Today is Christmas when we celebrate the joy of Christ’s birth.
by Jack Le Moine
Turn based strategy games: Civilization still rules. This game covers the entire history of world civilizations. Another game I’ve played a lot is Europa Universalis. A related game to EU is Crusader Kings. It differs from EU. Play EU as a country; play CK as a noble family. On the surface both games look the same but the different focus makes gameplay vastly different. For the nineteenth century and early twentieth century, there is Victoria. For all of these games there are new editions.
Military themed games are good because war is already a contest between two or more sides. I believe that the Ageod games are the best military history simulations because they are so detailed. There are games for The Roman Civil Wars, The Thirty Years War, The Wars of the Spanish Succession, The Wars of Frederick the Great, the early American Wars, The Wars of Napoleon, The Civil War, and World War I. There is a steep learning curve but the game mechanics are substantially the same for the entire series, so once you have learned one, the rest are easier.
I play the Total War series the most because they are easier. Unlike Ageod, Total War games allow the player to fight battles in detail in real-time.
The EU folks have a World War II game called Hearts of Iron.
This last year I’ve played Order of Battle a lot. This is a game like the old board games of decades past. Computers have made this kind of wargame much more playable. This means that campaigns can be more expansive and with greater depth of play.
Kerbal Space Program simulates the Space Age. It presents the problems of first designing rockets that will get into orbit and then flying them so that they do what you want them to do.
I have played these games through Steam. I like this kind of game delivery system because it stores the game accounts in the cloud, so I can download them when I need to buy a new computer.
Most of my history knowledge has come from books and videos but games are a valuable means of gaining insight.
Further information on: Christmas.
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