Quantum simulations of lattice gauge theories for the foreseeable future will be hampered by limited resources. The historical success of improved lattice actions in classical simulations strongly suggests that Hamiltonians with improved discretization errors will reduce quantum resources, i.e., require $≳2^𝑑$ fewer qubits in quantum simulations for lattices with 𝑑-spatial dimensions. In this work, we consider $𝒪⁡(𝑎^2)$-improved Hamiltonians for pure gauge theories and design the corresponding quantum circuits for its real-time evolution in terms of primitive gates. An explicit demonstration for $ℤ_2$ gauge theory is presented including exploratory tests using the ibm_perth device.