[Religion and Revolution]: Slavery, Emancipation and Abolition

Marla_Singer

United in diversity
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Since the original 1994 release, Sid Meier's Colonization has always pictured a rather "romantic" vision of the New World History as pictured by North Americans : rather weak Natives gently accept to get destroyed by the Europeans, Spaniards are dirty Native murderers, Portugal has never put a foot in the Americas and of course Slavery never existed.

TAC, then RAR, are the results of gigantic modders efforts to correct this and better fit with real History. And yes, even triangular trade hasn't been ignored, which I believe was simply unavoidable considering its Historical significance.

However, I still believe that slavery being brought in the game doesn't serve any purpose if it wouldn't serve a side quest which would be the road to its abolition!

Indeed, slavery has been abolished in most territories of the New World when they were still colonies, before their independence. So it should be also achievable this way in the game. Probably the whole concept of slavery would be more "bearable" for the Human player if the only source of salvation for the slaves wasn't to flee from the colonies. As it is now, I see absolutely no point in having slaves, and when it turns out I end up with some, I just let them flee.

As always, I'm not a programmer, so I can't do really more than throw some ideas and see how you feel.

A NEW UNIT: FREEDMAN
What makes slavery so unbearable to me in the game is the fact that slave you are, slave you will stay. There's no way out. Of course it was in a large way true, but not completely. With generations, manumission got more and more widespread and the population of freedmen never stopped rising.

Freedmen could be civil units with a status a bit similar to the one of Indentured servant : they can go to school and learn a profession from the natives. The way I see it, slaves should be able by work to become freedmen exactly the way servants can become free colonists, by using the "learning by doing" mechanism.


A NEW NATIONAL WONDER: ABOLITION
As I see it, Abolition could take the shape of a national wonder being built in colony rather late in the game. It could be materialized by a statue. Once abolition is "built" in a colony, all the slave units of the Empire are immediately changed to freedmen.


NEW FOUNDING FATHERS
History of the New World is filled with African-American Heroes that should be honoured in the game. Here are some ideas:
  • Zumbi dos Palmares: leader of the Brazilian first free maroon state of the Palmares. In-game, He could reduce by half the time needed for a slave to become a freedman.
  • Jean-Baptiste Belley: former slave, Belley ended up as representative of Saint-Domingue at the French revolutionnary convention. He played a decisive role in the abolition of slavery in the island in 1794. When Belley is on your side, abolition can be built twice faster.
  • Toussaint Louverture: leader of the Haitian revolution, the second country emancipated from Europe in the New World. When Toussaint Louverture is on your side, you could get additional military units for the Revolution (maybe a free great general?)
  • Henry Ossian Flipper: after studying at West Point, Flipper was the first freedman to become officer in the US army, in a regiment of the Buffalo Soldiers. When Flipper is on your side, freedmen becoming soldiers get a free promotion.

What do you think of these ideas? First, do you believe it would bring something to the game and second, do you believe it would be hard to code?

Of course if you have better ideas, I'm all open. :)
 
That sounds interesting!

It would give the player the possibility to free all his slaves.

Slaves are very "helpful" at the beginning of the game due to the fact that they are very efficient upon the fields (producing raw materials). However, in the late game the player would have a lof of specialists who and does not need so much slaves anymore - but would need a lot of free colonists inside the city for producing products and weapons.

Freedmen could be a very good solution! Thanks for the idea!!

I could prepare the unit graphic - but I don't know if it would be easy programming this Feature.

Maybe we should discuss of the mechanism of "freeing" the slaves...Hm,...:think::think:
 
Programming the Feature of "Freedmen" itself would be really easy.
(I created "Learning by Doing" to be easily adaptable.)

I actually purposely deactivated LbD for African Slaves and Native Slaves.

The problems I see with that feature currently:

1. African Slaves and Native Slaves are incredibly cheap.
A strategy of buying African Slaves could become too powerful if those slave could become free.
(Native Slaves could also be acquired in masses by having lots of wars with the Natives.)
--> Balancing / Gameplay

2. The feature would be active right from the beginning - which a lot of players would complain about considering historical accuracy.
--> Historical Accuracy / Atmosphere

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If we ever succeed implementing a good system of "Advances and Native Knowledge" and "Civics", those issues would be solved though.

A) If you research a specific Advance "Freedmen"
-> "Learning by Doing"-Feature "Become Free" for African Slaves and Native Slaves is unlocked.

B) You would need to "research" a specific Advance to unlock a Civic "Abolition".
-> If you choose that Civic Buying Slaves in Africa Screen will be locked, but all Slaves become "Freedmen"

-----------

Summary:

For me, the key to creating a well balanced and atmospheric feature here is first creating good base features for
"Advances and Native Knowledge" and "Civics" first.
(Those features could actually be the base for a massive amount of other cool new features.)

Founding Fathers considering the topic "Abolition" would then make sense as well.

RaR has by far not implemented all good features possible.
There are still lots of cool things we could do.

We will just need enough time and motivation.
We have to go step by step though. :)
 
I agree with you Ray.

I was thinking of Founding Fathers to keep it simple but the major flaw is that only a single nation can get each FF, letting other competitors to the initial status.

A civic system would be far more powerful as every European colonies could follow their own path without getting stopped by others. FF would thus only be accelerators or incentives that wouldn't ruin the whole things for those who missed them.

Now this also depends on the difficulty and time needed to implement this. I don't know if you've developped any prototype for a civic system, but such a big thing would be a whole topic in itself. Maybe it would be useful if you would let us know more about your current stage of development of a civic system.

I actually purposely deactivated LbD for African Slaves and Native Slaves.

The problems I see with that feature currently:

[...]
I agree, that's the reason why I actually believe emancipated slaves should have an intermediary status different from free colonists, a status similar to indentured servants. As such, changing slaves to specialists would remain a rather long process that a Human player couldn't fully master (From "slave" to "freedman" through a random LbD process, then from "freedman" to "specialist" during a long schooling).

Another bias to consider would actually be players who wouldn't get any slave, then get the civics to emancipate them, and only then would cynically buy them massively in order to get tons of cheap colonists. An idea to prevent this would be that, as a side effect, those civics should also progressively make slaves more expensive to buy, up untill abolition where it would simply be totally banned.

But let me insist on the fact that I don't want to create a mechanism that would be too hard to implement for you.

As for the uncertainty to be able to develop the thing fully, maybe a solution would be to make of it a specific "Emancipation" modmod during the developping stage that would only later be integrated in the full mod if you judge it satisfying. What do you think?
 
Implementing something like "Abolition" (Freeing all Slaves at once) only makes sense to me,
if we have a good base system of "Advances and Native Knowledge" (similar to Techs) and "Civics" first.
(I haven't even started seriously working on those feature and do not know if I ever will, because they are really huge concepts that require a lot of time, which I currently do not have.)

Using something like Founding Fathers or Buildings for that is total non-sense to my opinion.
(I would never implement something like that.)

When I was talking about Founding Fathers considering that topic I ment something like "giving a few Freed Men" or "giving 10% Strength to Freed Men".
(Not unlocking or activating some feature.)

The absolute most, I can give you now is:

By using "Become Free"-Feature of "Learning by Doing",
Native Slaves can become Converted Natives
and
African Slaves can beome Freed Men

Freed Men would act very similar to Converted Natives.
(e.g. not run away anymore.)

-------

I am not fully convinced but if Schmiddie really wants to have that feature and will also create the graphics (incl. UnitArtDef in XML) for the new Unit Freed Man, I will create it that way.
(I will leave the decision to him.)

@Schmiddie:
Do you want to have that feature ?

-------

Otherwise, everybody is of course free to create a ModMod. :thumbsup:

Edit:

@Schmiddie:

If you are willing to create a Founding Father image (or two), I would also add one (or two) Founding Father(s) with some simple bonus like:
"Gives 5 Freed Men" or "Gives +10% Strength to Freed Men"

However you want. :thumbsup:
 
No, that does not convince me, too. To activate "LbD" for slaves seams to be a hasty reaction for the major intention of Marla's idea of "freeing" slaves. LbD would "free" slaves already early in the game and the player cannot control the point of time (for example a slave could be freed due to work in the cityscreen).

Furthermore slaves could be bought in Africa very cheap, shipped to the New World and then could be educated in native villages... or does LbD not include the education in native villages?

Summary: We do not change anything now.
 
LbD would "free" slaves already early in the game ...

That is my problem with it, too.
People would complain about "historical correctness".

for example a slave could be freed due to work in the cityscreen

That is currently happening as well, when an Indentured Servant or a Petty Criminal becomes a Free Colonist.
(So that wouldn't be any issue.)

I would basically use the same mechanism.
(Controlled by increasing chances and minimal number of rounds to already have worked.)

... or does LbD not include the education in native villages?

No, Learning by Doing is completely unrelated to Education in villages.

Again, all my change would have done is applying the "Become Free"-Feature of LbD:

1. Native Slaves could become Converted Natives by working (by similar chances as a Petty Criminal can become a Free Colonist)
2. Afrcian Slaves could become Freed Men by working (by similar chances as a Petty Criminal can become a Free Colonist)

Otherwise it would not change anything.

Slaves would still run away and could still not be taught in Schools or at Native villages.

Once they have been turned into Converted Natives / Freed Men, they could of course be trained in Native Villages though.

We do not change anything now.

Ok, however you want. :thumbsup:
 
I agree with Schmiddie on the idea that either we integrate a process to abolition and then integrating freedmen would make sense or we keep things minimal as they are.

Considering there's no civic system currently, I still believe that building abolition as a national wonder in a colony (let's say once you've built enough government palaces or something like that), could be a good solution. In many civ game we were able to build "universal suffrage" or stuff like that and it never disturbed me.

An idea for freedmen to come progressively and not from start would be that the LbD process granting freedom to slaves would be dependent on the amount of liberty bells: the more you have liberty bells, the faster LbD would be to grant freedom to slaves (this way it could be nearly impossible at start).

I just want to point out though that, while they were extremely marginal at start, freedmen existed in the Americas already in the early 17th century, they were then less than 1% of the African American population though. They eventurally grew to up to 20% in some colonies by the end of the 18th century, before slavery started getting abolished. All this to say that it's a really long process which indeed accelerated with time.
 
I still believe that building abolition as a national wonder in a colony could be a good solution.

It isn't.
Using a building for that is absolutely horrible design.

1. We would waste a slot in CityScreen.
2. We would implement building logic (that is checked quite often) just for one single building.
3. I consider it absolutely unatmospheric to build something like an abstract concept with hammers in a city.
...

Seriously, we will not do something like that.

In RaR we will not implement crapy workarounds.
We either (at least try to) do something right, or we don't do it at all.

------

Please have some patience. :thumbsup:
We need to see what the future will bring and simply continue to go step by step.
 
I think it does not mean that we will implement things/features 1:1 which we are discussing here in this thread...

That is absolutely obvious. :)

The "step by step" was meant to say:

We currently lack good base features for abstract concepts like "Abolition" or anything else considering "Social Advances over time".
(Or simply doing stuff like unlocking features, units, ... .)

The appropriate base features are:

1) Advances and Native Knowledge (similar to Techs in Civ4BtS)
combined with
2) Improved Civic System (similar to the one in Civ4BtS)

Once we have implemented those, we can brainstorm and seriously talk about "Emancipation / Abolition".
(And a lot of other crazy stuff.)

Any feature for "Emancipation / Abolition" we could currently implement without those appropriate base features, would just be a crapy workaround,
which would feel unatmospheric and artificial and would most likely be thrown away, once the appropriate base features would exist.
(I am simply to busy to spend my time on implementing bad features that are likely to be thrown away.)

Today, I do not know, when - or even if at all - these appropriate base features might be created.
(Those base features are huge and my todo-list for the next Releases is already full of other important topics.)

However, my philosophie for creating new features is and will stay:
Create the best solution you can or don't do anything at all.

Right now, I cannot give you any good solution for the feature "Emancipation / Abolition".
But I might be able to do so in a few months. :)

That is why I asking for some patience. :thumbsup:
 
Would it be possible to use the Education buildings ( school, college, university) as a dual profession building, with one mode being the standard education mode, and the second mode being educating Native and African slaves towards their freedom, for a price at the end.

As an education system is usually built later in the game, it would mimic quite nicely the historical evolution.
 
Alternatively, could you slowly accumulate liberty bells and then initiate the Abolition from a Civic screen? It'll be placeholder until more refined Civic system appears.
 
Alternatively, could you slowly accumulate liberty bells and then initiate the Abolition from a Civic screen? It'll be placeholder until more refined Civic system appears.
I agree. Whatever are Ray's ideas on his future plans, I think it's a great idea to link emancipation with liberty bells.

That would make sense considering:
  • History: slave rights have been constant political battles, thus the more active are the politicians in a colony, the more they should be able to obtain rights.
  • Gameplay: considering liberty bells rise constantly in an overall game, it's a great way to implement the essential progressivity Schmiddie was talking about.
  • Semantics: "emancipation" and "liberty" are linked concepts. If the purpose of Colonization is to build a nation untill it's able to gain its own freedom, then it makes sense to involve slaves in the process.
 
You would also need to change the nation choices for when you declare indepenence. I always hated the Free the slaves option because I just made 2 colonists magically appear in every city. Somewhat immersion breaking.
 
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