What do Pops Represent?: Gameplay Mechanics and Historical Simulation Discussion

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Avian Overlord

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Are you people really talking about marx?
Are you implying The Divine Karl might have been wrong about something? That sounds suspiciously like heresy.

On topic, I think the real problem is the term "citizen" being used for a social strata when that's not really what the mechanic represents. Freemen and higher of accepted cultures are citizens, not just patricians. It's pretty clear that Citizen/Freeman is an attempt to universalize the plebeian/patrician divide with terms that aren't super-Roman. Personally I think "Freeman/Patrician" would work, the latter being a fairly universal term in its own right.
 

Trin Tragula

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On the tribesmen/freemen split, I think it might more useful to, rather than attempt to find some abstract theoretical category that we can match either to, or engaging with the game's flavour text, examine the mechanical differences between the two and determine what the semantics of the system are communicating with this distinction.

Tribesmen are:
  • Associated with tribes. By default, a tribal state is an undifferentiated mass of tribesmen; only if they have cities will their pops gravitate to other types. By default, a non-tribal state will have no tribesmen whatsoever; only while they are integrating tribal territory will they contain tribesmen.
  • Less valuable to the state than other pop types. They produce less.
  • Are slightly less participatory in the political process than freemen. Their political weight is 75%.
  • Are naturally happy. They are the only pop type with a positive base happiness.
  • Dislike "civilisation". Their happiness is negatively impacted as a territory's "civilisation value" increases. Whatever that means.
Freemen are:
  • Associated with cities and non-tribal states.
  • Represent some sort of intermediate position in a social hierarchy, between slaves and citizens. The game's primary coding for civic rights is which stratum a pop of a particular culture may advance to- envisaged as a linear progression from slave, to freeman, to citizen, to noble.
  • More valuable to the state than tribesmen. They produce more.
  • Are fully participatory in the political process. They have a political weight of 100%.
  • Are naturally unhappy, though not to the degree that citizens or nobles are.
  • Like "civilisation". Their happiness is positively affected by civilisation.
So, interpretation: what does this mean? Well, it's bound up in how we interpret two other closely-related systems: government type and civilisation.

With government type there's a three-way partition into "tribes", "monarchies" and "republics", but the major divide is between tribes and non-tribes. These are not exactly unfraught terms: there's a lot of historical baggage here and it's not clear that Paradox are handling the concepts with due care. Nevertheless, between things like tribal centralisation as a sort of tribe/non-tribe gradient and the existence of clan chiefs as alternate poles of power, I think we can be fairly safe in asserting that this is a distinction between strong and weak states. Not necessarily strong and weak executives- the republic/monarchic divide seems to be one of differing levels of autocracy, but both are presented as equally distinct from tribes- but how cohesive the state is as an actor.

Civilisation is stranger. There's a soft relationship between it and government type, but not as strong as the one with centralisation. The flavour text (breaking my own rules here for a second) claims it represents the level of "level of infrastructure and urbanization", but this is rather dubious. Two major pieces of infrastructure- roads, buildings- are broken out as separate systems, and urbanisation seems extremely strongly represented by the presence or absence of cities and metropoleis in a territory (civilisation predates that system, so this is somewhat a product of vestigiality, but the system's still hanging around so it's fair game imo). We're forced to assume that this is representing some unclear mix of whatever material conditions aren't already covered and the presence of social norms that are associated with strong states and strongly preferred by non-tribal pops, especially elites.

So, with that in mind:

The associations with the different forms of government is interesting. The fact that tribal states are, ceteris paribus, 100% tribesmen, is especially interesting. Imperator tells us that the founding of cities and the strengthening of states means, necessarily, the introduction of a social hierarchy. We move from an egalitarian society to a stratified one; tribesmen are replaced by slaves, freemen, citizens, nobles. That's almost profound! I'm not certain it would be unreservedly supported by the scholarship, but I don't think it would be entirely rejected, either- I see a lot of, just to name one name, James C. Scott in this analysis.

The lower outputs and the lower political weight seem to go hand in hand, to me. As @Samitte notes above, there's a sense that these are groups that are somewhat less bound to the state. There's a potential reading here where the lower outputs are a sort of mindless encoding of antiquated notions of "primitive" peoples and "barbarians"- that their returns to the treasury are less because they're just producing less. But slaves are also the largest producer of tax, while citizens and nobles produce non at all. If we are to read citizens as skilled labour, that seems to make little sense. In this context, in seems more reasonable to interpret a pop type's outputs as having less to do with their actual productive capacity and more with the state's ability to extract their product from them- how alienated they are from their labour value. Slaves are totally so, and so you reap the most tax from them. Political weight is straightforwardly a indication of tied into the state's workings a group is- though this time in the other direction. It's a measure of how able the state is to ignore the desires of those groups.

Also emerging here is a statement that states are motivated to create hierarchies because it produces social segments that the state is better able to extract resources from. Again this is a really interesting statement about the way states and societies work, and I think it makes Imperator interesting to think about as a text on this level.

The happiness transition is strongly tied to "civilisation", which, again, is poorly defined, so any interpretation we make is necessarily going to be weakly founded. What we can say for sure is that tribesmen are pretty happy just chilling, being themselves, while the non-tribal pop types seem to be kind of like hot house flowers- happy in the comfort of their natural environment, but highly sensitive to local conditions. That this is more extreme the more privileged a pop is is suggestive, but not conclusive. This could be purely a facile "pampered nobles can't hack in the wilds, but tribesmen are hard men" narrative. Again, though, there doesn't seem to be much else to support the idea that "civilisation" has much to do with material conditions. An alternative is that the social norms that civilisation encodes are hierarchical norms- the actual rather than theoretical strength of hierarchy prevailing in the region. That's attractive, given that it would seem to agree with the happiness gradient- the further up the tower of privilege you are, the more you benefit from hierarchy, and so the happier you are, and slaves don't benefit at all. But there are problems- would elites really be basally unhappy- tremendously so!- in weak hierarchies, if they have no memory of a strong hierarchy to compare it to? Contrariwise, are freemen far enough up the chain for their happiness to increase with increasing hierarchy? Something that may alleviate the latter is the thought that civilisation may encode not just the strength of hierarchy, but how naturalised hierarchy is in social narratives.

Ultimately, I think we have a moderately confident case that the tribesman/non-tribesman split encodes an division between egalitarian and hierarchical societies, and the tribesman/freeman split encodes a division between reconciled and unreconciled mid-stratum groups in hierarchies. This is weakly contraindicated in places- tribesmen actually produce more tax than freemen, though the difference is slight- but I think it's a workable as a reading.

So, that established, are these ideas worth encoding in system, and if they are, is the pop system an appropriate place for them?

To the former, I have to say yes. Like I said, I think this is one of the most interesting parts of Imperator as a text, and I think it's extremely valuable, both to that and to the gameplay, that it attempts to model this transition from weak to strong states as something other than some sort of transformation in abstract "government types" (alienated, somehow, from the actual legal and socioeconomic structures of the society??). I greatly like that it reaches all the way down to the fundament. I wish it was even more involved, even. Get rid of the pop type attraction on government types, push that all onto city status and civilisation, make civilisation dependent civilisation. Make founding cities the fundamental action of transforming society and strengthening the state. Have that feedback into government type. Maybe clan chiefs aren't just abstractly fundamental to "tribal" government types, maybe you've got a clan chief for every majority-tribal province. Dissolve the tribal/non-tribal government binary entirely. Put that on a gradient.

To the latter, I say kinda-sorta. This idea of the tribesman as the everyman pop, living in undifferentiated egalitarianism, functions as a relation between state and populace, but it's not, quite, an economic mode, which is a problem for various reasons that others have outlined above. The tribesman-freeman distinction is particularly problematic because, as noted above, in a lot of places the way of life is going to look very simple- free farmers, and the egalitarian-hierarchical split is already sufficiently encoded by the lack of elites into tribal societies: it does not require a new middle stratum. However, there are groups that are economically distinct from these farmers and which I think can be strongly matched to the "inner barbarians" concept that @Samitte raised previously; the unintegrated, politically inaccessible groups that cling on in peripheral areas even in strong states. These are non-farmers- pastoralists and hunter-gathers, mostly- groups that have historically proven difficult for states to grapple with, as their ways of life- less bound to immobile capital stock- make them more fluid and less vulnerable than city dwellers and sedentary farmers.

For what it is worth this is actually pretty close to how I see the pops.
Tribesmen are indeed the people who live in a less stratified society, where a tribesman pop is expected to be able to contain people that can perform just about every bit of job there is in a community. As the game sees it when you transition to to the more institution and legislation based countries the tribesmen are either unhappy or they take their place in the new stratified social order. And the transition from being a tribe involves founding cities where this process will start to happen regardless of how things are in the rest of your country. Likewise conquered cities will likely retain their pre-existing largely stratified socities as a microcosm inside your tribe.
Likewise tribesmen don't necessarily go away immediately when a country that isn't considered tribal expands into a region that is. They stay around, and as your mode of society spreads to the region they will either promote to the other pop types, until they do they will be increasingly unhappy about the rising "civilization level" as it rises to catch up with the rest of your realm.

These are all generalizations of course. And as an interpretation of human society in general I wouldn't want to champion this as an all encompassing model, but this is the way it works in the game and how we felt it best to portray the meaningful distinctions between tribal and non-tribal societies based in the historical interpretations that exist of societies of the era :)
It is a generalized model, because something like a game has to be, but one that allows for all kinds of interesting transitional states around the world (or indeed even inside the same empire), and in that it is at least much like real history.

Lastly the above is the rationale for the current way things are. As the game develops we've not been averse to expanding or changing around the pop system, but I wouldn't expect anything like that for 2.0 :)
 
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Calardaras

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For what it is worth this is actually pretty close to how I see the pops.
Tribesmen are indeed the people who live in a less stratified society, where a tribesman pop is expected to be able to contain people that can perform just about every bit of job there is in a community. As the game sees it when you transition to to the more institution and legislation based countries the tribesmen are either unhappy or they take their place in the new stratified social order. And the transition from being a tribe involves founding cities where this process will start to happen regardless of how things are in the rest of your country. Likewise conquered cities will likely retain their pre-existing largely stratified socities as a microcosm inside your tribe.
Likewise tribesmen don't necessarily go away immediately when a country that isn't considered tribal expands into a region that is. They stay around, and as your mode of society spreads to the region they will either promote to the other pop types, until they do they will be increasingly unhappy about the rising "civilization level" as it rises to catch up with the rest of your realm.

These are all generalizations of course. And as an interpretation of human society in general I wouldn't want to champion this as an all encompassing model, but this is the way it works in the game and how we felt it best to portray the meaningful distinctions between tribal and non-tribal societies based in the historical interpretations that exist of societies of the era :)
It is a generalized model, because something like a game has to be, but one that allows for all kinds of interesting transitional states around the world (or indeed even inside the same empire), and in that it is at least much like real history.

Lastly the above is the rationale for the current way things are. As the game develops we've not been averse to expanding or changing around the pop system, but I wouldn't expect anything like that for 2.0 :)

But why does "civilization level" is a city‘s factor? It feels inversive in tribes reforme, civlization raise without foundation, and tribesmen in it be come more and more unhappy. hope civilization finally attach to pop and effect promotion.
Anyway, these are small things, 2.0 already looks delicious enough. Hope that will be launched soon.
 
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IsaacCAT

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But why does "civilization level" is a city‘s factor? It feels inversive in tribes reforme, civlization raise without foundation, and tribesmen in it be come more and more unhappy. hope civilization finally attach to pop and effect promotion.

Completly agree with that, my next suggestion on the Senatus Populusque ties social mobility with civilization level, income and culture.

I also propose civ level to decrease when war ravages land, this way, tribesmen are not only a tribes (government) thing, but can appear in low civilized areas if they are continuously looted. Civilization represents health, housing, education, etc.. in their absence, people go back to nature.
 
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Rabid

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But why does "civilization level" is a city‘s factor? It feels inversive in tribes reforme, civlization raise without foundation, and tribesmen in it be come more and more unhappy. hope civilization finally attach to pop and effect promotion.
Anyway, these are small things, 2.0 already looks delicious enough. Hope that will be launched soon.
I definitely agree that civ value should be something with a more significant impact. Especially since it's now much easier to stack positive happiness bonuses through trade. It feels like a half-implemented mechanic at the moment.
 
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IsaacCAT

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Completly agree with that, my next suggestion on the Senatus Populusque ties social mobility with civilization level, income and culture.

I also propose civ level to decrease when war ravages land, this way, tribesmen are not only a tribes (government) thing, but can appear in low civilized areas if they are continuously looted. Civilization represents health, housing, education, etc.. in their absence, people go back to nature.

If someone doubts about societal collapse:

"Possible causes of a societal collapse include natural catastrophe, war, pestilence, famine, and depopulation. A collapsed society may revert to a more primitive state, be absorbed into a stronger society, or completely disappear."

 
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Samitte

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If someone doubts about societal collapse:

"Possible causes of a societal collapse include natural catastrophe, war, pestilence, famine, and depopulation. A collapsed society may revert to a more primitive state, be absorbed into a stronger society, or completely disappear."

Imperator starts with one good example, which I posted about here. In this case the main culprit was the shifting of a major trade route and the economic impact. Though they didn't really go back to nature, just decentralized and became more egalitarian. Civ level could be changed to Centralization lvl with minor tweaks and work fine and stop being so wierd and awkward. At that point much more can be tied into it (urbanisation, centralised (republics, some monarchies) vs decentralised (tribes, some monarchies like Armenia, Paphlagonia, Cappadocia were super decentralized). Centralization was not just something tribes were concerned with after all.

To go back to societal collapse: Some areas and societies are more vulnerable to such things, especially those reliant on advanced systems of agriculture (something the game cannot model yet) such as Chorasmia, Bactria, Sogdia, and Mesopotamia. In fact, not too long before the game parts of the intensive Assyrian agricultural system collapsed in the lands south of the Tur Abdin (300-400 year earlier ago the Khabur and its tributaries would have been surrounded by a lot of Farmland provinces).

Hopefully these kinds of systems (high risk, high reward irrigation systems) can be implemented in the future, since it would make a nice bit of proper empire building that the game could really use.
 
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IsaacCAT

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Civ level could be changed to Centralization lvl with minor tweaks and work fine and stop being so wierd and awkward. At that point much more can be tied into it (urbanisation, centralised (republics, some monarchies) vs decentralised (tribes, some monarchies like Armenia, Paphlagonia, Cappadocia were super decentralized). Centralization was not just something tribes were concerned with after all.

I think both concepts are worth measuring. Centralization is a political measure, while Civilization is a social measure.

Civilization should be tied with Health, Education, Housing, Police, etc... that may be provided fully or partially by the State.

Centralization is how the State shares power between different share holders or parties. The German, US federal government or tribe governments centralization is low, while typically countries like France or Spain the state centralization is high. But we won't say that the level of civilization in Spain is higher than US or Germany.


In I:R I agree that for a Tribal Government to reform to a Monarchy or Republic, you have to achieve a high centralization. But it is required for political reform. After reforming, you can have both centralized or decentralized republics, even Monarchies (feudal anyone?)
 
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Bovrick

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Civilization should be tied with Health, Education, Housing, Police, etc... that is provided by the State.
Might be looking at the wrong era for some of these. Likewise the modern idea of centralisation would have pretty much everything larger than a city state (and even then) be considered rampantly decentralised.
 
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IsaacCAT

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Might be looking at the wrong era for some of these. Likewise the modern idea of centralisation would have pretty much everything larger than a city state (and even then) be considered rampantly decentralised.

I have edited my post to change provided by state, to partially provided by the state.

What can be said in that period is that the level of civilization changed a lot. For example on health and education in Rome:

Educational practices were modified after the conquest of the Hellenistic kingdoms in the 3rd century BC and the resulting Greek influence, although Roman educational practices were still much different from Greek ones.[170][172] If their parents could afford it, boys and some girls at the age of 7 were sent to a private school outside the home called a ludus, where a teacher (called a litterator or a magister ludi, and often of Greek origin) taught them basic reading, writing, arithmetic, and sometimes Greek, until the age of 11.[170][171][173]

Roman medicine was highly influenced by the Greek medical tradition. The incorporation of Greek medicine into Roman society allowed Rome to transform into a monumental[clarification needed] city by 100 BCE.[7]

 
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Napoleon1971

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Here's my take from an examination of the Roman classes during the time:

Noble --> Senatorial class (perhaps still using the Patrician term, sometimes not)
Citizen --> Equestrian class (sometimes Patricians, often plebians)
Freemen --> non-slaves who did not have enough money to be a higher class, urban or rural (almost always plebians or outside the Roman Patrician-Plebian system)
Tribesmen --> This seems to make a distinction between "barbarian" freemen and "civilized" ones.
Slaves --> war captives, criminals, debtors who ended up being enslaved.....unlike the more-recent Atlantic slave trade, this was not usually a forever slavery, though it still could be such.

Maybe Paradox views it the same as me, maybe not.

One thing I think would be nice would be for the number of characters a country has at its disposal to be partially related to the number of Noble and Citizen pops a country has. The "citizen" ones should have a glass ceiling on prominence too that is hard (though not impossible) to break. However, rather than that breaking the barrier opening things up for all the citizen-characters, it should just move that character over to the noble category. Agrippa would be a perfect example of this. Its not until you get into Augustus' Principate system that the equites became more even with the Senatorial class in ability to become prominent socially.
 
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IsaacCAT

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Imperator starts with one good example, which I posted about here. In this case the main culprit was the shifting of a major trade route and the economic impact. Though they didn't really go back to nature, just decentralized and became more egalitarian. Civ level could be changed to Centralization lvl with minor tweaks and work fine and stop being so wierd and awkward. At that point much more can be tied into it (urbanisation, centralised (republics, some monarchies) vs decentralised (tribes, some monarchies like Armenia, Paphlagonia, Cappadocia were super decentralized). Centralization was not just something tribes were concerned with after all.

To go back to societal collapse: Some areas and societies are more vulnerable to such things, especially those reliant on advanced systems of agriculture (something the game cannot model yet) such as Chorasmia, Bactria, Sogdia, and Mesopotamia. In fact, not too long before the game parts of the intensive Assyrian agricultural system collapsed in the lands south of the Tur Abdin (300-400 year earlier ago the Khabur and its tributaries would have been surrounded by a lot of Farmland provinces).

Hopefully these kinds of systems (high risk, high reward irrigation systems) can be implemented in the future, since it would make a nice bit of proper empire building that the game could really use.

back to topic, do you think is it impossible to have tribesmen outside a tribe?

I don't think so. Not all tribesmen should disappear in remote areas something like @Jiben suggested for assimilation in this thread.

And in cities or settlements in advanced societies (or types of government) the development/civilization could go regressive in some areas due to war/famine etc...

Civilization or development is not something we should take for granted. The elephant in the room is the Roman Empire, that crashed into the dark middle ages.
 
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back to topic, do you think is it impossible to have tribesmen outside a tribe?

I don't think so. Not all tribesmen should disappear in remote areas something like @Jiben suggested for assimilation in this thread.

And in cities or settlements in advanced societies (or types of government) the development/civilization could go regressive in some areas due to war/famine etc...

Civilization or development is not something we should take for granted. The elephant in the room is the Roman Empire, that crashed into the dark middle ages.

This article is very interesting as it shows the composition (or better said decomposition) of the Roman Empire after I:R finish date. I cite this fragment to confirm the permanence of tribesmen inside the "civilized" nations of I:R. This influx of tribesmen and their management should be a game-play dynamic. This force for chaos, against the drive for development is the energy for civ building.

The great and small estates were worked by slaves, freedmen, and coloni (“farmers”), who had once been independent but had voluntarily or involuntarily subordinated themselves to the great landowners as their only protection against imperial tax collectors or military conscription. The landowners dispensed local justice and assembled private armies, which were powerful enough to negotiate on their subordinates’ behalf with imperial officials. Mediterranean trade diminished, and the production of more and more goods was undertaken locally, as was the organization of social, devotional, and political life.

Non-Roman peoples from beyond the frontiers—barbari (“barbarians”) or externae gentes (“foreign peoples”), as the Romans called them—had long been allowed to enter the empire individually or in families as provincial farmers and soldiers. But after 375 a number of composite Germanic peoples, many of them only recently assembled and ruled by their own new political and military elites, entered the empire as intact groups, originally by treaty with Rome and later independently. They established themselves as rulers of a number of western provinces, particularly parts of Italy, Iberia, Gaul, and Britain, often in the name of the Roman emperor and with the cooperation of many Roman provincials.

Roman ethnography classified external peoples as distinct and ethnically homogeneous groups with unchanging identities; they were part of the order of nature. Adopting this view, philologists, anthropologists, and historians in the 19th century maintained that the Germanic “tribes” that first appeared in the 3rd century were the ethnic ancestors of the “tribes” of the 5th century and that the ethnic composition of these groups remained unchanged in the interval. Late 20th-century research in ethnogenesis thoroughly demonstrated the unreliability of Roman ethnography, although modern concepts of ethnicity continue to exploit it for political purposes.


 
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IsaacCAT

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And Now for Something Completely Different:

Slaves are unique labor force in the game, they are the only ones required to produce goods. IMHO their monopoly in production feels wrong and they are too many.

At the start of the game, Rome has 23% of slaves, something that is historically accurate but in a normal game they increase rapidly to become 40-50% of the population. In Maurya is completly bollocks, they start at 30% of the population and I am not sure if this is accurate historically.

But my main complain is that it feels wrong that slaves is the only class able to produce goods in the game. I am preparing a suggestion to change this.

On the slaves reproduction, I already suggested that they should decrease instead of increase in here:

 
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IsaacCAT

Field Marshal
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Oct 24, 2018
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  • Imperator: Rome
  • Imperator: Rome Deluxe Edition
  • Imperator: Rome - Magna Graecia
And Now for Something Completely Different:

Slaves are unique labor force in the game, they are the only ones required to produce goods. IMHO their monopoly in production feels wrong and they are too many.

At the start of the game, Rome has 23% of slaves, something that is historically accurate but in a normal game they increase rapidly to become 40-50% of the population. In Maurya is completly bollocks, they start at 30% of the population and I am not sure if this is accurate historically.

But my main complain is that it feels wrong that slaves is the only class able to produce goods in the game. I am preparing a suggestion to change this.

On the slaves reproduction, I already suggested that they should decrease instead of increase in here:


I think this must be related to productivity. Nations get richer as their productivity increases. Freemen shall produce goods more efficiently than slaves.

Inputs and outputs differences between freeman and slaves:
  • Slaves produce goods
  • The player gets more tax income from slaves than from freemen. WRONG! There are many articles that show that slavery is by no means superior to paid labor (not even close!) for GDP.
  • Freemen eat more food than slaves.
  • Freemen produce manpower (something that is going to hopefully disappear in 2.0).
  • Freemen have more political power or their production is more affected by happiness.
I would offer this trade off between freemen and slaves to the player:
  1. Freemen eats more food and its happiness (stability, culture, etc..) affects production but you get more tax income and more produced goods than slaves
  2. Slaves eats less food, they are not affected by happiness but you get less tax income from them and produce less good
If player can manage food and happiness, what stops the player transforming all slaves to freemen?
  • Nobles and citizens, they require slaves POPs to be happy, you cannot run out of them if you do not want to piss them off.
 
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Valentinius

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Oct 21, 2019
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Just remove fremeen political power (or at least greatly reduce it) and make their contribution to levy rely on a law not yet passed by eg Rome and I'd be happy tbh. Then citizens are what theyre supposed to be and fremeen are what theyre supposed to be. Then alter their economic contribution for balance.

Or make levies moddable, political power is and I hope levies will be too.
 
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