Slave Trade

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Originally Posted by alh_p

This thread is why CA didn't put slavery in ETW...

Given that this sort of thing is used as an argument for it's inclusion, is it any wonder it isn't in??

"The only people who actually get offended by slavery, despite the fact it was abolished over 150 years ago, are poor American blacks who are looking for a free handout of cash by trying to make white people feel guilty about something they have not done, and trying to pretend that black people are the only people to ever be enslaved ever in the history of the entire world, a lot like Jews try to make the world believe they are the only people on earth to ever be treated badly in any way shape or form, and once again they are another group of people looking for nothing more than a free handout.

The lengths people will go to for free handouts of government money never ceases to amaze me."

reprehensible ignorance.

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While I agree that the argument you quote is horribly bad, that doesn't actually make slavery such a controversial thing to add to a game. Like I noted before Civilization IV has slavery in it(quite prominently actually, you can literally sacrifice your population to get stuff built quicker) but it received no negative publicity for this feature that I'm aware of.

I guess my point is that the only way to learn from history is to know of history. Deliberately ignoring uncomfortable truths is the way of repeating it(remember, this is a bad thing) and while I realize this is a computer game and not a history book, everything else in the game has strived to be as accurate as possible, why not this?

Actually I believe the Abolition of Slavery tech has the effect of increasing lower class happiness by 4 (I believe it is the only tech to actually reduce clamour for reform) and of increasing the cost to build plantations by 25%, as well as the (huge) prestige bonus. Not sure where the ideas about it only enhancing prestige came from, it's actually a pretty useful late game tech since by that stage the plantations are generally fully upgraded anyway but political unrest is becoming a real pain.

I'm not quite sure why this is such a controversial topic. I struggle to see how exactly adding in a highly detailed and explicit depiction of the Transatlantic slave trade instead of the rather more abstract and implicit representation in building plantations and the AoS tech would enrich the game in any way. Is this really the aspect of the 18th century people are most interested in recreating in great detail?

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Originally Posted by Alsn

everything else in the game has strived to be as accurate as possible, why not this?

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We all know this is not true, CA have consistently stated that their design philosophy emphasizes gameplay over historical accuracy, and they have always been willing to make sacrifices with the latter to improve the former. e.g., wars are much more about huge, decisive, army-destroying battles, and a lot less about making sure less of your side than the enemy die of dysentery before reaching the field, than in real life. In my view the same principle applies in this issue.

No one was enraged about slave trade in Rome and in Rome nad Medieval 2 it was possible to loot cities (I miss it!) , so why should there be no slave trade in Empire?!
So Africa just ends up overlooked, one more time...:whip:

And I mean, if they wouldn't have brought all these slaves to America, who knows who would be president there in these days :logic: (joke)

Slaves were a HUGE part of the global economy at this time.

The Romans made the world a slave, and even to this day you have whole nations enslaved (North Korea, Burma etc). Big deal if this time it was black people, I didn't hear anybody complaining about helotage or when those blue eyed Gauls were being enslaved in RTW.

Melanin levels shouldn't be a basis for outrage.

Most of you are completely missing the point. No one is arguing for slavery to be included because they feel it will be fun. They want slavery in because it is the 18th century, where slavery was a real, and almost essential business.

There are soldiers dying in this game. Rather horribly too, I must say. Why aren't there people arguing that CA should edit the game, and instead of dying, you soldiers have boo-boos, and instead of guns, they get nerf footballs. There, no more nasty stuff like dying.

You also fail to consider what life was like for the lower classes in factories. It was horrible work, and quite easily worse than slavery, considering the absolutely squalid conditions in cities. They were poor enough to be "owned" by the factory owners. Yet no one complains.

I'm pretty sure slavery is mentionned in the flavor text of the Plantation line of buildings. IIRC the blurb explains how plantations were cash crops meant solely for exporting exotic goods back to Europe, a concept which was only economically sustainable because of slavery and indentured labor.

So, while actual slave trading and Triangular Commerce isn't a game mechanic per se, if your Empire is sustained by those juicy crates of sugar and coffee from the Carribean, guess what ? You're an anti-abolitionnist ;)

(off topic, but in reaction to PBI's post : I haven't played Civ 4, but if they made the abolition of slavery increase happiness, boy did they whitewash/sugar coat it...
I remember how it was in CTP however, which I thought was quite clever : slavery was a formidable expansion/economic tool to use, as it both deprived other civs of their settlers and boosted your own pop, however it was a double edged sword : the special late Middle Age special Abolitionnist unit incited riots if used on cities that had slave pop, and more importantly the Act of Abolition wonder, once built, freed all slaves, everywhere at once. The civ that built the wonder had their slaves and part of those of all the other civs converted to normal population (huuuge population boost), the other civs ? Rioters everywhere. So you had to make the choice between either not getting involved in slavery at all at the risk of getting run over by slaver civs, become a slaver but research towards the Abolition tech ASAP which was sort of a dead end (plus the cost of building a semi-useless, one time use wonder), or just deal with the surprise mass slave insurrection bound to happen to you at some point.)

Eh, no. All slavery does is make YOUR population a little unhappy because you sacrificed your people to build stuff.

I here in the late game you can go Kremlin + State Property + Slavery to conquer the world. :)

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Originally Posted by A Very Super Market

Most of you are completely missing the point. No one is arguing for slavery to be included because they feel it will be fun. They want slavery in because it is the 18th century, where slavery was a real, and almost essential business.

There are soldiers dying in this game. Rather horribly too, I must say. Why aren't there people arguing that CA should edit the game, and instead of dying, you soldiers have boo-boos, and instead of guns, they get nerf footballs. There, no more nasty stuff like dying.

You also fail to consider what life was like for the lower classes in factories. It was horrible work, and quite easily worse than slavery, considering the absolutely squalid conditions in cities. They were poor enough to be "owned" by the factory owners. Yet no one complains.

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Spot on. Slavery had a MASSIVE impact on the world during ETWs timeline, so it is odd not to include it.


The issues of racism and the brutality of how slaves were treated don't really seem to be strong excuses for not including slavery when you consider that you can happily slaughter thousands of Indian troops with your own white, European soldiers at will. Indeed, watch some of the death animations and you'll see that combat in ETW is pretty brutal. Your men strangle and then break the neck of their opponents, spear people laying on the ground with bayonets or trample over men with horses.

Yet despite this slavery seems taboo - even thought it was in both RTW and M2TW.

I'm just being ignored now.

I've posted where it is.