Dev Diary - War and Conquest (Part II - Timelines)

“With the Celtiberians and the Cimbrians we fought as with deadly enemies, not to determine which should be supreme, but which should survive; but with the Latins, Sabines, Samnites, Carthaginians, and Pyrrhus we fought for supremacy. The Carthaginians violated treaties; Hannibal was cruel; the others were more merciful.”

Cicero, De Officiis, 1.38

Hello, Lucas here! Today I’ll talk about Rome’s expansion. This continues from Part I: Concept.

Rome famously was a city-state that became a huge empire. I think this is a big part of why people are interested in Roman history. How did this expansion happen? What was it like?

So, naturally, the game reflects this. Let’s dive into it.

Since Historia Realis is focused on historical realism (it’s right there in the name!), I’m prioritizing the historical expansion of Rome. This expansion was more an expansion of influence than of territory, but that’s besides the point.

Here’s a tool I made to visualize the data that is fed to the game in order to guide Rome’s historical expansion:

This tool is available for free here. It allows you to generate semi-historical timelines similar to above.

So if you want to do a historically accurate playthrough, you can!

However, a big part of what makes games fun is toying with things and seeing them play out differently. There are a few ways to make that happen.

Semi-Historical expansion mode

A planned feature is a Semi-Historical expansion mode, which distorts the historical timeline of expansion, creating something almost historical but not quite.

Below are a few examples of AHISTORICAL timelines generated with the tool I made:

[carousel][/carousel]

Again, you can play with this tool to generate your own random timelines. If you randomize a cool one, share a screenshot in our Discord!

A note on Start and End Dates

For now, I’m focusing on the period between 200 BC and 50 BC. This is after the 1st and 2nd Punic Wars, when Rome expands its influence around the Mediterranean, and before Caesar's civil war. I want to eventually stretch those dates both ways, perhaps into 300 BC to 50 AD, or beyond. But I think both the Principate and the Punic Wars would require some special mechanics, so I’m leaving them for later.

Anyway, let’s move on!

The simulated part

Even if a war starts at the exact date it did, its result is determined by the game. Do the Romans win their campaigns in this war? By how much do they win? These things influence how the war goes.

The end date of a war is far more variable than the start, because it has to take into account what happens in the simulation. The start can be unsimulated; I can just throw that into the game like an event that happens in a specific year.

Even then, the way I’m planning this is that these events (which I’m calling contingencies, let me know if you have a better name) require a response from the Senate, a war declaration. And that requires simulation. It could be that a contingency appears, but the Senate doesn’t put it to vote, or votes against going to war, or the Assembly does not confirm the Senate’s decision (all of these possibilities happened, historically). In that case, the war simply doesn’t happen

I’ll need to figure out a way to deal with that, by the way. Otherwise, when you play in Historical mode but the Senate votes against war, some provinces, even major ones like Macedonia or Africa, could remain