Firstly, apologies to any Americans; you're going to have to deal with my horrible spelling of "civilisation".

There are a few things that I've noticed about the population buyout feature that has me concerned. Let me start off by saying it's pretty OP as others have mentioned, since you can finish a building worth hundreds of industry with one or two units of population that take a couple of turns to grow.

My big concern, however, is that its flavour text by necessity makes anyone who uses it immoral. Essentially we are working our population to death. That's pretty brutal - and personally I feel absolutely terrible whenever I have to use the button - but its not a problem in itself if you want to roleplay an evil slave-driving empire. But look: egalitarian/'liberty' focused civilisations also have access to this action. Surely that's not right; no civilisation that genuinely values liberty would ever force its citizens to work themselves to death.

If you couple that with how necessary of a gameplay feature it is in the current build, there is basically no way to avoid being an immoral, evil empire without willingly handicapping yourself, even if you have liberty as an ideology. Therefore, I think this is a pretty glaring problem for both immersion and roleplaying, as well as for balance.

To fix this, I would propose four solutions: we can have the immoral flavour text removed or reworked to something more morally neutral (maybe have it explain something like funneling other forms of production to a construction so heavily reduces our the infrastructure needed to support other industries, etc.); we can lock the action for all civilisations except for the ones that have an extreme authoritarian leaning; we can nerf the action so heavily that it's rarely the best option; or - and this is my favourite option - we can change it to be an civic unlock, like the procession action among others. In my eyes, any of those would fix the issue with roleplaying and immersion. One way or another, though, I do think this needs to be addressed.

What does everyone else think?

Well gameplay wise the strategy is overpowered.  It should be seriously nerfed (possibly-20 stability for 20 turns for every pop you kill), and require an unlock.

If you look at the tech tree, you'll notice that the "Masonry" tech is the civic unlock for forced labor. Also the "Encyclopedia" tech in the Industrial era has an item called "Labor Charter" which removes the forced labor option.

I don't see any problem with keeping the buyout as is. Every centralized civilization has used forced labor in regular work like agriculture and mining, and for special projects like construction. Even for warfare, most common people were obligated to serve as a soldier for nobles. The only egalitarian/liberty "civilizations" were decentralized tribes, and our modern knowledge of their use of forced labor is limited. This concept of "liberty ideology" doesn't really apply until the modern era, when you would research the Encyclopedia text, so I think it is fine as is.

I agree with aye_Avast. I'm okay with the Devs keeping same the reality of what the player is choosing to do with forced labor.

I agree with Changlini (OP) that the population buy-out was extremely powerful and also seemed at odds with a humanist ideology. I intended to suggest that population buy-out would be removed after a certain tech/civic/era/etc., but some good sleuthing by Aye_Avast seems to confirm that this is already intended. So agreement all around, but what is the point I wanted to make?:

Developers, make sure that 'labor charter' (i.e. no more population buy-out) comes into play in a non-trivial way that cannot be gamed. For instance, if it comes in with a certain tech, I would just avoid that tech and kill off as much of my population as I can before researching it. Likewise, if it comes in at a certain time I'll just ramp up my slave labour in anticipation of that point. Therefore, please link the labor charter to a highly desirable thing (era progression, or a powerful tech, or a big bonus) to make gaming the system a non-trivial choice.

In addition, I think Krikkitone's suggestion of coupling stability losses to population buy-out is excellent. It prevents game-y mass buy-out timings and has a cool narrative aspect.

Aye_Avast wrote:

If you look at the tech tree, you'll notice that the "Masonry" tech is the civic unlock for forced labor. Also the "Encyclopedia" tech in the Industrial era has an item called "Labor Charter" which removes the forced labor option.

I don't see any problem with keeping the buyout as is. Every centralized civilization has used forced labor in regular work like agriculture and mining, and for special projects like construction. Even for warfare, most common people were obligated to serve as a soldier for nobles. The only egalitarian/liberty "civilizations" were decentralized tribes, and our modern knowledge of their use of forced labor is limited. This concept of "liberty ideology" doesn't really apply until the modern era, when you would research the Encyclopedia text, so I think it is fine as is.

There are still plenty of choices related to liberty in both in-game events and in civic choices. Forced labour may have been used fairly universally historically, but that doesn't make it any less authoritarian a concept. If we, as players, are trying to create a benevolent civ that leans far towards liberty on the ideological axis, surely it wouldn't be possible to use forced labour - at least not without making changes to where you sit on the ideological axis. That's not to say that authoritarian civilisations are automatically evil, which is why I suggested that this action should be made unlockable in a civic choice, like how 'procession' is unlocked; this would also help with balancing, since the other civic choice would also come with a reward. I'm surprised that other people think it's ok that egalitarian civilisations can work their people to death.

A huge stability disadvantage could slow down the time between using force labor. By the way I think at a few world wonders it makes sense to  make sacreficing  nessesary.

I don't think it is a good idea to tie actions into the ideology system, it would be hard to balance. Instead I would maybe make pop rushing unlocked with criminal slavery choice, while keeping war slaves as it is. Also I don't see why pop rushing should be blocked in industrial era, rather it should unlock further civic which allow you to ban slavery for some major bonus.

I am of the opinion that it is up to the players whether they wish to sacrifice pop for getting production rushed. If you choose rp in which your civ does not sacrifice its citizens, then that is your prerogative. Can the flavor text be made a bit more neutral, yes, but that doesn't change what is happening. On the topic of ideologies, as Aye_Avast pointed out, regardless of how egalitarian/autocratic a society was, forced labor, directly or by societal machinations (such as caste), has been prominent in all of them. The only point of contention is how extreme and how pervasive it was. Even in tribal societies, there are clearly defined roles, violating which means exclusion, thus death. Let me be clear here, I am not justifying forced labor, it is a practice which does not fit in any modern democratic society. But it is a view that is not even a couple centuries old, and forced labor still exists in varied forms. Now, on balance, perhaps, instead of flat completing the production, a tech, not a civic, can be brought into play which allows for temporary boost in industry while sacrificing the pop and a little stability. Later on, the boost can be reduced along with the penalties, with the pop no longer getting removed.

I agree with there being a penalty of stability for forced labour that much is obvious.

I think forced labour should remain a tech, historically working people past their limits was a sad reality of life more often than not. However I don't think tech should remove the ability of forced labour, I think it should be a civic.

The reason I favour this style, tech to unlock, civic to disable philosophy is for 2 reasons. 1 is that it allows agrarian civilizations to continue using what makes them viable. Even when it'll have a stability penalty for using I imagine there will be many people who continue sacrificing pop, or even completely ignore the encyclopedia tech to keep forced labour.

The second reason is that by making it a civic to disable forced working, you can reward the players who willingly decide to remove their ability to sacrifice population, instead of punishing those who sacrifice it instead. Say a general stability of FIMS bonus because your population is happier for having a benevolent ruler. It also allows everyone to research the encyclopedia tech and not make it an odd exception to most agrarian player's tech tree.

Ellaxarion wrote:

I am of the opinion that it is up to the players whether they wish to sacrifice pop for getting production rushed. If you choose rp in which your civ does not sacrifice its citizens, then that is your prerogative. Can the flavor text be made a bit more neutral, yes, but that doesn't change what is happening. On the topic of ideologies, as Aye_Avast pointed out, regardless of how egalitarian/autocratic a society was, forced labor, directly or by societal machinations (such as caste), has been prominent in all of them. The only point of contention is how extreme and how pervasive it was. Even in tribal societies, there are clearly defined roles, violating which means exclusion, thus death. Let me be clear here, I am not justifying forced labor, it is a practice which does not fit in any modern democratic society. But it is a view that is not even a couple centuries old, and forced labor still exists in varied forms. Now, on balance, perhaps, instead of flat completing the production, a tech, not a civic, can be brought into play which allows for temporary boost in industry while sacrificing the pop and a little stability. Later on, the boost can be reduced along with the penalties, with the pop no longer getting removed.

I like your point that it should be possible to hold on to forced labour as long as you like. After all, if we're re-writing history, it should be possible to roleplay an authoritarian civilisation! Of course, the at-odds nature of forced labour and humanism remains a problem. Maybe the punishments for using forced labour (i.e. stability penalties) could be scaled up after certain civics developments. On top of that, I think it would be interesting to add a diplomatic element; i.e. denouncing other civilisations for their use of forced labour. In practice I imagine it could be implemented something like what follows:

Brainstorm for Forced Labour Penalties

Initially: Force Labour Tech Unlocked

Sacrificing a Pop for Production --> -10 stability (placeholder value)
No other penalties

Sooner than Later (~Classical/Medieval Era): Civics choice between egalitarian vs. more hierarchical society (e.g. a republic vs. a monarchy or an aristocracy)
Sacrificing a Pop for Production --> -20 stability for 'republics', no change for class-systems
Republic Civilisations get a minor grievance against other civilisations under their influence when they sacrifice a population

Later (Early Modern/Industrial): A Civic for humanism/democracy --> some big bonus but also heavy penalty to forced labour use
Sacrificing a Pop for Production --> -100 stability
'Democracy' civilisations get a major grievance against any other civilisation sacrificing populations

I'm curious to hear how others can improve further on this idea, or what other suggestions you might have.