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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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We had a mechanic similar to it, but it was not good and very micro
So how do you plan on representing the rise of Moscow and the Ottomans other than just giving them unique modifiers and events to empower them over everyone else?

It was non-warfare raiding over land that made those states exist, either directly (by being able to profit off of that raiding, e.g. the Ottomans) or indirectly (weakening everyone else around them who were getting raided while they weren't, e.g. Moscow).

Like, you need something here.
 
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Is there a way for Europeans to get a monopoly on the slave trade like how the Dutch and Portuguese did? Will control over the West African markets influence this?
 
We had a mechanic similar to it, but it was not good and very micro



Is there any ingame difference between the amount of slaves acquired by the Berbers vs the Tartars because of this? As the Tartars were pretty much ahead in those numbers IRL.

I would assume that a much less risky and a more passive mechanic, such as the one the Berbers have, will yield significantly more slaves, than the risky war-only method of the Tartars, which would be contrary to what actually went down.


 
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Will Janissary buildings change with events or decisions to not use slaves? Janissaries started recruiting first from children of Janissaries (in late 16th century and early 17th century) then mainly from Muslim volunteers (Often Bosniaks and Albanians but others too) from middle of 17th century. This is also part of process where they stopped being elite troops and became standard line infantry.

It would be very accurate that if Ottomans stopped using slaves for Janissaries, they could increase their numbers but potentially lose their combat effectiveness first ceasing to be elite troops and even becoming practically conscripts over time (especially if they are allowed to civilianize as they did historically in 18th century).
 
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I would like to give some proposition concerning the Maghreb slavery system.

For the Maghreb, the population of slaves should be shrinking if there is no new slave input from raids and transaharian trade, since males were castrated, and the childs of the women slaves were free.

And I would also like to ask if we'll have mecanics of "New Culture" from slaves that live in a place for too long, like the Gnawa culture in Morocco for exemple.
 
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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!

If there is one thing that close to 30 years of making historical games have taught me, its that humans all over the world are all the same, both for good and for evil.
 
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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. I believe there asking if you can have slavery legalized in some parts of your country but not others, ie, like early USA
 
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.
I am not arguing that slavery had completely disappeared in China before the Mongols ruled China, but I am suggesting that the scope of slavery and its status in law and society changed repeatedly from the Shang Dynasty to the Song Dynasty. There were indeed laws in the Tang Dynasty (618-917) that equated the status of slaves with that of livestock, but three hundred years later during the Song Dynasty (960-1267), it had basically changed from being a universal practice to a privilege that only a few could enjoy.
 
Yes. There is a reason so many the other states in Mexico went "oh lets ally with these weird spanish invaders, no matter what"
Just as a reminder, literally everyone in Mesoamerica was doing sacrifices, including the allies of Cortez. I certainly hope it's not portrayed as an aztec-only thing.
 
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Do you get some sort of malus from using slaves into your army? Surely you should get a debuff to discipline right?

no. a soldier is a soldier.

Technically the Mamluks were a society relying entirely on a slave soldier caste.
 
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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?

where the buildings have a demand
 
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I am not familiar with how Genoan manned their galleys, but there is ample literature proving Venetian did not used them. They hired payed labor.

That is only partially true. Yes, the republic of Venice originally relied on volunteers to man their gallies, but they switched to also using convicts and Muslim captives in the 1540s. This is actually an event in EU4 :)
 
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no. a soldier is a soldier.

Technically the Mamluks were a society relying entirely on a slave soldier caste.
Nope. Mamluks were free men. They were bought as slaves, educated as slaves and then freed by their master, which made them feel indebted to them, making them to loyal soldiers and free men.
 
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Will we also see the sacrifice mechanic in West African states like Benin? They would sell of sacrifise captives from war. I have written a paper on the effects of the slave trade on West African states. One of the main arguments against ending the slave trade, from the perspective of some of these kingdoms, was its cultural and religious significance to them.
 
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.
I agree to some extent. They were certainly not slaves in the most narrow definition of the word. But I would argue that it's okay to model their recruitement as slaves as long as there is also a steady outflow of retiring janissaries who do have relevance (independent of janissaries characters being spawned). I'm not sure what the best way to implement that is.
 
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