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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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But that doesn't mean that a certain PM could require less Peasants, while now requiring the Slaves trade good as input. If that was indeed a limitation.

And regarding the "you can replace peasants with slaves on RGOs", Johan specifically said that slaves only work in two categories of buildings. Military buildings and plantations of which there are three types. Sugar, cotton and tobacco.
I think it is funny that you remembered the two building part of Johans statement but not the first part of it. I'll underline it.
"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." (emphasis added)

View attachment 1206046

You're right. This is a tooltip from the Tinto Talks about core economic concepts. Slaves do produce raw materials. Strange that those mines are not considered "buildings".
But i am glad to see that you made it there even if through a circuitous path.
 
Maybe you can make it a law
Where depending on the law you limit the reproduction of slaves. Since the population stays constant=1 just give it values from [0;1] depending on the law, where 0 would be castration and 1 be hereditary slavery.

As I understood Johans statement in that aspect, slave pops won't grow naturally, only with acquiring new slaves as described in TT. So they would be able to grow, just not by procreation as other types of pops.

Don't know is there's any relevant data from which is clear that slaves population was growing naturally, that is without new slaves acquired. They were having offspring, but they died at much higher rate than free pops, their kids too, so it's probably an educated guess to make the slave pops maintaining their numbers at best naturaly.

"Population Growth
Only peasants and tribesmen grow organically on their own, but all types of pops can die off from negative growth.
" - from TT #17

Only these two Pops grow naturally.
 
As I understood Johans statement in that aspect, slave pops won't grow naturally, only with acquiring new slaves as described in TT. So they would be able to grow, just not by procreation as other types of pops.

Don't know is there's any relevant data from which is clear that slaves population was growing naturally, that is without new slaves acquired. They were having offspring, but they died at much higher rate than free pops, their kids too, so it's probably an educated guess to make the slave pops maintaining their numbers at best naturaly.
The slave populations in the English "13 colonies" grew organically, but at a very low rate at first because as slaves were less common, they were not subject to the same levels of brutality and deprivation that slaves in the Caribbean experienced. Although the American born enslaved population did not really boom until the late 18th an early 19th century when there was an end to the slave trade or a disruption in the slave trade. I wonder how many Africans will end up being trafficked for there to be a substantial Afro-diasporic population and for there to actually be people in West Africa, since West Africa is largely empty, and has a very small population at game start. 100s of thousands went to what would become the USA and even more to what would become Mexico. In the Caribbean and Brazil where plantation work was harsher because slaves were more bountiful and the African continent was not far, they would not grow organically for the most part, but would be more prone to revolt.
 
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.
This seems like a wonderful place for some flavor events, especially for an eclipse. :)
 
Why little slaves in Europe at the start? There were many, especially used as sailors. Venice, for example, used a whole lot of slaves as sailors in their galere.
It's still small, in Italy there would be less than a percent of slaves in the rural side, 1-2% in big non merchant - port cities (like Milan) and 5% in the top coastal Mediterranean ones (like Venice, Genoa, Pisa, etc overall it'd be like 1% or less of the pop. Some cities banned trade of slaves but the rich would just travel to buy. Mostly domestic labour, street cleaner, boat cleaner, galley.


Some small independent lordships in Italy could've had and it would be employed in rural work like mining and such

Northwest (Northern France, Benelux, England) had close to 0 (presumably a rich guy could buy and return home with one if within the first century of the game.

Iberia should've a bit more during the height of the reconquista but then similar to Italy.


The Mediterranean islands should have more, like 10%ish in the cities and 5%ish countryside, with mining using most of the labour
 
Not atm, we had a system earlier but it was micromanagy and AI didnt understand it.
Are there plans to replace it with a less micro-y system? E.G. a variant of the mechanic of building slave centers in other countries, or just having a passive trickle of slaves from unfortified neighboring provinces of hostile nations that haven't beaten you in a war recently? The slaves gained through 'non-wartime' slave raids were a major part of the economy there and it would be a shame to not represent it.
 
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I think it is funny that you remembered the two building part of Johans statement but not the first part of it. I'll underline it.
"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." (emphasis added)


But i am glad to see that you made it there even if through a circuitous path.
Maybe it was because I forgot that RGOs are not done through buildings and assumed the RGOs mentioned were, in fact the plantations. Yes, shame on me for not remembering every single detail of all Tinto Talks ever released.
 
Slaves dont grow on their own, they maintain their levels at best.
It is commendable how this game reflects slavery much better than done before.

However this part here doesn’t reflect the intermingling of slaves and slavers at all. The previous comment on not differentiating between hereditary slaves is also a bit problematic for it misses the sexual oppression faced by these slaves. Many, if not the majority of slaves were born into slavery in some areas.

On the other hand, the liberation of slaves or their children also meant demographic shifts can be simulated that would otherwise not have happened. The mixing of Native American and African slaves and their (freed) descendants with white slavers was crucial to understand the development of the Americas. Could these important aspects of historical slavery be reflected in game please?

Again these are great steps to better portray history in all its facets, especially how the often overlooked African and Asian slave systems are also included. However, it could be improved upon, if only to be more respectful to those who descend from enslaved peoples.
 
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No, not really.

We are not simulating the societies where slaves were castrated either.
Couldn’t this be represented by the population contracting or promoting to peasants? The former simulating slave populations that can’t reproduce (castration mostly) and the latter populations which reproduced but slave status wasn’t hereditary. Seems like a relatively easy feature to implement and would add flavor.
 
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No, not really.

We are not simulating the societies where slaves were castrated either.
Slaves in most of the world didn't inherit the status though?
 
You say that slaves have no political power, but what about situations where you rely too much on slave soldiers? Will there be some general mechanics where slaves can become a political problem (you did mention literacy being a problem if they get it), or if not, will there be bespoke mechanics for situations like the janissaries and mamluks where slaves ended up having more power and causing more political problems than they "should" given their formal status as slaves?

Though I suppose some of the janissary problems came when they slacked their recruiting standards and the devşirme system was abandoned...
 
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The slave populations in the English "13 colonies" grew organically, but at a very low rate at first because as slaves were less common, they were not subject to the same levels of brutality and deprivation that slaves in the Caribbean experienced. Although the American born enslaved population did not really boom until the late 18th an early 19th century when there was an end to the slave trade or a disruption in the slave trade. I wonder how many Africans will end up being trafficked for there to be a substantial Afro-diasporic population and for there to actually be people in West Africa, since West Africa is largely empty, and has a very small population at game start. 100s of thousands went to what would become the USA and even more to what would become Mexico. In the Caribbean and Brazil where plantation work was harsher because slaves were more bountiful and the African continent was not far, they would not grow organically for the most part, but would be more prone to revolt.

Most of the enslaved people taken during the Atlantic Slave Trade were sent to South America, followed by the Caribbean. According to data from Slave Voyages, Portugal was the leading nation involved, with around 5 million people disembarking from Portuguese ships. Great Britain was the second largest, with about 2.5 million people. You probably already know about this database resource: https://www.slavevoyages.org/assessment/estimates

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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.
2 – great idea, but we should be able to liberate the slaves of all accepted cultures of our culture group.

Imagine as France you have ~20 local cultures, but you can only liberate core French culture slaves from around Ile de France (which is probably the primary culture). Whereas Berber pirates will probably have most slaves from Provence and Southern France, not from Paris.

The same example applies to the Spanish Kingdoms, Naples, Zaporozhian Cossacks etc.
 
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Not atm, we had a system earlier but it was micromanagy and AI didnt understand it.
We had a mechanic similar to it, but it was not good and very micro
On the micro part. I do hope there are some stuff not removed, because it feeling (very) micro for you guys itself, who are only ones who get to currently playtest PC. Because there are people who like the micro part and not having the game do everything for you. And also the complexity of things, which can sometimes go hand to hand with the micro. (Best example is The Settlers franchise (each update made it simpler and simpler) and I guess even older PDX games (but I can't talk much about those, since I haven't played myself, only by hearing from many others))
Of course one thing is making it work for players only and another thing is making it also work for AI. (Could still leave it in as an option or at least for modders to work magic with it. Like how there are some good AI improved mods for EU4, with some of those improvements even found its way to base game)
Then again, the complexity of the games is what can drive away some newer players. Not gonna lie, it took me long time to get properly into EU4, because of that reason. But it's also that same reason, why I'm loving it. So many new things to find, learn and do, even after having thousands of hours. :D
 
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@Johan is it feasible to enable nations which allow slavery to take certain percentage of lost soldiers during battles as slaves? Would it be to hard to implement? Like 10% of otherwise killed soldiers, would be transfered as slaves to closest slave market or soemthing like that?
 
Will slaves escape naturally if the conditions are right? Creating populations of former slaves in uncolonised, low population or low control locations like in the Highland of Hispanola or Great Dismal Swamp between Virginia and North Carlolina. Will slaves escape to neighbouring countries that don't allow slavery? it would be interesting to have an event or diplomatic action on whether to return the slave or keep the pops incurring a relationship hit.
 
Serfs has some rights as we
Many of these slaves also had varying levels of rights in different societies, and some were not even traded (janissaries as an example) so a slave market for them doesn't make sense. From the dev responses there seems to be a lot bias for the noble absolutely not slavery of european serfs against the slavery of barbaric civilzations. I think the system is alright but needs some revisions to represent the unique and different implementations of slavery around the world.

Also if serfs are not considered slaves, some of those categorized as slaves also shouldn't be slaves or at least not depicted as it is right now.
 
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Many of these slaves also had varying levels of rights in different societies, and some were not even traded (janissaries as an example) so a slave market for them doesn't make sense. From the dev responses there seems to be a lot bias for the noble absolutely not slavery of european serfs against the slavery of barbaric civilzations. I think the system is alright but needs some revisions to represent the unique and different implementations of slavery around the world.

Also if serfs are not considered slaves, some of those categorized as slaves also shouldn't be slaves or at least not depicted as it is right now.
It sounds like it's you who bias, or maybe lack of insight into how serfdom worked, can be attributed to.

European serfdom is a system that became entrenched as many free farmers looked for a suitable lord to intentionally become unfree serfs. Why would they do that?
Well, it's the same principle as in any society: people trade their freedom for security. Being unfree meant that you didn't have to serve in the military and you enjoyed various 'services' provided by your lord, such as law enforcement. Typically, a lord also had an obligation to provide for his subjects in times of need, such as famines. On the other hand, you had to pay taxes (less so than we today), you had to do a certain amount of free work for your lord and you were bound to work the land that you lived on.
For many people in the early and high middle ages, this was a pretty good deal, but of course there is (among others) one big drawback: once you became an unfree serf, your decedents would be as well. This is how you end up with a large percentage of the population "stuck" in this system. In the late middle ages, it did start to crumble as serfs were able to negotiate more rights and freedoms ('freedoms' in a feudal society is not the same concept as 'freedom' today) for themselves.
Inheritance also brought another issue, since, at least in some countries, land was split between all sons, so eventually peasants ended up with very little land to work on and became poorer while still being bound to that land.

In any case, all of this was a reciprocal system that knew rights and duties on both sides. Today, we generally support essential freedom that every human deserves, but these societies simply didn't have that concept, so the fact that you had to buy yourself free or at least ask your lord for permission before you could leave your home was viewed as normal.
Even today, you're not allowed to move without first asking your bureaucratic "lord" for permission, which can be quite a hassle. Like I said, there's always a trade-off between freedom and security in societies, and feudal serfdom simply made different kinds of trade-offs compared to the ones that we make today.

Slavery, on the other hand, is something completely different. A slave is property and has no societal leverage of his own. There is no negotiating for rights, and any benefits a slave receives are simply the product of his master's good will. A slave could be moved around to wherever he is needed, this includes soldiers.
 
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Maybe it was because I forgot that RGOs are not done through buildings and assumed the RGOs mentioned were, in fact the plantations. Yes, shame on me for not remembering every single detail of all Tinto Talks ever released.
Never implied that you need to know every detail in all of the Tinto Talks (TT) releases. What I quoted and other response before referenced was in this TT and a the top of every page.