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Lets concentrate on this for a moment.
Are servants, butlers, and house maids, a slaves? They may be the lowest class workers, living in theirs "masters" houses, and working for them for less than minimal wage, but they are not slaves, they can freely change their contracts, "masters" and houses, working for someone else, or somewhere else, and maybe they would be able to change their fate, educate some more, and maybe sometime got better job. Is that a slavery?
Or, as in your example. A person who has life debt to other, despite of is this a money debt, or honor one. Is that person a slave?
And yet game forces us to belive so, and emprie who is against slavery will hate us only because we have stratified society with servant class and leader class, because there is no distinction between those.
And there is distincion, and huge difference, between:
1. forcing someone into work because i fear they have three eyes or i hate that they have genitals on their face and i see it discusting so i want them to die while working - this is xenophobic slavery
2. Putting someone into mines because they born into lower class or because they are stronger, because its just more efficient than someone else, but if they dont want to do it by themselves i have to force them - this is authoritarian slavery.
and there is also the factor of property. Slavery require us to be owner of someones lives, but we are not owners of our servants of those who has debt, or rather - we shouldnt be, so they also should not be called slaves.
And with those examples, i just cant see xenophobes who put xenos, who they hate/fear as housemaids.

Ok, so it seems you have a different understandig of slave than i do, or at least what the description in the game means.

Ok, so first regarding servant, butlers and so on. If they are able to freely change their contract and basically walk freely, no they are of course not slave. But then there are those who cant do this, and those are in slavery, either direct or indireclty (wage slaves).

It seems that your understandig is, that battle thralls and entertainers in the game are free pops in servitude. But those are not free pops, these are slaves. Like literal actual slaves. Or let me explain it very exxagerted: I have my battle thralls enclosed in a pen, because thats the maximun on living standard i am willing to spend on dumb soldiers. Twice a day i feed them and occassionally they get dropped on a planet to fight for me. Depending on how the war goes, i either bomb the planet into pieces or i come back and pick up whats left of my armies. How do i keep them in check you ask? Fear, Horror and Pain. Undermine their self esteem and their unity and tehy will be to afraid to revolt and will never gooble up and form big masses. Occassionally small groups of slaves become unruly but those are quickly shot down, further strengthening their fear in me. I also like to send them off to war with a speech that ends with "Some of you may die, but its a sacrifice I am willing to make.

Now, i know you want to jime in and say "Oh, thats xenophobic, not authoritarian"... Well i never mentioned a different species.
 
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Ok, so it seems you have a different understandig of slave than i do, or at least what the description in the game means.

Ok, so first regarding servant, butlers and so on. If they are able to freely change their contract and basically walk freely, no they are of course not slave. But then there are those who cant do this, and those are in slavery, either direct or indireclty (wage slaves).

It seems that your understandig is, that battle thralls and entertainers in the game are free pops in servitude. But those are not free pops, these are slaves. Like literal actual slaves. Or let me explain it very exxagerted: I have my battle thralls enclosed in a pen, because thats the maximun on living standard i am willing to spend on dumb soldiers. Twice a day i feed them and occassionally they get dropped on a planet to fight for me. Depending on how the war goes, i either bomb the planet into pieces or i come back and pick up whats left of my armies. How do i keep them in check you ask? Fear, Horror and Pain. Undermine their self esteem and their unity and tehy will be to afraid to revolt and will never gooble up and form big masses. Occassionally small groups of slaves become unruly but those are quickly shot down, further strengthening their fear in me. I also like to send them off to war with a speech that ends with "Some of you may die, but its a sacrifice I am willing to make.

Now, i know you want to jime in and say "Oh, thats xenophobic, not authoritarian"... Well i never mentioned a different species.
Yeah... but those are not battle thralls... those are slave armies... battle thralls are your servants/slaves/mercenaries whos life is centered over fighting for you. Such treatment you described is nowhere near battle thralls... but i cant tell you you cant call your slave armies "battle thralls". Yet the core concept of this topic is to understand the difference. This is why i said, that distinction between xenophobe and authoritarian slavery is crucial.
And yes, we can still leave servants as slaves, but still distincion between authoritarian and xenophobe slavery is needed, and as more people cant see this differece the more i suggest removing slavery in the name of servitude.
 
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Yes, i purposely over exagerated. That may have been a mistake.

Yet still, the main problem persitst, where a lot of people seem to agree with me. What is the gameplay advantage? Because its not only me but many other people who cant see any gameplay advantage.
 
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I can agree with purges - they are clearly irrational and since xenophobia is considered an 'irrational fear' of another race or species, the wish to purge them could be interpreted as one of the expressions of the xenophobe ethic. For authoritarion ethic, I see no obvious connection. That said, again this is an option, not a must. I play authoritarian a lot, but never use purges, except when there is no other options (hive minds that can't be integrated)
I'd argue that Fanatic Militarists should have a Purge option. This could fall under the ideal of "The Evolutionary Imperative", a form of extreme Darwinism where the strong either subjugate or exterminate the weak. They'd have no negative modifiers towards other purging empires, even ones that purge their own species, since it just means that their opponent is stronger than them.

Think Protheans from Mass Effect. They conquered species and gave them a choice: Either submit and join the Empire, effectively becoming Prothean (which I assume meant citizenship and not actual genetic reworking into Prothean forms) or be exterminated.
 
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Yes, i purposely over exagerated. That may have been a mistake.

Yet still, the main problem persitst, where a lot of people seem to agree with me. What is the gameplay advantage? Because its not only me but many other people who cant see any gameplay advantage.
But what kind of advantage you are talking about?
If we are talking about lore, and immersion, then it will be one big advantage since it really shows difference between authoritarians and xenophobes. And yeah, there will be disadvantage for people who was using authoritarian slavery while not taking the authoritarian ethic since they will need to spare another ethic point for that, but it is also a lore advantage, because those people was already playing as authoritarians.
Problem is that autho/egalitarian and xenophobe/phile ethics are extremally vauge and simmilar to eachother and people tend to missunderstood those, especially that mechanics for both are very simmilar at least.
Mechanical advantage will be that authoritarians and xenophile will not fight against eachother. Its egalitarians and authoritarians or xenophobes and xenophile who should fight eachother.
Xenophobes do not tend to sick around xenos, they may feel superior to them, but they need to have authoritarian mindset to do something with that just like xenophiles loves aliens and love to stick with them, but should need egalitarian mindset to feel them as equals, without it, they just likes them, maybe love them, but its only some kind of attraction, authoritarian xenophiles should put them in zoos for every member being able to watch or stick with them.
 
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Xenophobes do not tend to sick around xenos, they may feel superior to them, but they need to have authoritarian mindset to do something with that just like xenophiles
Are you talking from your theoretical mindset or how the game is now? I am pretty sure all I need to do to enslave aliens is be xenophobe.

If you're talking from the viewpoint of your proposal, you're flat out wrong. You do not need to be authoritarian to enslave a people. Just look at the early history of the United States. Nominally a republic during the first half of the 19th century but they kept slaves.
 
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2. Indenture slaves and servants are treated as slaves when we know from rl that it is not the case, from description of those jobs, it looks like indenture slaves are not payed, but because they have debt to pay, and once they work their debt, they will become free, and earn money. Servants are just servants, maybe low payed, and living in someone's else home, but still workers. All of them have contracts and are not property of someone's else, they have rights even tho less, and are not a definition of slaves.
I have barely ever disagreed harder with anything posted on this forum, ever.

Indentured servitude in pretty much all cases has been way to similar to slavery to not call it slavery.

Since you want real life examples:
When colonisation/resettlement efforts were made for north america, rich people offered to pay for people to come over to start a life in the new world on the condition they work for them as indentured servants for X years. Once the time is served they were supposed to get a bit of land.
What happened in reality is that these people were worked to death, so you would never have to give them what you promised.
These people were not treated significantly different from slavery. They were treated merely a different flavour of inhumane.

Also, even the bible calls time-limited debt slavery slavery. (i think in exodus. rules that apply to indebted hebrews, which are different from all other slaves in that they have 7 year terms - with some additional coercive contractual addditions)

Indentured servitude is just a fancy contract name for slavery.
Especially because in contexts of indentured servitude the reality is that the enviroment is either coercive or directly without alternative.
The classic hyper-capitalist cyberpunk dystopia always includes indentured servitude and extremely coercive employer-employee dynamics. If your choice is work under terrible conditions for someone or starve then that is not a choice. It is slavery.

Coming back to the bible situation:
A (male) hebrew slave was meant to be enslaved for 7 years, then their debt is cleared and they are free to go.
However, when the enslaver gave the slave a woman and they had children together, the 7 years do not apply. They are still property of the enslaver.
If the slave wanted to be with their family they would have to swear lifelong submission to the enslaver.

So the choice is to be free and leave your family behind or to be a slave your entire life, but don't abandon your family.

Indentured servitude is just like that in the vast majority of instances.
Circumstances are usually so ridiculously coercive that no honest consent can be given.
"Starve or Submit" is not an honest choice in which you can say "well, they signed the contract. this is fair."

Just because you don't assign legal ownership over a person, doesn't mean that the reality of these people is significantly different from slavery.
It's merely a difference of submission by force and submission by coercion.
 
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What happened in reality is that these people were worked to death, so you would never have to give them what you promised.

To add to this, it was/is also a common practise to bill indentured "servants" for housing and food.
And in such a way that their debt only got higher the longer they worked.

Just because you don't assign legal ownership over a person, doesn't mean that the reality of these people is significantly different from slavery.
It's merely a difference of submission by force and submission by coercion.

There is (IMO) one major difference.
You can kill, maim or rape a slave without consequences.
An indentured servant not so much. You can kill him indrectly, like working him to death, but you can't just go and shoot him.
 
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To add to this, it was/is also a common practise to bill indentured "servants" for housing and food.
And in such a way that their debt only got higher the longer they worked.

Company Town tactics, yep.
No shortage of scumbags.
 
What happened in reality is that these people were worked to death, so you would never have to give them what you promised.
This is how ZUS in Poland works xD

But there is a thing about being a someones property.
Servants are not your property, even if you will called them "slaves", unless they are slaves and are working as servants.
And even inside very definition of slavery there is difference between slavery from xenophobia (afro-american slavery), and slavery from authoritarinism (some Riman slaves was someones property, but at the same time they had their own rights and ability to buy out their freedom, or could have their own slaves).
This threaqd is started from this very basic definition that game does not mark out, nor players can see the difference, which is huge.
Xenophobia slavery is based on fear or hatered, while authoritarian slavery is about efficiency.
Also, not every servant is at the same time a slave even tho they live in their "master" house.
Word "servitude" would be then much better to distinguish those two, even if you would leave your servants at lowest possible living conditions. and treat them as slaves"
 
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Yeah... but those are not battle thralls... those are slave armies... battle thralls are your servants/slaves/mercenaries whos live is centered over fighting for you. Such treatment you described is nowhere near battle thralls... but i cant tell you you cant call your slave armies "battle thralls". Yet the core concept of this topic is to understand the difference. This is why i said, that distinction between xenophobe and authoritarian slavery is crucial.
And yes, we can still leave servants as slaves, but still distincion between authoritarian and xenophobe slavery is needed, and as more people cant see this differece the more i suggest removing slavery in the name of servitude.
I think you're right here.

I think a significant number of 'servants' in the game are not actually chattel style slaves but rather extremely coerced workers which is pretty close.

Maybe they can walk away from their contracts but their entire population are basically forced to only work one way with very few protections, rights, or wealth. A bit like the migrant workers of the stellaris universe.
 
while authoritarian slavery is about efficiency.

First, i'd like to say that i am very happy seeing that so many people agree with my statements and i'd like to thank them. This should be above the quote, but i can figure out how to move the quote.

What do you mean efficiency? I am not sure i understand what you mean, but especially in Stellaris i would describe authoritarians is about unequality. I mean the opposite is egalitarian (ingame describtion: "Any society that does not embrace equality between its members - where an individual can rise to any position with enough hard work - is not only deeply unfair, but ultimately counterproductive.") and if we look at what you can pick in the game, its clear that these two ethics are about how you (as the government) sees your citizen. For example egalitarian can not pick the leader enhancement lineage (god, i forgot the name of the thing where you can pick this), as this is something which makes your citizens not equal to each other.
 
What do you mean efficiency? I am not sure i understand what you mean, but especially in Stellaris i would describe authoritarians is about unequality. I mean the opposite is egalitarian (ingame describtion: "Any society that does not embrace equality between its members - where an individual can rise to any position with enough hard work - is not only deeply unfair, but ultimately counterproductive.") and if we look at what you can pick in the game, its clear that these two ethics are about how you (as the government) sees your citizen. For example egalitarian can not pick the leader enhancement lineage (god, i forgot the name of the thing where you can pick this), as this is something which makes your citizens not equal to each other.
Yeah, i agree. But i was not talking about authoritarian ethic, but authoritarian approach to slavery.
Xenophobes put xenos in camps, mines, and slums for sheer fact they are xenos.
Authoritarians put everyone who they believe should be in camps, mines or slums for other reasons - some are strong and can be perfect miners, some are serviles genetically, so should become slaves, some are war captives. If they enslave xenos its not because they are xenos, but becuase there are other reasons, unless they are also xenophobes.
Also
Xenophobes treat their slaves as animals, (in pens at best), and this is for the same reason - they are slaves.
Authoritarians can treat their slaves very differently, some can treat them just like xenophobes, and some can treat them just like servants ant not slaves.
Those are two different approaches.
 
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I think a significant number of 'servants' in the game are not actually chattel style slaves but rather extremely coerced workers which is pretty close.

Slavery definition covers all forms of forced labor, including chattel but also contracts of indenture and coerced participation in an informal economy by restricting participation in the official economy.

Maybe they can walk away from their contracts but their entire population are basically forced to only work one way with very few protections, rights, or wealth. A bit like the migrant workers of the stellaris universe.

If they migrate away, their contract is not enforce by their new home. That's basically "walk away" and why Authoritarians should be leery of migration treaties.

Authoritarians put everyone who they believe should be in camps, mines or slums for other reasons - some are strong and can be perfect miners, some are serviles genetically, so should become slaves, some are war captives. If they enslave xenos its not because they are xenos, but becuase there are other reasons, unless they are also xenophobes.

In previous versions, an Authoritarian could enslave *anyone* for any reason.

Don't like that pop's faction choice? Now it's a slave, say goodbye Egal faction's political power.

Want to enslave all Miners on that one planet? You can. Ignore species, enslave arbitrarily, it's good to be the King.

Since 2.2 all slavery interactions are forced to occur through a UI which is set up for Xenophobes -- you now have to enslave by species.
 
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In previous versions, an Authoritarian could enslave *anyone* for any reason.

Don't like that pop's faction choice? Now it's a slave, say goodbye Egal faction's political power.

Want to enslave all Miners on that one planet? You can. Ignore species, enslave arbitrarily, it's good to be the King.

Since 2.2 all slavery interactions are forced to occur through a UI which is set up for Xenophobes -- you now have to enslave by species.
This is why i* brought this topic up.
to make at least some distiction between those two kinds of slavery, create differentiation between xenophobe and authoritarian, and xenophile and egalitarian.

* - Its not mine original idea, but im highly on it
 
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Yeah, i agree. But i was not talking about authoritarian ethic, but authoritarian approach to slavery.
Xenophobes put xenos in camps, mines, and slums for sheer fact they are xenos.
Authoritarians put everyone who they believe should be in camps, mines or slums for other reasons - some are strong and can be perfect miners, some are serviles genetically, so should become slaves, some are war captives. If they enslave xenos its not because they are xenos, but becuase there are other reasons, unless they are also xenophobes.
Also
Xenophobes treat their slaves as animals, (in pens at best), and this is for the same reason - they are slaves.
Authoritarians can treat their slaves very differently, some can treat them just like xenophobes, and some can treat them just like servants ant not slaves.
Those are two different approaches.

Finally we are talking about the same thing. Still, i think the better approach for this is to not separate slavery, but separate the living standards for xenophobes and authoritarian. I would even agree that xenophobes have some low level living standard exclusively (aka the pens), while autoritarian maybe have a special living standard above what a xenophobe can offer. Maybe something like luxurious living standards. Would also play well with indetures assets/servants roleplay. Give them a nice appartment, but charge them a lot so they cant escape. So authoritarian slaves would get luxurious living standards, decent living standards and basic living standards, while xenophobes would get decent living standards, basic living standards and pen living standard (or just called "The barn"). I hope my idea is clear.

Xenophobes on the other hand send the miner and farmers in the pens, together with the delicious livestock, but the battle thralls are decent living conditions as well as the entertainers.

That would give way more roleplay options as compared to your suggestion which would take options away and limit slave types to certain ethics.
 
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Finally we are talking about the same thing. Still, i think the better approach for this is to not separate slavery, but separate the living standards for xenophobes and authoritarian. I would even agree that xenophobes have some low level living standard exclusively (aka the pens), while autoritarian maybe have a special living standard above what a xenophobe can offer. Maybe something like luxurious living standards. Would also play well with indetures assets/servants roleplay. Give them a nice appartment, but charge them a lot so they cant escape. So authoritarian slaves would get luxurious living standards, decent living standards and basic living standards, while xenophobes would get decent living standards, basic living standards and pen living standard (or just called "The barn"). I hope my idea is clear.

Xenophobes on the other hand send the miner and farmers in the pens, together with the delicious livestock, but the battle thralls are decent living conditions as well as the entertainers.

That would give way more roleplay options as compared to your suggestion which would take options away and limit slave types to certain ethics.
I agree, but there is also a factor of complexiticy. As much as i would love to see drastical changes, and being able to play "good slaver" (what ia mean is to have lot of servants living in very good conditions), im not as optimistic as you in terms of such changes, so i brought up this idea, since its good enough, and simple enough to do it in few hours.
 
I think adding a few living standards based on ethics is not that difficult or complex. In fact i'd wager that I, with no modding knowledge and only rudimentary programming knowledge could make such a mod in a reasonable time frame based on what i have seen how mods works.
 
I think adding a few living standards based on ethics is not that difficult or complex. In fact i'd wager that I, with no modding knowledge and only rudimentary programming knowledge could make such a mod in a reasonable time frame based on what i have seen how mods works.
I'm 99% sure it's impossible for a modder to add any new living standards in.
 
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