GriffonSpade wrote:ahfretheim wrote:GriffonSpade wrote:I would actually group Monarch with Communism and Despotism: It's totalitarian.
No monarchy in the history of the world has EVER been totalitarian...
Yes, totalitarian was the wrong word. Dictatorial is more apt. While monarchs generally didn't micromanage, they are
rulers, not leaders, and effectively own everything themselves. They really have all the same power as totalitarians, but use it arbitrarily rather than systemically. Mind, in Feudal Monarchy they have to share this power and property with deputies to maintain order, and in Feudalism they outright lose power over the deputies.
Monarchs did traditionally own the farmland, but in both Civil Law, Sharia and Common Law countries criminal law and most of the legal authority we associate with the police or government fell primarily in to the hands of the courts, who interpreted it either according to precedent (Common Law), tradition (Civil Law) or a combination of precedent and Islamic religious teachings (Sharia). I would argue that this is a direct consequence of making everything about property and rightfulness. Despotism, without involving these things, has no interference from the courts.
Aside from that, I would argue that, because people wouldn't cooperate, totalitarianism is only possible with a totalitarian ideology that a substantial percentage of the population buys in to. Speaking of Despotism though, the implementation of slavery might make Despotic governments desirable later in to the game, as they would have the lowest percentage possibility, due to the lack of any property or privacy rights on the part of the slave owners or any kind of legal limitation on the state, of a slave revolt. Advanced governments, with their extensive property and individual rights, would actually have the highest probability of slave revolts.
To be fair, these things aren't exceptions from being treated like livestock: not being stupid enough to piss off animals that can stampede and trample you is just good sense.
Yes, except that these aren't animals.
Oh, there's no doubt that some were worse thans others historically, the question is can these nuances be viably represented in game mechanics?
With tech's and tech effects, of course. But I'm here to talk about slavery, not serfdom.
The two are married: Media technology in a large part controls literacy, allowing non-aristocrats to obtain it.(paper, printing press, mass production, etc) However, literacy is probably the more sensible to track, as it generally allows for more production and usage of technology. (It also doesn't require a ton of one-off bonuses/penalties or place undue weight on unimportant techs)
Media technology isn't the kind of technology I'm referring to, and also in FreeCiv (and in ancient Jewish society in real life, along with arguably the early Christian Church) literacy is/was implemented by building libraries and sharing books rather than making more of them. (This does bring up an important point though: should the Gutenburg Bible be a wonder that builds a library in every one of your cities?) I'm more referring to agricultural and industrial technology that made slavery no longer sensible economically or in terms of maximizing the potential of human individuals, things like tractors and factories. Libraries/literacy have the effect you describe, but the problem is that in certain eras the technologies developed would do more to make slavery ignoble than others, and it would not merely be individual technologies but entire individual eras this would be true of. In game mechanics, this would be best implemented by merely properly simulating the effect of these technologies on society, which is already done.
In game mechanics, I was thinking about having a "Make_Slave_Revolt_More_Likely" flag that will be added to the techs.ruleset file and only used on certain technologies, like "Gunpowder". That would be less about the effect we were talking about though and more about the NRA effect: the proliferation of small arms in the hands of private citizens making the prevention of slave revolts increasingly difficult.
As for the 'happy people', I usually view the 'angry' ones as specifically those that are out protesting something or other in their free time, while the 'content' are not celebrating, but neither are they out protesting (if only because they don't want to be brutalized, imprisoned, or killed by soldiers)
Oh I do too, but the difference is that a citizen has a proper social contract that enables him to rationally make that decision. Slaves, having no standing in society, have no guarantee that they won't be brutalized by their owners at any time for any reason and every guarantee that any expression of their dissatisfaction will be met most negatively, which makes rioting a rather silly implementation of their actions. To put it simply, they would never riot and your city would also produce shields, gold and surplus food regardless of how unhappy they were.
If the rebelling forces lose, they'd be forced outside the city and created as units a la partisans, Either X units per Y populations or X population for Y units, (possibly) minus some losses.
I'm thinking if they lose they just die, reducing the cities slave population, although maybe the availability of machine guns will allow small numbers of run-aways to be an effective combat force. If that is the case, Partisans might make sense once that technological level is reached.
I was thinking emancipation might just end slavery altogether, like it does in Call to Power, at least until the discovery of Mind Control (at which point the wonder might obsolete). Are there still a small number of slaves in the world? Yes, but it's statistically insignificant and mostly related to sex trafficking, which is not simulated by any means in Free Civ.
Hmmm, a single nation emancipating doesn't have this effect, though. Some way of 'infecting' other nations with a philosophy flag or something enabling this effect with emancipation would do it. (Likewise a totalitarian or otherwise dictatorial government might be able to 'suppress' the philosophy partially or wholly)
Over time it does though, so maybe a gray period with possibility of civil wars (like those that ravaged the United States, Mexico and Brazil after Britains emancipation) and severe riots would make the most sense. Obviously, though, this wonder would only be available once the world had become connected enough commercially and academically for such a one nation emancipation to have that effect, but that can be implemented easily through techs.ruleset.
That being said, I was also thinking about having an "Abolitionist" unit that could rescue slaves from enemy cities, adding them to their home city as free citizens, and also could instigate slave revolts which, unlike regular slave revolts determined by a roll of the dice, would lead to that enemy city being yours. Further, I was thinking that, while I don't agree with slaves making citizens unhappy in Republic and Democracy, the actions of abolitionists could make citizens unhappy about military activity content for a certain number of turns, the "Battle Hymn of the Republic" effect, so effectively a Republic or Democracy could feed off their enemies enslavement of people to support a larger army and more celebrations at home. Abolitionists would be available in any government type, but Democracies and Republics would benefit the most profoundly from them.
It'd be sensible, but like unit deaths causing unhappiness, it's something that'd be complicated to implement.
Enslaving foreign citizens is something that could only be implemented by way of modifying the source code, since it involves having TWO kinds of people in your cities instead of one and a new kind of unit for taking slaves, so we could find the city object and add a counter variable, that for every slave every added to the city, increases by one, and factor in that counter to the calculation of corruption. (Although actually, unit deaths causing things can be implemented in LUA script).