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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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1)Can countries from Europe re-introduce slavery? Or fight Mongols for the liberty of the slaves?
2)In Russia the slaves were serfs till 1723 , so in this case will it there be the same mechanics of sales and trade or will be only as population category?
On contrary in Poland peasants where having their rights limited from XIV century, until the partitions... to the point that XVII century serfs where basicaly slaves:
- no rights to migrate
- 100% dependent from their landlord
- forced to trade with landlord/other sefs from same landlord (realy tiny, 'local market')

They had some belonging, but after wars of XVII century, especialy Swedish Deludge, most of wealth peasants had, where robbed either by invaders, mercenaries or... their own troops.
Many of them: "lived in house owned by landlord and used tools landlord provided them, but since both: house and tools belong to landlord, he could take it from them")

So... @Johan
Will there be a way to reintroduce slavery? ( f.e. by increasing serfdorm and cutting the rights of peasantry?)
 
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1 - no
2 - yes
3 - no
4 - its out of the time frame
5 - yes
6 - yes
7 - not sure about your question?
8 - yes, no more slavery
9 - before industrialisation, slavery was not exaclty non-competetive.
10 - we talked about this, and one day we will have ethnic differences on poptype icons.

7 - that some regions of your contry allow for slavery and others don't. Basically how the US had free and slave states.

8 - what about slaves establishing their own independent state? (ie. Haiti)
 
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I am well aware that Janissaries were called the "kul" of the sultan, which is translated as "slave" or "posession", but to lumb them up with Mamluks, is simply wrong. There are too many references in literature underlining this.

1. The Mamluks. I already made a somewhat detailed post about this here:


The book "The Mamluk Sultanate" by Carl F. Petry is referenced there as well. The consensus is: The vast majority of Mamluks only recieved a basic education. However they were not slave soldiers, but free man, the moment they become a professional soldier. The "basic education" part already doesnt fit into the "slave" category, you guys made.

2. The Janissaries. I will cross reference multiple books first and then explain why the idea of janissaries being slaves (be it with our understanding or the frame set by the devs) is wrong:

"Useful Enemies" by Noel Malcolm

"A history of the Ottoman Empire" by Douglas A. Howard

"The Arabs of the Ottoman Empire: 1516-1918" by Bruce Masters

All reference Janissaries. Janissaries were at most forcefully recruited professional soldiers. Not slaves. They got paid, did their military service and retired after their military service. They recieved education and among the recruited people from the blood tax, a good chunck ended as governors in various provinces, acting de facto as loyal feudal lords for the Ottoman throne. Neither the slave category (as in they had no possession, education or political power) nor the frame set by the devs remoetly fits here. And although we dont know much about each and every single governor or governors in general (at least in the levant), we know for a fact that the Ottomans were quite active, when it came to libraries, which included western and eastern works. Katip Celebi (an Ottoman scholar) alone wrote a comprehensive enciclopedia referencing over 10 000 authors. I am saying this, because we also know for a fact that at least some janissaries had private libraries. So maybe the military branch may or may not have been as educated as the governing branch of janissaries, but they were educated either way. They had political power eitherway. They had posession of their own either way.

I am aware that slaves existed, which I am by no means denying, but they should not be lumbed up with janissaries.
 
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This seems like a shame. Especially since we have slave goods as a thing and estate buildings are a thing, making it so certain estate-constructed buildings like noble manors or houses in certain cultures require a certain portion of slave goods to satisfy them(a very small one, like .1 or some such) seems like it'd fit really well to represent this sort of thing.
 
Human sacrifices by the aztecs represented??? Extremely based

Yes. There is a reason so many the other states in Mexico went "oh lets ally with these weird spanish invaders, no matter what"
 
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Will it possible to not use slaves for combat advantage in galleys? For example Venetians didn't use slaves in their galleys unlike Spanish, Genoese and Ottomans which kept their combat effectiveness higher per sailor. Similarly Ottomans preferred to not use slaves in their primary ships for same reason instead conscripting sailors who could fight during boarding action. While Spanish preferred to use slaves on all their ships because they used soldiers for fighting on board.

Similarly, are slave requirements completely origin agnostic? It would be a little silly for Ottomans and Mamlukes to be able raise Janissaries and Mamluks through African slaves for example. In fact I think these two buildings should require a specific type of slave. War captives and devshirme later on for Ottomans and Circassian or Kipchak for Mamlukes.
 
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1 - no
2 - yes
3 - no
4 - its out of the time frame
5 - yes
6 - yes
7 - not sure about your question?
8 - yes, no more slavery
9 - before industrialisation, slavery was not exaclty non-competetive.
10 - we talked about this, and one day we will have ethnic differences on poptype icons.
Shouldn't slave revolt lead to the indipemdence of a country under soecifi circustances(like Haiti)
 
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Generally, researchers believe that the slavery in the Ming Dynasty was a continuation of the Mongolian slavery system, although the founders of the Ming Dynasty did not completely abolish slavery, but only limited the number of slaves that officials of all levels could own, and did not allow the creation of new slaves. (Officials' slaves came from the acceptance of Mongolian slave institutions)
Compared to the universal slavery of the Mongol Empire, although slavery existed in the Ming Dynasty, it returned to the 12th century before, when slavery was regarded as a privilege of royal service rather than production.
I find this difficult to believe considering China has a history of slavery that is essentially unbroken going back to... IDK, the Shang? Like there's not a period where you won't find it mentioned if you dig into it even if it doesn't jump right in front of you.
 
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Not the eunuchs part(IMO this can simply be abstracted, they wouldn't be "slave" pops regardless) but for China since it's not mentioned, this is a good question actually, how would slaves in China be handled? When reading up on China you could almost be forgiven for thinking Slavery wasn't a thing but then all of a sudden you come across a passage that mentions them nonchalantly. I feel like in general slavery in china is not really talked about(also makes the whole "no slaves of primary culture" thing ridiculous now that I think about it, debt slavery of peasants was common throughout asia and what is that if not primary culture slavery? Maybe it can be represented as serfdom instead or something, IDK).
I also want to comment about China situation about slavery. They had a unique system? that ensured their rights. Slave or servant for better sounding for majority of time is considered as property of a person or family. However they had rights after certain dynasty that they had payment and if killed can be punished by the court as murder.

I think you can consider them as indentured servants.

 
China under the Ming also had slavery, to be clear. It was not a mongol imposition. But yes Yuan probably ought to have a decent chunk of slaves, though like I said maybe a portion of them can be represented as "merely" serfs. Whether you're Yuan or Ming I also imagine most of the slavery would best be represented as being slaves held by buildings operated under the Noble estate rather than being state owned. For the most part, though state slavery ought not to be unheard of especially with like convict labor.
The trading and commercialisation of slavery was banned during the Song dynasty, which preceded the Yuan. The Ming continued having slavery but there were several attempts at restricting and curtailing it from different emperors, some who outright wished to have it outlawed. Overall, throughout Chinese history, slavery has been less relevant than in other civilisations and more based on criminal activity and debt rather than a huge market of captives and production workers. The Yuan dynasty is a big exception in this in its thriving slave network.
 
We had a mechanic similar to it, but it was not good and very micro

Couldn't it be more "automatic", similar to privateers? A market could have brigand raids if there's not enough Control in the locations, and if you have a presence in the Market you could set up your own brigand raids as slaving raids, so they'd have monthly enslavement etc etc. But no need to actually send troops manually to raid, like it happens in Crusader Kings.
 
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1 - no
2 - yes
3 - no
4 - its out of the time frame
5 - yes
6 - yes
7 - not sure about your question?
8 - yes, no more slavery
9 - before industrialisation, slavery was not exaclty non-competetive.
10 - we talked about this, and one day we will have ethnic differences on poptype icons.
I think for 7 the poster means like in USA where there was an internal division over where slavery was and was not permitted.
 
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Will the protugal have a particular “consumption” of slaves?
(They only took male slaves and therefore inevitably had greater needs, it seems to me that they are responsible for about half of slavery of the entire triangular trade)
 
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Does this mean that there will be serious risk of slave revolt? Slave reliant nations (especially in the new world like the USA) were in constant fear of having slave revolt even if the actual risk wasn't that high, and expended a huge amount of effort guarding against revolt. Will the player have to feel that same great and be incentivesed to also put in that level of effort or can you just run a slave based economy with no guardrails?

Also, will libertalia be coming back as a spawned/formable nation from eu4?

Finally I'm a little hesitant about hegemonies next week, I don't remember it being well loved as a mechanic in eu4 and it always felt a little awkward.
 
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