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This is my first mod, and a fairly simple one, I've rearranged the values of the various pops to make it more realistic
Citizens, as they were the core of the Mediterranean states, now provide manpower, the majority of the taxes, as the most common form of taxation was land based, and reduced commerce power.
Freemen, representing the non-citizen urbanites, produce less manpower, some taxes, and commerce income, as they would be the traders and shop keepers.
Tribesmen, due to their rural, and decentralized nature, provide no taxes. They only provide manpower, and the most proportionally of all pops.
Slaves, only produce a fraction of their former tax revenue, as you can't really tax a slave, and it was the best way to represent the value generated by slave labor.
The monarchy law of nobility admissions has been adjusted to reduce recruitment cost of heavy infantry an cavalry, as the citizens were expected to pay for their own arms and armour.
Feedback is welcome and encouraged.
I feel like i reduced taxes too much, but things were getting a little ridiculous with all the money you can make in game.
A way to properly represent slaves, if possible, would be for slaves to act as modifier boosters for tax that is actually produced by citizens. So for example, if you have a town with 5 citizen pops producing 1 gold each month, each slave you add to the town would give a certain % boost to that tax. So with 5 citizen and 5 slaves in that town, it would now be producing more than just 1 gold.
You could then balance this out by making promotion to citizen much harder and costlier (not only increasing oratory mana cost but also introducing other mana costs, and probably even religious/cultural restrictions). This way, player won't turn every pop into citizen for that tax. After all. you are integrating them in all aspects of your core society.
And of course, having too many slaves as tax boost will invite slave uprisings.
If it can be modified, make citizens a bit harder to please compared to freemen. You can also modify a law or two to allow us to define who provides most manpower - citizens or freemen. in the end, citizens represent core of your nation but smaller than freemen in numbers.
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Historically, most freemen in Hellenistic society had to get by with trade since they couldn't own as much land as citizens. So they should get a huge bonus to their commerce income, but generally produce less taxes and manpower than citizens. And no research points. They should also be made more numerous than citizens.
Promoting slaves to freemen (i.e. granting manumission) and promoting tribals to freemen, should also cost a bit more than usual. Not too much, but still a bit more than mana spamfest of vanilla.
Freemen can also grant a boost to the manpower being produced by citizen pops. This would represent the fact that soldiers were never exclusively city-dwellers, even if these were numerous. Armies of the east were much larger and used a huge number of landless freemen who had no other jobs as soldiers. It also balances out the problem that citizen-only manpower would be too small and limited by augmenting it with freemen boosts.
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Tribesmen should indeed provide no taxes (unless you are tribe government as well). But I think just to make them a bit more useful and prevent the player from instantly converting them to freement, tribesmen should have a small commerce income. Besides, this can represent the fact that tribes across the world were known for making independent barter economies and trading goods.
Tribesmen could also increase goods produced in a city (you know, tribals produced their own goods in their tribes and villages). And you can check their exploit by making them lose happiness a tiny bit faster than usual in civilized nations. If you are a tribe, they should work as usual and stay happy.
This concept was very well represented in that great old game known as Caesar 3, and it's even better predecessor Caesar 2.
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So what does this eventually result in?
- You don't build a city exclusively consisting of one pop - you have to balance it all out.
- You don't erase tribesmen on sight, you now have a reason to keep them if you can make them stay happy, to provide extra resources, and tiny bit of trade and manpower.
- Slaves aren't the best pop anymore. You can't spam them everywhere.
- Slaves are still very useful, but
- Civilizing the tribesmen and granting freedom to slaves isn't so cheap. Aside from losing their benefits you pay increased costs.
- Granting citizenship to people is actually an important decision. You can no longer raise people to citizens anywhere at will.
To summarize my idea:
Citizens -
- The only pop to pay taxes.
- Only pop to produce research points.
- Provide most of the manpower compared to freemen (or less manpower, depending upon law).
- Each citizen pop acts as a boost towards the commercial income produced by freemen.
- Promotion to citizen (i.e. granting citizenship) costs lots and lots of oratory power, and maybe even some religious and civic power.
- If possible, require more goods to become happy.
FREEMEN -
- Only pop to produce commerce income.
- Provide smaller manpower compared to citizens (or larger, depending upon law).
- If possible, they act as a modifier boost to the manpower produced by citizen pops.
- Do not produce research points at all.
- Don't pay any taxes at all, but it might be fine if they pay a very small amount of tax if OP decides so. It wasn't as if only citizens paid all the taxes.
TRIBESMEN -
- Produce a very small amount of commerce income, representing internal barter trade.
- Having loads and loads of tribesmen creates surplus of whatever resource the city produces, representing tribes creating their own goods to trade with.
- Do not produce any tax at all, unless you are a tribal.
- Provide a very small amount of manpower.
- Get unhappy slightly faster than other pops if you are civilized (already in vanilla, but effect is amplified).
SLAVES -
- Each slave pop adds a modifier that acts as a boost to the tax produced by citizens, amplifying the tax income. A big boost, in fact.
- More slaves create surplus of whatever resource city produces, just like in vanilla.
- Will rebel if too many are placed in one city (how many, that has to be worked out).
- Do not produce manpower, research or commerce or anything at all. Slaves exist to work.
The reason that slaves are near useless, as far as taxation is concerned, is that they had nothing to tax. The benefits of each class were made, in part, to represent the ability of the state to administer and tax them. That's why tribes provide manpower, and relatively little commerce, to represent nomadic trade and pastoralists, while being too decentralized to tax.
A way to properly represent slaves, if possible, would be for slaves to act as modifier boosters for tax that is actually produced by citizens. So for example, if you have a town with 5 citizen pops producing 1 gold each month, each slave you add to the town would give a certain % boost to that tax. So with 5 citizen and 5 slaves in that town, it would now be producing more than just 1 gold.
You could then balance this out by making promotion to citizen much harder and costlier (not only increasing oratory mana cost but also introducing other mana costs, and probably even religious/cultural restrictions). This way, player won't turn every pop into citizen for that tax. After all. you are integrating them in all aspects of your core society.
And of course, having too many slaves as tax boost will invite slave uprisings.
If it can be modified, make citizens a bit harder to please compared to freemen. You can also modify a law or two to allow us to define who provides most manpower - citizens or freemen. in the end, citizens represent core of your nation but smaller than freemen in numbers.
-----
Historically, most freemen in Hellenistic society had to get by with trade since they couldn't own as much land as citizens. So they should get a huge bonus to their commerce income, but generally produce less taxes and manpower than citizens. And no research points. They should also be made more numerous than citizens.
Promoting slaves to freemen (i.e. granting manumission) and promoting tribals to freemen, should also cost a bit more than usual. Not too much, but still a bit more than mana spamfest of vanilla.
Freemen can also grant a boost to the manpower being produced by citizen pops. This would represent the fact that soldiers were never exclusively city-dwellers, even if these were numerous. Armies of the east were much larger and used a huge number of landless freemen who had no other jobs as soldiers. It also balances out the problem that citizen-only manpower would be too small and limited by augmenting it with freemen boosts.
-----
Tribesmen should indeed provide no taxes (unless you are tribe government as well). But I think just to make them a bit more useful and prevent the player from instantly converting them to freement, tribesmen should have a small commerce income. Besides, this can represent the fact that tribes across the world were known for making independent barter economies and trading goods.
Tribesmen could also increase goods produced in a city (you know, tribals produced their own goods in their tribes and villages). And you can check their exploit by making them lose happiness a tiny bit faster than usual in civilized nations. If you are a tribe, they should work as usual and stay happy.
This concept was very well represented in that great old game known as Caesar 3, and it's even better predecessor Caesar 2.
-----
So what does this eventually result in?
- You don't build a city exclusively consisting of one pop - you have to balance it all out.
- You don't erase tribesmen on sight, you now have a reason to keep them if you can make them stay happy, to provide extra resources, and tiny bit of trade and manpower.
- Slaves aren't the best pop anymore. You can't spam them everywhere.
- Slaves are still very useful, but
- Civilizing the tribesmen and granting freedom to slaves isn't so cheap. Aside from losing their benefits you pay increased costs.
- Granting citizenship to people is actually an important decision. You can no longer raise people to citizens anywhere at will.
To summarize my idea:
Citizens -
- The only pop to pay taxes.
- Only pop to produce research points.
- Provide most of the manpower compared to freemen (or less manpower, depending upon law).
- Each citizen pop acts as a boost towards the commercial income produced by freemen.
- Promotion to citizen (i.e. granting citizenship) costs lots and lots of oratory power, and maybe even some religious and civic power.
- If possible, require more goods to become happy.
FREEMEN -
- Only pop to produce commerce income.
- Provide smaller manpower compared to citizens (or larger, depending upon law).
- If possible, they act as a modifier boost to the manpower produced by citizen pops.
- Do not produce research points at all.
- Don't pay any taxes at all, but it might be fine if they pay a very small amount of tax if OP decides so. It wasn't as if only citizens paid all the taxes.
TRIBESMEN -
- Produce a very small amount of commerce income, representing internal barter trade.
- Having loads and loads of tribesmen creates surplus of whatever resource the city produces, representing tribes creating their own goods to trade with.
- Do not produce any tax at all, unless you are a tribal.
- Provide a very small amount of manpower.
- Get unhappy slightly faster than other pops if you are civilized (already in vanilla, but effect is amplified).
SLAVES -
- Each slave pop adds a modifier that acts as a boost to the tax produced by citizens, amplifying the tax income. A big boost, in fact.
- More slaves create surplus of whatever resource city produces, just like in vanilla.
- Will rebel if too many are placed in one city (how many, that has to be worked out).
- Do not produce manpower, research or commerce or anything at all. Slaves exist to work.
As far as the conversion rates/difficulty, I've shared this with EHI, and hopefully they'll make it work better. In the mean time, I'll continue balancing out the values.
The reason that slaves are near useless, as far as taxation is concerned, is that they had nothing to tax. The benefits of each class were made, in part, to represent the ability of the state to administer and tax them. That's why tribes provide manpower, and relatively little commerce, to represent nomadic trade and pastoralists, while being too decentralized to tax.
I'm not saying that slaves should give tax revenue, but they were a significant part of the economy in this period, and thus very valuable. It seems that slaves in your mod are useless, which isn't very accurate, and basically gives no reason to even have them.
I'm not saying that slaves should give tax revenue, but they were a significant part of the economy in this period, and thus very valuable. It seems that slaves in your mod are useless, which isn't very accurate, and basically gives no reason to even have them.
Well their main value lies in their ability to produce goods. That's all they are good for, maybe for every 5 slave pops building cost should be reduced by 2.5% or 5%
Well their main value lies in their ability to produce goods. That's all they are good for, maybe for every 5 slave pops building cost should be reduced by 2.5% or 5%
From a state perspective they kind of are. The majority of slaves were owned by wealthy land owners who used them on plantations and as servants. They most the state benefitted from them was due to their use in mines, but precious metals, although a trade good, do not provide direct wealth to the state, unfortunately.
Well, in reality there are three economic sectors:
Primary (agriculture, mining, forestry, fishing):
Pulling wealth out of earth, rocks, forests, the sea Secondary (industry):
creating wealth by turning basic resources into something more valuable Tertiary (in the context of this game: trade): creating wealth by bringing surplus goods to areas where they are in demand
In the game, primary and secondary are fusioned for the sake of simplicity (assuming, for example, that the weavers and shepherds live&work in the same city).
Slaves, freemen and tribesmen would work either in the primary or secondary sector.
The tertiary sector, however, requires knowledge of mathematics, languages and geography, freedom to travel, the possession of mounts or ships, and starting capital - something more likely to be found in upper classes.
The ingame terms are misleading:
"taxes" means economic power/taxes from 1. and 2. sector
"commerce means economic power/taxes from 3. sector
The fact that slaves are owned by rich landowners is unimportant - it's the slaves' manual labor that results in the creation of wealth.
In the vanilla game, "commerce" is wealth based on the intellectual/logistical achievements of the upper class, while "taxes" is wealth produced by their slaves.
Freemen should give taxes, just as tribesmen and slaves do
slaves should give more "taxes" than freemen, because they are forced to work harder and are only allowed to keep a bare minimum for themselves
tribesmen should also give fewer taxes than slaves because they live in the wilderness, practice low-efficiency subsistence economy, care little about the state and are hard to tax
Freemen should give more manpower than tribesmen because they are more connected to the central government
the fighting men of tribes are already represented through tribal retinues
slaves shouldn't give manpower (historically, slaves were often freed to make them more willing to fight)
Citizens could give a minimal amount of manpower for flavor (representing officers and noble cavalry), but they seem strong enough as it is
Well, in reality there are three economic sectors:
Primary (agriculture, mining, forestry, fishing):
Pulling wealth out of earth, rocks, forests, the sea Secondary (industry):
creating wealth by turning basic resources into something more valuable Tertiary (in the context of this game: trade): creating wealth by bringing surplus goods to areas where they are in demand
In the game, primary and secondary are fusioned for the sake of simplicity (assuming, for example, that the weavers and shepherds live&work in the same city).
Slaves, freemen and tribesmen would work either in the primary or secondary sector.
The tertiary sector, however, requires knowledge of mathematics, languages and geography, freedom to travel, the possession of mounts or ships, and starting capital - something more likely to be found in upper classes.
The ingame terms are misleading:
"taxes" means economic power/taxes from 1. and 2. sector
"commerce means economic power/taxes from 3. sector
The fact that slaves are owned by rich landowners is unimportant - it's the slaves' manual labor that results in the creation of wealth.
In the vanilla game, "commerce" is wealth based on the intellectual/logistical achievements of the upper class, while "taxes" is wealth produced by their slaves.
Freemen should give taxes, just as tribesmen and slaves do
slaves should give more "taxes" than freemen, because they are forced to work harder and are only allowed to keep a bare minimum for themselves
tribesmen should also give fewer taxes than slaves because they live in the wilderness, practice low-efficiency subsistence economy, care little about the state and are hard to tax
Freemen should give more manpower than tribesmen because they are more connected to the central government
the fighting men of tribes are already represented through tribal retinues
slaves shouldn't give manpower (historically, slaves were often freed to make them more willing to fight)
Citizens could give a minimal amount of manpower for flavor (representing officers and noble cavalry), but they seem strong enough as it is
The reason I assigned tribesmen the highest manpower value is due to their abundance as light infantry in this age, for the Hellenes, for example, tribesmen were often used as skirmishers, as they were knowledgeable of the terrain, proficient hunters, and generally harder folk than the urbanites. But, in the Hellenistic nations, they are relatively few in number. For the barbarians, the same holds true, they were able to mobilize a larger proportion of their populations due to the lack of economic specialization that comes with massive urban centers, hopefully this will make the tribal nations more of a threat.
the Tribesmen only contribute commerce income because it is meant to represent the nomadic, or semi-nomadic, herders and hunters that sell furs, and other such things in the cities, and villages.
Freemen should provide more manpower, I agree, however, at this time they would have only composed the light infantry, as the citizen militias of the Hellenes were expected to supply their own equipment, I can't simulate that more accurately other than to make them less relevant to warfare. I've tried changing the manpower laws to target specific pops, but this doesn't seem to be possible. So, I simple made the base manpower law provide a 25% reduction to recruitment cost of heavy inf/cav.
