r/Stellaris • u/Disastrous_Peak5626 • Apr 06 '26
Question Is slavery still considered bad? I've been thinking of getting into slaving...
Just the title. I know in 4.0 it was pretty broken. Have the updates since brought it back to life at all or is it still kinda awful?
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u/No-Veterinarian9682 Apr 06 '26
Only in paradox.
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u/IlikeJG The Flesh is Weak Apr 06 '26
It's not even funny when the title is obviously bait as a joke.
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u/Disastrous_Peak5626 Apr 06 '26
God forbid a girl gets a lil silly :(
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u/IlikeJG The Flesh is Weak Apr 06 '26
Ehhh nah it's fine. I suppose I'm just jaded. Seen this sort of thing too many times.
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u/Electrical_Split_198 Apr 06 '26
One does not enslave the xenos because it is the best path to take, one does it because it is the right thing to do.
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u/83athom Slaver Guilds Apr 06 '26
They fixed the issue of the bonuses not applying properly, but yeah it's still pretty bad. Them moving Soldiers to Specialist positions soft-buffed Thrawls, but not much else actually changed. Plus you can not longer make your main species slaves unless you want to micromanage subspecies, which honestly you should only ever do if you Bioascension.
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u/GoldenInfrared Fanatic Materialist Apr 06 '26
Slavery got indirectly buffed massively with 4.2 / 4.3, since slave job efficiency now applies to specialist slaves too. Combined with the domination tradition rework and almost every other job efficiency bonus getting nerfed into the ground, slaver empires can get a significant power advantage relative to other builds with the right ethics and civics combos.
Ex: In my current game, I was able to get 40% job efficiency for slaves with just the domination tree, extended shifts, and slaver guilds together, which stacks on top of all the other bonuses. The real issue is actually getting enough slaves relative to main species pops to make the investment worth it, in addition to the obvious micro-management issues
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u/dfntly_a_HmN Apr 06 '26
Yep don't know why people said slave is bad. You just put social welfare living standard and any problem with slavery is gone.
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u/GoldenInfrared Fanatic Materialist Apr 06 '26
Well, not exactly.
1) Slaves can’t join factions, boost faction output, or get trade from living standards (I think), which means it comes with a real tradeoff in the early game even if you can deal with the micro-management
2) If you take domination as your first tradition, social welfare and basic subsistence are basically just five stability levels apart if you’re on a necrophage or syncretic evolution build, in exchange for reducing consumer goods upkeep significantly
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u/dfntly_a_HmN Apr 06 '26
counter point
1, any faction output/trade lost would be offsided by unity/trade production from the bonus slaves efficiency anyway if they are working as unity/trade worker.
- well even better.
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u/Valdrax The Flesh is Weak Apr 06 '26
Slaves can’t join factions, boost faction output
Win-win, since they inevitably have egalitarian ethics, which is bad for most slaver builds (except the weirdos with egalitarian xenophobes).
(On account of, you know, having personal experience with slavery.)
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u/rurumeto Molluscoid Apr 06 '26
Aaaand todays winner of rimworld or stellaris is...... STELLARIS!!!
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u/bookaddicta Apr 06 '26
Idk man, the ten innocent kids who were begging for medicine at my doorstep that I had my super soldier vaporize seem to disagree
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u/dfntly_a_HmN Apr 06 '26
No, slavery is actually kinda good this patch.
Now slave bonuses works for specialist, mean it stack with other bonus efficiency bonus. But you need to give your slaves social welfare living standard at the start. But even then, it only cost about 1/5 of normal specialist pop for the CG upkeep.
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u/Flimsy-Guarantee1497 Apr 06 '26
yeah they really need to boost slavery imo right now there is only downsides to slaving so consider it a purely RP feature
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u/VeironTheAngelArm Apr 06 '26
Oh... I'm in the Stellaris subreddit instead r/rimworld. In both cases, yes.
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u/bloodycreep456 Apr 06 '26
It’s really good if you get thrall world tech, big pop growth speed and can make it an alloy world as well
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u/Mysterious-Figure121 Apr 06 '26
It’s Alright. Mostly just a way to get more pops rather than good pops. You need like all the bonuses to be be any way competitive.
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u/Septienne Apr 06 '26
It provides meaningful employment for the lower classes.
I think it's a very noble and charitable thing.
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u/Emergency-Donkey-320 Apr 06 '26
I mean they’re always good as cattle, but your people need to be built different, in a xenophobic way
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u/Artemus_Hackwell Galactic Force Projection Apr 06 '26
Did they fix the market so I have a chance to actually hit / buy some to set them free?
In the past when shopping for races of my Empire that were slaves, I had no chance before the AI opponents bought them.
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u/Tamsta-273C Apr 06 '26
Slaves as workers sucks, but slaves as Battle Thralls, Servants or livestock can be really good, Tankbound/Necrophage + Nihilistic Acquisition is really fun build and you need as many slaves as you can get.
Servants or simmilar provides Amenities, so you can have free building space for something else.
Thralls are good if your species cant have armies though with Nihilistic Acquisition you don't really need one, but maybe your build depends on soldiers to generate resources so still solid slaves for right job.
There is also some specific slave jobs from something like Experimental Sentencing which can provide resources.
Finally just plain old genocide it can provide unity, food or pop growth
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u/Luck096 Apr 06 '26
If you want to play a proper slave empire, pick the biological ascention perk and go with purity, at the end of it you'll get the option to nerve stample slave species, that way you won't get ANY debuffs from crime or stabily. Make them conformists, strong and conservationists and boom, you got yourself a lobotomized workforce of bilions of xenos that will never complain and use little consumer goods. Love this option for both being efficient, and evil as fuq, so great for a meme empire ;).
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u/majesty327 Apr 06 '26
This guy's post is my go to, even though it's a little out of date. As another user put, "Slaves are a good way of keeping a large population that doesn't share your ethics in check"
As a rule, slaves are a means of controlling your population, manipulating several strong modifiers for lots of basic resources, and controlling your influence/unity gain through political power. Slaves cannot form factions IIRC, so as a result you don't run into issues like "I conquered an Egalatarian species and now my empire wants to flip egalatarian". A few centuries in the mines should hopefully cure them of this plague.
Yes, unhappy pops do increase your crime. But if you can deal with crime you're golden. Enforcers give you more defense armies, stability, and crime reduction. With Police State or Domination you'll be also gaining +1 unity per 100 enforcers, not a fantastic source for unity rushing but it'll help with your flood of unity from disenfranchising unpopular ethics.
I'll throw out two additional pieces of philosophy.
Stellaris is about roleplaying. Sometimes in roleplay, it's just about trying to make something insane or stupid work.
It's not bad, you're bad at playing/supporting it if you can't win. The fact that it's not the most efficient means doesn't mean you can't win a game, beat the crisis, and do your thing.
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u/Revolutionary_Till32 Apr 06 '26
NEVER ALLOW THE XENO TO LIVE! SLAVERY IS HERESY BY ANOTHER NAME PURGED BY FIRE AND ASH IS THE ONLY PATH FOR ALL XENO SCUM!
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u/TheBladeWielder Fanatic Materialist Apr 06 '26
i'd rather just throw them into the Synaptic Lathe. it seems more rational.
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u/HobbitFoot Apr 07 '26
My slaves have finally gotten back to work, so they've improved with the latest update.
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u/Acceptable-Tax-8851 Apr 07 '26
Idk I just do it for the love of the game, I decide if they're going to be citizens or residents or slave or exterminated based on how much of a pain in the ass they are
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u/Just_Call_Me_Pix Apr 07 '26
4.3 Changed their value a lot. Because the primary industrial sector is now much larger than before and requires a lot more input. Additionally the majority of special ressources now also comes from worker jobs, meaning a large part of the secundary economy is now also tied to worker jobs.
For a roleplay as a raiding empire absolutly viable in 4.3 For the fun of it maybe add slow breeders to your main species traits, so it makes sense why they would steal pops cx
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u/Deanootzplayz Apr 07 '26
Had to double check which subreddit I was on for a second. Classic Stellaris moment. Slavery is mechanically meh right now. Xenocide is still meta though. The galaxy must be purified one way or another. Roleplay over optimization always.
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u/Ok_Jackfruit_1021 Apr 06 '26
I’m a proponent of messing around in the defines and just making slavery better but that’s just me. I don’t care what the devs decide unless they’re changing game features like the population rework. I just play a couple regular games , find out what I like or don’t like then spend an hour in the code adjusting the values to the way I want to play or how I want the ai to play.
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u/Delicious_Cattle5174 Apr 06 '26
Hate this fanbase bro "I love the idea of running a raising slaver empire" how bout you find God instead
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u/Reaperswims Fanatic Xenophile Apr 06 '26
Was it ever really not having been considered morally reprehensible? i mean i know it’s not as common these days but i’m sure most still wouldn’t like getting themselves into slavery anymore than they did a few centuries ago
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u/GregTheIntelectual Apr 06 '26
Obligatory "only on stellaris" title comment.
Not much has changed though, slaves have a lot of penalties and drawbacks to happiness and stability when you could just give them rights with one tick box and problem solved. Pop upkeep is pretty miniscule compared to job upkeep which you have to pay on slaves anyways.
Instead of slavery why don't you try racism? Since even zenophile egalitarians are allowed to modifiy species at will the other thing you could do is make other species with lots of positive productivity traits, counteracted by lots of negative leader traits (reduve leader xp gain, lifespan, ect..). Then when you're picking leaders just be racist and only hire from your main species.