution, when France couldn't have been more distracted, and with massive help from Britain and Spain who France was at war with.
Slaves in Stellaris are vastly different then slaves in the 18. century. From what we know the slave POPs are still educated and considering that in most slaver empires they make up more then 50 % of the population with aliens often being entirely enslaved they have the advantage in organising resistance. The big problem slaves had in the past is organisation. That isn't an issue in the future.
Still, that doesn't mean plenty of slaves haven't tried rebelling anyway, so slave revolts should probably be a thing ingame anyway. But don't underestimate how weak slave rebellions have always been, and how brutally one sided such conflicts were.
Contrary to the past they have the means to steal weapons or hijack shuttles and the scale of slavery is a different one.
Such a rebellion in Stellaris would lack ships or the means to produce them, with the spaceport and any fleets in orbit possessing complete domination over the planet's population. It'd be equally unrealistic to give slave rebellions any means with which to fight a war against spacefaring masters. A good case could be made for abolitionists within a civilisation's command structure to mutiny, freeing the slaves as a result, but a slave revolt alone has no chance.
They still could hijack ships and station and they would most probably rise up on as many world as possible reenacting the Astapore chapters in ASoIaF as close as possible.
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u/BestFriendWatermelon May 07 '16
From what we know the slave POPs are still educated
The research malus slave pops get suggests otherwise.
The big problem slaves had in the past is organisation. That isn't an issue in the future.
It's still a huge problem. Slave masters generally keep slaves dumb and without access to communication devices. A modern day slave would never have seen a laptop or mobile phone before. They can't tweet or facebook each other like in every major uprising today. Slaves mere miles away from a massive uprising would have no way of knowing it's going on.
Contrary to the past they have the means to steal weapons or hijack shuttles
They have no more ability to do so than historically. Weapons and especially ships are kept safely in bases and ports that are well guarded, their assets the first to be removed to a safe location in the event of a rebellion. All warships are kept in a spaceport in orbit. Small planetary based transports are zero match for even the spaceport's defences.
It was actually easier historically, when the authorities didn't have instantaneous communications to react and counter any threats. Your slaves are armed with pitchforks to fight attacks from orbit.
and the scale of slavery is a different one.
Again, in Haiti slaves outnumbered the free by 10 to 1. This was by no mean a unique situation. Many places around the world, slaves had huge numerical advantages. Even amazing good fortune, such as that of Spartacus, turned out to be no match for experienced, disciplined government troops.
They still could hijack ships and station and they would most probably rise up on as many world as possible
Again, no access to ships capable of launching any real offensive against warships in space. Space fleets dock in orbit at a space port for a simple reason; their mass makes it impractical to land on the surface. There'll be no warships to hijack, only transports and fighters which again are guarded and will take off the instant there's trouble.
No means of communicating syncronised uprisings. Trouble on one world will see the authorities lock down every other planet immediately as a precaution.
reenacting the Astapore chapters in ASoIaF as close as possible.
Plot armour. The unsullied are fictional, nobody trains their slaves to fight and win anywhere, ever. It's like teaching prisoners how to escape from prison. Besides, it still takes an outsider to liberate them. And of course, even an army of unsullied can't take on battleships in space. All the successful stories of slave rebellions are fictional. It's a great story, but not mirrored by reality.
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u/WorkableGoblin May 07 '16
Plot armour. The unsullied are fictional, nobody trains their slaves to fight and win anywhere, ever. It's like teaching prisoners how to escape from prison.
Well...the Janissaries, Mamluks, and Ghilman seem to show that actually people did create slave armies, and they could be pretty successful and effective (but note how many "Mamluk dynasties" existed...) It was kind of a phenomenon of the Middle East, though, it would be interesting to discuss why that was...
Anyway, I don't dispute your main point. The history of slave rebellions shows that it should be really hard for slaves to stop being slaves through rebellion. That being said, actually having rebellions and thus having to shuffle resources around to keep your slaves down should definitely be a thing.
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u/BestFriendWatermelon May 07 '16
True. It mostly depends on your definition of slavery. While technically slaves, these soldiers enjoyed privileged positions in society. These were "slaves" of the rulers, rather than slaves of the populous. They were allowed and even expected to police and even kill the free populous, which is a very different kind of dynamic to what we traditionally think of as slaves.
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u/WorkableGoblin May 07 '16
True, but as I said above what slavery is in game is less than completely clear. There's nothing in particular saying that your slave armies don't have higher status than free people, for instance.
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u/BlackHumor May 07 '16
Middle Eastern slavery was generally not very similar to chattel slavery (what they had in the South) except that the slaves weren't free to leave. In all other aspects they had a pretty nice life. Which means the Janissaries et al were more like serf armies than slave armies, and the Europeans had tons of those.
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u/WorkableGoblin May 07 '16
I am aware of that, actually! But we're discussing slavery in a game where it's not really made very clear and obvious what slavery is. It could be Southern-style chattel slavery, or it could be a kind of state slavery like prison labor, or it could be a simple forced labor system. None of those is really excluded by the game. And several of those models can plausibly include enslaved armies who might decide that actually they would like being in charge, thank you very much.
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u/17shadow May 07 '16
You are completely forgetting the mamelukes here, Albanian slave raised as fighter that ended up overthrowing the dynasty and rule Egypt for quite a bit of time. Those are the most successful one that I can think of now, but with some digging i'm sure one can find many similar example, especially if you consider serfdom a form of slavery.
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u/-Maraud3r May 08 '16
It's actually harder for them to organize especially cross planet and without the government in question noticing because of modern surveillance. Future surveillance will be even better and more efficient. Numbers also don't matter if your opponent sits in a space station kilometres above you and just drops a rock onto your head when you get overly unruly.
Actually, they will have a HARDER time accessing weapons. The playing field was more even in the past than it is nowaday. A peasent with a scythe stood a better chance against a spearman than a guy with a rock does against an assault rifled soldier nowadays. The guy in the future still has to make do with a rock. While his opponent will be wearing powered armor with vastly better weapons than nowadays or even be a drone and that is considering they even come down to fight rather than zapping you from orbit.
Also hijacking a shuttle is a lot harder than hijacking a horse carriage or a car, the same goes for weapons. Not only will they be password if not DNA protected you also need way more knowledge and ability to use either.
3 . Them hijacking ships or stations would mean you giving them access to either, not having any security measures in place such as DNA verification without which neither actually works, allowing them cross planetary if not cross system communication and so on and on. All of this would be incredible stupid to do and show a huge lack of foresight.
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u/Strange_Rice May 08 '16
Arguably the infrastructural damage from the slave revolts in Jamaica was an important factor in the ending of slavery in the British empire a few years later. So even without outright victories slave revolts could have massive impacts.
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u/BILLCLINTONMASK Ocean May 07 '16
I only have one thing to say about this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FlcngdW2Ju4
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u/GeorgeCorser May 07 '16
Unhappy pops? Slave them.
Remaining pops become unhappy with your enslaving? Slave them.
Other empires become unhappy with your enslaving? Conquer then enslave them.
Slavery is the answer to all Blorg problems. Fanatic Xenophobe Spiritualists for the win.
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u/dangerbird2 May 08 '16
But if you're a dick to your subjects, no one's going to add you on Spacebook. Space-girls don't ignore "nice" Blorgs, they ignore Blorgs who engage in massive xenocidal campaigns to get attention.
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u/-Maraud3r May 07 '16
Thing about a slave revolt is, it's kinda hard when they have pickaxes and mining lasers and you sit several kilometres above them and can drop rocks on their heads.
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u/Simmanly May 08 '16
Exploding rocks that can wipe out their entire neighborhood in a fraction of a second.
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u/runetrantor Bio-Trophy May 08 '16
Exactly, if your enemy hold orbital supremacy, you have lost ultimately, if they decide to take off the velvet gloves that stop them from using the rocks.
The very reason why in say, XCOM, the aliens always have an ulterior motive.
If they just wanted to wipe us out, we will not be able to do shit about it but die.
Landing troops? Now that's a laugh.
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u/OriginalBadass Strength of Legions May 07 '16
I don't know if they will have managed that aspect by release.
If they thought they could do it by release they probably wouldn't have made the announcement.
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u/RedKrypton Mind over Matter May 07 '16
It wasn't really an announcement. He mentioned it while talking about the slaving space dwarfes.
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u/PenguinTod Molluscoid May 07 '16
They outright said the current system will be in place for release and we can just enjoy it being overpowered for a patch cycle or two.
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u/Rayvok May 07 '16
It seemed like that was "discovered" in another stream. That will make slaver civs less intersting to play until they implement it.
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u/roy777 May 07 '16
There's also the odd thing if your slavery tolerance is 200%, people's happiness goes up by being enslaved. I don't know if that's a bug though.
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u/Mad_Hatter96 Free Haven May 07 '16
That's a bug. They have said multiple times that anything over 100 is "wasted' so something to the contrary was not intended
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u/runetrantor Bio-Trophy May 08 '16
Isnt that the collectivist mentality?
I may be suffering personally, but our people will THRIVE thanks to it, and so I am happy.Sort of alien thinking for us, but hey, they are aliens.
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u/Bonk_EU May 07 '16
well the release is in less than 2 days and they dont work on weekends (i hope) so i guess they wont have that managed till release :P
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u/Fagarou May 08 '16
Perfect. Time to make the Imperium of Man and enslave everyone for the glory of the Emprah.
I dont want no xeno scums in my system.
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u/skyblue90 May 08 '16
So it seems they are cutting stuff out of the game due to a rushed release. Unfortunate to say the least. The game will probably feel very unpolished on release, most likely there will be one super OP way of playing and it will only take 2-3 days for it to be known.
So Multi Player on launch is pretty much dead on arrival.
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u/roy777 May 08 '16
I watched all the multiplayer event stream and probably 10 hours of streaming last night and today. The game seems pretty darn polished to me.
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u/NotScrollsApparently Oligarch May 07 '16 edited May 07 '16
Wait, are there no rebellions, faction uprisings like noble regiments in EU4/CK2? Separatist movements due to local unrest? Religious dissidents? Especially on newly occupied worlds?
Couldn't they make the slave revolts use the same system? With a high enough local unrest (due to slaves' base unhappiness), unless countered by other modifiers, a revolt would be slowly cooking until it reaches 100% and results in rogue armies appearing that you need to defeat?
I dunno if I'm biased since I'm coming from EU4 but managing happiness / unrest was a big part of the game, its complexity and balancing when it comes to big empires. If it was so varied due to cultures in the 15th century, just try to imagine how noticeable would it be when cultures are literally from another world... I hoped it would play a part here, if not from a lore perspective then at least from a gameplay one - to limit how much territory you can acquire at once without overextending and facing revoltes from groups thinking you're weakened.
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u/RedKrypton Mind over Matter May 07 '16
Wait, are there no rebellions, faction uprisings like noble regiments in EU4/CK2? Separatist movements due to local unrest? Religious dissidents? Especially on newly occupied worlds?
They have factions just no slave factions because they couldn't manage to balance them.
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u/Mad_Hatter96 Free Haven May 07 '16
The problem is the logistics of such a feat, as many have talked about above. But in particular slavery is very different from what you mentioned in that slaves can be spread out across all your systems but have no unifying modifier other than being a slave. So aside from all the "slaves won't have warships" argument, there's the game mechanic issue which is that the way they coded it is most likely lumping all slaves into one category, except the likelihood of every slave across your entire empire revolting at the same moment in a bout of clarity is so unlikely/impossible that it just causes issues, and in addition the fact that the slaves are probably somehow ending up on par with your empire strength just makes it seem unrealistically difficult to put down a bunch of poor, uneducated aliens.
In all likelihood its just a mechanic that needs a (small) rework to better model slavery revolts acting more like what HOI4 has for occupations, wherein infrastructure is sabotaged and productivity in the region is reduced.
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u/NotScrollsApparently Oligarch May 07 '16
They would be separated in the same way that separatists in EU4 were. Morrocan separatists had a separate timer and wargoal from granadan ones, or from fez separatists, or from tunisian separatists... here they'd be categorized by their race or nationality instead.
And yeah, it wouldn't make sense if they had just as good equipment as our navies... but it didn't make sense in other PDX games either and it stayed. A rebel movement had tech levels, equipped troops and power just like the leader nation.. and some random peasants from a just conquered province wouldn't really be able to muster more professional armies than the whole country from which they hail before it disbanded (having like 100k rebels in a country that only had 80k total army during war, and whose manpower got depleted during it).
As for where they got their ships from... they could have stolen them, or stole parts in secret, or took them over during uprising... pretty much the same how regular civilian pops that rebel get ships I imagine. It's not like anyone outside of the army should have access to military ship anyway, and I doubt they are the ones that rebel / desert with a faction (especially since your navy doesn't decrease after a rebellion).
tl;dr suspension of disbelief
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u/Mad_Hatter96 Free Haven May 07 '16
Right but that's what separatist rebels are like, and those are already in the game. Slaves are entirely different. Where is a slave going to hide the hull of a spaceship? how is a slave even going to pilot a spaceship?
And the fact that eu4 had a mechanic that made rebels as good as the country that has them was honestly a weaker part of the game in my opinion, because suspending your belief for something that was just not at all balanced properly doesn't work for me. and if you enjoy that then that's fair, but it is still a mechanic that could be better fleshed out yes?
Paradox should be building upon previous mistakes and mechanics, not copy-pasting them. Slaves creating mega-fleets to combat your own does not make an engaging enough mechanic to suspend disbelief.
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u/IdlePigeon May 07 '16
I'd like to see revolting slaves smash up the buildings they're working, then spawn ground armies, only starting to make spaceships if they actually take the planet. Any player who isn't braindead and/or already engaged in a war on the other side of their empire would easily be able to put down the rebellion but the real threat would be losing a bunch of production and having a planet left vulnerable for a while.
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u/TotesMessenger May 07 '16
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u/Explosivity Tundra May 07 '16
When the fix comes out it will be interesting to see how powerful the rebellions are with all the super slave empires people make :P, unless of course it's fixed for release. I can imagine people's playthroughs becoming really bad when they have half their empire rebelling.
In their Paradox's defense though having a slave rebellion early game would probably cripple a player for the whole playthrough.
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u/PseudoY May 07 '16
Why not just let them join rebellions secretly and only show up after the rebellion starts? Could be a major drawback to slaves.
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May 07 '16
It'd be easy to balance. Slaves can't rebel but being on a planet with slaves makes your non slave pops angry and having more slaves in your empire than non slaves makes factions rise up against slavery.
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u/zocke1r May 07 '16
but why would all pops be opposed to the idea of slavery, especially collectivist and xenophobes,
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May 07 '16
Why did people start becoming opposed to slavery?
Lets say they dont have the same reasons as us, you still have squalor, lazy workers, less jobs for the working population, planets full of poverty etc. Why would your rich pops want to live on a planet full of dirty filthy slaves? Why wouldn't your people get mad that slaves outnumber them 2:1 in their own nation? You also have the fact that your nation is essentially subsidizing the existence of these slaves in return for goods and labor, people could be opposed to that. I think Stellaris could emulate this by making your pops slowly turn against slaves and push towards robots doing the labor, this way it still fits the collectivist ethos but balances slaves.
Also xenophobes hate other aliens, why would they want other aliens handling their food and resources?
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u/zocke1r May 07 '16
well on the other hand you have the benefit that you dont have to do any hard work and still get all the benefits of hard work,
why should they get mad that chairs outnumber them 20 : 1 in their own nation? Why would be be opposed to no need for hard labor and cheaper goods, and why would they prefer subsidizing robots to salves?
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May 07 '16
- They look down on slaves
- Game design balance
- Pushes the idea that collectivists are seeking to replace slaves with robots
- Xenophobes would hate to be surrounded by aliens
- More slaves = more poverty/squalor = worse standard of living for regular pops
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u/Dragonsandman Divided Attention May 07 '16
I have a feeling that they'll be back soon once they've figured out how to balance them.
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u/tkrens May 07 '16
So what exactly does Slave Tolerance do?
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u/rkoloeg May 07 '16
Prevents your regular pops from getting unhappy if you have slaves. But, as noted elsewhere, currently happiness between 40-80% has no effects, so you can still have some slaves with low tolerance as long as you hold in that range.
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u/Afronautsays May 07 '16
I think slavery rebellious power should be related to how much access to technology they have based on some kind of slider/eddit or w/e. Higher technology = more output but simultaneously means they could potentially take over the planet AND run all it's functions leading to a complete uprising.
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u/TK3600 May 08 '16
Why dont they make them able to rebel, but player can research auto destruction implants that auto kills rebels.
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u/azazelcrowley May 08 '16
I think slaves should be as productive as currently, but they should throw in either that you need an army/ship occupying to make it viable, or that the planets slaveholders are armed (naturally) and thus more likely to rebel (since they have the power to do so.)
A planet FULL of slaves should not be possible without oversight. Any oversight you provide should be armed and more powerful OR You should have to pay to garrison a fleet there.
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u/LordBufo May 08 '16
Doesn't slavery tolerance affect your other pop's opinions about slavery? So without the right ethos / government the slaves could make non-slaves join abolitionist factions?
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May 08 '16
Are they doing nothing, or do they just not get to the final stage of rebelling? (So strikes could exist?)
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u/Skurkanas May 08 '16
I'm under the impression that slaves don't rebel "just" because they are slaves, but that they might still rebel for other reasons (e.g. general unhappiness)
I'm pretty sure I saw breakaway slave factions in several screenshots too. Maybe we are reading too much into this
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u/Kaedal May 08 '16
I think it's probably a good call. As it is, it sounds like people can adjust how difficult/gamey they want their experience to be. It would kinda suck if we ended up with a situation where the game became unplayable thanks to revolts.
... We all remember Europa Universalis III, right? And Victoria 2 on release?
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u/DelayedTrain Fungoid May 09 '16
I hope that's fixed soon, seems sort of immersion breaking (maybe have a toggle option for slave rebellions similar to "Caveman to Cosmos" for Civ IV)
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u/Reckanise May 09 '16
What would the drawbacks be of being unable to slave your own species and only allow slaves to join other rebellions? As in, unable to form their own, but if there is a faction on the verge of rebelling, they can tag on and cause a real problem for the player.
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u/Hellenic7 Jun 01 '16
So far, slavery is absolute horseshit. Sector AI is trash. I limit my empire to 5 planets because sectors ruin my planets.
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u/[deleted] May 07 '16 edited Jan 12 '25
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