Back then they were underpowered. If I recall, free girls made vastly more money whoring than slaves and rebelliousness was much easier to control, so enslaving them actually downgraded them.
I think there's an element of "the other man's grass is always greener" that applies as well. People tend to think that their preferred play style is underpowered compared to the alternative.
Of course, both styles must still be playable. But I don't see that they need to be precisely balanced. It's not like we're doing this competitively.
Edit: Happiness hits are an annoying way to balance things, disregard what I said previously.
Hmmm... don't think happiness hits. Think maybe a small bonus for free girls. And maybe existing negative modifiers hit slaves a little bit harder, so that once they get upset, it takes a little more attention to cheer them up.
I suppose the whole problem is the whether you think that WM was meant to be about a brothel full of slaves or running a business (or both).
Well, the original conception was (IIRC) SlaveMaker crossed with SimGangster. So it's always been basically a crime sim, which is one reason it's quite hard to support a nice-guy route. The amoral aspect of the game was built in from the start, and there's still a lot of stuff that assumes the player is a bit of a hardcase.
But fundamentally, it's about being a sim. Consider the SimCity games. They aren't about investing in renewable energy sources, or creating really nice parks. You can play them that way, but you can also create distopian hellholes, or maximise pollution because you enjoy the clean up job after Godzilla trashes the place. They're all valid options.
Similarly, I don't think WM is about owing slaves, or running a business, or carving out a criminal empire. It's definitely about setting up a sex-industry empire in a generic-but-sleazy fantasy city. Beyond that though, there are a lot of things it ought to be able to encompass
But I think the general consensus is that people want a 'good' way to run things as well, which means free girls need advantages over slaves.
Why? Not why should there be a "good" path, I accept that. Rather why do free girls need advantages over slaves? Why can't it be enough to know that you're doing the right thing in a world awash with temptations? Doesn't your "goodness" mean more if you're actually giving up certain advantages in order to maintain it?
Right now, there are none at all beyond the chance a girl attacks one of your gangs before she gets branded.
Job restrictions don't really make sense. Why couldn't I order a slave to promote the brothel or serve drinks?
I agree with you here. Why shouldn't I have a slave to act as matron? Or torturer for that matter. On the other hand, I can imagine that free women on average might be more
efficient for some jobs. It's something we should look at.
What about suspicion? Having more than, say 5, slaves would start to cause massive suspicion increases leading to more police raids on you. Eventually you'd have to decide to either suck up the losses from this, or start freeing some of the slaves.
I assume the extra suspicion still gets canceled out by bribes at they mayor's office? If so, then you're basically talking about upping the bribery rate needed by slaveowners. That's a bit tough to justify in a city that has an openly operating slave market, but it's workable as a mechanic as long as the penalties aren't too "massive".
Continual, non-bribable raids however would quickly make the game unplayable for those of us who like pretending to be bad lads, so I'm not so keen on that.
Do free girls pay any bills or do they keep all the money?
Currently room and board is part of the employment package.
But if they do not work they do not get paid and still have to pay their bills. Unless they are caught cheating the player or getting highly in to debt the most that can be done is to fire them. Player really does not need to worry a bought their happiness it is their choice to work or not.
All very free-market libertarian, but the game tends to assume conventional employment models. The PC is the Boss, and he gets to boss the floozies around. Restructuring to support an arrangement where the PC was basically the landlord would take quite a bit of work, and if all we're after is game balance, I'm not sure there aren't better ways to achieve that.
Slave girls can refuse jobs or acts but can be punished. Here are some ideas I had.
...
Rewards and punishments should have effects on more then just the girl directly targeted.
Yeah, I'd like to see more along the AI/ALife aspects of the game, and from past comments, so would necno. On the other hand, it's hard to do well and to keep balanced. It's a lot of work, too, since you tend to get swamped in lots and lots of decision trees and the complexity increases non-linearly as you increase the the number of factors under consideration.