Historical simulation video games!

grashopa

Crusader Kings is a great game to try if you are interested in medieval European history. You control a family dynasty from 1066 to 1400 and try to see how much land your family can control. The game is not so much about the land as it is about the people. It is a lot of fun for role playing as there are thousands of people in the game all with different stats and traits, and a unique random event system that guides what happens to them - love, friendships, rivalries etc. For example your 23 year old king of England might go insane, kill his sister then get excommunicated by the pope. Resulting in rebellions by your vassals and wars with your neighbors. This makes things much more interesting than simply deciding who to fight with next.

This game really got me into history as I tried to find out what really happened to the king of England vs what happened in my game Smile

Anyone else have a favorite historical game?

I am also looking for other simulation games like this one. Taking historical Europe and giving all the thousands of nobles in charge stats and traits, friendships and rivalries and then seeing what would happen as they interacted was genius. Simply watching the game and not playing is fun to see how the world turns out!

liljp617

Stronghold and Stronghold: Crusader I played for a long long time. Great RTSs centered around the medieval times and obviously The Crusades. Great fun...

Not sure if it's exactly the game type you're looking for but whatever. You can probably get both for $40 total these days or less..

The Civilization series is good as well if you're into that type of game...

mejo1900

Civilization is good, but it has some serious historical inaccuracies.

poppat

I would be interested to hear how inaccurate some games are, to help me wioth my MSc dissertation.

Cheers

poppat

deanhills

Sphaerenkern

I play FreeCol (Colonization in OpenSource) sometimes. You find out about important historical persons in the game (you can choose some of them to get different advantages), but you won't learn much about the actual developing of the history since you colonize America quite freely - maybe your declaration of independence will be earlier than 1776, maybe the Danes or Portuguese will colonize America...

{name here}

lagoon

I think it doesn't really matter, as it is the gameplay that you buy a game for.

laumalta

Im an Historian, from Brazil, and kinda liked some old games...
Here in Brazil we have an Europe centered History (because the firs real good Universities were established with french support, mainly...)... So we dont know much about America (the continent, not just U.S.A., lol) history (or African and Asian history)...

Well, about America history, I liked that old game "Colonization" (Sid Meyer´s). Lots of cool info... the game doesnt go deep into subjects, but call attention to certain interesting themes (like "indentured servents", or famous or not that famous people that had important role - Bartolomeu de las Casas, Adam Smith, Jacok Fuger, Simon Bolivar, etc, etc)... You dont do "research" you call those people to the "Continental Congress" and they bring some benefits to you...

And I think its a way better game than civilization... but Im a micro-management ******... hehehehe... There are some open source projects improving the game so, maybe by mid-2009 a new upgraded version will be available...

Uncharted Waters: New Horizons is cool too... you can learn a bit about ships, currents, winds, wich product was produced at certain places, natural wonders, etc...

About Medieval Role-Playing... Europa 1400 seems very cool... hard to find thou (at least here in Brazil...) I´ve never played it... but seems really cool...

Romance of the Three Kingdoms... nice game...

And about historical mistakes in games.... well... I think it must be really easy to find, as I doubt most of the game publishers minds hiring historians to check stuff... I mean... if hollywood screws up all the time and the so called "History Channel" is the most embarassing thing Ive ever watched (they dont even try: they just lie to people: propaganda... not science)... we cant be that hard on games...

Well... just some tips... but again... I love old games... (old stuff in general... Im an historian after all... hehehe)....

And sorry about the bad english... Im learning it through internet forums like this one... hehe...

sambuddha

Perhaps the age of empire series(althouth a bit hypothetical) was a good start with historical video games. The graphics was also very good.

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