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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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Are there any plans to represent slave revolts and potential formation of Mamluk states?

Not asking because I'm Georgian and we have had many Mamluk dynasties all over the middle east.

To add to this, will certain cultures have a higher or lower price as slave pops? It's well known that the Islamic slave trade focused a lot on the Slavs and Caucasians in and around the Black Sea.
 
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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.
 
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In the US the vast majority of slaves were born into slavery, not imported, so it will be pretty odd for the black population to stagnate or decline once importation of slaves ends.
I think this decision was based on the(IMO unfortunate, for lots and lots of reasons) decision that only peasants as a pop would grow, and every other pop would simply promote out of peasants in order to grow. But yeah, it creates lots of little idiosyncracies when you get into the weeds of things.
 
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Will slave populations in some areas grow in size significantly over time on their own, like in the colonies that would become the US South, while constantly decreasing and needing new slaves to be brought in in other areas in order to be maintained in size, like Haiti?

Slaves dont grow on their own, they maintain their levels at best.
 
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When you write that slave raids take a percentage of the population from a CITY, does it still include towns/smaller settlements? And as for the slave centers, can we designate that we want the slaves to go to a colonial subject rather than our own nation?
 
What happens when you conquer land with slaves while you aren't a slaving nation?

Is it simulated that some European nations held slaves in their colony while disallowing it in the motherland?

Can slaves rise to higher positions and end up in power in the states like with the Barbary corsairs in Salé?

The vast, vast majority of African slaves the Europeans got were bought, not raided. It was risky and unprofitable and Europeans in the time of the game barely got far from their coastal forts. Should this really be a mechanic? Does this at least drain your own pops then?
 
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Will this system be used to represent other forms of de facto slavery? Indentured servitude, for example, was common in colonial times and often abused to trick and trap people into perpetual debt slavery. It remains a common practice in the modern slave trade.
 
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Are you joking here, or do we have religions that need to kill at least one slave per day (or, say, 365 slaves per year)? First thought that came to mind was the Aztecs and Mayans, but I thought their sacrifices were more ceremonial and sporadic than actually needing a "stream of slaves".

Its not daily in the game no.
 
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They also get easy access to casus belli to go on slave raiding wars
Can Tatar states also do it?
Also unrelated what happens if there's a pop that is related to an estate but can't "participate" in it like surely orthodox syriac clergymen in the mamluks won't have the "privileges" and estate power of the Muslim clergymen (who have mamluks' state religion)
 
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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.
It would be great, if this mentioned Slave Trade Routes had a special map mode..
 
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Will it be possible for any nation, say France, to transform its culture/religion/ideas enough to enable it to enslave neighboring populations through conquest?

Can a nation (human or AI) explicitly select certain cultural/religious subgroups of its population for persecution and/or enslavement?
 
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It would be nice to have transfer of slaves on peace treaties as well. Both for slaver nations to get more slaves, similar to a monetary payment, but also for non slavery nations to free up some slaves in the loosing part and bring them home to be integrated (or not).

Also it would be cool if when we ocupy provinces with a high number of slaves, we could arm them and set them loose as friendly (towards you) rebels. Not sure if ever done historically, but it could be fun.
 
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Will there be any tools or events to educate players on how each country historically practiced slavery, or is it purely represented through mechanics? I think this system could be a great way to educate/inform on the historical reality of many of these states and empires.
 
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2. Most European countries didn't officially allow for slavery before the discovery of America, will this be represented?

This strongly depends on how you define "most". In medieval Iberia, for example, slavery was neither outlawed nor particularly uncommon. In my university days, I actually did some very interesting research on the provisions regarding slavery in the Siete Partidas. It contained an entire corpus of intricate, juristically fascinating provisions on all aspects of enslavement, slave trade and slave ownership.
 
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