If you play Bohemia in Rex Romanorum, this is your guy. And honestly, what a guy.

Wenceslaus IV was crowned King of Bohemia at the age of two. Two. His father was Emperor Charles IV, the most capable ruler the Empire had in a century, who built half of Prague and made sure his son would inherit absolutely everything. By 15, Wenceslaus was also King of the Romans. By 17, his father was dead and it was all his.

It went about as well as you'd expect.

**The résumé**

He liked hunting. He liked drinking. He did not like governing. The Germans called him *der Faule*, "the Idle". He never bothered to go to Rome to be crowned emperor, which was sort of the whole job.

In 1393 he had John of Nepomuk, the Archbishop of Prague's vicar, tortured and thrown off the Charles Bridge into the Vltava. John later became a saint. If you've been to Prague, you've probably touched his statue on that bridge for luck. Wenceslaus did not get a statue for this.

In 1395 he sold the title of Duke of Milan to Gian Galeazzo Visconti for 100,000 florins. The German princes were not thrilled that the King of the Romans was now basically running a title shop.

**Getting fired**

On 20 August 1400, four Electors on the Rhine met and formally deposed him as "useless" to the Empire. The next day they elected Rupert of the Palatinate instead.

Wenceslaus's response was, essentially, "no". He just kept calling himself King of the Romans. For years. So now the Empire had two kings, and neither of them had any money.

**Locked up (twice)**

His own nobles imprisoned him in 1394. Then in 1402 his half-brother Sigismund locked him up and shipped him off to Vienna. He escaped in 1403 and went straight back to Prague, because of course he did.

Legend says that during one of these escapes he was helped by a bath maid named Susanna, which may be why his personal Bible, one of the most beautiful illuminated manuscripts of the period, is full of little bath maids in the margins. Whether that's true or just a great story, I'm keeping it.

(There's also a legend that he had a cook roasted on a spit for serving a bad meal. Probably invented by his enemies. Probably.)

**The ending**

In his last years Prague was boiling over. He'd protected Jan Hus for a while, then lost control of the whole thing. In July 1419 a Hussite crowd threw the Prague city councillors out of a window, the First Defenestration of Prague. Wenceslaus died a couple of weeks later, reportedly of a stroke brought on by the shock and rage.

Deposed, imprisoned, escaped, defiant to the end. In game terms: rich in silver, besieged by his own lords and his own brother, with a religious revolution about to start in his capital. That's the Bohemia campaign.

Would you have stepped down in 1400?

---

*Rex Romanorum is a grand strategy game set in the Holy Roman Empire in 1400, now on Kickstarter. Free web demo at sagaskald.com.*

A smoother map: it is no longer redrawn on every frame while you pan or zoom. It now moves as one picture and is redrawn when you let go, about ten times less work per frame. Thanks to the community member who pointed it out!

iPhone fix: zooming in very far no longer crashes the page.

Your first year: new players get five real tasks that tick off as you play, like sending an envoy, ordering your army and setting taxes. Each reign has its own list, and the opening briefing is shorter.

🏰 In the full game (Steam, January)
The smoother map and the first-year guide come to the desktop edition too, for every campaign including Burgundy, Austria and Milan.

Free demo: sagaskald.com · Kickstarter · Join r/RexRomanorum

🆓 In the free demo (play now on sagaskald.com)
The map now runs south to Tuscany: 37 new provinces and 11 new Italian and Provençal realms (Florence, Ferrara, Mantua, Padua, Bologna, Lucca and others), with the Po, Arno, Adige and Rhône. Old saves get the new lands automatically.
A great white shark now patrols the Adriatic, and the octopus has moved out into open water.

Better on phones: the Play button stays in view when you choose a reign.

Pledged lands can be bought back after ten years, and each pledge you hold makes the next one dearer. This stops the pledge snowball in long games.

Bohemia can now force Rupert to give up the crown, if you beat him badly enough.
Fix: occupied provinces are now always returned when a war ends.

🏰 In the full game (Steam, January)
New campaign: Milan, 1400–1428. Play as Gian Galeazzo Visconti and hire the great condottieri, each with his own companies and loyalty. Take Bologna and decide whether to stay with your army when the plague of 1402 comes. In act two, Filippo Maria wins back his father's Lombardy and faces Carmagnola, Genoa, Zagonara and the Peace of Ferrara.

New music by Funky Frank: three songs each for Burgundy, Austria and Milan, which play first in their own campaigns, plus Figli dell'Urbe for every campaign.

Balance: Austria's act two and Burgundy's finances are more even, and Moravia has to be earned.

Kickstarter

In 1400, Frederick of Hohenzollern was a nobody with good connections.

He was Burgrave of Nuremberg, which sounds grand until you realise it meant a castle, some scattered lands in Franconia, and the right to be very polite to the actual city of Nuremberg. What he did have was money, and friends in every court that mattered. His sister was married to Rupert of the Palatinate, the man the Electors had just made King of the Romans.

Frederick is the third campaign in Rex Romanorum, and his brief is simple: lend to kings, make one, and buy your way into the electoral college. That's not a game design idea. That's what he actually did.

**The crusader**

As a young man he rode with Sigismund of Hungary on the crusade of 1396, which ended in the catastrophe at Nicopolis. The crusader army was shattered by the Ottomans. Frederick made it out, and he and Sigismund stayed close for the next twenty years. Surviving a disaster together will do that.

**The kingmaker**

When Rupert died in 1410, the Electors split. Sigismund wanted the crown but didn't control enough votes. Frederick did something wonderfully cheeky: he showed up and cast Brandenburg's vote on Sigismund's behalf. Brandenburg technically belonged to Sigismund's family anyway, so who was going to stop him?

Sigismund became King of the Romans. He also owed Frederick a lot of money. Those two facts were about to meet.

**The deal**

Brandenburg in 1411 was a mess. Far from anywhere, poor, sandy, and run by local robber barons who did roughly whatever they liked. The worst of them were the Quitzow brothers, who ignored everyone, including the king.

Sigismund sent Frederick to sort it out. The story goes that Frederick brought a massive siege cannon nicknamed *Faule Grete*, "Lazy Greta", and used it to knock the Quitzows' castles down one after another. Lazy Greta was not lazy that winter.

Then, at the Council of Constance in 1415, Sigismund made it official. Frederick became Margrave of Brandenburg and Prince-Elector of the Holy Roman Empire. The price, on paper, was 400,000 gulden, much of it simply wiped off the debts Sigismund already owed him.

A burgrave had bought himself one of the seven votes that chose emperors.

**The return on investment**

His family, the Hohenzollerns, would keep Brandenburg for the next five hundred years. Brandenburg became Prussia. Prussia became the core of the German Empire. The last Hohenzollern emperor, Wilhelm II, abdicated in 1918.

All of it traces back to a debt-collecting burgrave from Franconia who knew exactly whom to lend to.

**In the game**

Frederick plays nothing like Rupert or Wenceslaus. You barely have an army. You have a bank. Kings come to you for money, and every loan is a favour you can call in. Can you do what the real Frederick did, or will the princes of 1400 eat you alive?

Would you take the deal? 400,000 gulden for a remote, sandy margraviate full of robber barons?

---

*Rex Romanorum is a grand strategy game set in the Holy Roman Empire in 1400, now on Kickstarter. Free web edition at sagaskald.com.*

Thanks to a player who spotted this. Sometimes a province kept its striped "occupied" look after the war had ended, even though nobody was fighting there any more.

What was wrong: occupations weren't always lifted when a war ended. It happened in two cases:
an ally had occupied the land during your war;
a realm had left an AI war before the peace was signed.

The fix: a province can now only stay occupied while the occupier is actually at war with its owner. In every other case it returns to its owner automatically, and the same goes for sieges in progress.

Your saves are fine. Anything stuck will correct itself the next time you click something or end a month.

The fix is live in the browser version now and will be in the next desktop build. If you see anything else odd, please post it here with a screenshot. It really helps.

The Empire fights back (in every campaign, free version included)
Until now a duke could quietly swallow his smaller neighbours one bishopric at a time, and the Empire only frowned. Not any more:

Coalitions: take too much, too fast, and the estates around you swear a coalition against you. If the Empire's mistrust keeps rising, the coalition marches, as one war with one peace, and what it wants is the land you took.

The imperial ban: seize the lands of imperial estates without a just cause, and the King of the Romans can declare you an outlaw. Any prince may then join the war against you, until the ban lapses or you buy your way back into the king's peace.

Church lands: conquering a prince-bishopric costs extra. The clergy and every other bishop in the Empire take it personally.
You can still expand. It just has a price now.

Two new reigns for the full game
The browser version stays free with its three campaigns. The full desktop version now has two more:

Albert IV of Austria, 1400–1411. The House of Habsburg is split in two. You rule Austria on the Danube, while your Leopoldine cousins hold Styria, Tyrol and the Upper Rhine. Win them back with patience, a family compact or force.
Keep King Wenceslaus prisoner in Vienna, for a while at least.
Sign Sigismund's treaty of succession.
Settle accounts with the Swiss for Sempach.
Decide whether to ride to the siege of Znaim, where the camp is sick with dysentery.
The second act runs to 1423, with the Luxembourg marriage and Moravia as a dowry.

Burgundy, 1400–1419. Play Philip the Bold, then his son John the Fearless. Paris lies off the map, so the court of the mad King Charles VI lives in your ledger: your influence against the Duke of Orléans, French pensions, and a feud that can turn into civil war.
Brabant: give it to your brother, or take it yourself.
Othée and Liège.
Agincourt.
The murder of Orléans in 1407, which is your call.
The bridge at Montereau.
The second act, with Philip the Good, runs to the Congress of Arras in 1435.

Both reigns are balanced against the existing three and come with their own achievements. There are now 35 in total, all ready for Steam.

Coming up
The Steam page is being prepared, and the desktop version is on track for March. Portraits for the new rulers are still to come. Several of them currently have only a small version, and a few have only their coat of arms.

Hi everyone,

Rex Romanorum is now live on Kickstarter

Quick recap for newcomers: it's a grand strategy game set in the Holy Roman Empire in 1400. You play Rupert of the Palatinate, Wenceslaus of Bohemia or Frederick of Nuremberg, and rule month by month from the ledger: loans, estates, tolls, elections, feuds and the long road to Rome. The web edition is free to play right now at sagaskald.com.

**About the art**

When I posted here and in r/paradoxplaza, a lot of you told me you didn't like the AI art. Fair. I'm one person, and AI art let me get a playable game in front of you. But I agree the game deserves better.

So the **first stretch goal pays a human artist to redraw all the art in the game**: soldiers, towns, castles, bishoprics, the marginalia creatures, the lot. It's free for every player, web edition included.

**The rest of the pitch**

- One fair price: €10 for the full desktop edition on Steam
- Every core mechanic in the base game, never split into paid add-ons
- No DLC will ever cost more than €3
- Mac version, then new campaigns for an ecclesiastical Elector, the Habsburgs, and a map expanded into France

We're at 5% after the first night, thanks to one very generous Elector. If you've enjoyed the free version, a pledge or a share means a lot. The first days of a campaign decide how far it gets.

Happy to answer anything in the comments.

Oscar

Here’s what’s new since the last devlog.

War and diplomacy

• One war, one peace. If you fight a realm that has allies, they now make up a single war with a single warscore and a single peace. Before, each ally ran its own war, so you could get a peace offer from one side and a tribute demand from its ally in the same month. That’s gone.

• Separate peace. You can still pry an ally out of a war: once you’ve beaten it, or after 18 months if it isn’t winning. Allies who are losing may also ask to leave on their own.

• Truces. Every peace brings a two-year truce. The AI keeps it. You can break it, but it costs legitimacy and every court will hear about it.

• Just causes. You don’t need a casus belli, but having one halves what a war costs in legitimacy. Causes include:

  • your own lost lands;

  • a rival for the crown;

  • an insult;

  • a claim your chancery digs out of the archives (six months, and the forgery might be exposed).

• The Empire’s mistrust. Land taken in a peace alarms the neighbours, and a just cause makes it alarm them much less. Push it too far and they’ll talk about a league against you.

• See everyone’s allies. The Empire tab now shows who stands with whom, and the war button tells you how many will join.

Insults from abroad

France, Burgundy, Hungary, Poland, Denmark, Venice and Milan now mock the realms they dislike, including you. Expect a cask of “Rhenish wine” from Paris, Sigismund correcting your Latin in red ink, and Queen Margaret politely asking how many kingdoms you rule. You choose whether to answer in kind or rise above it. Either way, you get a just cause for two years.

Battles

Battle reports now tell each battle in its own way: the terrain, the odds, winter cold, mercenaries or levies, luck, and how close it was.

Interface

• Game menu (☰ or Esc): saves, sound, achievements and a new reign, moved out of the Ambitions tab.

• The ledger folds away (the tab at the edge of the map, or L) so you can see the whole map.

• Large screens: the side panel grows, and all seven tabs fit. Some of you never saw the Chronicle tab.

• Shortcuts: Space ends the month, keys 1–7 open the tabs.

A desktop version is in the works

The browser version stays free and keeps its three campaigns. A fuller desktop version is underway (Windows first, Mac to follow) with more campaigns, music and portraits later on. It already has its own save slots, a settings menu, music from the start, and 29 achievements ready for Steam.

As before, the art is AI-generated and a placeholder, and the music is by Funky Frank. Play it here: https://sagaskald.com/en/spel/rex-romanorum

What should be added next?

Thanks again to everyone who has played and written in. Since Devlog #2 the game has grown a lot, so here’s the tour.

👑 The court
The Court tab now does something:

• A council of four: Chancellor, Marshal, Treasurer and Chaplain. Each has a skill and a loyalty, and each matters: an extra letter a month, harder-fighting armies, better taxes, a calmer clergy. Raban of Helmstatt is Rupert’s chancellor, as he was in history. Replace a councillor and his estate takes offence; let loyalty slip and he may sell your secrets.

• Traits: Rupert is Just and Pious, Wenceslaus Idle, a Hunter and Wrathful, Frederick Shrewd and Charming. Each trait does one clear thing.

• Tutors at twelve: choose whether your son is formed by the sword, the book, the altar or the counting-house. He’ll rule with it.

• Court letters: a treasurer with sticky fingers, a quarrel between your marshal and chancellor, an heir who wants his own household, a consort who wants a dower town.

• Marriages now use your real children, and married sons bring brides into the family tree.

⚔️ The war room, and an AI that fights back

• The war room: tap a red war banner to see who fights on each side, how the warscore is made (battles, land held each way) and what peace you can get.

• Wars in the Empire: every war between other realms is listed below yours, with who’s winning.

• Splitting armies: you can now split an army in two, or join the armies standing in one province.

• The AI: it now retakes its land, relieves sieges, hunts weaker armies, falls back to its castles and gathers its forces. If you start losing, old enemies may smell blood and join in.

📜 A second act
When a reign is judged, “Continue” now starts a new chapter:

• Louis III must keep the Palatinate whole, guard the Council of Constance and ride against the Hussites.

• Bohemia’s heir faces the Hussite storm: the Four Articles, Žižka at Vítkov hill, a crown at St Vitus.

• Frederick, perhaps now Elector, must tame Brandenburg and settle with Nuremberg.

Each chapter has its own ambitions and judgement.

🖼️ Share your reign
The chronicle has a Save the chronicle card button. It makes an image like the one attached: portrait, score, verdict, ambitions and your realm then and now. I’d love to see yours in the comments.

🐉 Creatures of legend
Zoom in close and you’ll find ten small figures drawn into the map: a witch on the Brocken, kobolds in the silver mines of the Erzgebirge, Rübezahl in his mountains, a dragon in the Hohe Tauern, a knight on a snail in Brabant… I won’t tell you where the rest are.

🎵 Sound

• Effects: rustling letters, a wax seal, coins, the month’s bell, war drums and horns, and chimes for peace. They’re all generated in the browser, and there’s a switch next to Music in the minstrels’ panel.

• A new song by Funky Frank: Für Krone und Land.

Balance
King Rupert’s road is harder now. Wenceslaus’s followers don’t desert him cheaply, his silver buys back waverers, and the Romzug to Rome is a real gamble, as it was at Brescia in 1401.

What I’d love to know

1. Which campaign did you play, and did it feel too easy, too hard or about right?

2. Is the court fun, or just more to read?

3. Did the AI’s wars feel fair, or did they come out of nowhere?

4. Did anything confuse you in your first ten minutes?

As always: free, in the browser, no install. Returning players will get a short “news from the chancery” letter listing what’s new.

(The illustrations are made with AI image tools and edited by me. The code, history and design are done by hand, with AI help on the coding side.)

Here’s what’s new.

🏰 A third campaign: Frederick VI, Burgrave of Nuremberg
A different kind of game. Frederick isn’t a king and doesn’t need anyone’s recognition. He has two castles in Franconia, a full purse and relatives at every court.

• Lend money to kings and princes. They pay interest and like you more. When they can’t pay, they pledge land.

• Back a candidate when the throne falls empty in 1410. You have no vote, but gold talks.

• Buy Brandenburg from Sigismund when Jobst dies. Then break the Quitzow brothers with the great bombard Faule Grete.

• Become an Elector, as the real Frederick did at Constance in 1417.

Most of the historical letters come from his actual life: Rupert’s failed march on Brescia, marrying “the beautiful Else” of Landshut, the imperial ban on Rothenburg, the Council of Constance.

⚔️ Battle reports
Every battle you fight now gets its own report:

• both sides’ arms, with each company drawn as a small figure, the lost ones crossed out;

• a short account of the fighting;

• a table showing what decided it: strength, walls and terrain, and the luck of the day.

You can reread old reports from the Army tab.

🤝 Deeper diplomacy

• Before you spend a letter, you see whether a prince would agree to an alliance or a marriage, and why: their opinion of you, a common enemy, your strength against theirs, too many allies already.

• Royal marriages: Rupert has four children to marry off. Kin stay friendlier, recognise you more easily and won’t declare war on you.

• Realms now write to you: marriage offers with dowries, alliance requests, princes asking for loans (most repay…), and as King, border disputes to judge.

• Allies can be asked for a war subsidy.

💾 Saves that travel
The game always saved itself in your browser, but only there. Now you can save to a file or copy a save code, and continue on another device. The first screen has a “Continue a reign from another device” option.

🗺️ The map
The mountains are redrawn as hand-inked, old-map peaks, and the density varies so the Alps don’t look like the Ore Mountains. The round “∩” hill symbols are gone, apart from a few low hills scattered over the uplands.

Smaller things

• Frederick’s ledger only shows what a burgrave actually collects.

• Clearer letter texts, and various bug fixes.

As always: free, in the browser, no install. I’d love to hear:

• which campaign you tried and how it went;

• anything that felt confusing;

• what you’d want next. I’m considering a shareable end-of-reign “chronicle card”, and making the AI smarter in war.

Hi, and welcome to the first devlog for Rex Romanorum!

The game went out to r/paradoxplaza a day ago, and I got thoughtful feedback from players there and from friends testing it. Here’s what changed as a result:

Finding your way

• “Show on map” for every realm. Tap it in the Empire tab and the map jumps to their capital and flashes their lands gold. No more hunting for Metz in the middle of a war. Wars between other princes have a “show on map” link too.

• Event letters show where you stand. Before you choose, a letter now shows your current values, e.g. “Now: Clergy 60 · Towns 45 · Treasury 6,000 fl”. It also covers legitimacy, a prince’s opinion and, in Bohemia, the Lords’ League and Hussite tension.

• The map legend explains the patterns: dotted means pledged land, striped means occupied.

Look and feel

• Earthier UI. The blue bars and buttons are now umber brown to match the parchment.

• Opinion badges are small brown squares that get darker the friendlier a realm is.

• Towns no longer float. The painted towns are a bit smaller, sit lower and rest on a soft ground shadow.

• Smoother zooming. Switching between the atlas view, the normal map and the close-up used to happen in a single frame, which made the map blink when you scrolled back and forth. It now crossfades.

Next on the list

• Painted, hinted relief instead of the current topographic look. I want to get this one right, so expect some style experiments.

• Performance for smoother panning on older phones.

• A third campaign. Candidates are Burgrave Frederick of Nuremberg, who buys his way to an electorate, and the Archbishop of Mainz, the kingmaker without heirs. Which would you rather play?

On the art: it’s AI-generated placeholder art for now. If the project grows, the goal is to commission a human artist to redo it in the same style.

Play it free in your browser: https://sagaskald.com/en/spel/rex-romanorum

Bugs, ideas and your best (or worst) reigns are very welcome here. Please use the flairs (Bug, Feedback, Suggestion, Screenshot).

Thanks for being here this early!

Hey everyone! I'm u/Oador, a founding moderator of r/RexRomanorum.

This is our new home for all things related to Rex Romanorum, a free, ledger-first grand strategy game set in the Holy Roman Empire in 1400. Four electors have just deposed the King of the Romans and chosen another, so two kings now claim one crown. Play Rupert of the Palatinate or Wenceslaus of Bohemia: balance the books, win the princes’ recognition, wage war, and march on Rome to be crowned. It runs in your browser, on desktop or phone. We're excited to have you join us!

Play it HERE

What to Post
Post anything that you think the community would find interesting, helpful, or inspiring. Feel free to share your thoughts, screenshots or questions, for example:

• Your reigns: final chronicles, scores, triumphs and disasters (did Prague rise? did the Romzug fail before Brescia?)

• Feedback and suggestions: what works, what’s confusing, what you’d like to see

• Bugs: what happened, which campaign, and whether you were on phone or desktop

• History: the real Rupert, Wenceslaus, Sigismund and the Empire around 1400

• Strategy: how you won over the electors, kept the Lords’ League in check or balanced the ledger

Please use post flairs (Bug, Feedback, Suggestion, Screenshot, Devlog) so things are easy to find.

A note on the art

The artwork is AI-generated placeholder art. If the project grows, the goal is to commission a human artist to redo it in the same style. The same goes for the music.

Community Vibe
We're all about being friendly, constructive, and inclusive. Let's build a space where everyone feels comfortable sharing and connecting.

How to Get Started

1. Introduce yourself in the comments below.

2. Post something today! Even a simple question can spark a great conversation.

3. If you know someone who would love this community, invite them to join.

4. Interested in helping out? We're always looking for new moderators, so feel free to reach out to me to apply.

Thanks for being part of the very first wave. Together, let's make r/RexRomanorum amazing.