Historical accuracy

[King Zapp]

I have spent far too much time playing this game. I do love living out the life of a Roman dynasty through all the Republic. But, as someone who is deeply interested in the history of it all, there are a few things that bother me.

1. Women. Sadly, throughout most of history. Women did not "work" outside of the family home. My daughter's and wives having jobs that pay money are rather bizarre and completely inaccurate. Women should also not inherit anything. This was only the case in Sparta where women could inherit from dead husband's, but not until much later in history were women able to inherit land and wealth. In Roman society, a wife who had the skill of weaving was a highly appreciated wife. Otherwise their job was to decrease household costs, maintain and manage the household, and manage relationships with other notable households. Women should not affect the split of inheritance at all. Also.... Terribly enough... Women born into a ran household took the female version of their father's name, e.g. Agrippa's daughter would be Agrippina. And if she had a younger sister, she would be known as Agrippina the Older, and her sister as Agrippina the Younger. I am not agreeing with it, but it certainly paints a real picture of Roman society and it's appreciation of women.

2. Jobs. Judge, Lawyer, etc were political offices. Not jobs. The Praetors were responsible for this function of Roman society. There were cart makers, wine distillers, dead collectors etc which are not in the game at all. While I appreciate that there does need to be higher paying jobs for the game to function. I think that other jobs should be upweighted based on their actual value to Roman society at the time, not just on how cool they sound based on today's professions. For instance, Crassus was the richest man in Rome from all his land, and his Firefighters business. That would essentially not put out a fire until the owner of the property agreed a reasonable sum to pay them.

3. Political offices are essentially dead. Only the Aedile gets a special event based on their job. But every office of Roman government was vital to operating the country and wars it was involved in. There needs to be more events. And also some monetary gain for actually being in an office. Ex Consuls for instance were granted 5 year governorship over a conquered territory. They used this time to extract massive wealth for themselves as they grew their province. This needs to be in the game to make going for political office "worth it". At the moment it is just a money sink with no real value added to the game. So once I have become a Novus ♥♥♥♥, I just never go for political office again and focus on building property wealth until we have stupid untold millions to waste on pointless elections and offices.

4. Consul - essentially president. A person could only be consul twice in their lifetime with a minimum of 10 years between office sittings. At the moment you can run every second year. This bothers me a lot. Only Julius Caesar broke this rule, and it changed the Republic to an Empire. Consuls need to have bi-monthly events/decisions to make every 2 months. Consuls served 2 at a time and each ruled every second month in that year. So this would make the game more fleshed out and interesting.

It is an awesome game to play. I play on PC and mobile. Hundreds of hours into this. So would love more richness to the world, as well as more historical accuracy at points

[King Zapp]

Just to add to this....

Roman soldier was also a job. I am quite surprised that this is not an option at all. It had decent pay, and after 15 years of service you were granted land to retire on with your family. Would be fantastic for the lower classes to build yourself up early on. There can also be some cool events that can lead to your death, or a great victory in a war. A triumph should also be included in the game. The Triumph was the most important part of Roman Society. You can participate as a spectator, a soldier, or as the Triumphant person with the purple toga. A triumph should also grant untold prestige and wealth

[thomas_e_clarke69]

Spot on!

[CitizenOfRome]

Thank you very much for putting in the effort and time to make this detailed post.
We do try to be as historically accurate as & where possible and posts such as this definitely help propel us further towards that goal

> Naming of women
You're right and this is on our to-do list, we'll likely make the feminized form of the father's name the default suggestion and likely implement this alongside our basic agnomen granting system to add 'prima', 'secunda', etc

> Jobs for women
It's mainly based on this - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_ancient_Rome#In_business that suggests women engaged in trades and business similar to men, except in higher classes, and to reflect this, spouses from richer more prestigious families don't work for the most part in-game, unless you choose to put them to work yourself - but maybe we could add an influence and prestige penalty for doing so to better reflect the social pressures at the time

> Education for women
In the same article and elsewhere, it is suggested that most women completed primary education on par with men but beyond that it may have been frowned upon and it really depended on the paterfamilias to take a stand and have them tutored further, and I remember reading and referencing at-least one prominent woman before, I think it was Cornelia, the mother of the Gracchi who would have finished a rhetoric equivalent education in-game. The game is also set so to reflect the pressure in marrying your girl children off early and it really depends on the paterfamilias to push to educate them. NPC women are fairly less likely to have higher education to reflect this

> Inheritance and ownership of wealth for women
This changed a bit across our time period, in the very early republic, though they inherited wealth it was apparently technically her husband's property (not sure how it was de facto), but as time went on it became her own property, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_rights_of_women_in_history#Roman_law - also "By the Late Republic there were women who owned substantial property and controlled major businesses" from the same article

> Judges & lawyers
From what I've read and understood, Usually they first went to a Praetor who in turn helped them pick a neutral private citizen as a judge from the album iudicum and sometimes they picked a judge themselves - the judge job is meant to reflect this role of a civil arbitrator rather than a praetor - with the Praetor being the final authority. And it appears they did usually employ an advocate/lawyer to argue their case for them ('The ban on fees was abolished by Emperor Claudius, who legalized advocacy as a profession and allowed the Roman advocates to become the first lawyers who could practice openly—but he also imposed a fee ceiling of 10,000 sesterces' - from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_rights_of_women_in_history#Roman_law)
I'd of course love for more specific and better sources that can clear this up once and for all; While these posts do serve as well paying jobs for rhetors, if they're completely inaccurate, we'll figure out alternatives. Also I see all of these occupations less like modern 9-5 jobs, but more like occasional or part time employment at their will (especially for higher classes), and not a career sort of a thing - we'd like to better represent this fact in the future

> Firefighters
We do have an event around this in game but it's temporarily been disabled pending bug fixes, we'll have it back up soon and also a way for your character to get in on the action going forward

> Events for political offices and governorships
We will be expanding this here soon enough, more post specific events, etc and provinces, expansion, revolts and governorships going forward, along with tax farming & some warfare, but these will be added piecemeal over time, starting first with a Senate expansion coming soon

> Consuls need to have bi-monthly events/decisions to make every 2 months
I'd love for some examples so that we can make this into an in-game event
We also have a system of passing laws in the senate planned that'll come in a bit after the Senate update, and of course I am open to any ideas around the same as well

> Roman soldiers
It only became a regular paid profession rather than a conscription/draft after Marian reforms and we'd like to reflect this and make it a possibility with the system of passing laws - our time period actually starts at around 250 B.C.E, quite a bit before this reform historically. Even without the reforms, being drafted and fighting wars and earning military honours is definitely a thing we'll be having in game sooner than later, especially things around how near constant warfare impoverished many small scale land owners, leading to the attempts at reform by the Gracchi

Thank you for your patronage, I'm really glad you're enjoying the game, and I appreciate your contribution here!

[King Zapp]

Thanks for such a detailed response! I really appreciate the effort you put back into my post. I think all of us gamers appreciate responses like these, so hopefully someone will take a look at the discussion and decide to buy the game. It is silly hours of fun!

I have some feedback on a few of the points:

Jobs for women - based on the link there were very few jobs for women. So a woman blacksmith and such is where we can make immediate changes, keeping wetnurse, etc. What is interesting in that specific mention is related to actual business ownership, like brick making businesses. But the jobs are very very limited. What could be interesting for the higher classes, instead of an apprenticeship option, an option to start a business, with a required investment up front in order to actually qualify for it. Perhaps this could be done on a scale, i.e. small business to massive corporation. This doesn't need to scale with the current income of the family like the apprenticeships currently do. And can provide a much higher "paying job" that suits the higher class status?

Education for women is quite fair already. But they were barred or discouraged from Rhetoric as this was a masculine form of education. But to your point there were one or two women in history who broke this mold. I am sure to much public outcry at the time. So perhaps this can only be an event option for a genius or strong women to participate? But with an influence penalty of sorts and a higher cost?

Inheritance and ownership for women. Based on the link it was entirely up to the Paterfamilias whether his daughter would inherit. And initially, and at a middle point of the empire and Republic their entire property transferred to their husbands. So the inheritance information is not clearly "everyone gets a fair share". I am only highlighting this aspect of the game because it is very annoying while playing. I had one family with 5 daughters and 1 son. He was the youngest and all his sister's were married off, and upon his inheritance he received a pittance that dropped him down the classes. I don't imagine that any Paterfamilias in history would want to see his only sons suffer while his daughters are already married off to prominent households.

Judges and lawyers. This is where we might have a slight debate. Because poorer citizens were clients of wealthy citizens who would defend them in such proceedings. Whether this was an actual job role that paid any money seems to be much later. But early to late Republic is seems that the poorer citizens would rely heavily on their richer patrician rhetors to help, and in turn they would do the "bidding" of that family as it vyies for power. Whether that was elections, or creating mobs, etc. All for political and business gain.
Perhaps early game you can select the patrician family that could represent and help you, but I am not sure how that would look and work. Or if it will add much to the game. But a few random missions to go burn a building, or disrupt a prominent politicians speech wouldn't hurt either!

Consuls bi monthly event - in a lot of cases, the consuls were fierce political rivals and on opposite ends. Thoughts of Julius Caesar and Bibilus come to mind, where Bibilus was just doing his best to stop Julius Caesar at every turn. Some events around rivalry, especially faction based (conservatives, reformers, etc) would add a lot of richness. I think that at the start of your political career you should choose a faction to represent. And try to push that agenda with the senate during your consulship. Reformers leads to grain dol, more senate members, changes in govership rules, etc. Conservatives should focus on maintaining the current laws at large, as well as strengthening the already wealthy patrician and plebian base for more robust support. The events do not even need to be too rich and long lasting, but just make it more interesting to be the consul in general. I would love to take on an extremely strong conservative and have the crowd dump faeces on their head (like they did to Bibilus) if for nothing more than a laugh!

I am really looking forward to all the new features. And have already been loving the stuff you have been adding. It's a bit horrible for the cap of wealth on an infant, as you don't exactly choose to play as an infant, so it seems a bit like a punishment for the game randomly killing your Paterfamilias in a random accident. Who's usually forces me to start the game again. So that would be nice to fix that, even if an "uncle" looks after the vast millions for a fee. That would be significantly better than it all disappearing into the ethos.
On this note my Paterfamilias of 2 died once and I got to play as a long forgotten branch of the family. They had no education or jobs, which was extremely annoying, like they had just been lying around drinking while the 2 year old tried to hold everything together. I think that richer families should just automatically educate their kids at least up to rhetor.

I hope that feedback is helpful? And very happy to keep exploring some more consul options with you and factional events.

[Implied Facepalm Deadmeat]

Great game and great discussion, keep it up all of you!

[Implied Facepalm Deadmeat]

Is there a good book on the roman political system? ranks, titles, jobs, political positions, voting rights, familial structure etc?

[King Zapp]

The Twelve Caesars is a great book on the system, as well as the private lives of Romans.

[Implied Facepalm Deadmeat]

Really? I dont remember too much in twelve caesars, I will reread it!
Private lives of romans I think I have on my shelf I will give it a look, ive been suggested this book before.;

Thanks!