QSP Jack-o-Nine-Tails [v2.3] [ImperatorAugustusTertius / qwertyu12359]

[ImperatorAugustus]

Ideas for roadmap:

- Require the master to have reasonable hygiene (if living in shack still, can pay for bath at the spa, or go to the onsen if we enable it in the future) before purchasing a home from White Town real estate office - i.e., a filthy master is turned away (by guards or by Gloria).

- There is a lot of flavor text for the tutors, so I suggest we keep them endgame relevant by setting the skill gains from tutors to be equal to the best skill gains possible with master personal training (equivalent to master who knows lesson skill at S++ level with clothing bonus and has S+ training skill). So, it becomes a question of spending 15 sparks vs. 1 energy for training up non-sex skills.

- That leaves the academy for early game, but it is too expensive at 10 sparks per lesson. I suggest reducing the cost for academy lessons to 5 sparks, and making the skill gain for the slave equivalent to what the slave would gain from personal training with the master if the master knew the lesson skill at B+ level and had S+ trainer skill. Not as good as a personal tutor or an S++ master personal lesson, but much better than a new master with low skills.
- To make the academy late-game relevant, we could add lessons for certain sex techniques. I am thinking Demonstration category. The scenes almost write themselves...

- To give neophyte masters more ways to pay for academy lessons, implement the Slaver's Guild bulletin board and put up daily requests from other slavers for help with specific training tasks, for example:

1. They need one or more additional slavers for a group sex lesson (double penetration, triple, gangbang or bukkake)... player gets paid a few sparks for helping, spends some energy and depletes sexual excitement, and risks picking up rotphilis (except for helping with a bukkake lesson, which pays less...).

1b. I see we have a "group training" button at the Slaver's Guild already, which could cover #1 without needing to connect it to the bulletin board feature. But doing it through the bulletin board would allow the player to be selective about which slaves they fuck (show a portrait of the slave with the job offer).

2. They need a slave they are training to be collected and escorted somewhere (simple fetch quest for player, travel to one location, obtain slave, travel to other location). For example, retrieve a slave from the Golden Cage and bring to the Serpentine district residences (whereupon the mission completes, because the "other" slaver is not one of the specific NPCs in the residences; they are buyers, not slavers).

2b. If we actually generate a temporary slave for these missions, there could be more gameplay possibilities leading from it, for example upon seeing the stats of the temporary slave, the player might decide that they want to keep it ... but you can't steal a branded slave, so the player could make a purchase offer to the current owner. The owner could reject the offer or accept, depending on various factors. If the owner rejects, or if the player can't afford, the player could keep the slave in defiance of the Guild and lose guild reputation daily until it reaches zero and the Guild kicks the player out, at which point their brand status takes a massive hit and starts to decay daily also. If brand reputation reaches zero and guild reputation is zero, game over (citizenship revoked, slaver gets enslaved by the Guild). The player can mend fences at any time by delivering the slave to its proper owner, paying a fine in sparks to the proper owner and to the Guild, and get reinstated as a slaver. The "borrowed" slave cannot be sold to anyone else meanwhile (nor placed in cryo, because they won't agree to store a slave owned by someone else), but could be lost, in which case the player would be able to pay larger penalties in sparks to avoid game over.

2c. Possibly if the player borrows a slave for a while, this could create a rivalry with the other (off-camera) slaver, a concept which we could explore further... (random event: accosted by paid thugs when traveling! "we, uh, heard you have something that doesn't belong to you ... we're supposed to teach you a lesson, unless for some reason we didn't see you today..." [bribe with sparks or enter nonlethal combat with chance of injury]).

2d. You may ask, what benefit does the player derive from keeping the slave, to offset all the suggested penalties. It's 100% about wanting to keep the slave. Unless the "off-camera" other slaver is a rival (#2c), there should be a finite amount of sparks that would be accepted in exchange for transferring ownership of the slave to the player. The player can make a purchase offer, so if they like the slave but lack the funds, they can try to come up with the money. (Taking a loan from the moneylender might not be quite enough, but should come close to the target amount).

- The Slaver's Guild bulletin board could also offer daily missions from the Guild itself, for example:

1. Mix and deliver certain potions to a random NPC for nominal payment (e.g., 10% more than cost of materials) ... not for early game, but provides a source of income separate from selling slaves and a reason to make potions after you have enough for personal use

2. Help Farid with preparing slaves for the next day's market. Concept needs to be fleshed out, probably most of the logistical work of prepping slaves for sale would be handled by other slaves, but it seems likely that Farid would outsource some intake processing to fellow slavers - figuring out the names of each of the slaves, where they are from, and evaluating what their skills and stats are so they can be rated, explaining their situation to them, etc.

 

[clystar]

Is there money cheat on story mode? using CE or any mods out there. Or maybe anyone can explain how to get a nice income here. I tried using the fiend but is there a way to sell their produce? The colosseum doesn't bring that much money, about 50-70 sparks while my weekly cost is around 150 sparks. If I bought a plain looking slave it can't go above D- unless I make her famous fighting or surgery. D- slaves are only around 250 sparks. That means I need to buy them for maximum 50 sparks and train them for less than 2 weeks. Which is insane.

 

[Evangelion-01]

Is there money cheat on story mode? using CE or any mods out there. Or maybe anyone can explain how to get a nice income here. I tried using the fiend but is there a way to sell their produce? The colosseum doesn't bring that much money, about 50-70 sparks while my weekly cost is around 150 sparks. If I bought a plain looking slave it can't go above D- unless I make her famous fighting or surgery. D- slaves are only around 250 sparks. That means I need to buy them for maximum 50 sparks and train them for less than 2 weeks. Which is insane.

depends on where you sell them, clients are very demanding better to sell them to the shops and camps around (for example the military Camp in the Outskirts or the farm hand in the Outcasts Quarter).
Also a Very good way to earn money early on is takeing and completing guild Quests... save before you take the quest though... training a gladiatrix early with a weak char is suicidell, and you'll never finish an artist in time.
A Servant or Assistant will be your best bets.
The guild pays a small sum in advance and a larger after completing the mission... including Bonuses for being fast and/or delivering a higher ranked slave than requested

 

[ImperatorAugustus]

Sandbox mode has an in-game cheat menu (press options gear button on the bar at the top of the screen, and the option at the lower left enables cheats, which adds a second gear button next to the options button at the top of the screen).

Living alone in the shack in the slums costs around 2 sparks per day, and having a slave in the shack eating dehydrated food adds 2 sparks per day. So in dire straits (if you aren't on a time limit with moneylender), you could put your slave in cryo for all days except arena events. In cryo, the cost of keeping the slave is 1 spark per day. In sum, master living alone has minimum expenses of 20 sparks per decade, and master with one slave has minimum costs of 30-40 sparks per decade.

In other words, living in the shack with a skilled gladiatrix or brony and surviving entirely on the income from winning arena events should be possible. (You can't do this from the start because you need a skilled slave to be able to consistently win arena and/or racing challenges.)

I have not tried this and would be interested in reports from anyone who gives it a try.

 

[Yukihirou]

Sandbox mode has an in-game cheat menu (press options gear button on the bar at the top of the screen, and the option at the lower left enables cheats, which adds a second gear button next to the options button at the top of the screen).

Living alone in the shack in the slums costs around 2 sparks per day, and having a slave in the shack eating dehydrated food adds 2 sparks per day. So in dire straits (if you aren't on a time limit with moneylender), you could put your slave in cryo for all days except arena events. In cryo, the cost of keeping the slave is 1 spark per day. In sum, master living alone has minimum expenses of 20 sparks per decade, and master with one slave has minimum costs of 30-40 sparks per decade.

In other words, living in the shack with a skilled gladiatrix or brony and surviving entirely on the income from winning arena events should be possible. (You can't do this from the start because you need a skilled slave to be able to consistently win arena and/or racing challenges.)

I have not tried this and would be interested in reports from anyone who gives it a try.

Totally will do this build once 2.2 hit
have been interested in living life without taking a bath for a while

 

[ImperatorAugustus]

If you can afford it, you can visit the salon for hygiene (and maybe one day the onsen will be available for the master - currently, only slaves can go there, with the hot springs reward). Also, if you have a slave, the level 3 reward 'go to the beach' includes both master and slave bathing in the water, and there is no sparks cost for that. But ... I just noticed this is bugged and does not properly reset their hygiene.

 

[ImperatorAugustus]

I see on the roadmap some ideas about putting the Slums inside the city walls. Information is scattered, but according to the original game texts, the Slums are located outside the city walls. You encounter Isabella while "passing through the slums at the Border of the Fogs." In older versions of the game, the button for leaving the Slums was labeled "Walk to city" instead of "Leave the Quarter" (in the 2.2 dev version).

When you patrol at the Border of the Fog and encounter various monsters, notice that you never actually enter the Fog. Is it even possible to be "in the Fog", or is that just how citizens of Eternal Rome refer to other worlds (in the Fog / beyond the Fog from the perspective of Rome is "anywhere that isn't here")? If the edge of the Fog acts as a dimensional portal, then passing through the border of the Fog either teleports you to an "in-between" realm (in which case "in the Fog" is a specific place in the multiverse) or it teleports you directly to another world (randomly or with control if you have the requisite knowledge and skill - including but not limited to magical ability). If the edge of the Fog is not itself a portal but rather the Fog contains portals somewhere inside it, then it would be possible to physically enter the Fog without being teleported right away, but you would be at risk of stumbling into an unseen portal at any time (because obscured in the Fog). In the latter case, it might be possible for even non-mages to navigate the Fog (as long as the locations of the portals don't change). We know it is possible to pass through the Fog and control where you end up, because various characters mention business arrangements with specific worlds, implying there are ways to travel back and forth.

We know the Fog can be entered deliberately from other worlds by those with magical ability (for example, this is how the Nerd arrived in Eternal Rome, according to his backstory). We also know the Fog can be entered accidentally (for example, this is how Balalaika, leader of the smugglers, along with her former military unit, came to Eternal Rome unintentionally).

We know that the city of Eternal Rome is surrounded on all sides by the Fog. And we know that the distance from the city to the edge of the Fog changes frequently (perhaps constantly).

Reverend Molaru, Archbishop of Taurus House says: "A priest`s duty is to drive away the Fog from the Houses. Every day, on the altars of the cathedrals, sparks of creation are burned in ritual acts and Fog backs off. The Archbishop is in command of the priests and is personally responsible for the well-being of the territories around the Fog." I suspect the word "around" there is an incorrect translation and should read "surrounded by." The description of Archbishop Nirelis is: "This mummy is so old that he unravels as he moves, but Nirelis has great magical power and influence. His work is managing the temple, which removes Fog from the boundaries of the House." There are two other Archbishops, Reverend Porter and SHAITANA.

So each of the four Great Houses (Camira, Corvus, Serpis, Taurus) has priests responsible for spending sparks in a ritual that pushes back the Fog from their quarter of Eternal Rome. All territory within the city is under the jurisdiction either of the Vatican (White Town) or one of the Great Houses (they each have a "Quarter" of the city). As White Town is in the center of Eternal Rome, the four Quarters wrap around it.

We know that Eternal Rome has at least one external city wall all the way around it, because there is a city gate. It is not stated whether there are multiple gates. The gate in the game is labeled as singular ("the" gate) without stating which Quarter it resides in. So it might be that Quarter has its own gate, and going to "the gate" means going to whichever one happens to be nearest. It would make sense for each Great House to have its own gate, so that they do not have another Great House limiting (or monitoring) all of their comings and goings. Of course, having a gate is also a risk and requires maintenance: it is an easier point of entry than the wall for monsters seeking to enter the city, and it also needs guards to prevent the desperate riff-raff in the Slums from entering the city without permission.

When meeting Isabella, the slaver says: "the guards will not allow you into Rome proper without the sign of any of the Great Houses. I’m sorry, but I can hardly help with this. You need a recommendation from the recruiters." And Isabella says: "There are different ways to get into the city. I do not have sparks to bribe the guards, but I can pass as a slave of a respected member of the guild." From this, we know that there are guards, passports (effectively, if not literally - entry passes might take the form of tokens or the guards might have a list of authorized persons - but regardless entry is regulated by the Great Houses), and recruiters (from the guilds or other citizens looking to recruit from the Slums). If we think that each Quarter has its own gate, then to pass through a particular gate you would need approval from the Great House that manages that Quarter, and while they might accept the sign of another Great House, depending on relations between the Great Houses or their level of suspicion, they might not. While not overt in the game texts, in a city with rival powers, there must be conflict at times.

At the base camp that players can visit at the Border of the Fog, the sergeant is described as "in charge of one of the many fortified camps on the border of the Fog. He and his soldiers are the first line of defense against all dangers that enter Rome from other worlds." And he says: "Civilians do not belong here, you had better go back to the protected area."

So we know that there are multiple camps surrounding the city. Where are the Slums in relation to these camps? Is there a second wall between the Slums and the soldiers' camps? This does not seem to be clearly stated, but we can make some inferences.

The player home in the slums has the following description: 'You had to live in the remains of a house that was half-eaten by the Fog. For slum this place was built very thoroughly, but staying here is not comfortable at all, and most importantly - very, very dangerous.'

I interpret "half-eaten by the Fog" to mean that anything the Fog touches, vanishes. If the rituals are not maintained by one of the Quarters, the Fog creeps closer to the city walls, and could even creep past the walls into the Quarter itself. If the Fog ever got close enough to the city to touch the walls, they would vanish too. There must be a limit to the effectiveness of the rituals (the Fog can be pushed only so far back and/or only so often) and there must be variation in how close the Fog approaches the city on a given day. It is unlikely that the city walls would be placed somewhere where their vanishing is even an occasional problem. Maybe some Great Houses are more effective with their Fog-pushing rituals and so their portion of the city wall is farther out. It is doubtful that the wall is perfectly circular all the way around the city, given how much of a premium is placed on space.

If any land outside the city walls is deemed "safe" there would be immense pressure from citizens to bring that land inside the walls. In other words, the land outside the main city walls is land that citizens do not want, which means it is land that is not considered safe. So the edge of the Fog must sometimes approach quite close to the city walls, vanishing anything in its path (such as the portion of the slums built outside the walls in that area). The residents of the slums in that area would need to flee closer to the city wall or to an area where the Fog is not as close, then return later when the Fog retreats again to rebuild (except for the unlucky ones who get caught unawares, possibly including the previous resident of that shack in the slums).

Also, because the citizens do not want their wall to be eaten, they would leave some buffer space beyond the wall where the Fog very rarely comes (rare but not never, so not safe extending the wall further), and so the land closest to the wall would be the most valuable (being least likely to get eaten). From the citizens' perspective, the residents of the slums are the least valuable persons in Eternal Rome (that aren't worth the effort to make dead), so it seems unlikely that they would invest in building a second wall (that would need to be regularly rebuilt, necessitating import of raw materials) to protect the slums from monsters. The residents of the slums are themselves a buffer to delay the ravening hordes of monsters constantly emerging from the Fog until patrolling soldiers from the camps can hunt them down. Why bother protecting the slums at all (with the soldiers)? Probably the soldiers are really more for protecting the city itself (some monsters can fly, and if enough monsters are allowed to accumulate, they could breach the walls or overwhelm the gate guards). Also, some of the residents of the slums are employed within the city, and having a place for their wage slaves to live outside the walls means the citizens can hoard more of the land within the walls for themselves, so the citizens have an interest in maintaining a minimum level of safety outside the walls so they don't have to constantly replace their workers.

So, how much space is there from the walls to the border of the Fog?

Considering that what the player encounters at the Border of the Fog is representative of what is constantly happening there, not only when the player decides to patrol, we see that there are hapless women from other worlds frequently stumbling out of the Fog, and then being caught and raped by monsters that emerge from it soon after. So the distance from the border of Fog to the Slums must be far enough (most of the time) that these women can't immediately run and hide between buildings, or else we would be encountering these scenes whenever we visit the Slums instead of only when patrolling along the border.

There is also mention of enemies "fleeing the battlefield" when you prevail in an encounter, which suggests at least some amount of open space along the border. Considering that the priests perform their Fog warding rituals daily, my interpretation is that Fog advances a large amount every day, and the rituals push it back a more-or-less equal amount (with some give-and-take day-to-day, but an equilibrium is maintained over time). The space over which the Fog moves each day would be left barren or filled with random structures taken from across the multiverse (like waves depositing shells on the seashore). It is within that "high tide"/"low tide" space that the soldiers from the base camps patrol, and the most dangerous time to be in the Slums would be just before the priests do their daily rituals, when the Fog has reached its closest approach point for the day.

So when the Slums are referred to as being "at the Border of the Fogs" when you meet Isabella, it does not necessarily mean that the edge of the Fog is right next to the outer edge of the Slums, but at "High Fog" (to coin a phrase) it comes quite close. And anything left beyond the outer edge of the Slums usually vanishes the next day when the Fog rolls in.

With this interpretation, the base camps would be built close to the city walls and would have Slums on either side of them. In other words, the Slums are sandwiched between the city walls and the Fog, with soldiers patrolling the empty space between the Slums and the Fog, following the shifting boundary edge. Residents closest to the camps would be safest, of course.

Residents of the Slums are at constant risk of attack by monsters that slip past the patrolling soldiers, particularly at "High Fog" when there is little space between the edge of the Slums and Fog for the patrols to move around in, and there is even risk of Slums residents having their homes (and themselves) vanish into the Fog when the priests have a bad ritual day or the Fog is more rapacious than usual.

It is worth (pun intended) noting that the key ingredient for the Fog warding rituals, Sparks of the Flame of Creation, are contained in all living souls (according to game texts), and they can be extracted and imbued into objects, which forms the basis of enchantments as well as the physical currency of Eternal Rome. Sparks can be dissolved into a soul and then used to power magic, as described when the master casts spells or your slave takes enchanting lessons. Presumably casting spells without first absorbing Sparks is possible too, but would deplete the soul of the caster.

That gives an idea for a lore-friendly gameplay change: allow casting spells when you can't afford them, and drain the master's health [strength, allure and libido] stats instead. It would apply only when the slaver has run out of physical sparks. It would be interesting to see if this could be exploited by players. They could deliberately wait to take a loan until the end of the decade and meanwhile spend their master's stats on magic to help with training. But once the loan is taken, they would be spending physical sparks again for magic until it runs out, and on the hook to pay back the loan plus interest, discouraging any unnecessary spending. Other sources of income - selling previously and cryo-stored trained slaves, winning in the arena, etc. - could be used to avoid game over for a longer period, while keeping saved sparks deliberately as low as possible. Overall, I doubt it would significantly alter game balance, but it might be enough to save an otherwise hopeless situation. But we could make an option for the player to drain themselves instead of using physical sparks even when they have enough, introducing another dimension of gameplay strategy by turning the master's stats into another resource to be exploited. The drain rate would need to be balanced to exceed the rate at which the master can train up those stats, of course. For the first few slaves on a hard start, spending some of the master's stats instead of sparks could give more time to achieve difficult guild contract specializations like concubine, gladiatrix or pony, or shorten the time to complete the contract if the sparks saved on magic were spent on classes at the academy, but depleting the master's strength can lead to death, so it can only be taken so far...

There is also mention of the Vatican providing Sparks daily to each of the Great Houses, with the Praetor in each House being the person responsible for these deliveries. Where does the Vatican obtain all of those Sparks? We know that sparks exist in living souls, but can they be extracted by force? Does the Vatican engage in daily vampiric (soul-draining) rituals? One reason to doubt this is the practice of selling slaves to the butcher. If a slave is worth 5 sparks dead, then the Vatican must not be able to get more than 5 sparks from them while they are still alive, or else unwanted slaves would be sold to the Vatican instead of to the butcher. Still, even if the Vatican could forcefully extract only 1 spark per soul, if they have a method of obtaining victims that costs less than that, they would turn a profit.

Most of the women who wander in from the Fog get enslaved, and all slaves are female. What happens to men who wander in from the Fog and don't stay in the Slums? Many of the story mode master characters have stories about coming from other worlds. They all somehow avoided being murdered in the Slums and somehow became slavers. Butler's story mentions that he "put a lot of effort to gain the status of a slaver." Of course there are other Guilds besides the slavers (for example, the Illusionist Guild that maintains the illusion of the sky and sun for the artificial beach, which is actually in a cavern in the Serpentine Quarter). So some of the skilled male migrants arriving from the Fog may be able to secure jobs for themselves and survive that way. But if they can't show their worth, what is done with them? They could be slaughtered for food, but I don't see any text suggesting that in the game (pigs are specifically referenced as female). Hmm...

In addition to "honest" workers (residents of the Slums who have day passes to go to work in the city), we know that the Slums contain gangs of thugs (we sometimes see them catching girls at the border). Probably the members of gangs who are not also in the first category (workers) eke out their meager living by 'protecting' (extorting) residents (pay the dominant local gang to leave you alone; they try to keep other gangs away so residents keep paying them) and by capturing men and women who stumble out of the Fog and selling them to Slaver's Guild representatives or delivering them to recruiters in the hope they might have some valuable skill. This possibility of value to a recruiter is probably how most men emerging from the Fog survive their initial encounters with the gangs; they get captured and handed to the recruiters for a few sparks, or rejected and then either get forcibly inducted into the gang that caught them -- attrition undoubtedly being high -- or sent back into the Fog (dead or alive at the whim of the gang in question).

Naturally, as available space is finite, the Slums are very densely populated and the residents of the Slums must be fiercely competitive as every resource is scarce. Anyone living in the Slums must have protection of a gang or a Great House or Guild in the city (as the player does, being a slaver) to discourage other residents of the Slums from stealing everything they have, killing or enslaving them.

If the equilibrium between the priests and the Fog boundary ever shifted outward (meaning that a section of the Slums is no longer at constant risk from the Fog), the Quarter of the city on that side would expand outward, taking over part of the Slums there, because the citizens in that Quarter would hardly care to leave the expanded territory to the poor. But equilibrium shifts outward probably do not happen (the rituals are well-established, as is the behavior of the Fog: the rituals are probably about as effective as possible already). On the other hand, equilibrium shifts inward could happen when a Great House falls out of favor with the Vatican. Their Archbishop would be given less Sparks for rituals and would lose some ground (and some of the Slums) on that side (but probably the Vatican still would give them enough sparks to avoid the Fog reaching the city wall), until they patch up their differences. That would be tough luck for the Slums residents from that area, who would have to relocate around the outside of the city to the Slums in the territory of one of the other Great Houses.

Incidentally, there is mention of "Camira war camps" in the Fenris master character's background, but I see nothing else in the game text about them. Possibly this is a reference to the base camps outside the section of the city walls belonging to the Camira (Outcasts) Quarter. Or possibly there are some wars being fought elsewhere in the multiverse that the Outcasts are involved in. (If the Fog can be navigated, it stands to reason that Eternal Rome can wage war against peoples in other worlds and establish colonies, demand tribute, and do the other types of things that foreign invaders do after defeating the locals.)

 

[ImperatorAugustus]

Having a low standard of living with high fame (brand status) currently has little impact. The mood penalty is easily ignored. I suggest instead using standard of living as a soft cap for brand reputation. If your brand reputation exceeds your standard of living, potential buyers think that you can't afford a higher standard of living because your training quality has fallen and so they are more reluctant to purchase from you, and also your brand reputation decays until it reaches the level that corresponds to your standard of living. Also, there should be minimum living standards for each residence; White Town can't be lower than Luxurious, Necropolis can't be lower than Respectable, Taurus can't be lower than Comfortable, Serpentine can't be lower than Basic, Outcasts can't be lower than Poor. All story mode characters start in the Slums, so this change would not affect their living expenses, but it would raise the costs for moving up in the world.

If it proves too burdensome, then along with other economic rebalancing, we could lower rental costs somewhat (essentially shifting some of the rental expenses to cost of living).

In addition to influencing whether high-class customers are willing to buy from you at all, we should consider other ways to reflect standard of living on gameplay. It should influence how slaves and NPCs regard the player, and should be a gate for certain activities (like being allowed into the Gentleman's Club in Taurus Quarter). The standard of living set at the end of the previous decade should be the one considered, so players can't game the system by raising the level before taking an action and then lowering it again.

 

[ImperatorAugustus]

One thing the end game lacks is the ability to have a harem of well-trained, devoted slaves simultaneously living with the master and taking care of his every whim while also helping him train his latest guild contract or future arena champion or brony or what-have-you. I'm proposing a multiple-assistants feature, in other words. Obviously you can approximate this by keeping them in cryo, but that doesn't run the nightly simulation on them. Putting them in the farm or the prison overnight is a way around that, but has potentially unwanted side effects. Once you can afford a large enough residence for them, why not let extra slaves live in the extra rooms. The user interface doesn't need much adjusting for this, just provide a way to exchange the current assistant with one of the spares. The simulation needs some work to apply the same end-of-day processing to the extra assistants after the main assistant, and make sure nothing happens multiple times that should only happen once.

 

[ImperatorAugustus]

Is there something wrong with the teaching skill while playing as nerd? I'm playing nerd at difficult/hardcore difficulty, but despite training my slaves as much as I can using my character and even getting a lot of these skills to A+/S+, teaching skill is stuck at Trainer F-. It seems like for me it's only at nerd because I have Lecturer S+ on my other characters.

Edit: Never mind, I think I know why. I don't remember the reason why I did it, but I had check mark "supervise slave" on my assistant. When I unmarked it, I finally went to Tutor D- after awhile. Tested it again on a new game to be sure and yep, got it leveled up. Took awhile under the new game though.

This is an old post, but as far I can see, supervise rule has nothing to do with it. The master's teaching ability improves when a successfully teaching a skill that the master knows at a higher level than the slave, and only when the slave exhibits sufficient diligence, which is affected by many factors (obedience, mood, aura status, pride, phobias, tiredness, psyche and whether the Domini Dictum spell is active).

 

[ImperatorAugustus]

On the roadmap:

b) Slave jobs such as prostitution, selling painting canvas, playing music, working at the restaurant (a bit like in the game Slave Maker).

Of this list, I vote NO for all except selling art. The premise of JoNT is that there is no shortage of labor supply for every possible job a slave could have, given the never ending arrivals of new slaves. In such a world, with space at a premium and every spark being counted, why would a brothel give up a cut of its revenue to a slaver, when the brothel can just buy a slave and keep the full profit? Same for working at a restaurant: they buy slaves to work those jobs full-time, there's no opening for part-time workers. If a slave is bad at the job, they get rid of the slave, buy a new one from a different slaver, and complain to the Guild and everyone else they know that the first slaver gave them a bad product (--brand rep, --guild rep).

Selling artworks is an exception because every artist has their own style, so there may be those who love the works of your slave and would pay for them (I would limit this to slaves with the special random trait Painter). If it was another kind of fame that could be developed over time, it might be a nice addition. However, it could be a double-edged sword. For every one person who likes a piece of art, there are two critics who despise it (and extend their ire to the one who created it, and anyone associated with them). So if the slaver tries to promote a slave's art reputation, there should be some penalty to the slaver's brand reputation (he thinks that trash is art? his slaves must be worthless too.) until the slave gains enough fame to win over the masses (her style is so unique and fresh!).

Performing music requires a venue, and any kind of ensemble piece with multiple performers would want 100% dedicated slaves for the job, so again no room for a part-timer. But a solo performance for a crowd might have some value, especially if the slave has the special random trait Musician. Alternatively, the slaver could have their slave perform for free at the forum as a way of building the slave's fame and the master's brand. That could include dance too (if they have the Exotic Dancer / Ballerina special trait). Again it could be a double-edged sword, at first negative until the slave wins over enough of the critics.

Aside from lore-friendliness, adding jobs that slaves can do while still living with the slaver weakens the gameplay necessity of regularly selling slaves to obtain value from them, and moves gameplay in the direction of a slave-keeper game. There are some prized slaves you keep (assistants, arena champions) when you can afford to, and it makes sense to have long-term achievements for them like becoming famous (whether as an arena champion or as a painter). But unless the slaver is willing to live in a shack (as suggested up-thread), with social stigma and other risks/penalties, it should not be possible to maintain positive sparkflow (more income than expenses) without regularly training and selling slaves.

Rescuing slaves from the Fog and selling them does the same thing (easy money without actually having to do any training). The untrained sale value of slaves from the Fog should be massively reduced, and the expense of acquiring them should be increased (e.g., make most Fog battles do at least minor injury to the slaver, requiring medical center treatment, healing balm or a day of rest before any strenuous activity to avoid making the injury worse - which could be modeled by setting master energy to zero). The slaver should have to keep Fog-rescued slaves and train them at least to D- rank to make any meaningful money from them, but shouldn't be penalized for dumping slaves they don't want... just not rewarded either.

 

[clystar]

In such a world, with space at a premium and every spark being counted, why would a brothel give up a cut of its revenue to a slaver, when the brothel can just buy a slave and keep the full profit? Same for working at a restaurant: they buy slaves to work those jobs full-time, there's no opening for part-time workers.

Why have your slaves work in someone else's premises when you can open your own. And then have them compete according to slave ratings, services, rep etc. You can train a cook, maid have them work in your restaurant. Train sex slave and have them work in your brothel. Train fighters to have them provide security at your premises or make them fight in colossuem. Train a good secretaries to have them manage your premises. Train musicians to attract people to your premises. This would expand the game potential a lot better than your suggestion.

 

[ImperatorAugustus]

Why have your slaves work in someone else's premises when you can open your own. And then have them compete according to slave ratings, services, rep etc. You can train a cook, maid have them work in your restaurant. Train sex slave and have them work in your brothel. Train fighters to have them provide security at your premises or make them fight in colossuem. Train a good secretaries to have them manage your premises. Train musicians to attract people to your premises. This would expand the game potential a lot better than your suggestion.

It's a better idea than sending them to work for someone else, I agree, but there are also Guild monopolies to consider. You are a member of the Slavers Guild, not the Business Conglomerate Guild. Your job is to sell slaves, not keep them. The game now is designed around slaver gameplay, and would need significant changes in many areas to become a business conglomerate tycoon game instead. It seems like a different game concept in the same world setting: Jack of Nine Businesses?

 

[ImperatorAugustus]

By the way, living in a shack is not really dangerous, but it should be. Some ideas: Encounters in the Slums with monsters (often injured already and the fight concludes after a few rounds if you don't manage to win by yourself by soldiers who were chasing the monster arriving and killing it), or encounters with thugs demanding 'protection' money (once per decade, unless a new gang has moved into the area), plus the small possibility of your shack being fully eaten by the Fog, leaving you homeless. (Are there any inns in Eternal Rome where you could rent a room for the night? Not enough tourists, I would think...)

 

[clystar]

It's a better idea than sending them to work for someone else, I agree, but there are also Guild monopolies to consider. You are a member of the Slavers Guild, not the Business Conglomerate Guild. Your job is to sell slaves, not keep them. The game now is designed around slaver gameplay, and would need significant changes in many areas to become a business conglomerate tycoon game instead. It seems like a different game concept in the same world setting: Jack of Nine Businesses?

Technically you are still training the slaves because it would take a lot of time to fully employ them in one shop. The business is just a side management thing where you can choose whether to keep your slaves or sell them. Obviously selling the slaves would create a lot of income in bulk while making them work would depends on a lot of criteria. It would put players to make a decision to sell their S+ slaves or put them to work. Devotion would play a role here to determine the slaves efficiency and maybe overtime it would decay. So you have to retrain them.

I'm aware that people are into putting BDSM to the slaves and want to keep it like that. But currently, after training 4 or 5 slaves the game feels like a repetition. Well my suggestion would expand the game in a lot of ways and yes would change the genre from slave trainer to slave management.

 

[ImperatorAugustus]

I would need to be convinced on the lore side too. I can't see the various Guilds being happy with some upstart trying to displace all of their monopoly businesses. They would bury the venture in red tape. Eternal Rome literally has a Ministry of Circumlocution. For the reference:

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[Lokplart]

I see on the roadmap some ideas about putting the Slums inside the city walls. Information is scattered, but according to the original game texts, the Slums are located outside the city walls. You encounter Isabella while "passing through the slums at the Border of the Fogs." In older versions of the game, the button for leaving the Slums was labeled "Walk to city" instead of "Leave the Quarter" (in the 2.2 dev version).

When you patrol at the Border of the Fog and encounter various monsters, notice that you never actually enter the Fog. Is it even possible to be "in the Fog", or is that just how citizens of Eternal Rome refer to other worlds (in the Fog / beyond the Fog from the perspective of Rome is "anywhere that isn't here")? If the edge of the Fog acts as a dimensional portal, then passing through the border of the Fog either teleports you to an "in-between" realm (in which case "in the Fog" is a specific place in the multiverse) or it teleports you directly to another world (randomly or with control if you have the requisite knowledge and skill - including but not limited to magical ability). If the edge of the Fog is not itself a portal but rather the Fog contains portals somewhere inside it, then it would be possible to physically enter the Fog without being teleported right away, but you would be at risk of stumbling into an unseen portal at any time (because obscured in the Fog). In the latter case, it might be possible for even non-mages to navigate the Fog (as long as the locations of the portals don't change). We know it is possible to pass through the Fog and control where you end up, because various characters mention business arrangements with specific worlds, implying there are ways to travel back and forth.

We know the Fog can be entered deliberately from other worlds by those with magical ability (for example, this is how the Nerd arrived in Eternal Rome, according to his backstory). We also know the Fog can be entered accidentally (for example, this is how Balalaika, leader of the smugglers, along with her former military unit, came to Eternal Rome unintentionally).

We know that the city of Eternal Rome is surrounded on all sides by the Fog. And we know that the distance from the city to the edge of the Fog changes frequently (perhaps constantly).

Reverend Molaru, Archbishop of Taurus House says: "A priest`s duty is to drive away the Fog from the Houses. Every day, on the altars of the cathedrals, sparks of creation are burned in ritual acts and Fog backs off. The Archbishop is in command of the priests and is personally responsible for the well-being of the territories around the Fog." I suspect the word "around" there is an incorrect translation and should read "surrounded by." The description of Archbishop Nirelis is: "This mummy is so old that he unravels as he moves, but Nirelis has great magical power and influence. His work is managing the temple, which removes Fog from the boundaries of the House." There are two other Archbishops, Reverend Porter and SHAITANA.

So each of the four Great Houses (Camira, Corvus, Serpis, Taurus) has priests responsible for spending sparks in a ritual that pushes back the Fog from their quarter of Eternal Rome. All territory within the city is under the jurisdiction either of the Vatican (White Town) or one of the Great Houses (they each have a "Quarter" of the city). As White Town is in the center of Eternal Rome, the four Quarters wrap around it.

We know that Eternal Rome has at least one external city wall all the way around it, because there is a city gate. It is not stated whether there are multiple gates. The gate in the game is labeled as singular ("the" gate) without stating which Quarter it resides in. So it might be that Quarter has its own gate, and going to "the gate" means going to whichever one happens to be nearest. It would make sense for each Great House to have its own gate, so that they do not have another Great House limiting (or monitoring) all of their comings and goings. Of course, having a gate is also a risk and requires maintenance: it is an easier point of entry than the wall for monsters seeking to enter the city, and it also needs guards to prevent the desperate riff-raff in the Slums from entering the city without permission.

When meeting Isabella, the slaver says: "the guards will not allow you into Rome proper without the sign of any of the Great Houses. I’m sorry, but I can hardly help with this. You need a recommendation from the recruiters." And Isabella says: "There are different ways to get into the city. I do not have sparks to bribe the guards, but I can pass as a slave of a respected member of the guild." From this, we know that there are guards, passports (effectively, if not literally - entry passes might take the form of tokens or the guards might have a list of authorized persons - but regardless entry is regulated by the Great Houses), and recruiters (from the guilds or other citizens looking to recruit from the Slums). If we think that each Quarter has its own gate, then to pass through a particular gate you would need approval from the Great House that manages that Quarter, and while they might accept the sign of another Great House, depending on relations between the Great Houses or their level of suspicion, they might not. While not overt in the game texts, in a city with rival powers, there must be conflict at times.

At the base camp that players can visit at the Border of the Fog, the sergeant is described as "in charge of one of the many fortified camps on the border of the Fog. He and his soldiers are the first line of defense against all dangers that enter Rome from other worlds." And he says: "Civilians do not belong here, you had better go back to the protected area."

So we know that there are multiple camps surrounding the city. Where are the Slums in relation to these camps? Is there a second wall between the Slums and the soldiers' camps? This does not seem to be clearly stated, but we can make some inferences.

The player home in the slums has the following description: 'You had to live in the remains of a house that was half-eaten by the Fog. For slum this place was built very thoroughly, but staying here is not comfortable at all, and most importantly - very, very dangerous.'

I interpret "half-eaten by the Fog" to mean that anything the Fog touches, vanishes. If the rituals are not maintained by one of the Quarters, the Fog creeps closer to the city walls, and could even creep past the walls into the Quarter itself. If the Fog ever got close enough to the city to touch the walls, they would vanish too. There must be a limit to the effectiveness of the rituals (the Fog can be pushed only so far back and/or only so often) and there must be variation in how close the Fog approaches the city on a given day. It is unlikely that the city walls would be placed somewhere where their vanishing is even an occasional problem. Maybe some Great Houses are more effective with their Fog-pushing rituals and so their portion of the city wall is farther out. It is doubtful that the wall is perfectly circular all the way around the city, given how much of a premium is placed on space.

If any land outside the city walls is deemed "safe" there would be immense pressure from citizens to bring that land inside the walls. In other words, the land outside the main city walls is land that citizens do not want, which means it is land that is not considered safe. So the edge of the Fog must sometimes approach quite close to the city walls, vanishing anything in its path (such as the portion of the slums built outside the walls in that area). The residents of the slums in that area would need to flee closer to the city wall or to an area where the Fog is not as close, then return later when the Fog retreats again to rebuild (except for the unlucky ones who get caught unawares, possibly including the previous resident of that shack in the slums).

Also, because the citizens do not want their wall to be eaten, they would leave some buffer space beyond the wall where the Fog very rarely comes (rare but not never, so not safe extending the wall further), and so the land closest to the wall would be the most valuable (being least likely to get eaten). From the citizens' perspective, the residents of the slums are the least valuable persons in Eternal Rome (that aren't worth the effort to make dead), so it seems unlikely that they would invest in building a second wall (that would need to be regularly rebuilt, necessitating import of raw materials) to protect the slums from monsters. The residents of the slums are themselves a buffer to delay the ravening hordes of monsters constantly emerging from the Fog until patrolling soldiers from the camps can hunt them down. Why bother protecting the slums at all (with the soldiers)? Probably the soldiers are really more for protecting the city itself (some monsters can fly, and if enough monsters are allowed to accumulate, they could breach the walls or overwhelm the gate guards). Also, some of the residents of the slums are employed within the city, and having a place for their wage slaves to live outside the walls means the citizens can hoard more of the land within the walls for themselves, so the citizens have an interest in maintaining a minimum level of safety outside the walls so they don't have to constantly replace their workers.

So, how much space is there from the walls to the border of the Fog?

Considering that what the player encounters at the Border of the Fog is representative of what is constantly happening there, not only when the player decides to patrol, we see that there are hapless women from other worlds frequently stumbling out of the Fog, and then being caught and raped by monsters that emerge from it soon after. So the distance from the border of Fog to the Slums must be far enough (most of the time) that these women can't immediately run and hide between buildings, or else we would be encountering these scenes whenever we visit the Slums instead of only when patrolling along the border.

There is also mention of enemies "fleeing the battlefield" when you prevail in an encounter, which suggests at least some amount of open space along the border. Considering that the priests perform their Fog warding rituals daily, my interpretation is that Fog advances a large amount every day, and the rituals push it back a more-or-less equal amount (with some give-and-take day-to-day, but an equilibrium is maintained over time). The space over which the Fog moves each day would be left barren or filled with random structures taken from across the multiverse (like waves depositing shells on the seashore). It is within that "high tide"/"low tide" space that the soldiers from the base camps patrol, and the most dangerous time to be in the Slums would be just before the priests do their daily rituals, when the Fog has reached its closest approach point for the day.

So when the Slums are referred to as being "at the Border of the Fogs" when you meet Isabella, it does not necessarily mean that the edge of the Fog is right next to the outer edge of the Slums, but at "High Fog" (to coin a phrase) it comes quite close. And anything left beyond the outer edge of the Slums usually vanishes the next day when the Fog rolls in.

With this interpretation, the base camps would be built close to the city walls and would have Slums on either side of them. In other words, the Slums are sandwiched between the city walls and the Fog, with soldiers patrolling the empty space between the Slums and the Fog, following the shifting boundary edge. Residents closest to the camps would be safest, of course.

Residents of the Slums are at constant risk of attack by monsters that slip past the patrolling soldiers, particularly at "High Fog" when there is little space between the edge of the Slums and Fog for the patrols to move around in, and there is even risk of Slums residents having their homes (and themselves) vanish into the Fog when the priests have a bad ritual day or the Fog is more rapacious than usual.

It is worth (pun intended) noting that the key ingredient for the Fog warding rituals, Sparks of the Flame of Creation, are contained in all living souls (according to game texts), and they can be extracted and imbued into objects, which forms the basis of enchantments as well as the physical currency of Eternal Rome. Sparks can be dissolved into a soul and then used to power magic, as described when the master casts spells or your slave takes enchanting lessons. Presumably casting spells without first absorbing Sparks is possible too, but would deplete the soul of the caster.

That gives an idea for a lore-friendly gameplay change: allow casting spells when you can't afford them, and drain the master's health [strength, allure and libido] stats instead. It would apply only when the slaver has run out of physical sparks. It would be interesting to see if this could be exploited by players. They could deliberately wait to take a loan until the end of the decade and meanwhile spend their master's stats on magic to help with training. But once the loan is taken, they would be spending physical sparks again for magic until it runs out, and on the hook to pay back the loan plus interest, discouraging any unnecessary spending. Other sources of income - selling previously and cryo-stored trained slaves, winning in the arena, etc. - could be used to avoid game over for a longer period, while keeping saved sparks deliberately as low as possible. Overall, I doubt it would significantly alter game balance, but it might be enough to save an otherwise hopeless situation. But we could make an option for the player to drain themselves instead of using physical sparks even when they have enough, introducing another dimension of gameplay strategy by turning the master's stats into another resource to be exploited. The drain rate would need to be balanced to exceed the rate at which the master can train up those stats, of course. For the first few slaves on a hard start, spending some of the master's stats instead of sparks could give more time to achieve difficult guild contract specializations like concubine, gladiatrix or pony, or shorten the time to complete the contract if the sparks saved on magic were spent on classes at the academy, but depleting the master's strength can lead to death, so it can only be taken so far...

There is also mention of the Vatican providing Sparks daily to each of the Great Houses, with the Praetor in each House being the person responsible for these deliveries. Where does the Vatican obtain all of those Sparks? We know that sparks exist in living souls, but can they be extracted by force? Does the Vatican engage in daily vampiric (soul-draining) rituals? One reason to doubt this is the practice of selling slaves to the butcher. If a slave is worth 5 sparks dead, then the Vatican must not be able to get more than 5 sparks from them while they are still alive, or else unwanted slaves would be sold to the Vatican instead of to the butcher. Still, even if the Vatican could forcefully extract only 1 spark per soul, if they have a method of obtaining victims that costs less than that, they would turn a profit.

Most of the women who wander in from the Fog get enslaved, and all slaves are female. What happens to men who wander in from the Fog and don't stay in the Slums? Many of the story mode master characters have stories about coming from other worlds. They all somehow avoided being murdered in the Slums and somehow became slavers. Butler's story mentions that he "put a lot of effort to gain the status of a slaver." Of course there are other Guilds besides the slavers (for example, the Illusionist Guild that maintains the illusion of the sky and sun for the artificial beach, which is actually in a cavern in the Serpentine Quarter). So some of the skilled male migrants arriving from the Fog may be able to secure jobs for themselves and survive that way. But if they can't show their worth, what is done with them? They could be slaughtered for food, but I don't see any text suggesting that in the game (pigs are specifically referenced as female). Hmm...

In addition to "honest" workers (residents of the Slums who have day passes to go to work in the city), we know that the Slums contain gangs of thugs (we sometimes see them catching girls at the border). Probably the members of gangs who are not also in the first category (workers) eke out their meager living by 'protecting' (extorting) residents (pay the dominant local gang to leave you alone; they try to keep other gangs away so residents keep paying them) and by capturing men and women who stumble out of the Fog and selling them to Slaver's Guild representatives or delivering them to recruiters in the hope they might have some valuable skill. This possibility of value to a recruiter is probably how most men emerging from the Fog survive their initial encounters with the gangs; they get captured and handed to the recruiters for a few sparks, or rejected and then either get forcibly inducted into the gang that caught them -- attrition undoubtedly being high -- or sent back into the Fog (dead or alive at the whim of the gang in question).

Naturally, as available space is finite, the Slums are very densely populated and the residents of the Slums must be fiercely competitive as every resource is scarce. Anyone living in the Slums must have protection of a gang or a Great House or Guild in the city (as the player does, being a slaver) to discourage other residents of the Slums from stealing everything they have, killing or enslaving them.

If the equilibrium between the priests and the Fog boundary ever shifted outward (meaning that a section of the Slums is no longer at constant risk from the Fog), the Quarter of the city on that side would expand outward, taking over part of the Slums there, because the citizens in that Quarter would hardly care to leave the expanded territory to the poor. But equilibrium shifts outward probably do not happen (the rituals are well-established, as is the behavior of the Fog: the rituals are probably about as effective as possible already). On the other hand, equilibrium shifts inward could happen when a Great House falls out of favor with the Vatican. Their Archbishop would be given less Sparks for rituals and would lose some ground (and some of the Slums) on that side (but probably the Vatican still would give them enough sparks to avoid the Fog reaching the city wall), until they patch up their differences. That would be tough luck for the Slums residents from that area, who would have to relocate around the outside of the city to the Slums in the territory of one of the other Great Houses.

Incidentally, there is mention of "Camira war camps" in the Fenris master character's background, but I see nothing else in the game text about them. Possibly this is a reference to the base camps outside the section of the city walls belonging to the Camira (Outcasts) Quarter. Or possibly there are some wars being fought elsewhere in the multiverse that the Outcasts are involved in. (If the Fog can be navigated, it stands to reason that Eternal Rome can wage war against peoples in other worlds and establish colonies, demand tribute, and do the other types of things that foreign invaders do after defeating the locals.)

I do agree with you but I think that in this case, we might want to alter the lore a bit. The slums are a very lack-luster place in terms of gameplay and if we ever want to make something out of it, we need it in the city in some way because there's no way that any kind of organization, no matter how illegal or strong or independent or numerous it is can not exist under no defences. Maybe 2 walls could exist. The big gate would be around the outcasts and then a smaller gate around the slums but there has to be something.
That is why that change was made. (Which btw this emote: besides the goal in the roadmap means that it's done)

 

[Lokplart]

On the roadmap:

Of this list, I vote NO for all except selling art. The premise of JoNT is that there is no shortage of labor supply for every possible job a slave could have, given the never ending arrivals of new slaves. In such a world, with space at a premium and every spark being counted, why would a brothel give up a cut of its revenue to a slaver, when the brothel can just buy a slave and keep the full profit? Same for working at a restaurant: they buy slaves to work those jobs full-time, there's no opening for part-time workers. If a slave is bad at the job, they get rid of the slave, buy a new one from a different slaver, and complain to the Guild and everyone else they know that the first slaver gave them a bad product (--brand rep, --guild rep).

Selling artworks is an exception because every artist has their own style, so there may be those who love the works of your slave and would pay for them (I would limit this to slaves with the special random trait Painter). If it was another kind of fame that could be developed over time, it might be a nice addition. However, it could be a double-edged sword. For every one person who likes a piece of art, there are two critics who despise it (and extend their ire to the one who created it, and anyone associated with them). So if the slaver tries to promote a slave's art reputation, there should be some penalty to the slaver's brand reputation (he thinks that trash is art? his slaves must be worthless too.) until the slave gains enough fame to win over the masses (her style is so unique and fresh!).

Performing music requires a venue, and any kind of ensemble piece with multiple performers would want 100% dedicated slaves for the job, so again no room for a part-timer. But a solo performance for a crowd might have some value, especially if the slave has the special random trait Musician. Alternatively, the slaver could have their slave perform for free at the forum as a way of building the slave's fame and the master's brand. That could include dance too (if they have the Exotic Dancer / Ballerina special trait). Again it could be a double-edged sword, at first negative until the slave wins over enough of the critics.

Aside from lore-friendliness, adding jobs that slaves can do while still living with the slaver weakens the gameplay necessity of regularly selling slaves to obtain value from them, and moves gameplay in the direction of a slave-keeper game. There are some prized slaves you keep (assistants, arena champions) when you can afford to, and it makes sense to have long-term achievements for them like becoming famous (whether as an arena champion or as a painter). But unless the slaver is willing to live in a shack (as suggested up-thread), with social stigma and other risks/penalties, it should not be possible to maintain positive sparkflow (more income than expenses) without regularly training and selling slaves.

Rescuing slaves from the Fog and selling them does the same thing (easy money without actually having to do any training). The untrained sale value of slaves from the Fog should be massively reduced, and the expense of acquiring them should be increased (e.g., make most Fog battles do at least minor injury to the slaver, requiring medical center treatment, healing balm or a day of rest before any strenuous activity to avoid making the injury worse - which could be modeled by setting master energy to zero). The slaver should have to keep Fog-rescued slaves and train them at least to D- rank to make any meaningful money from them, but shouldn't be penalized for dumping slaves they don't want... just not rewarded either.

There are plans to add a fork in the social progression aspect of the game by introducing the ability to side with a trade guild. Which would put you at odds with the slave guild, making selling slaves a lot harder and less profitable but would give you bonuses to selling product and eventually, in the end game you would open your own place of business.
We haven't really discussed the implementation of this feature (the jobs) in detail yet but my idea was that it would be a feature available after siding with the trade guild. Depending on your position in the guild, you could make a deal with shop owners to "put a good word in the guild for them" in exchange for letting your slave work there as an employee. So the benefits would be higher then the costs. Or by blackmail, threaten them to close their shop unless they do what you say. There are a lot of possibilities for making this lore friendly. It just takes a bit more work.

 

[ImperatorAugustus]

The slums are a very lack-luster place in terms of gameplay and if we ever want to make something out of it, we need it in the city

What do we want to make of it?

For all the reasons I outlined in my post, a second wall seems unlikely. Any organization with wealth and influence ipso facto would be inside the city walls, or at least have its power base there. The moneylender is explicitly described as choosing to live in the Slums because the lack of regulation there is better for his business, but it adds that his reach extends to White Town, implying that he is owed favors by the ruling class.

What do we know about the demographics of the population in Eternal Rome? One hint is the Coliseum description, which mentions hundreds of thousands of spectators. By comparison, the Colosseum in Italy had a capacity 50,000 - roughly 10% of the total population at the time (~450,000). If we assume a similar ratio here, Eternal Rome has a population numbered in thousands of thousands, i.e., between 2 and 10 millions. That estimate includes slaves, who are allowed to be spectators also. Considering that you can walk to any location in the city in under an hour (interpreting 1 energy as a measure of time is a bit of a stretch, admittedly...), and the average human walking speed is around 3 miles per hour, that would put the diameter of the city at around 3 miles, which is incredibly small area for such high population density.

What is the ratio of citizens to slaves? It is implied that citizen slave owners all have multiple slaves already. Almost all of the jobs that the slaver sees are staffed by slaves, but this may reflect a bias in what the game focuses on due to his profession. Where do all the retail slaves sleep and eat when they are not working? For example, do waitress slaves live in rooms within the restaurant building where they work? Are there barracks somewhere with rows of identical bedrolls or hammocks (using vertical space too), where slaves go for their prescribed rest periods, with the same sleeping spot being rotated between several slaves with different work shifts?

Just how deep do the catacombs under Eternal Rome go? Since the city is constrained in radius by the Fog but is not constrained in height or depth, verticality can be exploited to the limit. We know for example that the Illusory Sea is contained in a cavern under the Serpentine Quarter, and the Anthill is described as having towers (Zephiros has an observatory at the top of one).

On the other hand, the only births in the city are those that the Vatican oversees, so population pressure is entirely at the discretion of the ruling class (they could stop accepting new citizens arriving from the Fog whenever they want, or impose a population cap where new citizens are mostly allowed only when old citizens die -- with exceptions for the politically favored, of course). While there is undoubtedly some death rate among citizens due to intrigue, the medical center is exceptional and citizens can be very long-lived (particularly the undead), so turnover in the citizen population from natural causes is likely low. Citizens also may be conscripted in the armies of the Great Houses and sent to die in battles on other worlds, assuming the logistics of moving through the Fog are feasible for armies and the economics are favorable (return on investment is worth the cost of war). Camira and Taurus are shown to be the least cunning and most likely to pursue wars of conquest if possible, whereas Serpis and Corus seem more inclined towards intrigue (with emphasis on technological or magical pursuits respectively) and less inclined to wage war to obtain their goals in other worlds where they could instead subvert the locals to fight amongst themselves. So, it's not clear that attrition from war would be a dominant cause of death for citizens.

Neglected to mention bankruptcy - running out of sparks is practically a death sentence in Eternal Rome.

 

[Lokplart]

What do we want to make of it?

We could make it a livable environment. Washing should be possible, albeit less effective. Cooking can be done at a campfire too, you don't need a kitchen, again, low quality food.
A mini quest line could be something related to a thieves guild, maybe starting from the moneylender?
We could also make a great house (of sorts) in there with it's leader being "The King of Beggars"
As you said, some events.
The second wall doesn't have to be 2 meters thick of concrete and 10 meters high or whatever the main one is. It can be a sturdy enough wall to keep small monsters at bay built from scraps and whatever other resources the city could spare.

Citizens also may be conscripted in the armies of the Great Houses and sent to die in battles on other worlds, assuming the logistics of moving through the Fog are feasible for armies and the economics are favorable (return on investment is worth the cost of war).

I thought this was kind of like a one way trip. Like you can come to Eternal Rome but never leave. Where is it mentioned that travel from Eternal Rome to any other world is possible?