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 governor of Sicily, would later exile himself in Massilia to avoid condemnation — a common practice. Cicero, at this time a little-known young former Quaestor, would go on to become Aedile, and eventually Consul. Later yet, both men would be killed by the proscriptions of the Second Triumvirate).

The full Motions screen, where internal politics happen.


A Motion can be many things: awarding a Triumph to a general; prosecuting a governor for corruption; establishing a new law, etc. In this diary, I will focus on the first two: triumphs and trials.

Let’s first look at the roles in which the player (and all other characters) can appear in a Motion:

1. You can start a Motion and be its promulgator;
2. You can be the Target or Beneficiary of a Motion;
3. You can participate in a Motion either supporting or opposing it;

This means that you can be in many positions, such as:

- You’re the prosecutor trying to exile a corrupt governor.
- You’re the victorious general trying to get approval to celebrate a Triumph.
- You’re trying to enact a law, or perhaps you’re trying to stop it from being enacted.
- You’re a corrupt governor defending yourself!
- You’re defending a corrupt governor, perhaps because they’re your friend or family, or perhaps they aren’t corrupt at all — they were unjustly accused.

As you can see, there are many possible roles to play in Motions. Ultimately, a Motion either passes or it fails. But there is a lot that goes on inbetween, and how that happens.

A list of Motions.


Issues in Historia Realis are “things that a Motion can be about”. They occur naturally as the game progresses. The governor of Sicily was corrupt? An issue is created. Gaius bribed voters to get elected Praetor? New issue. Lucius won a great victory in Gaul? That’s an issue too. He’ll want a Triumph, and his enemies in the Senate might not want him to gain that glory. Issues are just a big list of things that can be acted upon through Motions.

Issues generally do nothing, just sit there waiting for a Motion to “pick them up”. But not always, and I’ll have more on that in a future diary.


One of my design goals with Historia Realis is to create an annoyance-free experience, or as close to it as possible. Here are a few traps that I tried avoiding with this system:

ːsteamthumbsdownː Too much micro-management: There is some interaction which is natural and required, but I try to frontload most of the “clicks” and customization to the beginning of a Motion, and then things just run along. This is because you'll also be doing a bunch of other stuff while trying to pass a motion.
ːsteamthumbsdownː Feeling out of control or hopeless: I don’t want you to feel like there’s nothing you can do to pass your Motion and that it’s all up to RNG. Therefore, there are several ways to influence the outcome of a Motion. Calling on participants is the most basic one, so I’ll touch on that next.


The Active Politicians list.

I’ve ran into a few problems when designing the experience of “being a Senator”. One major one was that you probably don’t want to be bothered about everything that’s going on in politics every single year, simply because there’s so much of it. You’re generally more concerned about advancing yourself, not about the prosecution of so-and-so, the triumph of a random guy, and so on. Although it’s a cool thing to simulate every little thing, they can also feel distant and repetitive, so they have to happen in the background, to some extent.

Unless, of course, you do want to care about what’s happening in a given year. Then you can become an Active Politician (I need a better name for this — I’ll take suggestions in the comments). You also automatically become one by being elected to office.

When you become an Active Politician, you can participate in Motions, and you’ll get invited to support or oppose this or that one, and you can start motions yourself, though some Motions are exclusive to specific offices like Consul or Plebeian Tribune.

The point is this: only a small percentage of Senators (and some non-Senators) will be Active Politicians each year. If you don’t care about the internal politics right now, you can just ignore them. Or you can become active if they become relevant to you.

There is some historical justification for this: the concept of pedarii is disputed, but it referred to senators who voted along with their “superiors”, and didn’t debate. It’s also well established that junior senators were generally less active, and spoke last, if at all (however, they were often more active as prosecutors).

There’s also some natural inactivity: those engaged in governing provinces, or being on the staff of a governor, or waging war, are naturally inactive in the Senate because they’re far from Rome.

The Clashes within each Motion are represented by little icons under the yellow/red bars.


Roman politics were notoriously aggressive. However, I use the term Clash not just in a sense of violence, but also in the sense of political clashes.

What determines the outcome of a Motion is not only the number and quality of supporters and opposers, but also their performance as the two sides Clash. Delivering performances, either through speeches in the Senate or in a Contio (public meeting), or perhaps performing well in a street brawl, is vital.

When a Motion starts, a certain number of Clashes is expected to occur: let’s say 3. As time goes on, each Clash is set up and its slot gets filled. When they’re all filled, they get resolved and the outcome of the Motion is decided.

Clashes can generate interesting and unexpected outcomes, and I have some ideas to expand upon this simple mechanic — it will probably get its own diary in the future.


Look, Roman law was complicated. It was mostly based on tradition rather than well-defined procedures — and yet tradition was often interpreted differently, or force was used to establish new precedents. Especially in the Late Republic: see the Gracchi, Marcus Drusus, Sulla, etc.

So to represent the procedures of Roman politics, I needed a mechanic that was both structured and flexible. The result was Stages.

A Motion has to go through all of its Stages, and be approved in all of them, in order to pass. If it’s shot down at any Stage, it either becomes a weaker version of itself in order to try to pass, or it fails (unless it Escalates, but I’ll leave that for later).

A Triumph Motion.

Triumphs are simple. They have just one Stage: the Senate. Historically, triumphs were awarded by the Senate and required no ratification by any assembly.

A Prosecution Motion. Notice it has more slots for Clashes, and a separation between the icons to represent different Stages.

Prosecutions were historically very complicated, but I’ll try to keep it simple. A quaestio, or inquiry, had to be established to look into the matter and pass judgement on it. For that to happen, one of the governing bodies had to first approve of the establishment of the quaestio. This means there are at least two stages: deliberation and quaestio. For example, it might go:

- Tribal Assembly → Quaestio → End.
- Senate → Quaestio → End.

Two stages in either case, but different governing bodies establish the court.

But let’s make it a bit more complicated. In 149 BC, the plebeian tribune Lucius Calpurnius Piso created a law that established the quaestio perpetua, a permanent court for trials of corrupt governors. The composition of the jury of this court became a major political dispute[en.wikipedia.org] for the next century, but that is a different matter. What matters here is that he simplified the procedure so that prosecutions could be completed in a single Stage:

- Quaestio → End.

So you see, Stages allow for both structure and flexibility. Here are a few other examples of Stages you might see:

- Senate → Senate → Centuriate Assembly → End: A law is rejected by the senate, but it’s rewritten and the weaker version passes, so it’s taken to be ratified by the Assembly.
- Centuriate Assembly → End: A law is taken directly to be voted on by the Assembly, bypassing the Senate. This will likely cause Legitimacy issues (see Upcoming Additions below).
- Senate → Tribal Assembly → Escalation → End: A motion passes in the Senate, but fails in the tribal assembly, perhaps being vetoed by a Tribune. But its promulgator doesn’t withdraw it, so it escalates into violence and leads to loss of Stability (see below).

Finished Motions.


The most severe outcome of a Motion would be the death or exile of a former governor. Another possible outcome was financial restitution, often a multiple of the amount known to have been stolen (2 times what was stolen or so, it changed throughout time).

But acquittal was far more often the case. And then the prosecutor might be themselves prosecuted in retaliation.

One such historical case of retaliations went like this:

- The elder Caepio was exiled and fined for losing the Battle of Arausio, against the Cimbri. The prosecutors were the tribunes Saturninus and Norbanus.
- Caepio’s son, whom we will call Caepio the Younger, wrecked the voting proceedings of a law that Saturninus was trying to pass. It passed anyway.
- Eight years later, as the political landscape shifted, Caepio was prosecuted for that disruption.
- Caepio and his allies prosecuted Norbanus for his tribuneship. Saturninus was dead by now.
- In the end, the jury of equites acquitted both Caepio and Norbanus, ignoring their petty squabbles.

To me, all this maneuvering had two goals: 1) increasing the standing of oneself (and one’s allies) and 2) decreseaing the standing of one’s enemies (and their allies). But this was also wrapped around a complex political landscape, which I will talk in a future dev diary about Interest Groups.

Triumphs and Ovations were also a part of the same apparatus: you try to get them for yourself and your friends, and avoid your enemies from doing so. As such, the main outcome of Motions is changes to Prominence, either positive or negative. Look forward to a future dev diary about social status.

Right now I haven’t yet implemented gaining an Agnomen, the nickname that victorious generals often got: Africanus, Macedonicus, Numidicus, Asiaticus and so on. But fear not, this is coming!

Motions screen with both current and finished motions.


I am following the thesis that depth comes from simple yet interconnected systems. I’m trying to avoid “complex” systems as much as possible, because they’re hard to understand and to interact with for the player, and hard to change and improve for the developer.

This means that, instead of designing complex and convoluted systems, I’m trying to design a few simple yet meaningful and effective systems that create depth not so much within themselves, but in the overall experience, through the interactions between all systems.

Within a single system, what I want is at least one core tension. That is, one “hard choice” (or “interesting decision”, to use Sid Meier’s term) that comes up often.

The hard choice for Motions is often this: do I want a small guaranteed reward, or a big risky reward? For example, you can go after a corrupt governor. But he has lots of friends in the Senate, so you’ll likely fail. But if you succeed, you’ll gain a lot of prominence!

It's a single interesting choice. However, due to interconnected system, this choice also overlaps with others. What if the corrupt governor is a friend of your father-in-law? Do you want to take that relationship hit?

With these overlapping systems, depth emerges.


"That man is GUILTY!" Sketch for a painting representing a prosecution in the Forum.

There’s a lot more to talk about, but this is all for today. I'm going to mention a few of the things you can expect in upcoming diaries:


Some things you can expect to see in future dev diaries:

- Lawmaking: In addition to trials and triumphs, you’ll be able to propose laws.
- Voting: You’ll be able to see the voting process in the Senate and Assemblies.
- Escalation and Vetos: Violence can erupt and extreme measures like vetos can be taken.
- Retaliation: Accusing someone could lead to them accusing you, justly or unjustly.
- Legitimacy and Due Process: Some motions will be more legitimate than others, depending on whether they were seen as just and if they followed the due process or not.
- Revoking, Weakening and Strengthening Motions: Laws and even motions like exiles can be revoked in the following years, creating a very dynamic society. Or they can sometimes be weakened or strengthened, creating links between past and present.


Here are some upcoming or current systems that interact with the Motions system:

- Interest Groups: Groups like Equites, Urban Populace, Soldiers, etc, will be dynamic and demand more rights through laws.
- Factions: Characters will be able to ally each other and cooperate in elections, their year in office and beyond.
- Favors and Grudges: Gain favors by helping others in their Motions, and spend those favors to pass your own.
- Tiers and Prominence: Rise in the ranks of society by prosecuting and defending others, and passing laws, gaining prominence through the courts (see the dev diary on hierarchy & marriage).
- Vice: Become more vicious by pursuing unjust convictions (see the dev diary on Vice).
- Magistracies & Provinces: Only some office holders can start some Motions, and only former provincial governors and their staff can be prosecuted for corruption in the provinces.
- Stability & Civil War: Violence and escalation in the courts can lead to the destabilization of Rome, and eventually to civil war.

All that said, please note that everything I said here might change. And it probably will! That's the iterative nature of making games, you just keep changing and improving things.

Wishlist Historia Realis:
https://steamproxy.net/steamstore/app/2560540/Historia_Realis_Rome/
Thank you!
— Lucas

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.


“I’d rather be first in a village than second in Rome.”
— Julius Caesar (as often paraphrased from Plutarch, Life of Caesar[penelope.uchicago.edu])

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 before).
Representing social mobility in the game also means representing social structure in some way. You can’t have social mobility without some kind of social ranking, places from which to climb and fall. This is where the Tier System comes in.

The Romans did have concrete structures of social hierarchy, the ordines (orders). But these were mostly to differentiate the elite from the rest. In Historia Realis, all simulated characters are part of the elite, men who could conceivably be elected into the cursus honorum, plus their families. So ordo (order) is not a useful concept here, since all men of the aristocracy were in the same order.

So how to rank these men?

The Tier system represents social position, even though there isn’t an exact historical equivalent to it. I believe that it captures the spirit of Roman hierarchy, if not its precise form. There is a danger here of being “too creative” with history and making something that is detached from how things actually worked in the past (I’m looking at you, pretty much every historical game[/i]). But I believe that part of making great games is taking risks and making bold, dangerous decisions – provided that they pay off. Only time will tell, but I like the results so far.

Another point in favor of this system is that it allows for the “top man” dynamic that the Romans liked so much. Their word for it was princeps, from which the word “prince” comes from, but which meant literally “first”. The most well-known use was princeps senatus, “first in the Senate”, and then the title of simply princeps by Augustus. However, Princeps was used in many contexts[en.wikipedia.org].


Being first (princeps) among peers was a crucial part of Roman life. In the game, therefore, there is a “first tier” among all tiers, which is where the top Romans are. Furthermore, each tier also has a “first place” slot. To simulate social mobility, the character in that first place gets promoted to a higher tier every five years (a period which the Romans called a lustrum, when new Censors took the census and rearranged the social hierarchy).

You gain points of Prominence in your tier by succeeding in your actions and endeavors, but also through other means. I will talk about this more in future diaries.

The concept of a Tier is represented by this stairs icon.


How did Romans in different rungs of society relate to each other?

There was the patron and client relationship between men of different orders. But, among the elite, since they were all of the same rank, they had a similar kind of relationship called amicitia, which sounded more respectful.

From my research, the essence of amicitia was:

• It was mutual and mutually beneficial.
  
• It could be between equals as well as between superiors and inferiors.
  
• It was limited in number. One wasn’t the amicus of everyone — even Cicero, who had many amici, was clearly not an amicus of Mark Antony. In fact, he was an inimicus (enemy), but that’s another diary.
  
• Although limited, it seems that men higher up could have many supporters. We find many names of Quaestors and other upstarts linked to men like Pompey and Caesar.
  
• It was fluid. Alliances could be made and unmade.

A character's main resources and attributes. Choosing allies with the right Aptitudes (the A, B, C letters at top of the bars) and the right Skills (the height of the bars) is crucial. A depleted, red bar means that an attribute has been used recently, but it will recharge and be ready for use again soon.

• Julius Caesar and Mark Antony. Antony performed various duties in war and peace for Caesar, and Caesar supported Antony in elections and giving him positions, such as a legateship in Gaul.
  
• Julius Caesar and Labienus. Labienus served mostly in war, and then “betrayed” Caesar once the Civil War began, fighting in Pompey’s side.
  
• Pompey and Labienus. Even before the Civil War, Pompey had supported Labienus in his political career, and possibly introduced him to Caesar.
  
• There are many more examples of this kind of relationship. Octavian and Agrippa. Marius and the Metelli. Caesar and Pompey. Crassus and Caesar. The list goes on.

How did the relationship show up in practice?

• Support in actions, political or otherwise.
  
• Electoral sponsorship.
  
• Assignment of positions as legates in military campaigns and administrative staff in provinces.
  
• Tutoring of children and teens.
  
• Marriages to cement these alliances.

Right now I’ve only implemented the basic structure that will enable the above elements, so you can expect more details about each one in the future.

Did these relations of alliance create factions? Some common uses for the term ‘faction’ in Roman history are:

• Marian faction (Gaius Marius and then Cinna and his followers).
  
• Sullan faction (Under Sulla, in opposition to the above).
  
• The Gracchian faction (Gracchi brothers).
  
• The Triumvirates could be considered factions, and sometimes a “Senatorial faction” is mentioned in opposition to both.

It’s well-established that there were no political parties in the Roman Republic, but controversies remain among scholars about how the Romans organized. Most historians say that there were no groups such as the traditional optimates and populares, though it seems that at least the cause of the people did exist and was exploited by several politicians (Gracchi brothers, Saturninus, Clodius, etc), as also existed the cause of the aristocracy and its attempt to hold on to power (Sulla, Cicero, Cato, etc). There were also powerful families which could be conceived of as factions: the Cornelii Scipii, the Caecilii Metelli, perhaps the Julio-Claudians. But allegiances were fickle and there were often members of the same family on opposite sides of political disputes.

It seems that the Latin word factio was used in a derogatory way, as an accusation. “You are forming a factio!”. As if people who were organizing in factions were somehow cheating the political system, deviating from the mos maiorum (way of the ancestors).

Considering this complexity, I’ve decided to refrain, for now, from having factions in Historia Realis. I believe that implementing amicitia, which has more solid support from historical sources, might be enough (and conveys the complexity of social organization better).

We generally associate marriage alliances with monarchies. But the Roman Republic made use of them extensively. Perhaps the most notable example is the marriage between Pompey and Julia, the daughter of Julius Caesar. They got married when she was about 17 and Pompey was an accomplished 47-year old, which was not an uncommon age difference. When she died giving birth (to a child who didn’t survive), the alliance between Pompey and Caesar also ended, and the Civil War soon began.

Marriage is intrinsically connected with amicitia. You’d generally marry someone in your social circle, the daughter of an amicus, and you’d often form a relationship of amicitia with a relative. For example, Mark Antony was a distant relative of Julius Caesar. Antony’s mother, Julia[en.wikipedia.org], was probably a third-cousin of Caesar.

There’s a fantastic book about marriage in Ancient Rome called Roman Marriage: Iusti Coniuges from the Time of Cicero to the Time of Ulpian, by Susan Treggiari. Here are some of my notes from it. Please note that these are all about aristocratic marriage:

On Men

• Men were valued for two main factors: noble birth (nobilitas) and wealth.
  
• Young promising men often married right before their Quaestorship and after their 10-year military service (around age 30). But sometimes they’d marry around age 18, before starting their military service.
  
• Handsome men were valued.
  
• Male promiscuity could be a problem, but not always.
  
• Male achievement and rise in the cursus honorum mattered.

On Women

• Women were valued for beauty, health, pudicitia (good character) and wealth.
  
• Women who had produced children (and thus were fertile and healthy) were valued.
  
• Women were wed for their money too, because of the dowry men could get.
  
• Young virgins had low or no dowries, because their virginity was already considered valuable.

Other Interesting Notes

• Ugliness mattered in both genders. That is, people didn’t want to marry ugly people.
  
• Outsiders were marriageable sometimes. That is, up-and-coming wealthy men from the provinces could find wives in Rome.
  
• There was a possible increase of marriages for love in the Late Republic. But it was mostly a socio-economic alliance.
  
• The father was the initiator for finding suitors for his daughter.
  
• But the bachelor could also have initiative when searching for a wife.
  
• Cicero’s daughter marriage process, from brethroral to wedding, took about a year.
  
• Dowries could be higher depending on age and divorced status. Divorced women generally had to put up higher dowries.
  
• Ill-intentioned bachelors could marry promiscuous women with intention to divorce and take their wealth.
  
• Men needed to have enough family funds (father’s) to support the same lifestyle the woman was used to.
  
• There were different types of marriage[en.wikipedia.org]. Perhaps the most meaningful difference was whether the husband became the legal guardian of the woman (cum manu) or if she remained under her father (sine manu).

This painting I made shows a Roman wedding. The wedding day was long and eventful, with many moments throughout. I decided to portray a scene towards the end, after the bride arrived at the groom’s house. There was a ritual where the bride symbolically offered the groom a spindle, representing her role in weaving the family’s clothes (though rich women likely just bought clothes), while the husband offered fire and water, probably representing his provisioning of resources fundamental for life and survival.

The flammeum, an orange veil covering the bride's face, is a commonly mentioned piece of clothing in weddings. White clothes for both the groom and bride were also tradition.


There’s much more to cover. I haven’t talked about genetics, inheritable traits and attributes, adoptions, divorce, dowries, brethrorals, inheritance of property, and so much more! I will discuss these things in future diaries as they are implemented, so make sure to follow the game on Steam if you don’t want to miss it!


Check out the website[historiarealis.com] where you can sign up for the alpha, and join our Discord[discord.gg] to discuss the game and get exclusive progress updates!

https://steamproxy.net/steamstore/app/2560540/Historia_Realis_Rome/