Representation of Slavery

[MidKnight Lament]

This is another off-shoot from the "Unconventional Warfare in Civ III" thread, that was getting too confusing.

We definitely had some wacky Unconventional Warfare units in CTP, but I was pretty happy with how Slavery was handled.

1. Were we happy with the Slavery model? (Does it need an overhaul?)

2. What changes would you like to see made? or
What new system would you propose?

I feel that Slavery was far too important in the history of mankind to be ignored in Civ 3.
How would we like to see it done?

- MKL
[This message has been edited by MidKnight Lament (edited March 19, 2000).]

[Youngsun]

MKL

I agree "Slavery" is the saddest part of human history and it has to be represented by someway.

I was pretty happy with what I could do with "Slaver unit" in CTP. I think Activision wanted to creat a battlefield for the slavers vs abolitionists but I don't think their goal really got into the game.

I reckon we need more bonus from "getting slaves then make them work for my civ" so we will be tempted to have more slaves.

[Adm.Naismith]

As I've already told in the original thread, I never played CTP, so my point of view have some limit.

I agree with you about slavery relevance on history, then on CIV III too.

My idea is: why slaves workers as units?

In short:
Slaves where mainly prisoners of war (also men with debt they can't pay, but that's not relevant to the whole number IMHO), and in a CIV game we can model them by two ways:
a) battle between units don't always end with total destruction of a unit, but with some prisoners too (we can look to other threads, as links between units and conscription methods, to decide how many citizen are included into a unit.
b) attacking a city could end with you gain the city but decide (or are forced) to put some citizen in slavery. You can also decide to destroy all the city and keep the slave only (atrocity or not, it should depend from other factors as age, S.E. choices etc.).

If you agree with this model, now we have some slaves to:
a) put at work into nearest city (some level of unhappiness is needed) as another kind of specialist - more thought later on food needs and work effect.
b) assign them to a slave combat unit, with appropriate limits (ditto, more thought later)

Can we work on this basis to improve the model?

------------------
Adm.Naismith AKA mcostant

[Grumbold]

In general I dislike 'special units' because they represent far more nebulous and diverse effects than the single on-map unit can replicate. Slavery is perhaps the one that works best - individual slaving teams did trek or sail hundreds of miles, raid an area and head back. Even so a menu controlled system would allow more subtle control - and perhaps allow the same system to cater for POW's, forced labour camps etc. Depending on how liberal your government was the criminals, prisoners and slaves would become less productive and more burdensome. Then perhaps the diplomatic and happiness models could be adapted to take this into account. Democracies really aren't too unhappy at the prospect of their armed forces being scattered around the world - as long as only a tiny percentage of them are KIA or interned in the enemy's prison camps.

[Youngsun]

Admiral

quote: a) battle between units don't always end with total destruction of a unit, but with some prisoners too (we can look to other threads, as links between units and conscription methods, to decide how many citizen are included into a unit.

"POW concept" I like it and this is actually batter than having a separate slaver units.

quote: b) attacking a city could end with you gain the city but decide (or are forced) to put some citizen in slavery. You can also decide to destroy all the city and keep the slave only

Interesting point. I think you were able to give us imaginative ideas because you did not play CTP. Hahaha "Capturing citizens as war booties" Good idea I also like it.

But you did not memtion about "slave hunt" done in Africa(shadowy part of human history ) and how it's gonna be implemented. I think "Slaver units" were actually representing this element.

Grumbold

We met again. I first saw you at my corporation thread. How is it going?

quote: Even so a menu controlled system would allow more subtle control - and perhaps allow the same system to cater for POW's, forced labour camps etc.

Hmmm. menu contolled system. sounds nice and do you have more ideas on this or be specific little bit.

quote: Democracies really aren't too unhappy at the prospect of their armed forces being scattered around the world - as long as only a tiny percentage of them are KIA or interned in the enemy's prison camps.

You are right they mind more about casualities taken rather than actually sending troops abroad. But they still mind about sending troops don't they? Anyway good point there because under present games no democracies care about their servicemen dying . I think this element should be reflected into the game so when we take heavy casualities from a war the war would become so unpopular and may cause eventual downfall of the government(if that was democractic one)

[The Joker]

Slaves should definately be included in Civ3. The CtP system worked ok, except that it was way too easy for a slaver to just steal population from foreign cities. A slaver should be visible to other civs on the map, and taking slaves from an enemy city should be an act of war. As the slaver should have little or no defencive capabilities it would often be accompanied by a military unit.

Slaves should be pop heads in cities, and would propably be cheaper (only need 1 food per turn and furthermore not need luxuries), but also require military units to stop an uprising. The chance of an uprising should be smaller with military units in the city, but could never be removed.

I think you should be able to turn your own pop into slaves (this would cause unhappyness for a few turns), and also - this is a must - be able to turn slaves into normal population.

I really like the ideas about captured enemy cities that could be destoryed and the people returned home as slaves. This should be pretty good in ancient times as it should be very hard to hold a city without the support of the local pop. Spreading this pop to a number of cities should assimilate the conquored pop faster and furthermore reduce the chance of uprising.

[Stefu]

I think that CTP model is good too, except those pesky slavers are a bugger when going to cities - they need to be held back in some way! Then, some more issues:

When slaves go to cities, their ethnicity and religion could follow. I'm not sure about religion tho - Christians tended to convert their slvaes to some kind of christianity while in Moslem lands, you couldn't keep Moslems as slaves - if one converted then he had to be freed! This needs handling. But ethnicity, definitely.

Slave trading must be included. This could be handled by slavers going to foreign cities and buying slaves. Hmm - maybe if you try to take slaver to enemy city it commits a slave raid, but to friendly city it attempts to buy slaves? In any way, I think that after succesful strike slaver unit should change so that you can see chained slaves behind him, and then you could take them to any city you wanted, or sell them on. Since this would slower slavery considerably, maybe slaver could catch many population units at same time? Also there could be "slave treaty" which specifies that all slaves one nation catches are auto-sold at one nation - this would be good for more peaceful civ, since it leaves all the murky work for another civ.

Also, the abolition should be better than in CTP. Instead of abolitioner units and Emancipation wonder, have "Abolition" button or something - abolition would result to all slaves being freed, but there'd be period of unhappiness in general population of slaveholding cities and chance of revolution. Maybe there could be "gradual emancipation" option as well? Anyway, towards the end of game abolition could become more and mroe pressing option, since abolitioned nations could use slaves against non-abolitioned nations, when industrialism hits in slaves get production penalties - and there's Reputation falling option as well, like this (assuming 7 civs):

All nations slaveholding - 4 nations slaveholding: No reputation hit:
3 nations slaveholding: slaveholding nations have reputation 1 level lower
2 nations slaveholding: -"- 2 levels lower
1 nation slaveholding: -"- 4 levels lower
All nations emancipated : No reputation hit.

[Grumbold]

I see {in only vague terms, admittedly} the principle of slavery being one of additional productivity at the expense of unhappiness that can be reduced to approaching zero by military supervision. As civilisations evolve similar ideas apply with POW's, criminals and political dissidents being forced to work.

An ancient civilisation that embraced slavery usually did not have specialists - the troops captured and enslaved directly. Because the culture existed they all carried the tools of the trade with them and shared in the collective act of taking captives. These were then put to work, sacrificed, absorbed into the culture or sold as custom dictated. The standard independant slaver operation with one boat and a few dozen thugs raiding isolated villages came later and is too small scale to be represented and they are hardly likely to be targeting the capital city of another great civilisation.

Perhaps the player should sign up to a code upon starting. The more advantageous in the short term (enslave everyone and put them to work, military and civilian alike) would carry the biggest long-term diplomatic penalty. Buildings could be constructed to assist in enhancing the productivity, speeding the absorbtion or reducing the rebelliousness of slaves. Over time construction of certain buildings and/or shifting to more enlightened forms of government could allow the player to shift their slave ethic.

A Democracy with a bloody past to atone for could be worse thought of (by other liberal governments) than another who still practiced the death penalty but had less of a violent past. A militant regime might respect a country with a no-nosense attitude as long as it is enslaving their enemies, not their allies! The abolition of slavery by one country should not instantly eliminate it worldwide but slowly tilt the economic scales away from it being profitable.

As slavery dwindles how you handle POW's and your own criminals becomes more important. Under communism a higher percentage of your own internal growth would automatically be incarcerated than unde a democracy. However they would work them hard and feed them less instead of costing the taxpayer. The most liberal societies might find an unwelcome tide of poor immigrants trying to sneak into the country and putting a drain on the economy. Diplomatic options would need to expand to cater for POW ransom and arguements over border controls.

The sort of ethical dilemmas this would introduce could add a new element to the game. Everyone with a hint of skill could win as a slave-taking hard line society that went on to treat POW's and its own prisoners roughly. A globe spanning empire of peace lovers who never enslaved anyone and freed prisoners would be a feat to boast about!
[This message has been edited by Grumbold (edited March 20, 2000).]

[The Mad Viking]

quote: Originally posted by Grumbold on 03-20-2000 11:29 AM Under communism a higher percentage of your own internal growth would automatically be incarcerated than under a democracy.

Little known fact: USA is the country with the highest percentage of its population encarcerated. (Harpers) This includes Russia, China, Bosnia, Libya, Iraq and every other despotic little banana republic you care to think about. Sorry to nit-pick, but I think its a common misconception.

I agree with your point about the military serving as slavers in ancient / early medieval times. I think we need some ability to trade in slaves in later times like the raiding of Africa. But I don't see the need for slave units. As someone suggested, they should be tradable pop head, with no unhappiness, less food and no lux..

For many decades, slavery and democracy co-existed in the US,(without any real military suppression.) This did not cause unhappiness for the cities until emancipation became an option. Obviously it caused misery for the slaves, but this did not adversely effect the functioning of the economy or government.

European ridicule of the US, pointing out the obvioud hyprocrisy between the Constitution and slavery helped motivate the abolitionists. The model suggested would nicely refect the difficulty of being a minority slaver civ for very long.

[supremus]

CTP slavery model is very good. I think it should just be copied by CIV 3. It is simple and works very well.

[MidKnight Lament]

quote: Originally posted by Grumbold on 03-20-2000 11:29 AM The abolition of slavery by one country should not instantly eliminate it worldwide but slowly tilt the economic scales away from it being profitable.

Yeah, I like this idea. And the farther the world evolves away from slavery as an option, the more likely countries continuing to practice it will be labelled as committing atrocities (as per previously debated models).

quote: Originally posted by Grumbold on 03-20-2000 11:29 AM The most liberal societies might find an unwelcome tide of poor immigrants trying to sneak into the country and putting a drain on the economy.

Has anyone explored this idea before? I'm certainly no historian, but I get the impression that country's populations have swelled dramatically due to refugee immigration at various times in history. Certainly enough so to warrant representation in Civ3. Am I off the mark here?

- MKL

[Urban Ranger]

I don't like the CtP implementation. Slaver units are too powerful. I agree that enslaving should be carried out by military units, so any act of that sort is an act of war. Furthermore, enslaved population cannot be "teleported" back to friendly cities. They must be moved back, escorted by friendly military units. If they are not escorted they will vanish: scatter into the countryside to filter back home after a certain number of turns. This will give interesting possibilities. The original country could attempt to defeat the escorts to free the slaves, or a third country could attempt to defeat the escorts to steal the slaves.

Slaves are always drones (unhappy). Mechanisms should be available to free the slaves, i.e., to intergrate them into your society as citizens, perhaps after certain civ advances allows you to do so, and other civ advances could force you to free all the slaves.

[Jon Miller]

Hi all

as with about everything the ctp representation of slavery was horrible

I would have heavily defended cities and higher technology then the other nation and they would come up and use there indivudual slavers on my cities, not only is this unrealistic it is not ballanced either

no slaves were ever taken of people who could defend themselves unless the slaves were military captives

the simple act of allowing the citizens to be armed and being at least close to technical par would alliminate any slaving another nation would be trying to do towards you

also slavers as a whole were an independent unit for a relatively small time and for the politically important nations did not affect them at all

slavers, as well as corporations and religion (and probably intelligence and trade) should be not unit represented

perhaps for the time when state sponsered merchants explored the seas (and lesser extant land) for trade, there would be a unit that could engage in trade

actually most the slaves were bought by traders from slavers who were not actually part of the group that ended up with the slaves, in otherwords let slaves be traded to (and let captured cities peoples and armies be made slaves)

Jon miller

[Grumbold]

CTP's model of slavery was, to give it its due, better than any that preceded it. If its biggest claim to fame becomes that it inspires a far better approach to be adopted in Civ3 (or CTP2) then I will be happy.

[MidKnight Lament]

Agreed. It had its faults, but it was a noble attempt to include something which hadn't really been givern consideration before.

[Adm.Naismith]

Well, I personally don't see any need to speak against CTP, I'm here to suggest about CIV III or any other good clone that, using our suggestions, will reach the shops.

Back to slaves, I want to detail my previus post:
Slaves as specialist in city I was thinking of a "head" reproduction into a city of slaves citizens (a contraddiction in fact, slaves where not citizen, but you have got my point). As specialist, they can have plus and minus to reproduce their peculiar status. During a revolt you can change normal worker into slaves (as The Joker said), as criminals or politics prisoners, and back to normal workers (free slaves or prisoner).

That switch shouldn't be too easy: we need to relate slaves to unhappines, less research points (as in SMAC), etc.
Any city must have military units to keep the slaves in control, and may be you should not be able to have more than two slaves for every common worker or specialist (something similar, to avoid unrealistic "only slaves" city.

About the slaves hunt, I suppose we can model it capturing indigeneus tribe.
Depending on the general model, they will be Village of Native Citizen (see my "capturing cities idea in previus post) or indigeneous units (as mindworms in SMAC, see my "capture POW" ditto).

As others have said, Social choices (or goverment type) and Wonders can limit the slaves use, but I will add a World Counsil's Law (as in SMAC). I agree with MidKnight and others, how devastating could be ban slavery as atrocity (trade limited or stopped) to crush a police state that fund its production on criminals/slaves!

I know this model doesn't take care of slaves trade, but I'm not sure trade was the most importan part of the slave affair. I think on country level use of slaves was more important in production and public works than in trade income.

Best part of this model is IMO that we use already tested concept and representation (in CIV II o SMAC game), and we can keep the same concept from ancient age (proper slaves) to modern age (criminals and POWs during wars), until social choice, world counsil's law or a wonder make it no more viable.

Look Youngsun, once a time I don't see the need of a panel to cope with slavery

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Adm.Naismith AKA mcostant

[S. Kroeze]

'Report: SLAVE TRADE EXPANDS

"Every year all over the world more than a million women and children are sold like slaves; this slave trade is still on the increase"

A report of the American authorities, that was yesterday presented at the beginning of a special conference about trade in humans in Asia, says so.
Gangs would sell every year about 250,000 women and children out of South East Asia and from about 150,000 to 200,000 out of Russia. In Europe women and children are 'bought and sold' for 30,000 dollars, according to the report.
The US designate trade in humans as the third most paying sort of organized crime.'

(source:'Metro' of 30/03/2000(a Dutch newspaper);my translation)

So slave trade is definitely not something done with. It may be beyond its peak and have changed its character, but essentially it is still there!

[raingoon]

Ideas for Slavery in Civ 3

Slavery, as with every feature in Civ 3, should compell the player to have to make an interesting choice. Do I want to practice slavery for the production advantage it gives me? Or do I fall behind in production by outlawing slavery while striving to build a more industrial economy? That is the fundamental dilemma. Here are the four main new features in Civ 3 that I think speak to the problem of slavery:

1) A Slave Economy. A slave economy should be about twice as efficient at building things than no economy at all (which would essentially be a pre-industrial, merchant economy, one that traded to compensate for what it could not build). This would make slavery tempting early on. Later an industrialized economy should be about three or four times more efficient than a slave economy -- at processing energy, building its own infrastructure, units, etc. This would roughly model the difference between South and North in the United States during the Civil War.

At some point an economy that grew large by investing heavily in slave labor will be challenged by the more-rapidly increasing capabilities of those who have suffered without it, but invested in industrialization instead. The trade off is that the past's slave labor allowed them to dominate up until then.

2) The First Kind of Slavery: Enslaving Your Own Population. First, the player should have the option of enslaving some of his own population. I suggest this be shown on the game map as a proportional decrease in their City Size and increase in production capability. To make it interesting, if population units are distinguishable by their religious beliefs, this might be one way of singling out the unfortunate group. Of course, it can also be as simple as changing a pop unit from an Elvis to a Slave, and reaping the resultant bonus to production (say, double). This covers newly-captured cities as well. I do NOT believe citizens can be stolen en masse from cities you do not contol, as in CTP.

About enslavement, I agree with those who say you should not be able to undertake this lightly. If you decide to use slavery, either captured or drawing on your own population, you should have a window of time to change your mind, perhaps five or ten turns, after which it should take no less than 25 turns to emancipate (more below).

3) The Second Kind of Slavery: Enslaving OTHER Populations. You should also be able to enslave populations NOT in your cities and not in any other cities -- in effect, capture slaves. I don't think slave trader units are necessary. Any military unit attacking another unit would be an opportunity for taking slaves. These victimized populations would be taken from either barbarian units or units belonging to other civs -- anything from a spy, to a settler, to a tank. But first they would have to be defeated in battle, at which point the game would give you the choice of finishing them off or taking the survivors prisoner (as others have suggested). In a stacked battle, the sum of all the surviving and wounded, etc., would simply be abstracted and, should you choose to take prisoners, then whatever unit(s) they had been, they would now all be converted into one or more PRISONER UNIT(S), say a unit resembling a settler in chains. There would be several options in dealing with your new prisoners:

a) First, the prisoner unit could be put instantly to work on your infrastructure -- roads, highways, rail, or developing resources such as coal mines or oil fields, etc. (the rate of their work would be diminished by about what a settler's speed is to an Engineer's in Civ 2). Your civ's economy would be instantly labeled a slave economy, the five to ten turn grace period would begin, and any resulting social penalties applied. After the grace period emancipation would take up to 25 turns to return your social happiness to what it was before (see Emancipation below).

b) Second, the prisoner unit could be made to "JOIN A CITY" as a slave, which, as with drawing slaves out of your own population, would NOT add to the population of that city but instead increase that city's production capability. NOTE: if you are already at war with that prisoner's civ, they would not be considered slaves and you would suffer no slavery penalties; their number would be kept track under a "POW" list -- you could still trade that number back (see below, prisoners of war). But if you were NOT at war with that civ, they would be instantly declared slaves, any resulting social penalties would be applied against you, and they could not be traded back but only emancipated (see below).

c) Thirdly, if you are at war with their home civ your prisoner unit(s) could be fortified in a fort as prisoners of war, as opposed to putting them to slave labor. Again, their number would be tracked under a POW list. Perhaps the difference between putting POWs to slave labor as opposed to fortifying them in forts is that the former would decrease their number gradually. In the latter case, their number would be the same as when they were captured. The advantage is you can use prisoners as future bargaining chips against their home civ. Eventually you might amass enough of a prisoner population that the civ may be willing to concede something to you for the return of their manpower (this assumes that units in Civ 3 are built by taking actual population from your pop window, thereby making population a resource). This would make using POWs as slave labor a potentially expensive proposition.

d) Obviously, prisoners taken by your victorious unit(s) could be either executed or released, on the spot.

4)EMANCIPATION. You should be able to emancipate, to outlaw slavery. This means all slaves (not POWs) would be counted, finally, amongst your city populations. I suggest that, after emancipation, you continue to experience unhappiness or civil unrest, and in increase in migration out of your civ (if such a thing is modeled), until the discovery of CIVIL RIGHTS or some other equalizing social mechanism.



[This message has been edited by raingoon (edited March 31, 2000).]

[MidKnight Lament]

raingoon has raised his hand in a big way! I think I'm happy with most of what you've written. Just some thoughts from my end...

1. I think we can all agree that the choice whether or not to use slavery should be a big one. It should also be quite tempting, because let's face it, some big civs went far using slave labour.

2. I agree that we shouldn't just be able to nab slaves out of an enemy city. What we were doing in CTP? Drugging them chloroform first?

3. I was unsure how a system would go without a slaver unit, but I think you've just about convinced me. It does beg a question though. If a slave is captured in battle, how does the slave end up in your city. Should it have to be escorted?

4. Interesting seperation of slaves vs POWs. I'm going to have to have a think about this one. Sounding ok though. Particularly towards modern warfare when bargaining could become quite lucrative.

5. Emancipation is probably a must. You should get good reputation brownie points out of it too. (Side thought: How as a bill of Human Rights or the Geneva Convention not been a wonder so far? I guess that's for another thread.)

Plenty of stuff to discuss about slavery yet though.... Thanks for your solid input, raingoon.

- MKL

[Adm.Naismith]

S.Kroeze, interesting figures indeed. I will look around to other sources because I would like to check them in comparison between born/death rate, enslaving duration etc.

Often women and child are enslaved as prostitute, still they are sometime released after some years because no more "profitable" (my excuse because of crude concept, I don't know a better, polite word).

To tell the true, I'm not sure Firaxis P.R. would be happy to walk on this "thin ice" concept of modern slavery where slavery on old history can be easily accepted.

Raingoon, I'm not sure to understand why you prefer to model slavery as improved city production but not as "civ head" in city screen.

My proposal to keep them as "special worker" has some advantages.

Quoting myself (sorry for this) into the Migration thread by Sir Shiva:

quote: I underline that immigrate or refugee model has lot of shared point IMHO with slavery model: they are special citizen with limited rights, source of some kind of unhappines, potential resources if you are able to integrate them into your CIV as common workers.

Let's see, then: special workers that add only different numbers to production, unhappiness, but still are in need of food, can be killed by an attack (may be more easily than common workers, because they will be less protected by defending troops), can be converted into common workers (released or "assimilated").

They can revolt, as unhappy citizen, or crushed by police and military troops using martial law.

The only difference I really see is when you propose to make PoW tradeable, to let them go back at the end of war. This will interfere with a simple "civ head" model.
Keeping a POW list can be a workaround, but I bet that if some kind of cultural origin will be stored with population "head" we can use this as a better way to count back the POW numbers. As cultural will change with years, so less and less PoW will be ready to go back into original country. On actual CIV timescale we will have war ended after some decade, so I'm not sure PoW will be really interested to go back, if not by emigration model: they will be free in cities, so if the cities are good place to live they will stay there with their new families (something it happens on small scale after only five year of WWII, but I'm almost sure was more common in old centuries, where travel where difficult and expensive).

About the feature to secure PoW into fort, I would like to suggest instead (once more as in Slavery thread) to let the player to control the "PoW settler", ordering to it to found a Prison Camp (a kind of city without feature available).

You must put enough sentinel units (any infantry or SMAC police unit will be good) to avoid revolt and escape. The advantage against a "escorted settler" is that you need less military unit to control them (higher police ratio because of fence and walls of a Prison camp).

On this line, during a Prison Camp revolt you don't have a production stop, you have the appearance of a "runaway unit" that will try to go back home.

If the Prison Camp grow too large, itself food production will not be enough to keep prisoner alive. You must decide if share food with your cities or let prisoner starve (I suggest that's a major atrocity on the diplomatic level).

To sum up, I suggest to introduce:

- Slave/PoW settler, when captured (immigrate/refugee settler into migration model) under control of warder Civ player

- Special Worker Slave/Immigrate into common city screen

- Ability to build Prison camp / Refugee camp by above special settler, instead of City

- A "runaway unit", very low level infantry or special settler that you can try to recover back to original Civ (PoW) or found a new, separate Civ (Slave)

I bet they are not too difficult to add to current Civ model, if Firaxis will keep basic things similar enough.

In exchange we have lot of interesting choices to make during the game with (I hope) tolerable micromanagement.

Or may be I completely miss the wrong part of my idea, so please make a good postmortem examination of it!

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Adm.Naismith AKA mcostant

[S. Kroeze]

The current idea seems to be that the slaver in CalltoPower is irrealistic and not historically founded.

I would like to point out that during the last two centuries of the Roman Republic(second and first centuryBC), a period about which we have a lot of sources and reliable research, there were three sources of slaves:
-children sold as slaves by their parents because of poverty and the inability to feed them properly; this was only a small part of all slaves, not exceeding 10 %
-prisoners of war, accounting for about half of the origin of all slaves (and in this period Rome was waging a war somewhere all the time)
-slaves acquired during slave raids by pirates; this constituted the other half of origin

In the sources we read about districts of the eastern Mediterranean becoming depopulated as a result of constant slave raiding; most people were rurals living in small villages, not able to defend themselves against well-organized pirates, coming by sea. At first the Romans did nothing to restrain this piracy: instead they were very glad with this constant supply of cheap slaves! Only when several Roman aristocrats, among others Julius Caesar, became victim of the pirates, they suppressed the piracy. From that time on most slaves came from Germany and southern Russia.

The Viking raids and the slave raids in Africa follow the same pattern: slave-raids are usually carried out by well-organized private companies, willing to fight. 'Barbarians' are often even more skilled in it than civilised nations!

[MidKnight Lament]

Interesting stuff. Minor nations could be both the experienced instigators or the helpless victims.

Nabbing people out of small villages and whisking them away by ship sounds much more realistic than walking down the main boulavade of your enemy's biggest city, with 50 slaves in chains behind you. "He'll be back..."

Good info there, S. Kroeze.

- MKL

[raingoon]

Very interesting. It points out the crux of slavery. It's an economic issue.

Meaning, there should be the ability for one civ to capture slaves then sell them to another. The buyer would use them to increase their production, while the seller would of course increase their coffers.

And pretty soon it becomes clear how such a horrific thing got started in the first place. Awful as it is, I think a true Civ game would accurately model the despicable side of human history as well as the greater good.

[Adm.Naismith]

Bumping for easy reference in current Slavery topic.

I think it contain some great touch able to improve CIV, also without changing too much its model.