Civis: The Eternal City

Rome does not fall in a day. It falls through a hundred small decisions made by men who believed they were saving it. In Civis, you are one of those men. Play a single senator's lineage across four generations of Roman history, from the Gracchan land reforms of 138 BC through the death of Augustus in 14 AD. Rise through the offices of the Cursus Honorum, build and protect your family dynasty, navigate the factional politics of the Senate, and survive a Republic that is tearing itself apart in slow motion. This is not your standard map & menu game. Battles happen, campaigns are fought, and military glory matters. But the real contest takes place in the Senate chamber, the dinner party, the morning Salutatio, where your clients queue at dawn, and the private conversations that decide elections before a single vote is cast. A Republic in Decline Civis follows a defined dramatic arc: 138 BC to 14 AD, the Gracchan crisis to the death of Augustus. Your playthrough bends that arc; it does not break it. Play as a reformist, a conservative, or a pragmatic opportunist and watch the same historical pressures produce different catastrophes. Era I — The Gracchan Crisis (138–110 BC) Land reform, tribunician radicalism, and the first political murder on the steps of the Capitol. The rules of Roman politics are being rewritten in real time. Choose your position carefully. It will define your family for generations. Era II — The Marian Revolution (110–82 BC) Marius wins six consulships and reforms the legions. Soldiers now owe their loyalty to their general, not the state. The Social War grants Italian citizenship too late to prevent the resentment it was meant to cure. Sulla is on the horizon. Era III — The Late Republic (82–44 BC) The institutions that held Rome together are intact on paper and hollow in practice. Everyone knows what is coming. Nobody can stop it. The question is which side of history your family stands on when it arrives. Era IV — The Augustan Settlement (44 BC–14 AD) The Republic is preserved in name and abolished in fact. Augustus calls himself First Citizen. The Senate still meets. Your family must decide how to survive, and what survival costs. Core Systems The Salutatio — Dawn Ritual Each morning your clients arrive seeking favors, patronage, and political cover. Read their needs, identify the resource they are asking for, and choose the rhetorical approach that gets you the best terms. The clients you help become the votes you can count on. The ones you disappoint become the whispers you cannot silence. The Disputatio — Oratory Build your rhetorical argument from a scaffold of classical techniques, apply the gestural language of Chironomia, and deliver a speech evaluated by an audience that knows the difference between Logos and Pathos. Win in the Senate, the courts, or the Forum, each arena rewards a different approach. The Convivium — Dinner Politics The dinner party was Rome's most effective political venue because nothing said over wine was ever officially said. Arrange your guests deliberately. Invite a gossip from a rival family and see what she knows. Four rounds of negotiation, intelligence-gathering, and alliance-building, with guests who are doing the same to you. The Domus — Your Household Move through the rooms of a Roman house that reflects your family's current fortunes. Manage the wife whose social network may know things your spies do not. Tend the Lararium. Manage the household taberna attached to your property and help its tenants grow the business, and your profits, over time. The Leges — Legislation Move a law through the Senate from initial proposal to ratification or defeat. Build coalitions, trade votes, invoke religious procedure to delay hostile motions, and watch the Republic's institutional health shift with each bill that passes or fails. The legislation you pass or kill now shapes the era your grandchildren inherit Archetype-Driven History Civis does not force historical figures into your game. Instead it scans the characters in your world, identifies which of them most closely matches a historical archetype based on their traits and the current state of the Republic's pressure variables, and bends the world to allow that character to follow a historically recognizable path. A senator who has completed his education, belongs to a family sympathetic to the Populares, and carries the Demagogue behavioral tag may be drawn into the Julius Caesar archetype and begin making decisions that echo Caesar's path. But now, he is a product of your specific playthrough's history. If the Gracchi succeed and land reform defuses the underlying pressures, perhaps no Caesar emerges at all. Archetypes are engines for dramatic situations, not historical reenactments. The Political Families of Rome Ten competing Gentes pursue their own careers and agendas independent of the player. The man you humiliated in court at the start of Era I may be Consul by Era II, and he has not forgotten. Each family sits somewhere on the gradient between Optimates and Populares, and that position shifts as the Republic's pressure variables push everyone toward the poles. Marriage into these families is a political negotiation. Each candidate carries hidden behavioral tags that affect your household for generations. Nuba, a wealthy freedwoman with access to Rome's great houses, offers introductions — and for a price, a deep vetting service that reveals what the family would prefer you not know before signing the contract. A Republic That Can Die Six institutional variables track the Republic's health across every era. These are based on common pressures historians identify as causes of the Republic's fall, modeled as a living system that your decisions accelerate or slow. - Auctoritas Senatus — The Senate's collective legitimacy. When it collapses, magistrates stop obeying not because they are ordered to but because they have calculated that they can get away with it. - Fides Militum — Legion loyalty to the state rather than to individual commanders. When it breaks, the legions follow their general home. - Annona — Grain supply and urban mood. A hungry city produces the kind of mob politics that gives demagogues their openings. - Concordia Italica — The satisfaction of Rome's Italian allies. Ignore it long enough and you get the Social War. - Ius et Lex — The integrity of the legal system. When courts become tools of factional warfare, everyone knows it and no one can say so. - Concordia — Political cooperation between factions. Its collapse is not a symptom of the Republic's disease. It is the disease. Characters Who Remember Every significant NPC in Civis is driven by the Personica AI engine, a proprietary LLM-integration system built alongside the game for Unreal Engine 5. Each character carries a persistent memory, a consistent personality built from the same trait system that defines the player, and the ability to respond to what your character has actually done rather than to a generic player avatar. Personica runs locally. Civis operates completely offline using an included llama.cpp server and GGUF model that run seamlessly in the background. No API tokens, no subscription, no cloud dependency. The game's design, art assets, and sound are entirely human-created. The only AI-generated content is some narrative text of the game itself; sandbox dialogue, flavor responses, and history summaries. The Dynasty You Build Each household is led by a Paterfamilias- not just a familial title but a legal status with specific rights and obligations. Guide your children through the traditional Roman developmental stages. Arrange marriages that cement political alliances or quietly undermine a rival family's prospects. Work with your wife to leverage her traits and connections. The children you raise inherit your virtues, your debts, your enemies, and your opportunities. The dynasty you build in Era I is the foundation (or the liability), that your descendants navigate in Eras II, III, and IV.