A couple newbie questions?

[mdoolitt]

Just started playing and really enjoying the game. Couple questions though:

1) Do I need to build a Fishery if I have Fish in adjacent sea zone?
2) Do I need an Ironworks if I have Iron in the region?
3) How does culture conversion work? I built a New Faith building, but it doesn't seem to do much
4) Does the Freedmen decision actually free any slaves? I have a glut of slaves from my pirate fleet, and I'd like to change some to free citizens
5) Is there any reason to prefer slaves to free citizens?

[loki100]

1 - no, just to access the resource, but the fishery has other benefits (gold income etc)
2 - yes, same for all the minerals (so gold-gold mine etc)
3 - slowly, set your message setting to average (in general this is a good idea) and you'll see the conversion messages. For most states the base rate is 5%, so that building gives you 10% and so on
4 - yes, again average will enable you to see this
5 - no, its a bit ahistoric but I sell them all the time to get control of loyalty etc

[jimwinsor]

1) Not really, but a Fishery in the region will give Fish-adjacency to any adjacent coastal and inland regions.
2) If you mean Iron Mine, no, it's optional. Iron can still be exported and/or used for adjacent Bonuses without a mine.
3) You should see a foreign population switch to your national culture from time to time, the occurrence should appear in the log.
4) Yes, there is a slave Decision that will convert some slaves to freedmen. The Decision to sell slaves pops up more often, however, and is generally more effective.
5) None that I can think of ...

[Soar]

5) Slaves eat only half as much food as citizens, and depending on their ethnicity and your choices in decisions regarding slave rights, they may produce less unrest than citizens, especially in really big cities since the unrest of each added faction-ethnicity citizen scales based on how many are already in the region. Also, foreign-ethnicity citizens get penalties to food and infrastructure production compared to faction-ethnicity ones, but foreign-ethnicity slaves don't.

Since their unrest generation swings heavily based on ethnicity, their relative usefulness depends heavily on where you're getting your slaves from.

[georgioz]

1) Most of the time its not worth. Exceptions are that you either want to rush higher tier commerce buildings then Fishery with 45 infrastructure cost is cheap way to do that. The other possibility is that you just want to provide fish bonuses to other neighboring regions. Fish is a resource that is not needed by any building - which means you cannot import it into a region you want by some other building. So you have to build it adjacent to other coastal regions of you want to take advantage of it - meaning building Coastal Markets/Garum Shops. And the bonus for Garum Shops/Coastal market make it a very nice choice - especially in smaller provinces that you want to focus on commerce buildings.

2) Iron Works is not a building in this game. The Iron itself as a resource is a bonus just for military buildings which is kind of meh if you ask me. However Iron is "needed" by Furnace which brings iron to the region and that unlocks Copper Works and Bronze Works. These two structures "need" Copper and Tin respectively. The iron is also needed by Tools Manufacture (the upgrade for Blacksmith) which produces Tools - which provide very nice bonuses. So in short all you need iron for is for it to be in range to build Furnace in region where you want to focus on these Metal/Tool buildings.

3) Responded by other people well.

4) Responded by other people well.

5) Oh yes. This is where some people are wrong in this thread. The main feature of Slaves is that they have flat unrest (negative loyalty) no matter the size of the city. While for citizens this number increases by one for every 4 citizens you have. So for citizens of your ethnicity the first 4 citizens have unrest 2, the 5th-8th have unrest 3 and so forth. So the loyalty penalty gets progressively worse and worse with the number of citizens. You see this as visual indicator - the green/yellow/red bar under the citizen - when you click on the city view. This is one of the reasons why Sparta is actually a very nice start. You can have huge city with 30+ slaves and manage loyalty easily while building Tier III buildings in every category. In fact mix of slaves and citizens seems to work best. Slaves eat only 50% of food and can produce food themselves. So at minimum if you have stable middle sized city with all slots built up, good loyalty that you do not want to expand for loyalty reasons - having only slaves assigned to food production while citizens produce culture/commerce - is optimal. The only problem is with high base unrest ethnicities (Germanic, Semitic etc.) where slaves have high base unrest and in general are dangerous. Converting ethnicity of your population is always worth.

[mdoolitt]

Thanks everyone for all the answers. This was very helpful

[duirixuanyan]

1) Most of the time its not worth. Exceptions are that you either want to rush higher tier commerce buildings then Fishery with 45 infrastructure cost is cheap way to do that. The other possibility is that you just want to provide fish bonuses to other neighboring regions. Fish is a resource that is not needed by any building - which means you cannot import it into a region you want by some other building. So you have to build it adjacent to other coastal regions of you want to take advantage of it - meaning building Coastal Markets/Garum Shops. And the bonus for Garum Shops/Coastal market make it a very nice choice - especially in smaller provinces that you want to focus on commerce buildings.

2) Iron Works is not a building in this game. The Iron itself as a resource is a bonus just for military buildings which is kind of meh if you ask me. However Iron is "needed" by Furnace which brings iron to the region and that unlocks Copper Works and Bronze Works. These two structures "need" Copper and Tin respectively. The iron is also needed by Tools Manufacture (the upgrade for Blacksmith) which produces Tools - which provide very nice bonuses. So in short all you need iron for is for it to be in range to build Furnace in region where you want to focus on these Metal/Tool buildings.

3) Responded by other people well.

4) Responded by other people well.

5) Oh yes. This is where some people are wrong in this thread. The main feature of Slaves is that they have flat unrest (negative loyalty) no matter the size of the city. While for citizens this number increases by one for every 4 citizens you have. So for citizens of your ethnicity the first 4 citizens have unrest 2, the 5th-8th have unrest 3 and so forth. So the loyalty penalty gets progressively worse and worse with the number of citizens. You see this as visual indicator - the green/yellow/red bar under the citizen - when you click on the city view. This is one of the reasons why Sparta is actually a very nice start. You can have huge city with 30+ slaves and manage loyalty easily while building Tier III buildings in every category. In fact mix of slaves and citizens seems to work best. Slaves eat only 50% of food and can produce food themselves. So at minimum if you have stable middle sized city with all slots built up, good loyalty that you do not want to expand for loyalty reasons - having only slaves assigned to food production while citizens produce culture/commerce - is optimal. The only problem is with high base unrest ethnicities (Germanic, Semitic etc.) where slaves have high base unrest and in general are dangerous. Converting ethnicity of your population is always worth.

I'd like to add something.
The top unrest per citizen of your ethnicity is 8. So 2 2 2 2 3 3 3 3 4 4 4 4 5 5 5 5 6 6 6 6 7 7 7 7 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 ......

[vakarr]

Converting ethnicities only happens for citizens doesn't it? So you have to get slaves, convert them to citizens (via a decision) then convert them to your ethnicity that way?