- Dev Diary - Actions Revisited - 21 May 2026
“Alea iacta est.”“The die is cast.”— Julius Caesar, crossing the Rubicon. It’s possible Caesar actually spoke it in Greek: ἀνερρίφθω κύβος, transliterated as anerrhiphtho kybos. Which sadly doesn't have the same ring to it, in my opinion!Hello, Lucas here! We're taking a detour from the previous diaries on war to talk about the Action System.The very first diary posted here was about the Action System. I’ve decided to revisit it, now that I know more about the game. Making a game is a process of discovery, and I've learned a lot since then.I made a prototype for this purpose. It’s free and you can play it here! If you do, please use this form to send me your feedback!This prototype will only be up for about a week in order to collect feedback. However, you can still access it afterwards if you're a paid subscriber on Substack.The Action System is my replacement to the event system seen…
- Steam page has been updated, help us translate it! - 16 May 2026
Hi, Lucas here!We're looking for volunteers to help translate the Steam page into other languages!Join our Discord to help out!The Steam page has been updated, some attention was given especially to the "About this Game" section, also called the Long Description:We have partial and total translations for some languages already, thanks to the wonderful community at our Discord, but all languages need at least proofreading before I can update the Store page with these translations.These are the priority languages:FrenchItalianGermanSpanish - SpainSpanish - Latin AmericaPortuguese - PortugalPortuguese - Brazil (I am Brazilian so PT-BR is not needed)PolishRussianSimplified ChineseTurkishJapaneseKoreanThere are also more languages that would be great to have. Join the Discord if you want to help! I will add the translations to the Steam page if we can get them + proofreading!BulgarianCzechDa…
- Dev Diary - War and Conquest (Part II - Timelines) - 18 April 2026
“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, 1.38Hello, 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…
- Dev Diary - War and Conquest (Part I - Concept) - 13 April 2026
“The highest ambition of our magistrates and generals was to defend our provinces and allies with justice and honour. And so our government could be called more accurately a protectorate of the world than a dominion.”Cicero, De Officiis, 2.27Hi, Lucas here! In this diary I will talk about war and how I'm expecting to represent it in Historia Realis. Hope you enjoy!Today I'll focus more on war & conquest in general, but it's worth sharing a few points on how I expect you might be able to interact with war:You can be a junior officer doing smaller duties in an army.You can be a legate doing more important duties for a commander.You can be the commander yourself (usually a Consul or Praetor, or a promagistrate).You can be a Senator who voted "yes" to start the war, but never took part in it.You can be a Senator who begins a vote to recall a commander who is doing poorly, or who prosecutes…
- Dev Diary - Provincial Administration (Part II - Prototype) - 17 October 2025
Today we’ll take a look at the province administration prototype. I decided to create it separately from the main game in order to get player feedback more quickly.This prototype is playable right now, but available exclusively to Substack supporters as a way to thank them for their support. It will be available for free for everyone soon, as I will need more playtesters. Join our Discord and sign up to the mailing list to be notified! Or, if you can’t wait, you can become a Substack paid supporter to gain access now:Join on Substack!Please note that it’s a prototype, so it’s not representative of the final game. Also, there’s currently no in-game tutorial, as the mechanics will change considerably. So I made a video tutorial, where you can watch me do a playthrough:(Above is a 20min video of me explaining this prototype of province administration)A quick note on visualsThis prototype i…
- Dev Diary - Provincial Administration (Part I - High Concept) - 27 June 2025
"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…
- Dev Diary: Character Personalities - 7 June 2025
Dev Diary – Character PersonalitiesHi, Lucas here!This will be a focused diary on a very specific thing: personality.People seem to like personality theory, considering the popularity of the MBTI personality test and such. Are you an INTP?In Historia Realis, there are 64 personalities that characters can have, and today we’ll look at how I got to those, and their differences.Personalities are not traits. They’re very different things. There are hundreds of traits in the game, and they’re separate from personality.Characters are born with a specific personality, while traits can be gained. You can have hundreds of traits, but you only have one personality. Let’s see some comparisons:TraitsPersonalityCan have many, even hundredsYou have only 1, which is composed of a few aspects.Changeable: gain new ones, lose old onesHard to changeHave levels (for example, from Terrible Orator to Great O…
- Dev Diary: Internal Politics, Part 1 - 5 May 2025
Dev Diary – Internal Politics, Part 1 Let's talk internal politics of Rome! This diary presents Motions, focusing on two types: triumphs and trials. These were two mechanisms through which the internal politics of Rome rewarded and punished its representatives. I will talk about the Stages that a Motion can go through, perhaps first being approved in the Senate before it can be ratified in an Assembly. Then the Clashes that happened, and the ultimate outcome of a motion. I’ve also included a couple of notes on my design philosophy, and what you can expect from future diaries. Hope you enjoy. Thanks! — Lucas “Gaius Verres appears to stand his trial before you: a man already condemned, in the world's opinion, by his life and deeds; already acquitted, according to his own confident assertions, by his vast fortune.” — Cicero, in the speech In Verrem (Against Verres) (Gaius Verres, former go…
- Dev Diary: Marriage & Hierarchy - 27 August 2024
Diary – Marriage & Hierarchy Hey, Lucas here! Today we’re gonna look at social status and social mobility in Historia Realis, in particular two institutions through which elite Romans achieved and maintained their position in society: conubio (marriage) and amicitia (literally “friendship”, but in fact more like a socio-political alliance). As we’ll see, these were interconnected. Please note that the game is a work in progress, so everything I mention here can still change. Tiers of Society “I’d rather be first in a village than second in Rome.” — Julius Caesar (as often paraphrased from Plutarch, Life of Caesar) Romans were fiercely competitive, and Rome was an increasingly socially mobile society. The following video I made shows the data on which families held Consulships. Over time, we see more and more novi homines (”new men”, those with no ancestors that had held the Consulship b…
- Dev Diary: Vice and Virtue - 9 July 2024
Diary – Vice and Virtue Harmony makes small things grow; the lack of harmony makes great things decay. – Sallust Hi! Lucas here. Today I’d like to introduce a few special resources that characters have in Historia Realis. These are: Vice, Tranquility and Animus. They are all part of the action system and add depth and interest to it by creating opportunities for stories to emerge. Most actions are neither Vice nor Leisure, just normal. Vice and Leisure are special types of actions, and I will now explain what they do. Vice (Vitium) Vice was a big deal for Romans and I believe it’s part of what makes Roman history so compelling for us today. Many of us know the emperors Caligula, Nero and Commodus for their extravagance and vice. So, for Historia Realis to be an accurate representation of Rome, you need to be able to witness (and do) some wicked stuff. There were lesser and greater vices…
- Dev Diary: Deep SImulation - 12 January 2024
Hi! Lucas here. This will be another more general dev diary. I am currently making a lot of fast iterating on the design of Historia Realis, and as such I don’t want to ‘commit’ to those design decisions by writing about them. It somehow feels like I would be obligated to stick to a design if I share it on a dev diary, even though this is not really the case, as games change a lot, especially these days with patches and updates. However, these dev diaries are basically the only way for you to know more about how the game works, and I wouldn’t want to mislead you by saying something only to change it later. One solution might be to write ‘design exploration’ dev diaries where I make it clear that what I’m talking about might change. I’ll try that sometime and see how it goes. For today, though, let’s talk about the next design pillar of Historia Realis. There are 3: Pillars Emergent Stor…
- Dev Diary: Emergent Stories - 25 September 2023
Hi! I'm Lucas, creator of Historia Realis: Rome. Today I’m gonna talk a bit about the vision for Historia Realis. We're gonna get theoretical rather than practical, and look at the big picture. If you want to see more specifically how the game works, check out the previous dev diary about the Action System! Anyway, the game has 3 pillars that guide the design: Pillars Emergent Stories Deep Simulation Historical Realism I'm going to cover them in separate diaries. Let's start with emergent stories! Emergent Stories This is an old dream of game designers, and I think that the industry has made amazing progress in this area. Crusader Kings, Football Manager, The Sims, Dwarf Fortress, RimWorld and many others have paved the way. I've also enjoyed a cool new take: Shadows of Forbidden Gods. The vision for storytelling in Historia Realis is that you create your stories as you play. You may be…
- Dev Diary: Action System - 1 September 2023
Hi! I'm Lucas, creator of Historia Realis: Rome. For this relaunch of the dev diaries, I'm going to cover the core mechanic of Historia Realis: the action system, which is the beating heart of the game. It was designed to replace the usual event system in similar games. The problem with event systems Most strategy games use events, pop-ups that interrupt your game and ask you to make a decision. Those are alright and sometimes necessary, but there are a few problems with them: ːsteamthumbsdownː Randomness: They are generated through a random number generator that spawns an event just because. Also, the outcome of the event is often random; you have a % chance to succeed. ːsteamthumbsdownː Repetition: The first time you see the event, it's pretty cool. The second time, you already know the drill. By the third time and beyond, you already know the best option and auto-click it. ːsteamthum…
- Dev Stream - 21 August 2023
Woah! You can watch me make the game! Cool!
