Is making the key options or UX variables open in Settings a way to short circuit these testing expenses? Your OSS target audience should be more than comfortable customizing their own experience.
You raise a good point about Rome. The patron/client model seemed to keep the social peace for quite a while. Not unlike the social welfare system that is described in the article. Additionally, I think the development of firearms and cheap/easy to use weapons actually had the opposite effect that you propose.
Specifically, the development of firearms led to a profound expansion of the democratization of violence. This is the meaning of the quote, "God made Man but Sam Colt made them equal."
Indeed, it wasn't the high technology that was important but how that technology reduced the need to invest our only truly scarce resource, time, in order to kill.
Pick up a gun, of almost any kind and in minutes you will be able to kill a similarly armed opponent. Now try the same thing with a bow and arrow or a sword (or more commonly a spear).