Good Concept. Slightly bad execution so far.
- You should be able to "afk" train slaves. i.e. when you prostitute them they should level up based on what actions get performed. (I honestly thought it was going to be that way, but no increases). Or you could have it where they randomly level each other when left at the fortress each day.
- Cities should either tell you what aesthetics they want so you don't have to drive around to each one every time, or the slave should have an indicator for which city would desire them more.
- You should be able to see the slaves stats before you choose to keep them.
-It looks like the entourage is going to have a limit, but I haven't gotten to it, and I tried. I think it should have a limit tbh. Like 20 people max.
-Slaves in your fortress shouldn't cost daily gold, if they arent there to level up and they aren't able to be sold while there, they shouldn't cost me money, they should be able to farm for themselves.
-I know it's in "early access" but once you beat your first bandit camp you basically beat the game. There should be a tough camp you have to beat to win. Like a rival church that has like 50 attack points. (assuming entourage isn't limited and you can get more mercs every few days)
-If you're going to give the option to cum inside, pregnancy should be a factor. Why worry if a prostitute is going to have vaginal if she's not going to be put on maternity leave. JS. (The kid could become a citizen instead of a slave so you never even have to deal with the child aspect, and the pregnancy can just be "Shes locked in her room for the pregnancy" no need for animations or player models.)
- the option to free a slave is just a means to not pick up a slave you don't want, the option to free them in the city with 10 gold however doesn't make sense to me. You should get some type of honor reward for freeing slaves if thats the case. Like better prices in the city, or a chance event to run into the slave everytime you go to the city. Something. IDK
Just some thoughts, you can implement what you want. It's your game. But as it stands currently there is no point in training the slaves because you can just bulk sell them at the best city and then hire mercs clear bandits get 4 slaves and bulk sell again. Training is tedious takes 1 of the 3 energy each day, and barely levels the slave no matter how you do it. So it seems like a pointless mechanic other than the naughty scene factor.
I played for all of like an hour or two and I have like 16k gold, more slaves than i can count, no bandit camps left on the map (at the moment) and it's like I've already beat the game. I get it's early access, but I feel like it should have had more grindy mechanics. Like the afk training program to get a slave worth any value. Instead you clear a bandit camp and you get 4 almost medium tiered slaves that you can immediately sell for almost 1k each. The captain of the bandits never chooses to die instead of becoming a slave, So your guaranteed 4.
Thank you for the honest feedback. I actually agree with you on most of your points and was already planning to implement them. I'll address the ones I have something to add, but the ones I don't mention I just still haven't had the time to do yet.
3) I don't plan on having you see a slave's skills when you pick them, to give some element of surprise and because it would be a little more realistic. When the aesthetic scores stops being random, the appearance of the slave will matter much more, so I'm fine with keeping skills a surprise.
5) Slaves will probably always cost a resource to maintain since they are forbidden from working in the world of the game. It also serves a game design purpose since I want to incentivize a playstyle more focused on having fewer slaves rather than turning it into a numbers game (it's not the case at the moment as you said but it will be counterbalanced in the future).
7) Pregnancy is definitely planned and I was planning on doing the citizen approach you mentioned.
8) Yeah, freeing a slave with some money will probably give you a little reputation as a "good guy," but it probably will never be advantageous in a gameplay sense. It's there mostly for players who enjoy roleplaying. Your idea of an event where you run into your ex-slave is great! I'll definitely do something like that.
You're definitely right about the bulk selling strategy being a problem at the moment. I plan on countering this by having you "break" villagers to make them accept and enjoy slavery. Also having characters be able to get injuries, so that you'll have to invest in recovering the health of a good amount of the slaves you get in bandit camps. Of course, both injuried and unbroken slaves will be worth drastically less money
8) If you do the event, I think "free a slave with gold" should have a "Yeah I'm good" or a "Lost it all" version. The good one could offer themself for fun, and the bad one could offer themself for "More help". Just a thought.
To fix the bulk selling strat now all you'd have to do is increase the price based on their submission stat. IDK how you got it scaled right now, but if you just made people train the submission stat before selling lvl 0 could be 50% normal price +10% per level. Training submission is actually the easiest to train right now, so it would make sense to lock the price to it.
Just some added thoughts, again, your game, and it's a great concept. The only execution flaw is it's so new there isn't really anything to keep you playing. Thanks for making a great game.