Slavery as an Element of Gameplay

[Grim_Fendango]

Slavery is a topic that has been touched on before but never directly I found. Though I think it is a topic that is worth discussing individually in its own right. In the capturing thread, unit conversion with female villigers was talked about. Though here I give my own take on how unit conversion or rather 'slavery' could be added to the game in a way that would be unique and alter the tactics of 0AD in a verry interesting way.

IMO I generally found the unit conversion wih the preists in AOK to be a bit of a waste of time(unless of course you really wanted to annoy someone). Having units turn to your alegiance almost magically on the field adds a whole new aspect to the micro management side of combat, because part of the spoils( the new slaves) are killable and to reap the full spoils of war they need to be brought into safety(if they were villagers). Such tasks I found often to distract me from the battle tactics at play and thus lessoning my enjoyment of the battle overall.

Taking a note from the Total War series, slaves were meerly an after thought, you made the decision about what you would do with your captives after the battle. I'm not suggesting that a choice is required but rather, make slaves feel like a reward and less like a choor when you get them. I would prefer that the slaves be sent back to the capital, where they can be put to work. In The Way of Kings a book by Brandon Sanderson, slaves that came from war were loaded up into carivans(more like wagons with a big people cage on it) and sent to where they would be used(i.e the capital). I'm not a histery guru, but can you see what I'm getting at here? Certain civs were more favourable of slavery than others, so this benefit of war could vary between civs, rather than just simply being a stock standard feature to fascilitate more balancing.

To make slaves more autimated to me makes sence also on a psychological level also because, in slavery being removed from your homeland in a sense is like having a great part of your identity removed. To players it would really only be a subconciouse thing but would give the game a more consistent and realistic tone. On that note having a converted slave individually controllable would be inconsistent with the whole identity having been removed thing. Perhaps employing a slave driver unit that controlls a groupe of slaves would be a better approach. So a unit from your civ - that you created could exhibit dominance and controll over a captured unit. In that context a slave would not fit into the citisen catagory and as such would not contribute to the pop count. However, I do suggest that some sort of slave population management system would need to be instigated where slave capacity is dictated by the number of slavedriver units you have.

Lastly you guys have mentioned(in other threads), what would happen if a slave did turn on you. I'd like to think that this would usually happen in the event that a slave groupes slave driver was killed, and as a result the group would then revolt. Though Im not suggesting that they return to their long lost home land, but rather they become wild hostile like in behaviour and simply attack anything they can see until they die. No one ever said slavery would be always fine and dandy. Perhaps the effect of such an event could be lessoned with tech upgrades. But could you imagine say if you had all your slave drivers working a forrest, and then an enemy cavalry archer killed one slave driver, it could cause a dominoe effect resulting in a multitude of slaves resulting and killing anything they can see. If the numbers were right you could just about whipe your self out. This could give slave keeping a bit more of a risk reward sort of feel . I mean if you could garuntee the safety of your slaves(e.g., with walls) then perhaps you would feel confident on having a 40: 60 slave to citisen ratio.

I think slavery is a verry interesting concept and one that I have not really seen explored in a lot of games. But you should be thinking of ways to use its premise to explore new and interesting gameplay concepts, that give a more unique feel to the game experience. I mean, slavery not only would increase the management tactics, but enemies could verry much incorporate this into their attack stratagies. "Aim for the slave drivers so a revolt can happen to weaken the enemy".

Anyway this would probably require a substantial overhaul to the game mechanics and AI, but I think it would be totally worth it.

Yep, those are just some of my thoughts. I'm just starting my second year of my bachelores of Software Engineering at uni, so I really don't have a lot of time for games anymore. But AoK was a classic and I really like the project and look forward to seeing where it goes. .

Edited January 15, 2013 by Grim_Fendango

[Jeru]

Thanks for your input, Grim_Fendango!

I am thinking this is the sort of thing that could only be incorporated into 0 A.D. as an independent mod, unrelated to Wildfire Games, both because of technical aspects, and because of cultural connotations of slavery.

[av93]

I'm thinkig about easier concept of slavery.

Slaves colud be bought in city phase, and are allround better workers than citizien soldiers (how much? 10% to 20%?) they also are a little bit expensive (150 gold?)

So, when you get into city phase and you have a strong economy, you can start to change your citizien soldiers for slaves, (you can still making citizien soldiers to work, of course) boosting your economy.

Slaves are like women, can be captured and that stuff..

Some civ habe bonus to slavery, some can't get, it depens on the desgin, but this is my basic concept.

By the way, you're playing a game that have people killing each other... Why not make slaves get in? Some games have slaves, like Imperium Civitas and I think that happens nothing. It's history...

[Jeru]

By the way, you're playing a game that have people killing each other... Why not make slaves get in? Some games have slaves, like Imperium Civitas and I think that happens nothing. It's history...

I agree, but modern cultural considerations still factor in to our decisions from time to time.

And sadly, a lot of people are more offended by representations of, say, the naked human body, than by representations of people killing each other.

[Aurium]

I realy realy like the Grim_Fendango proposal! It is driving the 0ad to a new perspective where the game-play is a RTS+RPG and the possibility of history creation goes far nicely away from buildings and battles. The strategies variability can make that a new game when you find a new opponent. But yeah... that may be harder to code. But not that hard!

The av93 idea is nice too, and we can mix both putting the av93 idea inside the commerce building.

I am thinking this is the sort of thing that could only be incorporated into 0 A.D. as an independent mod, unrelated to Wildfire Games, both because of technical aspects, and because of cultural connotations of slavery.

Jeru, i'm brazilian and we have a dramatically pain long slavery history, but that is a strong historical characteristic and i don't know who can say 0ad project is in favor of slavery because that is a game feature while that game has murdering and that is ok. I understand the cultural considerations, but in this case the person must point us as "pro killer" also and that is ridiculous. Well... be sure: the history teacher will love us.

[idanwin]

I am thinking this is the sort of thing that could only be incorporated into 0 A.D. as an independent mod, unrelated to Wildfire Games, both because of technical aspects, and because of cultural connotations of slavery.

I think that as long as we don't make all slaves black it shouldn't pose too much trouble. What's more, slavery was a big part of ancient history. Romans, Greek and Egyptians had them, and probably they weren't the only ones.

Then again I'm European, we were wise enough to decide on banning slavery much sooner than Americans, so we're much more 'over it', speaking of slavery won't get you any strange looks, angry comments or hate mail (though that depends how you speak of it ...)

I would like to be able to raid an enemy base and steal their women ... not very realistic, really, but the male civilians would fight back.

Slave revolts would be much too much micromanagement and it's not worth coding it into the game, for me. Once you 'capture' slaves, they should become yours, and stay yours. I can imagine citizen soldiers getting captured, so I would give them loyalty as well, but heroes and champion units should not be enslaveable. When citizen soldiers lose their loyalty (the fewer they are the faster their loyalty drops if they are in neutral/enemy territory, champion units and heroes would help them keep loyalty)

So:

Female Citizens & Slaves:

Lose loyalty quickly when in neutral or enemy territory, can easily be enslaved by enemy cavalry when undefended.

Friendly military units in proximity slow down the rate at which loyalty drops.

Male Citizens:

Lose no loyalty in friendly territory, few in neutral and more in enemy.

Other (friendly) male citizens in proximity slow down the rate at which loyalty drops. Friendly champion units and heroes in proximity slow down the rate at which loyalty drops even more, or may even increase loyalty.

When captured i.e. they are greatly outnumbered in neutral or enemy territory they become slaves to the player with the biggest military power at that location* (if in a player's territory, that player gets the slaves, if in neutral territory all citizen-warriors, champion units and heroes that are near should be counted and the player with the biggest military power gets the slaves)

Champion Units & Heroes:

Cannot be enslaved.

Increase the loyalty of nearby units.

Ships:

Naval warfare could be implemented with boarding enemy ships, this would allow you to not only damage the other ship, but even get a slight chance to make it yours.

Siege Weaponry:

Difficult topic ... these are certainly interesting to capture, but then again, I believe that when on the brink of capture you could quite easily destroy siege weaponry (chop important pieces off, cut wires and cords and set the rest on fire). And for gameplay I think it would be better if they could not be captured (losing siege weapons is quite costly enough, to lose them to your enemy is even worse)

*now that I think of it: Maybe calculate the total military power of that location and give percentages of slaves according to these, so that if two allies have joined forces, both can get some of the loot?

On the transportation, negotiation and trading of slaves:

Slavery is bad. You shouldn't do slavery. If you do it, you're bad. Because slavery is bad, okay. It's a bad thing to do slavery, so don't be bad by doing slavery, okay. That would be bad. Slavery is bad, okay.

Joking, that's not what this is about. (if you don't get it:

)

Another interesting idea may be to allow sending slaves to other players in the diplomacy window. Why?

1) Your ally needs an economy boost? Send him some slaves.

2) I can imagine an AI that asks you to send his slaves back to him, or he will destroy you. (this sounds soooo nice) (I would probably say: "Take them, if you can!" but hey, it's still fun)

3) It could add some interesting interactions in multiplayer games without fixed alliances and a lot of players.

Is this conceivable? Certainly. The easiest way is to send them immediately to the 'main civ center' (oldest standing civ center) of that player. A more graphical way would be to send a cart with slaves ... this would look amazing ... but it has many disadvantages (could be destroyed on its way, takes time to get there, can't go over water ...)

[Grim_Fendango]

In the capturing thread where I originally posted this, I thought that they were in the general direction of my initial proposal but it was at it's simplest form a discussion on what could be captured and what coudln't.

To tie this more together I would incorporate the feature simply by having the amount of slaves available to be proportianal to the amount of enemy units 'defeated'(not necisarily killed). Obviousely the civ you decide to play as would have a role in deciding that ratio. As you guys said not all civs used slavery so for those with a 0:1 ratio(units enslaved:enemy units defeated) I'm sure they could have their own unit benefits to compensate.

Look I'm glad that this is being discussed and considered. Slavery was a real aspect in history. How graphically represented this is, is of course up to you guys. I mean if you had some african sort of race(I haven't played much of 0AD so you may already) and you pitted them against the romans, it could be a battle of blacks vs whites. Well obviousely, and of course some players could draw their own racist conertations from this. When I initially proposed this I did specify however that there incorporate it with a risk reward machanism(which by the way technically for a slave revolt all you would need to do would be to change the freindly slave AI to a wild bear AI). So be that as it may you just have to present it as what it is with a straight face(e.g., Heshen cloathing for slaves).

One more interesting aspect to this could be that while you civ may like doing slavery another civ on your team may not. Perhaps making the slave ratio adjustable as a diplomacy civic option thing could make negotiations more interesting. Maybe even make it effect trade benefits(e.g., reduce the trade route pay loads as the slave intake increases). Ofcourse these are just ideas but can you see the implications!

As for what happens if the cart gets destroyed, well yeah that would be awesome. A highway revolt! Slaves could be sent to a jail sort of thing where they can be trained as a group of slave units. In such a way enemy captives would have their own role as a resource(though I suspect for realism the numbers would diminish and would be capped depending on the amount of jails you had).

Slave revolts, I don't think would add that much micro-ing. Just makesure the slave driver doesn't die, keep them within city walls.

There are so many ways that this could be incorporated. And as a full time student I unfortunately cannot devote time to be a prime contributor to this project. In the end it is up to those at the helm to decide what elements should be included and in what manner also. Though as I said before simply converting villagers to me is too unrealistic. Also treating them as a trainable unit like anyother, while it does sound appealing would only represent slaves in a shallow sense(though would be easy to impliment).

To wrap up:

Here's how I would impliment(the names and figures are completely arbitrary):

• To produce slaves you need an amount of captured prisoners(well call these slave points, SP).
  
• SP is generated by defeating enemy units within their territory and would accumulate at a ratio Y:1 ratio(SP generated:enemy units defeated).
  
• Y is decided by a civic option or a preset figure depending on the civ you are playing as, or a mixture of both.
  
• Slaves become active(get put to work) when a slave driver is trained and the resources are payed. These then become active slaves(AS) component of the total slave population(TSP). The X amount of slaves used in the slave groupe are then deducted from the SP amount and added to the AS amount.
  
• TSP(total slaves) = AS(active slaves) + SP(inactive slaves)
  
• TSP is capped by the amount of slave containment buildings(Jails) the player has.
  
• When jails are built theTSP cap is raised.
  
• Slaves can be produced X times faster then normal workers because all you are training is the slave driver(you already have the slaves).
  
• Slaves work harder(well wouldn't you?)
  
• If the slave driver is killed the active slaves from that groupe change to using a wild AI and will attack your units untill they are killed(making slaves a bit risky if poorly managed).
  
• Slaves perform are able to perform the duties of a normal civilian. Though they cannot build civic centres(it just doesn't seem right, they are not civilians).
  
• A group of active slaves can be regarded and controlled like a single unit.
  

Well thanks guys for the chat. I hope I have inspired you somewhat. Best of luck with 0AD, I'm exited to see where the project goes.

[Pedro Falcão]

If slavery is ever going to be added, add an option to not have them in the match, too. Some people just want the good and old bloodshed, not to keep sending men to their deaths.

I, personally, think slavery should be tied to morale. While the soldier has morale, he'll fight to death. If he loses all his morale, then he'll start losing loyalty, until neutral, when he'll look like a chained beggar, instead of a soldier. When the slave driver is killed, the slaves may revolt or may run for freedom and abandon the game (running to the corners of the map), but can be intercepted in the way and recaptured or, if intercepted by a hero that's not from the same faction as his captor, may join his forces.

[idanwin]

Jails, Slave Drivers, Revolts ... it all sounds a bit too complicated and much too much micromanagement to me.

Having captured these enemy units, I don't want to worry about them revolting and about building jails. If I had to, I would just kill them, much easier.

If slavery is implemented, I'm of the opinion that it should be simple and straightforward, at least for the player. My whole speech about slavery may not seem that simple, but for the player it is just:

Protect your women, never send military units to enemy territory on their own and always put some champion units and heroes in your army.

Those three rules are rules that you would apply anyway, even without the slavery system, but they become more important now.

I was thinking that civs who were known to have slaves could have increased gathering rates for slaves or their carrying space, or maybe enemies in their territory lose loyalty faster?

add an option to not have them in the match

Sounds like a good idea, but if we implement slavery the right way this should not be necessary - except maybe for scenarios - because the slaves should not cause much - if any - micromanagement.

In my opinion slaves should be like female citizens. Easily capturable. Can gather resources and assist construction. They should (in my opinion) not be able to construct buildings themselves, but if you think this should be changed for gameplay reasons I will not argue.

I, personally, think slavery should be tied to morale.

Fully agreed. This is a total must. (one remark though: why have both moral and loyalty? why not make that one? if moral has to reach zero before loyalty decreases, you might just as well make them one and the same thing)

when he'll look like a chained beggar

I don't agree here. No intermediate state between enemy soldier and friendly slave. It wouldn't look good if there is suddenly some chained beggars on a battlefield. Loyalty should be calculated not per soldier, but per group of soldiers. This would make sure that during a battle no soldiers get converted to slaves while others are still fighting. When one of the two opposing sides is greatly outnumbered (the sum of values of all citizen-soldiers, champions and heroes is smaller by far), all of their citizen-soldiers (in that battle) would become slaves at the same time. Thereby ending the battle. There may still be some champion units or a hero left to kill. But that should not pose a problem because they were outnumbered anyway.

running to the corners of the map, but can be intercepted in the way and recaptured

In my opinion this is a really bad idea. What if the corners are all water? Running after them is a waste of time, really. Painstaking micromanagement.

if intercepted by a hero

Slavery should certainly broaden the use of heroes (and in my opinion champion units).

I think Pedro is headed in the right direction, but I wouldn't go as far personally. I think we need to keep things simple and avoid adding micromanagement as much as possible.

[Lion.Kanzen]

The Slavery must depends about Capturing Feature.

[Mythos_Ruler]

My original idea for "slaves" was that they would be bought at the market and would be available "globally" like how bartering is global. Meaning, the number available is the same number available to all players and their cost and availability would fluctuate depending upon how many are being bought (very much like bartering). They would be great at gathering, but suck at building, and would be capturable similar to domestic animals. No slave revolts (capturing takes place of that) and nothing else too complex.

[av93]

My original idea for "slaves" was that they would be bought at the market and would be available "globally" like how bartering is global. Meaning, the number available is the same number available to all players and their cost and availability would fluctuate depending upon how many are being bought (very much like bartering). They would be great at gathering, but suck at building, and would be capturable similar to domestic animals. No slave revolts (capturing takes place of that) and nothing else too complex.

Maybe the availability could depen on death statidistics. If there are battles in the map, slaves could become more available.

[Sighvatr]

Here is another approach if we implement a morale system into 0 A.D.

1) All Civilian Soldiers are enslave-able, except for cavalry units.

2) When a civilian soldier loses morale and runs away, pursuing troops can capture instead of kill.

3) In order to capture a deserter instead of killing, a player must research the technology 'Slavers'.

4) If a deserter is attacked by a player's troop with the 'Slavers' technology, the civilian soldier is converted and stripped of arms, instead of taking damage.

5) Enslaved civilian-soldiers may not be killed by a player by highlighting and pressing the delete button.

6) Enslaved civilian-soldiers will instantly convert back to it's original player faction if a large friendly and/or allied force appears.

7) Enslaved civilian-soldiers will be able to function like any civilian-soldier except with the ability to fight.

8) Enslaved civilian-soldiers do not contribute to the population limit.

[oshron]

i think the most efficient way of making slavery a gameplay feature would be to do what Empire Earth's expansion pack did: make it something that can be researched by applicable civilizations (the Persians, notably, would not be allowed to have slaves in-game because the practice was abolished by Cyrus the Great in the 6th century BC), and those civilizations gain slaves by killing enemy units (simulating prisoners of war) so instead of having to physically Capture a citizen-soldier or female citizen, you just kill them and there's a chance that a free Slave unit will appear at your civic center

aesthetically, the slaves for each civilization could be styled to resemble peasants/commoners of every other playable civ. so, for example, the Celts could kill enemy units and they would get slaves which, though functioning exactly the same as each other and the same as those of other civs, would resemble Persians, Indians, Greeks, Iberians, and so on

[Sighvatr]

I like your suggestions, but I think I favor my own!

[Mythos_Ruler]

My original idea for "slaves" was that they would be bought at the market and would be available "globally" like how bartering is global. Meaning, the number available is the same number available to all players and their cost and availability would fluctuate depending upon how many are being bought (very much like bartering). They would be great at gathering, but suck at building, and would be capturable similar to domestic animals. No slave revolts (capturing takes place of that) and nothing else too complex.

Maybe the availability could depen on death statidistics. If there are battles in the map, slaves could become more available.

Agreed to this. The number of slaves available would vary depending on the rate of casualties, plus some automatic rebound (like how bartering rates recover over time). Also, Persians would not have access to slaves, but would have additional bartering and trading techs to compensate.

A few more details:

• Slaves eventually die. The more a slave works, the less health they have.
  
• Slaves cost no population.
  

[zoot]

Could it rely on battle detection? Like, for every player who is in battle, add x slaves per turn.

[Mythos_Ruler]

Could it rely on battle detection? Like, for every player who is in battle, add x slaves per turn.

Sure, something like that is fine. Whatever way is chosen, the point is clear: More military activity = more available slaves.

[J-Dx]

I like the idea of fighting a battle and then clicking on my civ centre to see how many slaves I 'caught'! If they were a new unit added to the game I like it.

It would almost work as a reward for fighting - kill an enemy and have a % chance of getting a slave. I imagine it as appearing as a trainable troop from the CC but having a set number trainable dependant on your kills (easily displayed by a number upon the slave icon that decreases when you 'train' a slave).

If slaves were free or very cheap to train then it would be a decent advantage to using citizen-soldiers and women, though I think the idea of the slaves slowly losing health might be necessary to ensure citizen-soldiers and women are still used by players! Perhaps also only the winner of a battle should gain the reward of slaves (or both players if the kill ratio is near equal). I'd make it so you couldn't heal slaves with priests as well to make sure they always die eventually. Perhaps slaves could be sold at the market, 'garrisoning' them which makes them available for other players to buy (price dependant on how many other slaves are available globally on the map.

This seems to be reasonably easy for the player to deal with, as they do little more than fight a battle as per usual and then 'train' the slaves after. No micro-management involved in getting the slaves or transporting them back to your base.

I would much prefer a system such as this to simple conversion or slaves appearing randomly on the map during a battle which would require a lot of micro-management and in some ways clutter the battle field.

I can imagine that, during a battle in which slave units appear, I would ignore them until the battle had been won, which would leave the slave units wandering around. Not very realistic and I wouldn't enjoy that as much.

[Sighvatr]

I say we wait to create a morale system, and then bring in slavery.

[Mythos_Ruler]

I say we wait to create a morale system, and then bring in slavery.

I don't see how they are connected.