Update log
Full Historia Realis: Rome update
The complete published notes, normalized for clean reading and source attribution.
Extracted changes
- Gameplay
- Maps
"Exert yourself in every direction to earn men's good word, not with a view to rival others, but to surpass yourself."
— Cicero’s advice to his brother Quintus, who had become governor of Asia (Cicero, Ad Quintum Fratrem, Book 1, Letter 1).
Hi! Lucas here.
In this dev diary, I’m going to cover the “high-level concept” for provincial administration in Historia Realis. In other words, I'll talk about the experience that Historia Realis intends to provide to players in terms of being a governor, or of being in a governor's staff.
I won’t get into specific mechanics — instead, I’ll talk about my historical research, design goals and the “pre-production” of my prototype for this system. Next time, I’ll cover the actual prototype, and that diary will have lots of examples and images. But this one is all text, no pretty pictures. Still interesting stuff, I think!
I’ll focus on the administration of “peaceful” provinces here, sometimes called permanent or territorial provinces — those that had already been conquered and just needed maintenance. War and conquest will be left for another time.
A fancy new banner!
Mistakes I Tried to Avoid
I've had to kill a few sacred cows — or sacred geese, if we’re sticking to the Roman theme — in order to create a historically accurate experience.
Without studying the history, there are many naive approaches to systems design that I could’ve taken. Here are a few common strategy gaming tropes, and why it would be a mistake to implement them:
| Common mechanics that would be a mistake | The reality of things |
|---|---|
| ːsteamthumbsdownː Building: The player would be able to construct and “level up” several buildings. | ːsteamthumbsupː Roman republican governors had no substantial treasury, and did not commission or initiate many public works, if any. |
| ːsteamthumbsdownː Recruitment: You’d have a variety of “troop types” to choose from and compose your army. | ːsteamthumbsupː Troops in Roman provinces were either garrisoned legions assigned by the Senate, legions assigned to a specific war, or local militia. Either way, the governor had no meaningful way of increasing the number of troops — at least not as a rule. There were exceptions, like Caesar in Gaul. |
| ːsteamthumbsdownː Economy: You’d produce, sell and buy different resources: food, wood, stone and such. You’d also set and collect taxes, and increase your revenue in order to build more buildings and recruit more troops. | ːsteamthumbsupː The economy was mostly in the hands of the locals and the publicani, private contractors. Taxes were collected by the publicani and sent directly to Rome, not going through the governor. Building contracts were assigned in Rome to the publicani, not by the provincial governor. |
Other common tropes are tech trees, diplomacy, moving troops in a map, etc.
All these elements can —and probably will— show up in some form. They’re not entirely out of place and wrong. But, when making the core of a new system, I have to think of the general rule rather than the exceptions, and what matches historical evidence.
These tropes also miss some important aspects: local autonomy, law, order and corruption. And they don’t capture what it was like to be a Roman governor.
What I did instead
I took a first principles approach, and ignored gaming tropes. My question was: what was the experience of being a governor actually like? What choices did one have to make? And what mechanics better convey that experience?
The mechanics I’ve arrived at so far are not things like “spend 100 gold to build a
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