Historical Slavery

[CarnalCanaan]

I've noticed that slavery has been a tough concept for Civ designers. It played no role in Civ2, appeared as captured, less efficient workers in Civ3, and now it is the civic which allows you to pop rush.

For a concept that, however repugnant, has played such a dramatic role in human history, it seems to have gotten camped under curiously different game concept guises.

I'd like to see what the community has to say on this.

1st, can we put together a sort of "schematicized" theory of slavery? (That is, ignoring ethical impacts and any other effects irrelevant to the game.)

2nd, can we think up an in-game mechanism that would better represent this theory than either of the above systems?

To start off, the move of slavery to the pop rush system is a big change from Civ tradition, IMO. Previously, it was assumed that pop rushes were the actions of a state-centered absolutist/fascist/totalitarian regime, sacrificing the lives of insignifican people for the larger good of the society. The cost for this action was decreased happiness. Thus, the trade-off implied by the game was that if a society could provide for greater diversion of its labor (represented as religious/entertainment buildings and society-wide "luxury spending"), then the state could kill people for production. If the society could not do this, it would kill so many people that the society revolted.

This revolt-by-oversacrifice concept still applies in Civ4, through the unhappiness pop rushes affect, but the fact that it cannot be done unless the society has accepted human ownership seems somewhat backwards. I assume the pop rush is sacraficing "slaves", which under such a social system would not be considered humans and thus wholly sacrificable.

But of course, slavery does not imply the wholesale murder of humans (néé destruction of property) for a productivity increase. Rather it implies the forced productivity of persons who might otherwise follow different pursuits. It is a sharpening of production, not a one-time buy-off.

Perhaps a new specialist, the Slave, who adds production but reduces happiness or health, thus implying the retarding socio-economic affects on slaveholding societies.

Anyway, let me know what you think.

[Bill3000]

It played no role in Civ2, appeared as captured, less efficient workers in Civ3, and now it is the civic which allows you to pop rush.

Workers can be captured in Civ4 as well.

[Martinus]

I think the concept of Slavery is represented in Civ4 in a decent way. It is not stellar, but is not bad either.

Slavery, as represented in game, is not just the slavery of ancient regimes (or countries like 18th century US) - that would limit it just to hereditary slavery, where there exists a certain category of people who are considered private property and whose offspring are born into slavery. Slavery is simply a system where there exists a certain category of people who can be forced (by private owners or by the government) to perform work, even at the cost of their lives - in essence, they are treated not like subjects, but like objects. Soviet Russia, employing forced labour of political prisoners, or Nazi Germany using forced labour of Jews and other conquered ethnicities, employed Slavery as well in the terms of Civ4 - especially as Slavery is just one aspect of a government in Civ4, and therefore it can go along with Hereditary Monarchy and Theocracy (to model ancient Egypt) just as well as it can go with Police State and State Property (to model Soviet Russia), or even Universal Suffrage and Free Religion (to model pre-Civil War US).

[Martinus]

Also, in game terms, since the feature of gold rush is also tied to a specific civic type, for game balance you needed to have pop rush tied to a specific civic - thus reiterating the concept that the governments of earlier Civilization games were deconstructed into a system of blocks, from which you can build your "custom" governments. In this sense, tying it to slavery seems like a good decision.

[CarnalCanaan]

Originally posted by Bill3000

Workers can be captured in Civ4 as well.

They can, but there's no distinction between them and those you've drawn from your own populace. Even the Indians' captured workers become their native Fast Worker.

[CarnalCanaan]

Originally posted by Martinus
[...] therefore it can go along with Hereditary Monarchy and Theocracy (to model ancient Egypt) just as well as it can go with Police State and State Property (to model Soviet Russia), or even Universal Suffrage and Free Religion (to model pre-Civil War US).

Good point. It seems curious to have Universal Suffrage and Slavery at the same time, but I suppose that's exactly what the U.S. was (or at least what it thought it was).

I've always thought of the pop rush as something like the Great Leap Forward - a blatant expenditure of human lives as capital. (Ironically stated, I know.)

Perhaps the next Civ could use a more detailed model of migration. Thus, population losses, either to "starvation" or "slavery rushing", would be represented as a movement of population to more tenable environments, rather than just people dying.

I think it's interesting that Civ has long had a concept of cultural assimilation, but only after a conquest (or later, a culture flip). Granted, one of the prominent civilizations, America, is a culture of migrants, but I think that's all the more reason to put in something that simulates this part of human history.

If nothing else, it's not nearly as much a third rail issue as religion, and they packaged that fairly nicely, I think.

[MasterDave]

Moo3, with all of its many faults, had a very interesting migration model, where races would automatically migrate to the planets with the friendliest atmospheres for them. Meaning that if you conquered a system inhabited by an alien race, or found a splinter colony of aliens, then those aliens would migrate to other planets within your empire that best matched their environmental needs. This meant that you would often have planets with populations from many races living together, and sometimes your own race would become the minority on many of your own planets. It was very interesting to watch this happen over the course of a game.

I do not know if such a migration model would work in Civ4 from a gameplay standpoint. It is already hard enough to grow a half-decent city in suboptimal areas such as tundra or deserts. To have people migrating away from such places would make those locations even more untenable, which means that a poor starting location would be even more damning than it is now.

The specter of political correctness also limits civ4's treatment of slavery. The last thing that Sid and company wants is Hillary going nuts at a congressional hearing denouncing civ as teaching "our children" that slavery was cool.

[gdgrimm]

The last thing that Sid and company wants is Hillary going nuts at a congressional hearing denouncing civ as teaching "our children" that slavery was cool.

Hmmmm..... She just recently mentioned something about 'plantation' in a demeaning fashion, and Civ4 has those.

[Badtz Maru]

"Victoria" modelled slavery fairly well. In that game, your various provinces had population units that varied in size and type. Each type of population unit had certain requirements to remain happy - aristocrats or capitalists would require plenty of luxuries and other resources, but their benefit was that they had lots of wealth you could tax and their presence provided bonuses (capitalists increased the efficiency of factories, aristocrats increased the efficiency of farms I think). Just above the bottom rank were laborers and farmers, who usually didn't accumulate much wealth, but they didn't need anything but basic clothing, food, etc., and you needed them to fill your fields and mines.

Some nations had slave pop units, that could only be used in fields or mines and had no wealth at all, but were relatively cheap to maintain. They could not be upgraded, like you could upgrade laborers into factory workers, and they had some other limitations that made them only useful in a pre-industrial society and a burden once you started building lots of factories - they took up space that could be filled with upwardly-mobile immigrants. It worked very well for the era of the game (19th and early 20th century).

[Lord Avalon]

Originally posted by Martinus
... or even Universal Suffrage and Free Religion (to model pre-Civil War US).

Women didn't get to vote in the US till 1920, which is post-Civil War.

[CarnalCanaan]

Originally posted by MasterDave

I do not know if such a migration model would work in Civ4 from a gameplay standpoint. It is already hard enough to grow a half-decent city in suboptimal areas such as tundra or deserts. To have people migrating away from such places would make those locations even more untenable, which means that a poor starting location would be even more damning than it is now.

Well, yes, I suppose this would be difficult, but it already exists, when your city on tundra is struggling to grow over size 4. Moreover, migration has been responsible for populating otherwise inhospitable climates - think the Yukon or the Arabian desert. Managing gold and oil rushes might be neat.

I think the framework's already in place, since religions grow along trade networks. I would think certain actions by the player would affect the migration - for example, Closed Borders would inhibit migration; Open Borders would allow it. Universal Sufferage would encourage it; Police State would discourage it. Etc.

Perhaps it would be more reasonable to use a system that doesn't modify population, but modifies ethnic make-up. As it is now, your cities start out filled with conquered foreigners who gradually turn into assimilated citizens. The process only works one way. I think it might be interesting to see it work both ways. Big, successful cities will attract foreigners who crowd out the natives, which increases the risk of revolt (not unlike real-life NYC). The process of assimiliation still applies, but if your cultural standing does not keep up with the rate of heterogenization, a net increase in the plurality of your cities' populations results.

It always seemed curious to me that the world's biggest, richest, most alluring in-game city - New York, London, Rome, Babylon - was usually homogenous because it had never been captured. Wheras in real-life each of those cities has been magnets for persons from every corner of their respectively known worlds.

Besides, this would act as another drag on the top civs to prevent runaway games.