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Tinto Talks #34 - 23rd of October 2024

Hello and Welcome to another Tinto Talk, where we spill information about our entirely secret unannounced game with the codename Project Caesar.

This week we will talk about how slavery works in this game.

Slave Pops
One of the six types of pops we have are the slaves. These lack pretty much every right in all countries, and are simply exploited. They are not allowed to move around on their own, they have harsh enough lives that they are basically only keeping the current population levels at best of times, and they have absolutely no income nor any political power. If they get any sort of literacy they are very likely to be rather upset. At the start of the game the usage of slaves is mostly gone from Europe, but it's more prevalent in other parts of the world.


slaves_cairo.png

Part of the slaves in Cairo at the start..

Usage of Slaves
Slaves are primarily used in resource gathering operations, but they can also be used in various buildings. These types of buildings can be categorized into two types of buildings.

First we have the slave-soldier buildings that require slaves to function, and produce manpower or sailors. These include buildings like mamluk or janissary barracks that provide a part of the armies of the Mamluks and Ottomans.

The second category of buildings are the plantations. These are buildings that you can unlock from Age of Discovery advances. There are three types of plantations, for sugar, tobacco and cotton. These are far more productive than the RGO for the same goods, but require slaves to function.

galley_barracks.png

One unique building to get you a lot of sailors.

Of course there are other uses for Slaves. In some religions you need a steady stream of them to sacrifice daily to make the Sun go up the next day.


Acquiring Slaves
There are multiple ways to get slaves.

First of all you have the classic way of conquering nearby territories and enslaving part of the population as you sack their cities. This is something that as diverse cultures as amongst others, the Haudenosaunee, Aztec and the Kanem Empire can do from the start. They also get easy access to casus belli to go on slave raiding wars. As you sack a city, a percentage of the population will become slaves and appear in the closest slave market you have, and if none is near enough, then to the closest slave market nearby.

Secondly, we have the Berber States, who engaged in slave raiding from the sea. In Eu4, this was a button you clicked on your ships when they were near a coast that had no slave-raiding-cooldown active. In Project Caesar this ability is a part of the privateering mechanic, in that if you have access to this ability, then your privateers will raid a random coastal location in the area they are in, and take some of the pops as slaves for the closest slave market. This is stopped by having a truce, above 100 opinion, or a good old coastal fortress.

slave_raiding.png

Morocco is one of the countries that can do this from day 1.

Thirdly, you have the Slave Market Building. While it acts as a hub for slave trades, it will also try to enslave pops of non accepted cultures, and different religious groups. This is to simulate how the Delhi Sultanate and others enslaved people in their conquered lands over time.

slave_market.png

It all adds up over time..

Fourthly, you have the possibility to build slave centers in foreign locations that have less power projection than you. This is to simulate part of how the Europeans got their slaves from West Africa to the New World. While a significant part of slaves were bought from other African Kingdoms that were willing to sell slaves taken from their enemies, they were also locally captured by the slavers themselves near their slaving centers. If you wish to fight this in your territories, you need to go to war and forcefully expel them.

Finally, you can trade for slaves. In Project Caesar, slaves exist both as a type of goods and as a type of pop, and they are slightly linked. Buildings can produce slave goods and require slave goods as input. When a slave goods is traded between markets, the game will also move pops in relative sizes to locations that have a demand for slaves.

Thus, if you have buildings or resource gathering operations that can use slaves, they will create a demand for slaves in the market, and if you trade from a market that both produces slave goods and has enough slaves present, the game will move about 200 pops from the slave market each month for each good you trade.

At the start of the game there is the Trans-Saharan trade, where northern african countries import slaves from West Africa, many sold by the Kanem Empire.

Later on, during the Age of Discovery, you will see the triangular trade between Europe, West Africa & Americas, which will reduce the Trans Saharan trade volumes.

There is also another market system, as the Mongol States have access to taking slaves when conquering land, and they created the greatest slave trading network the world has ever seen. Since Muslim states could not keep muslim slaves, and christians did not want christian slaves, the Mongols traded the muslims to the christians and the christians to the muslim countries. The trade links from India goes to central asia as well, as Delhi trades their slaves to other markets, while they get the slaves they require for their mamluk-style armies.



Stay tuned as next week we’ll talk about Great Powers and Hegemonies..
 
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Would there a possibility to make a nation only consisting with Slaves, Slave nation pretty much?
On top of that then having a possibility to "recruit" more slaves by using the many mechanics of obtaining slaves?
Would give very interesting gameplay.
 
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1. Will indentured peasants be also represented as slaves?
2. Most European countries didn't officially allow for slavery before the discovery of America, will this be represented?
3. Is a law "children of slaves become free" in the game? It operated like this in some places
4. Can an attempt at abolition trigger a civil war (look at the US)
5. Will abolition be instantaneous?
6. If you don't practice slavery, will you free all the slaves upon getting some in your lands?
7. Will a division between slave and free states be able to be implemented?
8. Can slaves start a slave revolt? If yes, what will happen if they win?
9. Slave economies were ultimatelly not very competetive nor productive, especially once industrialisation showed up .Will this lower output be represented?
10. It's kinda werid that the African slaves are represented by an icon of two white people - but having the slaves be the only POPs that are black would be ever worse - did you think about having the POP icons be different depending on their ethnicity (similiar to EU4 advisor portraits)?
 
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so the basic difference between Serfs and Slaves is, that i can trade the later?
correct?


Also can i give my slaves certain rights?
Like improved life conditions? Or upgrade them to Serfdom?
 
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Is there something stopping early game Christian nations from building slave markets, or will for example Sweden be able to enslave and sell off the finno-ugric pagans from day one?
 
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Do the slave raid nations include the hordes for example? Or really anyone, as the Russians took for themselves, and sold slaves to the Tatars, even until the 18th century, for example during the "Great Wrath" in Finland.

Hordes should definitely have some sort of non-war raid mechanic for acquiring slaves, like the Berbers, and not just limited to sieges.


 
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These mechanics seem pretty deep over all, I'm impressed. I'm glad that ALL slavery is getting covered. From mongols to galley slaves to native american slavery. EU5 will teach us that ALL of our ancestors were just... awful, awful people. And made a tidy profit out of it!

I guess this does confirm that "raiding" as a non-war action isn't a thing. Can't say I'm surprised but I know others wanted it, but I think it'll function well enough like this.

Can slaves be ransomed back to their home country at all? Or if a slaver state loses in a slave raid war(or just a generic war where they took some slaves on the side) can the victor demand a return of enslaved pops? Or are they just essentially lost as soon as a city is sacked.
Also, what happens to slaves if I conquer a province with them? Like if I play as Castille and conquer morocco, will local slaves be freed or will they continue to be used in local industries(and I then have to dismantle the local slavery myself, or choose to keep it or something).
 
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In the case of trade, where will the pops that are moved end up? In the location of the importing market center or in the location(s) the building(s) creating the demand are in?
 
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The various Anatolian beyliks should also have coastal raiding from day 1, as those "maritime beyliks" definitely put a lot of pressure on the Byzantines through constant coastal raiding.
 
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Interesting diversity to simulate the ways slaves were obtained. Will there be a distinction between societies where slavery was hereditary and where slavery wasn't? Slaves in the Aztec Empire did not inherit their status, for example.

No, not really.

We are not simulating the societies where slaves were castrated either.
 
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Can you go full Victoria 3 and emancipate slaves in locations you own? If so, what happens to the buildings? Do they switch from Slave Input to Population Input or do they have disabled and/or destroyed and you need to build from ground up?

***

Also are slave soldiers/sailors in any way different from regular ones or nah?
 
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