Slave Composition help

[MohawkWolfo98]

One of the many fund things I try to do in this games is creating a strong core of freeman and citizens, rather than rely consistently on slaves to do all the heavy work. It makes me feel all gooey I’m building an empire that will last.

With that in mind tho, what is the historical % of slaves in the Roman Republic/Empire, and does anyone have any strategies for minimising the amount of slaves in ur empires? I have tried building forums etc but I seem stuck on a Empire-wide 40% of slaves by the mid/late end game. Any help reducing that further will be appreciated, or just posting what the lowest u can go

 

[IsaacCAT]

Good point, I always felt that slaves are too many at the end game, but I do not have the historical numbers.

On how to improve your desired ratio, the wiki has a page where it describes laws and governments that favour other POP classes than slaves. Building many cities also helps:

Population - Imperator Wiki

imperator.paradoxwikis.com

 

[Kadanz]

I only build slave cities on horse & elephant provinces. Export surpluses to my capital for the output boni. For any other city I go for citizen and noble ratios. I don't bother with freemen cities, manpower is never really an issue anymore after the first 10 years (15-20 if you start with a real small nation).

 

[Autonomous]

Cities have relatively low slave ratios just with their base stats, and, except in very specific edge cases, they're not where most pops live. Building forums in them isn't going to do much to reduce the slave fraction.

Settlements by contrast are something like 2/3rds slave by default, so you'll see a much bigger impact from building barracks in them.

For comparison:

Late game empire, heavily urbanised, barracks in settlements:

(~30% slaves, ~30% freemen)

Late game empire, less heavily urbanised, slave estates in settlements:

(~50% slaves, ~20% freemen)

Identical city builds in both cases: all-in nobles/citizens.

e: Colours are

Red - Nobles
Blue - Citizens
Yellow - Freemen
Green - Tribesmen
Umber - Slaves

If you can't remember off the top of your head. Extra nobles in the first example is probably a consequence of the higher urbanisation for that empire. Or just that the capital was that much larger (4k pops in the first example, 1k pops in the second)

 

[MohawkWolfo98]

Cities have relatively low slave ratios just with their base stats, and, except in very specific edge cases, they're not where most pops live. Building forums in them isn't going to do much to reduce the slave fraction.

Settlements by contrast are something like 2/3rds slave by default, so you'll see a much bigger impact from building barracks in them.

For comparison:

Late game empire, heavily urbanised, barracks in settlements:

(~30% slaves, ~30% freemen)

Late game empire, less heavily urbanised, slave estates in settlements:

(~50% slaves, ~20% freemen)

Identical city builds in both cases: all-in nobles/citizens.

e: Colours are

Red - Nobles
Blue - Citizens
Yellow - Freemen
Green - Tribesmen
Umber - Slaves

If you can't remember off the top of your head. Extra nobles in the first example is probably a consequence of the higher urbanisation for that empire. Or just that the capital was that much larger (4k pops in the first example, 1k pops in the second)

I’m really impressed by both ur heavily urbanised composition! Do u have screenshots or even save games for both?

 

[MohawkWolfo98]

I only build slave cities on horse & elephant provinces. Export surpluses to my capital for the output boni. For any other city I go for citizen and noble ratios. I don't bother with freemen cities, manpower is never really an issue anymore after the first 10 years (15-20 if you start with a real small nation).

I only build forums because unintegrated cultures are stuck on freemen so I build many forums so slaves can promote. Do u integrate all the cultures, or do other measures to reduce slave composition?

 

[IsaacCAT]

what is the historical % of slaves in the Roman Republic/Empire,

If you accept the source data, it seems the game nails it with Rome(*) having between 35-40% of slaves:

Slavery in ancient Rome - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

That does not imply that players like us cannot dream about alt history with more egalitarian societies.

(*) only applies to Rome, other societies may not had such majority of slaves.

 

[Kadanz]

I only build forums because unintegrated cultures are stuck on freemen so I build many forums so slaves can promote. Do u integrate all the cultures, or do other measures to reduce slave composition?

I usually prep for late game. Assimilation snowballs quite fast and you don't want your main culture to be stuck on freemen. I rarely build forums or any at all since freemen ratios are quite high as is.

 

[MohawkWolfo98]

I usually prep for late game. Assimilation snowballs quite fast and you don't want your main culture to be stuck on freemen. I rarely build forums or any at all since freemen ratios are quite high as is.

Thanks for your help. Do u build more academies or court of law buildings then?

 

[Kadanz]

Thanks for your help. Do u build more academies or court of law buildings then?

If you don't mind the extra micro management you can keep going the forum route and switch over as you assimilate. If not, build courts of law and academies from the start. This has the added benefit of giving you heavy levies (HC and HI), that's the main reason why I build my cities this way. Legions on demand without having to pay the constant upkeep.

 

[MohawkWolfo98]

If you don't mind the extra micro management you can keep going the forum route and switch over as you assimilate. If not, build courts of law and academies from the start. This has the added benefit of giving you heavy levies (HC and HI), that's the main reason why I build my cities this way. Legions on demand without having to pay the constant upkeep.

That’s amazing, i didnt know pops also skewed the levy composition as well. Do u know where to find such info regarding freemen etc so I can look it up?

thanks for all ur help btw, really appreciated

 

[Kadanz]

That’s amazing, i didnt know pops also skewed the levy composition as well. Do u know where to find such info regarding freemen etc so I can look it up?

thanks for all ur help btw, really appreciated

I was wrong about pop types influencing levy composition. I don't know where I got that from. Only culture has an impact on your levy composition. You learn something new every day

You can find the levy templates in the "...\common\levy_templates"

 

[IsaacCAT]

@MohawkWolfo98 your own post in the forums already raised some questions about levy composition long time a go.

It seems culture is not the only factor, and advanced units are linked to pop types. This info I think has not been confirmed by devs. I will try to look further.

 

[MohawkWolfo98]

@MohawkWolfo98 your own post in the forums already raised some questions about levy composition long time a go.

It seems culture is not the only factor, and advanced units are linked to pop types. This info I think has not been confirmed by devs. I will try to look further.

Oh. How did I forget my own post lmao XD Thanks for ur help

 

[Kadanz]

@MohawkWolfo98 your own post in the forums already raised some questions about levy composition long time a go.

It seems culture is not the only factor, and advanced units are linked to pop types. This info I think has not been confirmed by devs. I will try to look further.

Unless I glanced over it somehow, the wiki doesn't mention pops influencing advanced units. Innovations do however give you an engineer unit if the levy size is big enough. I did operate under the assumption that pop types did influence it somehow but I can't remember where I got that from. The files don't indicate that's the case.

 

[IsaacCAT]

Unless I glanced over it somehow, the wiki doesn't mention pops influencing advanced units. Innovations do however give you an engineer unit if the levy size is big enough. I did operate under the assumption that pop types did influence it somehow but I can't remember where I got that from. The files don't indicate that's the case.

It is in the game, if you hover over the percentages of each unit you can see how they are composed (hat tip to Vespasian of HMO Mod):