Santa Paravia and Fiumaccio is a video game in which each player becomes the ruler of a fledgling Italian city-state around the year 1400. The goal of the game is to become king or queen; to do so the player must manage their city-state so that it may grow.
History
The game, by George Blank, first appeared in the December 1978 issue of SoftSide magazine, and was published by Instant Software for sale on tape cassette as a computer game for the Radio Shack TRS-80, the Apple II, TI 99/4,and the Commodore PET. It has been translated into many languages and has been ported to the Palm Pilot.
Gameplay
The game consists of yearly turns; each turn involves the allocation of grain and funds, attempting to grow the colony in both population and size. A ruler must ensure that sufficient grain supplies are available to feed his people; by distributing excess grain, a ruler can encourage more citizens to move into his city-state. However, often famine and rats cause grain reserves to diminish.
Funds can be spent to purchase more land, military forces, or various types of structures. These structures include revenue producing mills and markets as well as prestigious palaces and cathedrals. (The SoftSide version had a code error that allowed you to keep all your grain, even when you went bankrupt.)
Based loosely on the text game Hamurabi, Santa Paravia and Fiumaccio was an early God game. It combined 'guns and butter' economic tradeoffs with graphic development of a kingdom with buildings being constructed and shown on the screen as well as character development, shown as progressive promotions from baron to king.
Source: Wikipedia, "Santa Paravia en Fiumaccio", available under the CC-BY-SA License.
Back of Box:
Enter the world of 1400 A.D. and become the ruler of Santa Paravia, an Italian city-state.
Being a ruler has its advantages, but it isn't all fun and games. First, you have to deal with your serfs--good help is hard to come by you know. Then you have to worry about your grain harvests, building mills, and marketing your goods.
You also can't forget about leveling taxes, and setting the law of the land. Then there's the problem of being invaded, and dealing with the clergy (you'll love that).
In the end you'll find Santa Paravia to be a fun, mentally stimulating strategy game in which you balance the forces of nature, economics, soldiers, merchants, clergy, and your serfs to make your little kingdom the Paris of the Midwest, or something like that.
Features include: excellent graphics, strategy, and many hours of learning fun for all ages. For one to five players.
