I've had this idea rolling around for quite some time. In Rome you have buildings that require 20 workers to staff and some that require 40 workers. For the most part managing slaves is best accomplished by fusing them all into one mega unit of 40 and them moving them en-mass to where they are needed.

My issue with this is that it can be very hard to fuse them into stacks of exactly 20 to fit them into a standard woodcutters lodge, etc. This tends to be best accomplished with workers only. Would the team consider either; limiting the slave groups to 20 individuals so that we can take the modular approach and send either one batch or 2, as required; or allow, with the press of a button, the splitting of fullsize 40-man stacks of slaves into 2 separate 20 man stacks when required to fit into those smaller buildings?

Unless this was done for gameplay reasons and I am meant to be more careful with my slave fusing?


EDIT: Oh, and my game crashed when I tried to alt-tab back into it after writing this. I know alt-tabbing is a known issue but I will include the dump file just in case 'more information is always better than less'.
http://filesmelt.com/dl/Hegemony_Rome_1_9_99_rev_29305_Feb04.dmp

Splitting would be quite handy if it is possible to do.

Otherwise I'll stick with what I am doing now. Slaves for farm/mine, Workers for logging/cattle. Makes sense in a way, mass farming is hard labour and mining is incredibly dangerous, perfect for slaves. Chopping trees/carpentry and milking/butchering cattle are skilled labour, so 'trained' workers is fitting.

I like the idea of limiting slave units to 20, like a worker unit. The only complication is when a unit over 20 men surrenders. That is already theoretically possible (90 man legions) but I haven't experienced it.

I think slaves and workers are equally productive now. What do you think about giving free workers a modest bonus? That is probably historical, and also forces the player to choose whether to maximize production with free workers, or manpower by replacing workers with slaves.

I'm not sure if the gold costs work properly. Supply lines don't seem to cost anything, and I never run out of money. Or food, once I get going. Do cities still consume food?

I think slaves and workers are equally productive now. What do you think about giving free workers a modest bonus? That is probably historical, and also forces the player to choose whether to maximize production with free workers, or manpower by replacing workers with slaves.


It's quite interesting from the gameplay perspective because slaves are easy to get and workers are expensive because of the recruitement costs. Usually i build workers in the early part of the game only, while relying on slaves as the game progresses. A bonus for workers would give them a sense in the later stages of the game.