Greetings All! We’ve had a lot of questions posted public and via emails so just wanted to post a update to hopefully explain our position on Historical Accuracy Versus Gamplay, and allow for further discussion and player input on the subject.
Of course historical accuracy is high on our agenda when planning game mechanics, and we hope to include mechanics which simulate how it must have been to live in ancient times. It is hugely important though that there is balance, and that there is a game to play at the end which is fun, I am sure you appreciate it is tricky to get these factors to marry up perfectly.
As far as possible we would like the game to be historically accurate, however at this point it is not possible to model the entire roman empire and beyond, so some artistic license and suspension of disbelief will be required to create a dual faction, multi cultural environment suitable for an immersive sandbox world.
We can choose a starting point, based upon a point in time in ancient history as we know it, but after that players will have to write their own history for this world.
Firstly let me clarify the main difference between Race and Faction, as currently intended.
We would like players to be able to choose a heritage/race/ethnicity for their character - not all romans were born in rome, and it is perfectly possible to choose a ‘Barbarian’ race and pledge allegiance to Rome, or vow to resist Roman oppression, it is also possible to choose a Roman heritage, but prefer to live free from the confines of Roman rule.
In other words, race and faction are intended to be entirely different choices and not necessarily indicative or exclusive of each other. In the Roman world, you were either simply with Rome, or against it.
I am sure many of you are aware that the term Barbarian’ originates from the Greek word βάρβαρος (barbaros). Hence the Greek idiom “πᾶς μὴ Ἕλλην βάρβαρος” (pas mē Hellēn barbaros) which literally means “whoever is not Greek is a barbarian”.
The Romans, as huge Hellenophiles took a similar meaning from the term, and it is in this sense we shall use it.
You are free to roleplay your ethnicity however you like, and there will be race specific buildings, craftables and religion to support your roleplay. You may also choose to either accept Roman rule, and be a roman citizen or resist if you prefer and be a ‘Barbarian’ rebel. It is technically possible to remain neutral, or try to, although this is somewhat dependant on whether that is tolerated by other players, again, you are either with or against Rome, there is little middle ground.
Hopefully with this approach we can allow for the natural development of politics, including inter-faction friction rather than just red versus blue. When you consider that both factions have to be well balanced, in order for the project to function as a game, (can you imagine the moaning if the Romans have a huge advantage over less technologically advanced Barbarian factions, even if this is historically accurate, it doesn’t make for great gameplay) it will be very difficult to fully explore every tribe/culture that the romans were up against and in doing so, you would have to create in effect a limitless number of different games within one game, depending on the race someone chose. Especially with regard to politics, there needs to be a lot of scope for players to shape this rather than have it forced on them, and we hope that an open approach to this can be adopted.
We hope to find a believable and practical way to counter this in our game world, one such way would be to begin our storyline with a barbarian uprising against Rome, in which all tribes/races on the opposing side can band together against ‘Rome’ and operate out of their equivalent encampment town.
We hope over the coming weeks to share some of our gameplay ideas and mechanics in greater detail with you all, which will hopefully help to put this in perspective, and allow players to get involved in fine tuning those.
In the meantime, we have to bear in mind, that although we would like the game to be as historically accurate as far as is possible, in particular with regard to crafting processes, equipment available, lifestyle choices and what mattered in the life of ancient people - it really does have to be a game ‘based on’ Ancient Life, rather than actually be an ancient life simulator.
Its worth bearing in mind too, that scholarly opinion is divided on many aspects of ancient life, especially with regard to the fall of the empire and it is sometimes difficult to pin down precisely, so we will have to do a certain amount of interpretation of the facts to see how concepts will fit within workable game mechanics.
I am sure you all appreciate that this is a massive endeavor for an indie development team, so we have to be realistic in what we set out to achieve initially.
I hope this helps answer some of the questions that have been asked on our facebook page and forums, and I look forward to hearing other peoples opinions and suggestions on this matter.
