civilization by building cities, researching technologies, and of course, smiting
his enemies.
While the game is great fun on its own,
it does have some historical merit. The
decisions you have to make are common
to leaders throughout history: Do you
place your cities for maximum growth
potential or where they can be easily defended? Do you emphasize commerce
and technical advancement or military
power? Do you choose a form of government that leads to happier and more
productive people but fewer military options? Are you honest or deceitful in your
diplomacy?
As your technology improves, the
player slowly moves through history, advancing toward the feudal era and eventually discovering technology that leads
to battleships, tanks, and space travel. He
can play on an accurate globe or (to simulate the exploration of the world) a randomly generated planet that he explores
only gradually.
You can create fascinating battles with Xconq.
FreeCiv is a complete free variation of
Civilization that runs on all major operating systems. It is roughly equivalent to
Civilization II (arguably the best game in
the series).
Strategy games have
a long history, both as
entertainment and as
tools for serious training.
Games are not the only way to study
history, but they can be an interesting way
to investigate what happened during pivotal battles. If you have students who are
interested in military strategy and tactics,
consider allowing them to investigate one
of these interesting game alternatives.
Blessings!
The Civilization games are highly addictive and can take a long time to play,
but they can serve as a great starting
place for many conversations about historical events. The game was designed
to follow the general flow of history, but
the exact historical details will not be
precisely as you remember from History
class because the results are determined
by choices made by the human and AI
players. (In my most epic game, my Mayan Empire defeated the hated Goths by
being the first civilization to colonize Alpha Centauri.)
Many commercial versions of Civilization are available. The current version
is available for desktop computers and
is quite expensive, but there is also a
wonderful smaller version called Civilization Revolution, which is less expensive, runs on mobile devices and gaming
consoles, and is tuned to run in shorter
games of 1–2 hours. Warning: A full
game of Civilization can take dozens of
hours over weeks.
xconq
Strategy games have a long history, both
as entertainment and as tools for serious
training. I grew up playing paper war
games with my father (a career Infantry
officer—I didn’t win very often). These
games are more about game play than
flashy graphics, but they can be quite fun
and can give you a real sense of the kind
of decisions commanders make.
Xconq is based on a very old computer
game called Empire. While Empire was
an abstract game set roughly in World
War II technology, Xconq was designed
from the beginning to be a system rather
than a single game. The standard version
of the game has units based on the World
War II era, but the game was designed to
be flexible enough to be used for many
different kinds of battles in many different historical eras.
The game ships with dozens of interesting scenarios, including the Peloponnesian Wars, Gettysburg, the Normandy
invasion, and Beirut 1982. If that isn’t
enough, the game also comes with a
scenario language that makes it reasonably easy to re-create any battle you can
imagine, which would be an ideal assignment for an older student. Rather
than writing a report about the Battle of
Agincourt, why not try to write a scenario to describe how the battle happened? Xconq (like nearly everything I
suggest) is entirely free and works on all
major operating systems.
Andy Harris is a homeschool dad, father of
four great kids, and husband to the greatest homeschool teacher ever. He has taught
all ages of students, from kindergarten
to university level. Andy is the author of
a number of well-known books, including HTML/XHTML/CSS: All in One for
Dummies, Game Programming—The L
Line, PHP6/MySQL Programming for
the Absolute Beginner, and Beginning
Flash Game Programming for Dummies.
For more information about his books, to
see where he is speaking next, or to just
say hi, please stop by his website: www
. aharrisbooks.net
