http://www.langmaker.com/paravia/

Brief Introduction

"You are the ruler of a 15th century Italian city state. If you rule well,
you will receive higher titles. The first player to become king or queen
wins. Life expectancy then was brief, so you may not live long enough to win.

"The computer will draw a map of your state. The size of the area in the wall
grows as you buy more land. The size of the guard tower in the upper left
corner shows the adequacy of your defenses. If it shrinks, equip more
soldiers. If the horse and plowman is touching the top wall, all your land is
in production. Otherwise you need more serfs, who will migrate to your state
if you distribute more grain than the minimum demand. If you distribute less
grain, some of your people will starve, and you will have a high death rate.
High taxes raise money, but slow down economic growth."- George Blank

Version History

Santa Paravia & Fiumaccio was originally designed by George Blank. It was
first released commercially in 1979 for the TRS-80, and was later published
by Keypunch Software for the Commodore 64 and the Atari. It has also been
ported to the Apple ][ and Amiga. Inspired by the classic BASIC game of
Hammurabi, Santa Paravia set a new standard when it was released, with its
exciting graphical display and the verisimilitude of its Italian setting. The
best of many early attempts at "guns & butter" strategy games, it represents
an important evolutionary milestone in the history of computer games, and can
be seen as an ancestor of Sid Meier's Civilization.

I ported Santa Paravia & Fiumaccio to Windows. The
Windows version preserves the "classic" text-based interface, if you are
feeling nostalgic, or you can play the game in map-view, using the new menu
commands.

The Windows open source code, written in Visual Basic, is available, and if
you are a programmer, I welcome your submissions. If someone will design the
bitmap for a toolbar, I will write the code for the toolbar. Other ideas for
additions: adding an option for the tournament rules, adding a history graph
of key statistics, adding more detailed online help, refining the underlying
simulation engine, etc.

Jeffrey Henning

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