How the Update 1 systems work and how to use them. All of it runs through the decree box.
Every system in this update is operated by writing decrees, the same way military orders already work. You type what you want in your own words. The game reads the decree, works out which systems it touches, and applies the result. There are no separate menus or buttons for these actions; the panels on the dashboard show you the state of each system, and the decree box changes it.
Some things worth knowing about how the reading works:
You can commission public works. Twelve types exist: amphitheatre, circus, forum, temple, baths, aqueduct, harbor works, roads, walls, palace, triumphal arch, and granaries. Each type has a cost range and a build time; the game sets the exact figures from how ambitious your decree sounds.
A project takes 30% of its cost up front and drains the treasury monthly while it builds. If the treasury cannot cover the up-front cost, the project is announced and quietly shelved — you keep your money and get nothing. Costs by type run from around 25M denarii for a triumphal arch to 500M for a palace.
Once a project exists you can rush it, pause it, resume it, or abandon it, all by decree. Naming the project helps but is optional when you only have one.
Rushing raises the monthly cost by half and roughly doubles the chance of accidents. Abandoning a project costs popularity and legacy — the half-built shell is remembered.
Every building month carries a small chance of a cost overrun (price up 10%, two months added) or, more rarely, a collapse. A collapse kills workers, ends the project, costs popularity and legacy, and produces a crisis event. Rushed projects collapse much more often. Palaces, harbors, and amphitheatres are the riskiest types; roads, walls, and granaries the safest.
A finished building applies permanent bonuses by type — aqueducts raise the water supply, harbors raise trade revenue, baths lower crime, granaries add grain reserve, temples add piety — plus a popularity boost. You can then hold a dedication ceremony by decree for a further one-time boost. Completions add to a legacy score, which is shown on the panel and gives your end-of-reign Wikipedia article a monuments section. Collapsed and abandoned works appear there too.
Each scenario seeds a household of named family members — Nero gets Agrippina, Octavia, and Britannicus; Commodus gets Lucilla and Crispina; Vespasian gets Titus, Domitian, and Caenis. Custom emperors get a generated household. Each member has three stats, all 0–100: ambition, loyalty, and standing (their public popularity).
By decree you can exile, execute, recall from exile, arrange marriages, grant offices, or adopt a member as heir. Naming them works; describing them works too.
Ambition rises when a member's standing is higher than your popularity. A member with ambition 60+ and loyalty 40 or below counts as a threat: they raise conspiracy risk every month, and when a conspiracy forms it is named after them — the plot against you cites your own sister, not a random senator. The family panel flags threats with a warning marker.
Members age and can die naturally. A death produces an event and clears the heir slot if the heir died.
When adopting an heir, eligible family members (sons, daughters, siblings, cousins, age 14+) appear at the top of the candidate list with effects drawn from their actual stats. Adopting an outsider still works, as it did for the best emperors. You can also adopt directly by decree ("adopt titus as my heir").
The major provinces have named governors with three stats: competence, integrity, and loyalty. Scenarios seed six historical ones (Galba governs Nero's Hispania; Pertinax governs Commodus's Syria). Click a province on the map to see who runs it.
Appoint by decree. Describe the person and the game generates their stats to match: ask for a competent administrator and you get competence; install a crony and you get loyalty with a discount on integrity; appoint your horse and you get a governor with the statistics of a horse.
Naming a serving governor to a new province is a transfer: they keep their stats, and their old province falls vacant behind them.
Send a governor before the Senate and the verdict is decided by the game from his actual integrity and the Senate's current mood. Conviction: popularity and Senate confidence rise, his estates are confiscated to the treasury, and the provinces take note. Acquittal: the Senate resents the failed show-trial and you get your governor back with a grudge.
A mob expectation meter (0–100) rises 2 points a month — 3 when grain is short, because bread and circuses are one appetite. At 80 the city formally demands games. At 95 Rome riots: popularity −6, crime up. Holding games resets the meter.
Games come in three scales — modest (8–15M denarii), grand (30–60M), spectacular (90–160M) — read from your decree's ambition. The payoff in popularity and arena satisfaction is larger the hungrier the mob was, so games land hardest when the meter is high. Two catches: spectacular games need a completed stone amphitheatre (without one they run at grand scale), and holding lavish games while the granaries are nearly empty backfires — the cheers curdle into chants about bread.
Only for wars actually won in the last twelve months. A real triumph: popularity +6–10, legion loyalty up, legacy banked, mob sated. A triumph with no victory behind it: the Senate grants a sneering ovation and your standing with them drops.
You can sponsor named gladiators or charioteers (up to four). Their fame compounds, their wins reflect on you, and a famous gladiator can die on the sand — which produces city-wide mourning and a decision about funeral games. You can also declare for the Blues or the Greens of the circus: half the city roars your name, the other half sharpens its wit.
A piety stat (0–100) tracks how Rome reads your respect for the gods. Traditional religious decrees raise it; radical and lawless decrees lower it; it drifts back toward the middle on its own. Senators read omens too — piety has a small effect on Senate outcomes.
The lower your piety, the more omen events fire: lightning on the Capitol, prodigies, the sacred chickens refusing their grain. Each comes with piety-restoring choices. Below 30, a Vestal scandal lands on your desk — as Pontifex Maximus, you judge it.
Off by default; with it off the Senate works exactly as before. With it on, the Senate is four named blocs per scenario — Commodus faces the Aurelian Old Guard, the Court Favourites, the Stoic Opposition, and the Danube War Lobby — each holding a share of the 600 seats, with an ideology and a disposition toward you (0–100).
Off by default; with it off, crisis events end with the classic three fixed bearing choices. With it on, the three choices are written for the specific crisis, taking into account your decree and what the political system did to it — a blocked decree gets choices about carrying a defeat. The trade-offs stay within the same bounds as the fixed choices (±3 to popularity, Senate confidence, Praetorian loyalty), and if generation fails the fixed choices appear instead.
Set in Game Setup. About half of all months are open events — light flavour where you set the agenda — in every mode.
On the decree screen, once per month, you can pay 5M denarii to take the auspices before submitting. Write your draft decree first, then press the button: a haruspex reads the entrails and tells you — in omen language that is nonetheless accurate — how extreme the game considers your draft and how sensitive the public reaction is likely to be. Redraft if you don't like the liver.
Two collapsed controls sit under the decree box, next to the existing military-detection override. Both are for the rare case where you know better than the classifier.
Forces how your decree is enacted instead of letting the game classify it: SENATE (put it to a vote), EDICT (rule by decree), MILITARY, DIPLO, PROCLAIM (just words — no mechanical action), or APPOINT. Resets to AUTO every month.
Each of the six action systems — officials, family, governors, buildings, games, religion — has its own AUTO / ON / OFF row. AUTO lets that system's detector decide. ON forces it to read your decree ("I said build the temple and it didn't detect it"). OFF switches that system's detection off entirely. These persist across turns.
| Setting | Where | Tier | Default |
|---|---|---|---|
| Opera Publica (buildings) | Game Setup | Premium | Off |
| Domus Augusta (family) | Game Setup | Premium | Off |
| Provincial Governors | Game Setup | Premium | Off |
| Bread & Circuses | Game Setup | Premium | Off |
| Religion & Imperial Cult | Game Setup | Premium | Off |
| Senate Factions | Game Setup | Free | Off |
| AI Crisis Aftermath | Game Setup | Free | Off |
| Event Generation (Classic / Hybrid / Dynamic) | Game Setup | Dynamic & Hybrid are Premium | Classic |
| Enactment method override | Decree screen | Free | Auto (resets monthly) |
| Action detection overrides | Decree screen | Free | Auto (persists) |
| Augury | Decree screen (Religion on) | Premium | — |