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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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I have an question. Will eastern european slave trade be also represented in Project Ceasar just like Atlantic slave trade?
Crimean Tatars, captured little more than 3.000.000 people and many Ottoman women in harem were slavic.

Or we pretend that it's east europe and it doesn't exist?
Evidently we're between representations, so right now there's no representation.
 
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.

Can slaves convert, and if so, depending on your laws, that change their status?
For example Berber capture slaves could be freed if they rejected their native religion and worshiped Islam. While in the Americas, African slaves were converted to Christianity but it did not lead to their freedom.
 
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.
Perhaps "Accepted Culture" would be a better criteria for slaves to return? I know that it might be tempting, but I doubt a Swedish military expedition to free slaves in North Africa would just leave the Danish slaves to be.
 
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2. What happens when a slave market runs out of wrong-culture pops to enslave?
Nothing what a little bit of Imperialism can't fix.
Or maybe it's time to figue it out you make more money paying small wages which you make back as a landlord and in your company store..... lol those welfare slaves getting food and housing for free trolololol
 
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.
Slaves should be allowed in mining, but they aren't swinging a scythe to harvest wheat because wheat wasn't labor intensive enough/profitable enough to make slaves a worthwhile investment. Cotton is both, every cotton boll had to be picked from the plant by hand *and* cotton was in high demand, wheat wasn't exactly quick and easy to harvest but you weren't going plant by plant doing it.

I only hope we the player will have the option to just never implement slavery. I don't care if it's historical or not, I'm ok with hampering myself in game because I just don't wanna do a slavery. I hope there's also some costs or tradeoffs involved in engaging in slavery, it wasn't and shouldn't be all positives.
 
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Is there a way to visualise in the map the slave markets flow? In the same way, will pop migration be visible with indicators like arrows?

Without graphical representation could be difficult to understand what is happening with your slaves and pops
 
We had a mechanic similar to it, but it was not good and very micro
Crimean Tatars used to build large fortified camps inside Poland/Lithuania in Ukraine from where they collected slaves and got back to their lands.
You could simulate that easily by mechanics around buildings, like slave center you mentioned.

And if e.g. Poland would like to stop the raiders it will "declare war" on the building and army inside of it but not with the horde country directly. If Poland wins battle the process of raiding for slaves will be ended.

It wouldn't be micro for hordes really and for affected player this could be a funny mechanic in times of peace.
 
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We had a mechanic similar to it, but it was not good and very micro
But wouldn't you say that it being micro is kinda the point. Players wouldn't want to raise levies (with all the cost that comes with that) and engage in all the micro necessary to pursue a fast raiding army, and the point of the mechanic wouldn't be to encourage players to chase around raiders. You might want to send your troops if the army is quite big, but for the rest, you'd have to find other solutions like building fortifications, signing special treaties that stop the country from raiding you, or simply go to war to enforce the end of raiding
 
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Slaves dont grow on their own, they maintain their levels at best.
You said PC has disease mechanics so why not use that to simulate the ever decreasing slave population of the Caribbean which required a constant flow of slaves to maintain a steady population.

You could also use the same mechanics to simulate Arab Slave castration by giving slaves lots of attrition in Arab States.
 
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1-or if I change Norway into the Nordic religion, I will be able to engage in privateering and plundering the provinces of England.
2-Will the Mongols be able to take tribute from other nations in the form of slaves.
3- Will the order from Rhodes be able to kidnap Muslims and sell them, for example, to colonies in America?
4-Will slave armies be able to rebel? The Ottomans had many such rebellions where the Janissaries changed the ruler.
 
Read without context, it seems to say that the game is part of history.
I mean, right now it's a part of the future, but after it's released, it will be a part of history.

This comment will age like fine wine
 
How will the game represent Ottoman Slave Soldiers aka Jannisaries? These weren’t slaves with no rights, these were slaves that had power and privilege, enough that sultans feared their wrath and would bribe them to appease them and keep them from revolting
 
10. It's kinda werid that the African slaves are represented by an icon of two white people - but having the slaves be the only POPs that are black would be ever worse - did you think about having the POP icons be different depending on their ethnicity (similiar to EU4 advisor portraits)?
It says they're Circassian no?
 
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