• We have updated our Community Code of Conduct. Please read through the new rules for the forum that are an integral part of Paradox Interactive’s User Agreement.

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..
 
  • 269Like
  • 60Love
  • 27
  • 17
  • 3
  • 2Haha
Reactions:
There are three types of plantations, for sugar, tobacco and cotton.

Will there be other goods that can use plantations that use slavery? Brazil's coffee plantations of the 19th century made widespread use of slavery and the gold boom in Minas Gerais in the 18th century was a particularly brutal period for enslaved peoples there too, functioning very similarly to plantations. I understand that not all goods sought after by Europeans in the Americas were extracted/cultivated using slavery, but these two should really make the cut.
 
  • 6
  • 5Like
Reactions:
Can slave raiding be done against non-states? Especially in West Africa, a lot of slaves were acquired by raiding less centralized tribes nearby, less so than established kingdoms.
 
  • 1Like
  • 1
Reactions:
Sounds very good. I love how project salad ties in all these thing together and where the movement of people is tracked and displayed so actions have lasting consequences. Gone are the days of slacking manpower to summon millions without any real impact.

Bonus points for Lara Croft getting caught stealing artifcats in the corner!

1729693076972.png
 
  • 6Haha
Reactions:
Can you mod on other trade goods tied to other pops? EG, could you mod in a ‘German settlers’ trade good for a backdoor simulation of the importing of German Burghers by Eastern European states

not with current mechanics,.
 
  • 42
  • 8Like
  • 1
Reactions:
1 - yes they keep their culture + religion
2 - you can conquer the territory, but yeah, a peace treaty to get all slaves of your primary culture back home would be good to have. lets add.

Could we also have a treaty to get back all slaves of your religion (or even just slaves of all accepted cultures in your country) as well for a higher war score cost? I imagine if a united Spain went to war against Morocco to free slaves, they’d want to free Catalan Catholic slaves as well as Castilian Slaves.
 
  • 1Like
Reactions:
"At the start of the game there is the Trans-Saharan trade"

I would like to inquire about the indian ocean slave trade. As that had existed for a long time prior to the start date, as far as I'm aware thousands of years before, expanding significantly with the rise of Sassanid and Eastern Roman trade.

It continued the arrival of Muslim trade to the region in the 7th century. By the 11th century Kilwa had become a key center of this trade.

Addendum: Thank you for your work. I ask as it was a large part of history and the people sold ended up not just in the ME and Persia regions but India and even as far as Java.
 
Last edited:
  • 2Like
Reactions:
Is it possible to organize armed raids to free slaves? This was the Cossacks' specialty, they often raided Crimea to free the Orthodox and were generally at the tip of the sword against non-Christians in the service of Moscow/Russia.
 
  • 1Like
  • 1Love
Reactions:
  • 48Like
  • 9
Reactions:
The slave centers mechanic is very ahistorical if it's intended to represent part of how Europeans got their slaves. Europeans rarely captured slaves themselves; the risk of malaria was too great, and the average lifespan for a European merchant in West Africa was less than a year because of malaria.
Fully agree. '1493' by Charles C. Mann has a great chapter on this topic. Places like Fort Elmina and all the other Slave trading outposts and colonial forts had rarely more than 10 concurrent European people present.
 
  • 7
Reactions:
We had a mechanic similar to it, but it was not good and very micro
Maybe you could implement a "Raiding" casus belli that 1) doesn't allow for the attacker anything more than monetary reparations, 2) the defender can ask for monetary reparations or return of slaves, 3) the defender could force a white peace as soon as all of its own troops and none of the defender's troops are on your lands, and 4) the war doesn't create a truce from the defender's part (so they could immediately counter-attack, if they wish so. This counteracts the white peace on point 3). Although this seems like a low-stakes war, this would allow the attacker to capture some slaves from the defender's lands and defeated armies, while the defender could capture slaves if they defeat one of the invading armies.

I believe that wars declared using this CB could realistically portray the nature of border warfare that generated slaves, and don't be very micro.
 
  • 5Like
Reactions:
Does the player have any control over if and how to engage in the slave market besides binary laws?
Can one choose if they want to, for example, use and import slaves but never export them, or if they want to export slaves to other markets but never use them in their own Resource Gathering Operations, or perhaps some combination of the two?
 
2) big issues

first off, Genoa and Venice used convicts, not slaves. It's arguably one of the key reasons why the battle of Lepanto turned into a Christian victory. Contrary to the Ottoman fleet, both republics manned their gallies eith actual sailors, not slaves... well. At least this is certainly true for Venice as far as I know

second, slaves should be an invisible estate that, when is dissatisfied enough, well. A civil war happens :)

anyways

yeah seeing galleys being manned by exclusively slaves is so wrong on a lot of levels. You could do that non slaves manned galleys get a slight buff, and that some nations (like Venice for example) have a particular advance / law that lets them get sailors by enorolling convicts and the likes. So basically a passive permabuff to monthly sailors
 
If you can't have slaves in a location due to laws/etc, then they become peasants, and their buildings useless.
The building part doesn't seem right. For a plantation it matters little whether the workers are paid (little) or slaves. I propose to have at least some buildings [EDIT: related to slaves] like the aforementioned plantations with different production methods; e.g. a plantation could have its "standard" mode with the slaves as a goods input and an alternative mode without it producing at a similar rate than an RGO or ever so slightly more (to represent the economies of scale these buildings usually could provide).
This way the building doesn't become useless upon abolishing slavery, which, I imagine, many - myself included - will find irritating.

EDIT 2: In terms of balance and to set it apart from the (upgradable) normal RGO buildings, I propose (significantly) higher upfront, meaning construction, costs.
 
Last edited:
  • 7Like
  • 4
Reactions:
Also if for example i bring a lot of slaves into my country and then emancipate them.

Do the now peasant pops want to migrate back?
 
  • 1Like
Reactions:
Maybe you could implement a "Raiding" casus belli that 1) doesn't allow for the attacker anything more than monetary reparations, 2) the defender can ask for monetary reparations or return of slaves, 3) the defender could force a white peace as soon as all of its own troops and none of the defender's troops are on your lands, and 4) the war doesn't create a truce from the defender's part (so they could immediately counter-attack, if they wish so. This counteracts the white peace on point 3). Although this seems like a low-stakes war, this would allow the attacker to capture some slaves from the defender's lands and defeated armies, while the defender could capture slaves if they defeat one of the invading armies.

I believe that wars declared using this CB could realistically portray the nature of border warfare that generated slaves, and don't be very micro.
Usefull trade conflict CB ! :D
 
  • 1
Reactions:
Slaves dont grow on their own, they maintain their levels at best.
This doesn't make any sense. African-American slaves were the majority of the population in some Southern US states throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, and their population only grew after the slave trade was abolished
 
  • 9Like
  • 3
Reactions:
Will slavery also be intertwined with the disease mechanic?

Contractual labour from same-country Europeans was apparently roughly 3 times cheaper than buying a slave in the early 1600s. However, the Europeans they were not very Malaria resistant and died rather quickly.

This is considered to be one of the reasons why the North-South divide had such a large difference in slave presence: the slaves simply outlived the Europeans (malaria-wise). Same is true for tropical America. North of Chesapeake bay Malaria couldn't thrive due to the lower temperatures.

The malaria was obviously also detrimental to native populations, as it traveled along with the slave trade from Africa.

Source: '1493' by Charles C. Mann.
 
Last edited:
  • 8Like
  • 1
Reactions:
Wallachia and Moldavia kept Romani slaves up until the 1850s, btw
 
  • 6Like
  • 2
Reactions: