Slaves (new player)

[Vainfall]

New player here, never played more than 20 turns of any rome 2 campaign. finally decided to sit down and DEUS VULT as macedon though. Massive vet of other total war games though.

Slaves. Should i enslave captives? i notice they decrease public order, and i get that they increase income... but are they worth it?

I really enjoy numbers and min/maxing so if any fellow ultra nerds out there have done number crunching, don't be afraid to shower me.

[Nilte]

Well hello there and welcome to rome 2 I tend to keep a constant look at my slave% in my regions and after that dicide if i need to enslave captives. If I recall correctly you dont get any bad traits as in medieval 2 when you execute prisoners so keep chopping of your captives heads xD. The sell slaves edict is good to use when you are runing high on slaves. For me I try to keep my slavepop at around 30% since it seems i get the most profit compared to the PO negatives. If we take the province Thrace for example, this province allmost always nets me around 4k/turn with slaves and the boost to industrial wealth. Play around with it and dont forgett to keep an extra eye on the slavepop in your provinces

Ps: I forgot to mention that there is followers you can get that boost slave income and decrease slave PO negatives. I use this with a dignitary specced into economy and a general specced the same way to get the most out of the province.

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[Augustusng]

Well, it depends. In most situations, it's useful to take a few slaves, just watch your public order. You can always use the "sell slaves" edict to drop their numbers faster if you want.

Though... it gets a little tricky in the late game. How slave income works - it's the same kind of percentage as your tax rate and empire maintenance, which of course you can see in each province's income overview. You just add together the tax rate, slave income, and empire maintenance percentages, then multiply that by the sum of your cities' wealth in that province. So if your empire maintenance penalty is above 100%, you have to rely on tax rate and slave income bonuses to produce any income at all from that province. I ran into a situation in my current campaign where I was dramatically losing income each turn; it was because I was selling slaves, and the slave population was the only thing keeping my economy afloat, due to the extremely high empire maintenance. Of course, trade income and client state tribute aren't affected by empire maintenance, so those income sources are useful late-game too.

Also if you control a region that produces the slave resource, you can get some small factionwide bonuses to slave income and public order.

[philler]

I agree with Augustusng, the key point in the whole game is to balance out multiple effects. Enslaving captives can be useful tool to boost your income, especially after large battles. Be aware, that also the options after conquering new cities have different consenquences when dealing with captives. Once I incurred serious problems with PO resulting in severe rebellions when I was looting because of need of money for funding my wars. The most apparent income bonuses will you get in a cities with slave resource - there I would really recommend the combo of all possible slave buildings with sell-slave edict.

[JCB206]

Mid game I have slave buildings in all provinces. 90% slave population and 100 PO. Just how I play. Not sure if I would be better off with industry buildings. I trade with everyone, even if it makes someone mad by mid game. Love the slave resource.

[GMFH]

I have found that owning at least one of the slave producing regions, either in Thrace or Arabia Felix is critical to lowering the PO malus from slaves globally. Once that region capitol is fully upgraded, it reduces slave PO negative by 40 percent I believe. Once I have an upgraded slave region, enslaving captives becomes my preferred option due to the massive income bonus they provide. I also begin looting most settlements at this point as well for the slaves.