Did cave people have slaves? Its seems counter-intuitive to whole hunter gather social system. As you need people to hunt slaves, and people to watch over them which is rather risky since you live off of the food you can hunt or gather.

What keeps you to a band as a slave? Can you just run off whenever? if not why not?

Doesn't seem like you have many choices here, but I guess that is why slaves are slaves.

Did cave people have slaves? Its seems counter-intuitive to whole hunter gather social system. As you need people to hunt slaves, and people to watch over them which is rather risky since you live off of the food you can hunt or gather.

What keeps you to a band as a slave? Can you just run off whenever? if not why not?

Cave people did not have slaves. It is theorized that they would sometimes capture members of other tribes, but those people were eventually integrated as full members of the new tribe.

So the next thing on the "new features: coding" todo list is slaver encounters.

slavers attack to subdue, capture you, then sell you off as a slave.

so, what if you're captured?

the way i see it, either you try to escape or you don't.

if you don't, you're a slave for life - basically game over (unless you want to play a slave).

if you try to escape, either you succeed, or you don't.

if you don't, you're a slave for life - basically game over (unless you want to play a slave).

if you succeed, X amount of time has passed, and you're free (able to play normally again).

and of course, the appropriate penaties for X amount of time passing should be applied, where X could be anything from minutes to decades.

so is that it? game over, or cross off X amount of your life and continue playing?

are those the only two basic outcomes?

note that being captured then escaping is similar to going to jail in skyrim.

There should be some kind of choice.

If you have been captured and your only way to avoid game over is to follow a certain path, then you don't have a choice at all and it would become boring quickly.

So, I would include some kind of risk-reward choice, eg. you can escape at certain milestones (1. captured in jail, 2. transport to slave market,3. at slave market,4. at new home). The easiest would be to escape at the early slaver jail, once the slaver go out searching for new victims, but there would be no rewards. The hardest would be to escape at the new home (guards, unknown environment etc.), but you could discover new useful items, weapons, food etc. and steal it.

In other words, make it really simple (captures=permadeath=game over) or make it interesting enough, so that people will get captured on purpose.

Did cave people have slaves? Its seems counter-intuitive to whole hunter gather social system. As you need people to hunt slaves, and people to watch over them which is rather risky since you live off of the food you can hunt or gather.

What keeps you to a band as a slave? Can you just run off whenever? if not why not?

at first, apparently not. whenever two groups came into conflict over territory or space, one would move on. lots of unclaimed world out there, why not? this may have been one factor driving our rapid expansion across the planet. and as you say, slaves require food and guards, which in turn requires a well off and well organized society to be able to afford extra food and hunters/warriors. it was only in the later periods, when competition for space (best hunting, etc), that groups would come into conflict and such things became more common. by the time the neolithic era had arrived, we were well versed in the art of killing each other.

times when it may have happened: in later periods, when two groups were semi-settled (camping in one spot for 3-6 months at a stretch) and in close proximity. but there it would be either wife taking, kidnapping children (a valuable asset), or perhaps some ransom type thing. wives and children raised in the new band would be the only ones who might not leave.

the original idea for slavers came from a review of everything that could be done, not that it necessarily was. in the case of things like slavery, war, cannibalism, etc, there is little archaeological evidence to go on. but your points about the need for food and guards is the same made by the experts. so supposedly, slavery (as we think of it) didn't arise until after hunter/gatherer gave way to agro/settlements.

sounds like i ought to limit it to raiding and interband rivalry.

think: family feud, hatfields vs mcCoys. a couple of your boys put the bag on your rival's daughter down at the lake your bands fight over. can't kill her, it would start a full out interband total war. so you'd ransom her back. lots of prestige in that, rub their noses in it. but that's kidnapping, not slavery.

bag a wife or steal children from another band as you pass through, or just before you move on for the season. that would probably be the limit of it. by the time they wake up from being subdued, they're bound and gagged, and many miles from home. so far away in unfamiliar territory, their only hope of survival is to stick with the new band (their captors). in such cases it would be more like being drafted, force recruitment, impressed, or shanghaied, than being captured as a slave - as the idea is to get them to join the new band.

It is theorized that they would sometimes capture members of other tribes, but those people were eventually integrated as full members of the new tribe.

yeah, looks like this is the route to go.

no slaver encounters, and no kidnapper encounters, except as part of raiding and inter-band rivalry modeling.

but then again, kidnappers might make sense. a band of 2 or 3, they locate other bands, bag an easy target, ransom them back, then move on. only need a little food and one guard for a few days to run that lifestyle. and the payoffs could be big. bag the elder's grandkid and just SEE how much the band will fork over!

the encounter would only occur when the player's band had 2 or more members. kidnappers would attack to subdue. if the kidnappers attack and win and subdue a band member, the other band members get a "ransom demand" encounter: "X trinkets, one week". a kidnapper returns a week later. if you pay, you get the band member back. any tricks along the way (killing kidnapper messengers) and the band member dies.

the only question is, whats to keep the kidnappers from simply killing the bandmember once they get the ransom? they'll be moving on, so they have no fear of reprisals.

so that turns it into an encounter where you lose a band member and either do or do not pay a ransom in the process. i was thinking "I don't negotiate with terrorists" would be a good choice for the "no" response on the dialog menus. <g>.

random encounters with hostiles looking to kidnap your band members in order to make them their band members should be modeled.

mating and kids are planned, so kidnapping children would be possible. but what other band members might be weak enough, or under what circumstances might other band members make an easy target? if you were kidnapped, what would make you stay? wealth, sex, power, prestige, protection, safety, security, intimidation, fear?

5 amazons vs one young male? or 5 brothers vs one young female? they would have enough food and guards to hold one captive until they came around, or they gave up and killed or released the captive.

In other words, make it really simple (captures=permadeath=game over) or make it interesting enough, so that people will get captured on purpose.

well first it has to pass the reality check, which it doesn't really seem to do.

at first i thought through what it would be like to continue playing through being captured etc. you'd have a limited area in which you could move, such as a shelter, field, or camp site. you would have duties (quests) to perform. "goto the great mother river and slay 25 reeds and bring them to me! I want to make some cordage!". mundane stuff like that.

so, simplifying the modeling of the situation, it boiled down to you try to escape or you dont and you succeed or you dont. when and where you try is reflected in the random number "X": how long has passed since being taken. an escape with no gear is assumed. but one could always add a chance for "you bash the guard with a rock, grab their atlatl and darts, and run for the hills, run for your life!".

stepping back and taking a look at how this translated to gameplay:

slavers is a negative encounter where the player either loses a band member, or a band member loses "X" amount of time (and skills get rusty etc),and all/most of their gear. unless "X" is small and they had little/no gear, the player will just reload the last savegame.

same sort of deal with kidnappers. player loses a band member and possibly a ransom too, assuming the kidnappers kill the captive. unless the band member and/or ransom is no great loss, the player will reload a savegame.

so in both cases, its like fighting any other hostile, except they attack to subdue, silly fools!

if you lose (die or are captured), you'll reload. about the only cool outcome is winning the initial encounter. so is pretty much the same as any other combat with a hostile. except that in some cases you don't die, you just age "X" amount of time, and your band may have to pay a ransom. this all assumes one can even come up with the ransom in the first place. if you win the initial encounter, you get gear off the bodies, just like a combat with hostiles.

so in the long run, they're the same as normal hostile encounters, except for the details of what happens if you lose, which in most cases will be enough to prompt a reload of the last save game.

so there really doesn't seem to be much point in adding them. redundant additional content for content's sake is no content at all.

the loss of a combat forcing a save game reload is already more than adequately covered by hostile caveman and animal encounters. adding slavers and kidnappers would increase the number of types of opponents to lose to, but not the odds of getting deadly encounters, or the odds of winning a deadly encounter. slavers and kidnappers fight the same as hostiles (except for subdue). the only difference is what happens after you lose. and who cares? its bad - so you're reloading anyway! <g>

The key, I think, is energy.

Consider that a captive would probably be given a minimal amount of food. If food gives a person energy and energy is going to be the primary factor for how far away from the camp you could run, you are in effect bound to your captives. Further, the wilds are dangerous just by their nature. You don't know where your home is, and you don't know the terrain around you. It's just plain safer to stay. And with limited energy, you are not likely to be able to fight against your captors in a very effective way.

Though your captors could limit you to the mundane, it would probably be more beneficial for them to have you engage in dangerous or energy intensive activities. For example, why not have you go flush out some dangerous prey without any weapons? Maybe there's an opportunity for escape there,tough it would be a highly dangerous one with things that want to kill you both behind and in front of you.

I think you could probably make captivity for a player interesting enough to encourage him to keep playing. I think where it becomes difficult is when the player's band captures someone, how do you establish an AI to respond to the circumstances and take risks as the player would?

I think the various means of escape would be interesting, e.g. kidnappers get attacked and you run, natural disaster and you run, stealthy escape, steal stuff and escape, fight them and escape, talk around a captor and escape, etc. Or potentially stay with them. It could also be valuable if your captors have better resources than you, a safer environment than yours, an opportunity to travel, future allies maybe.