Are their games a good way to learn history?

>>3386254
No

EU2 and Vicky series, yes.

The rest? Hell no.

A good introduction maybe. But the last thing this board needs is more pseudo-historians that get all their knowledge from grand strat.

>>3386254
Historical geography and a few things from the text in events? Yes.
As an adequate substitute for reading a history book? No.

I've played 1500 hours of eu4 and 100 of vic2 and I have way too much European history shit in my brain

>>3386254
I have 800 hours on EU4 and just picked up CK2
They are by no means a substitute for books as >>3386273 said but they are an entry level media that could push more people to develop a more serious interest in history, especially the young

>>3386254
Not really, they might spark and interest though

>>3386254

I have 0 hours in EU4 and 0 hours in Victoria 2. Just read fucking books. Get audiobooks if they can't hold your attention.

>>3386254

It may help the noob at history understand that things are always changing and that periods of History are not static.

>>3386254
Download the HIP mod for CK2 if you really want to get down to the nitty gritty of it. That mod is historical autism.

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>tfw remember the first HoI manual which had a day by day of WW2
How far it's fallen since then

>>3386254
Unironically, yes. For the typical normie, anyways. If they actually get into that game, they'll learn a lot.
I did.

>>3386254
It's good for understanding geography

>>3386262
For the Glory + AGCEEP, Victoria 1 + VIP, Darkest Hour/HoI2 + any realism mod

that's how I learned my basic history

>>3386273
>>3386272
>>3386262
>>3386434
>>3386480

It's a good place to start learning basic history.

>>3386731
Not anymore, they've stripped the hard coded events to almost nothing, I mean I don't mind it I just wish it was a game rule

>>3386254
I think the problem is that paradox games (other than CK2) let you play as a country. This creates the unrealistic point of view that countries and not people are the central actors of history, and turns you into a nationalist

>>3386254
You can learn history even from Assassin's Creed, just don't listen to the ingame narative. Take the historical events and characters then do your reading.

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>>3386790
All I learned from Vicky 2 was that Jacobins are cunts and free markets are cancer

>>3386254
Geography, mostly yes. Real history? Probably not so much.

>>3386272
Pleb who can't get high levels of technology growth while maintaing strong enough military to deter would be invaders detected.

>>3386816
Free market is great, once you established a solid industrial base.
Unless you enjoy micromanaging thousands of factories

>>3386816
Also sphering China = economic collapse
Communist uprisings are cancer
Had a game one time where almost the entirety of Europe and North Africa were Communist while Russia became a republic

>>3386254
It's a good way to learn about the starting year, that's about it

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>>3386837
>hey, you know what we need?
>Another ammunition factory, even though we have no fertilizer!
>Bankrupt in 3 weeks, can't delete it

>>3386850
survival of the fittest, anon. Just switch to interventionalism a few years and delete the bankrupt factories

>>3386863
Nah, Paradox should just fix their shitty AI

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>>3386837
Obligatory

>>3386254
Ot offers more depth than the zverage videogame but WAY less depth that even the shittiest history book. Also inaccuracies, often for the sake of gameplay.

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>>3387036
>Stellaris is becoming the most accurate history game
How the fuck did this happen?

>>3386717
this. EU2 (or ftg, its the same thing) and AGCEEP gave you so much history insight because of the events. EU4 always turns into clusterfuck. Ive actually read once that some Chink school uses EU2 to teach European history (this was when EU2 was a new game)

It's like watching crash course: it's great if you're some uneducated normie with no historical knowledge or interest whatsoever, but you're a manchild if you continue past that.
In any case, the whole fun of a paradox game is being ahistorical as shit and restoring all byzantine lands in 1914.

>>3387454
dont watch that shit. its politically correct propaganda focusing only on the aspects of history they want you to know and disregarding everything else. Also you cant learn anything from 5 minute history snips. Grab a fucking book and dont be braindead

>>3387466
It's for high school classes, kids who don't give a shit and will probably not give a shit without bill nye-esque soundbytes to hold their attention.
I mean, reading a book is well and fine, but as a matter of educational policy "read books lol" is not particularly effective. Students have to be eased into study.

>>3387496
well then you are on the wrong board, kiddo.
>>>/b

>>3387533
And leave the board to pseuds like you? That would be cruel.

>>3387541
who the fuck is pseudo? Pseudo- what even? Pseudo is a prefix. It doesnt mean anything by itself

>>3387610
Are you new here?

>>3387610
t. Pseud

>>3387626
yes. I came here for history and only found shitty memes, "what if" threads and black penises

>>3387648
perhaps there's somewhere you should be going back to
is it reddit?

>>3386254
In the sense of that they may jump start an interest, sure. But 99.99% of the time after the first five years (At least in EUIV) history goes straight out of the window and you have France being reduced to nothing by England, Spain, and Austria while Britanny and Tunis have discovered colonization and the Hatakeyama have conquered northeast Siberia. It's one of those games where you go, "Oh! That existed at some point before I gobbled it up with my OPM." and you look it up from there.

>>3387669
jokes on you, newfriend. I come from /pol

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>>3387648

>>3387691
Then you should be right at home with black penis threads

>>3387706
im actually refugee from black penises. But now i have to escape again. SAD!

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>>3387691

>>3386254
civilization series i guess

>>3387763
kiss your sister

>>3386816
>be greece
>fascist rebels keep taking over
>keep overpaying soldiers
>keep going bankrupt
just noting things that need to be fixed. or things like
>want a part of another country that has your minority culture
>Get entire province
>gotta keep fighting nationalists because i cant give back a small part

>>3386915
so fucking true. also managing huge armies is cancer.
playing countries like USA or HRE is fucking boring. plus your entire army gets disorganized after 1 fucking war so you gotta merge them all together and split them into 20 armies and spread them out again, just do to do the same thing over again in 5 minutes

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>>3387903
I'd say the U.S.A is a fairly relaxing country in Vicky 2, especially if Europe has constant wars, then you get a trillion immigrants, can grow your industry peacefully and test out some economic bullshit, experiment a bit. I agree with the reorganizing armies part and HRE being boring. I can see why some might find USA boring, but I guess it was made to be a beginner country rather than some hardcore shit like going Oranje great power without prestige spam.

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>>3386254
honestly these games are just gross. they promote imperialism, nationalism, and colonialism, and every person i've met who plays them is some sort of "anti-sjw" nerd type. i wouldn't be surprised if all the people who posted positive things about them ITT post on /pol/ as well.

>>3386837
The dedicated central planner will outperform any other nation, which I guess is kinda the point of the policy.
>>3386850
This is probably by design. Vicky 2 throws a shit ton of rebels at you and politics influenced by consciousness and militancy simply because they don't expect you to say HM's government the whole game, considering the period was one of rising nationalism and frequent revolution.
superfluous factories is certainly part of this, because even though you get considerable growth unemployment drives up militancy, resulting in either different parties getting elected or, well, jacobins and reactionaries and communists EVERYWHERE.

>>3387923
Yeah prestige is kinda a problem when it comes to deciding great and secondary powers. The idea is probably that even if you prestige up you can lose it to being on the wrong side of a crisis, but in practice that rarely happens. It needed reweighting.

>>3386254

>is alternative history a good way to learn actual history.

No.

It teaches you geography and to get interested in history. That's about it.

They intentionally ignore a lot of history to make game balance 'more fun' for the general player. Also its very disconnected from a lot of history that isn't related to politics like actual technology growth, migrations, war, etc. one of my favorite books about the age of absolutism went to great lengths that looking at its history purely from the eyes of statesmens histories is absurd. So at the very least in the case of EU and Vicky especially the games turn out to be little better then Diplomacy.

They are games first and foremost.

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are war games a way to learn history?

no- they both fill entirely different purposes

>>3386470
What's autistic about it? It's easy to play, nothing compared to truly autistic mods like Europa Barbarorum.

Paradox armchair historians are the worst, the base their historical knowledge completely on abstractions, then abstract those abstractions when discussing real history here
>Austria-Hungary collapse was inevitable, they let their pops militancy get to high
>G*rmans won the franco-prussian war by researching better artillery techs then the frogs
>panzer divisions were op, single handedly caused mass encirclements.
>byzantium should have allied with hungary and pooland against the stinky turks
>burgerland got more immigrants because they passed more political reforms
Anyone here who gets 90% of their historical knowledge from paradox games needs to go back to >>>/vg/gsg or >>>/r/paradoxplaza, im sick of arguing with you retards when you present shit arguments

Not quite Paradox (as its Eugen, but its published by Paraducks), but they made me realize how suffering some of the German divisions went through on the Western front.

https://www.eugensystems.com/divisions-panzer-lehr/

>Be the most well equipped German Division in the entire war, tons of Tiger IIs, Is, Panthers, Pumas, supplemented by fully motorized infantry
>All manned by Tank propaganda demonstrators, training instructors, and ex elite members from other divisions
>General de facto led the Afrika Corps for months and was Rommel's Chief of Staff
>Be hyped to be the greatest Panzer division next to only LSSAH, Das Reich, Wiking, etc.
>Second you show up to Normandy you get targeted by the largest air bombardment in the entire war with over 1500 planes headhunting your mere 100 or so tanks
>sends the general into becoming a bumbling mess from shell shock from the constant bombing and the artillery of the three divisions he was fighting

honestly this is prolly one of the most depressing division chronicles ive heard jesus

One of these days I'm going to restore Hellenic Paganism in CK2, and bring the Pagan Roman Empire into EU4 with Rome as the capital.

Haha, eat shit, Constantine!

>>3386254
No, they are games.

It's a good way to learn political geography n sheeit

read books pleb

>>3388322
>Europa Barbarorum

Best mod.

>>3388322
Gameplay isn't significantly altered but the title and dynasty histories are insanely detailed, way more than vanilla.

>>3390012
>Gameplay isn't significantly altered

Oh yes it is. The fact you can't use captured enemy military buildings to train your best troops immediately in bum-fuck nowhere Gaul was a huge step up from vanilla by itself.

>>3390030
I wasn't talking about RTW, I was talking about HIP.
They're not even about the same game.

>>3390034

Sorry, my mistake. I thought you were talking about EB there.

>>3386790
>let you play as a country. This creates the unrealistic point of view that countries and not people are the central actors of history, and turns you into a nationalist
But that's true you retarded post modernist. The nation-state remains the best unit to promote your happiness and move society forward.
Go let in all the immgrints enmass and see how that works out for you. Everyone operates within a nation, a the government is ALWAYS the biggest spender in a economy and thus the main driver in that sense.
The government is ALWAYS the biggest spender in research and development.
The government frames how everyone inside it operates, great man history theory is trash. There are no great men in shitty countries

>>3389632
Its really not that hard thanks to secret societies.

>>3389632
Hellenism can't be reformed so enjoy your empire getting split by gavelkind
Or download a paganism mod

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>>3390103
>The government is ALWAYS the biggest spender in research and development.

But thats wrong.

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>>3388322
>when Roma Surrectum II's in game encyclopedia has every article be at least 1000 words and has a bibliography

Crusader Kings 2 is a good way to understand medieval politics from my experience.

>>3390542
it's really not a good way to understand "medieval" anything but keep telling yourself it is shart

>>3390587
1. Suzerain-vassal relationships (they are kind of too vertical but hey, it was a clusterfuck irl so no way to implement that in a game)
2. Claims
3. Investiture
4. CBs
Are implemented well, it's a good start but later you will learn that it was much more complex

>>3386254
Only Historical Geography, and even then that's mostly irrelevant once you've played for a few years. You do get the vague idea of what countries are there, and a sense of when various historical events occured

>>3390103
That's not true. That's what 20th century leaders tought to idiots like you.
Meanwhile, elites of different countries were always international and best buddies, and they cared more about each other than about the poor people of their respective country

>>3390434

It doesn't need to be reformed, it's not the same as the other pagans. The ridiculous loops you have to jump through to get it not-withstanding.

>>3386816
>only 1 units stacks on most provinces

Truly the cancer has not even begun
Also >ancap rebel spam

>>3387610
"Pseud" is short-hand for pseudo-intellectual.

>>3391343
>Control holy site
>Secret convert to that faith
It's piss easy now with Monks and Mystics

>>3391625

That still doesn't work for Hellenic pagans. The only way to get hellenic in-game without custume creating a character is these exact steps.

1) Have 'supernatural events turned on' in the game rules.
2) Be both immortal AND insane.
3) Appoint a horse named Glitterhoof as chancellor.
4) Make the horse immortal.
5) Get the event where an immortal demon horse challenges Glitterhoof as a duel.
6) Be charismatic enough to have the dialogue option to convince the immortal horse to be your courtier.
7) This horse is Hellenic pagan, so you can have him teach your children and convert them to Hellenic.

No other way. It's hard enough to get the Immortal trait, let alone all this other stuff on top of that. It's basically an Easter egg.

>>3391746

You can't custom create a Hellenic character anymore, not without modding the game.

>>3388006
I like paradox games, particularly Victoria 2 and EU IV, and I hate the mouthbreeding right wing retards

>>3388006
Love that falseflag there bucko, go back to whatever pile of shit you come from.

>>3386254
They're the John Green of videogames. If you're unlearned they will eventually introduce you to a thousand concepts, people and cultures you never or vaguely heard off. But this introduction will be very flawed and simplified. So you decide if that's good or bad for your learning.

>>3386816
Is this normal if you play as France? I started a game as France and eventually uninstalled Vicky because of fucking jacobins.

>>3386254
it's not a terrible supplement and can spark interest.

>>3388006
I was introduced to this games by my oldest cousin and he's a literal commie who is in the Pirate Party. The fucking Pirate Party.

>>3390628
>but later you will learn that it was much more complex
Which you won't if you're a fucking normie who thinks that CK2 thing is already complex, ie if you belong to the great majority of the population.

>>3392064
So you're from Iceland?

>>3392081
Why should he be from Iceland, he could be from all over the place.

>>3390500
Where can this quote be found? In what source I mean.

>>3392081
The Pirate Party is fucking everywhere in Europe. They're just mostly an irrelevant minority but so are paradox players in general.

>>3392085
>>3392100
My mistake, I thought Pirate Party was an exclusive Iceland thing. Thank you for enlightening me.

>>3392043
It's normal as any country in Europe

>>3386254
As a way to get people into history they're pretty good, as an actual source of historical knowledge, not good at all, but that isn't the purpose of those games anyway.

>>3392106
Then I did well by uninstalling.

>>3386254
Its a good way to learn maps, which is part of understanding history

>>3388006
You dishonor the good name of Sochie. Delete your post.

>>3389201
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=16gWRxv_aZY

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>>3392139
>Bomber Harris, Destroyer of Dresden
>General Ike, Governor of Bavaria

>>3392064
Holy shit, same here but it was a friends friends, commie in a Pirate Party.

>>3386254

Unequivocally yes. Sure they're not "deep" and there are some errors in the data set, but as an introduction to history they are superb, and even if you literally never read a single book and get ALL your historical knowledge from Paradox games, you will be more "informed" than you will be "misinformed".

>>3392139
I swear every Panzer Lehr player I've come across in an idiot and thinks his Panthers and Tigers are going to work unsupported

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>play Mount and Blade: Warband
>join the Swadians
>going okay so far
>lots of tournaments and parties
>level up and grow my party
>own a few fiefs
>even more parties
>other nations start declaring war on us
>EVEN
>MORE
>PARTIES
>all territory is being taken
>get defeated in battle
>become prisoner
>finally pay off my ransom
>didn't have a lot of money so I had to rot in prison for a while
>enemies were surrounding us
>were down to our last city and 2 castles
>ANOTHER FUCKING PARTY!!!
>The Nords siege our one castle
>The Rhodocks siege our capital
>Our glorious leader formulates the perfect plan
>"Let's have a party!"
>Sarranids begin to siege our last castle
>I'm still holding out in the city
>battle ensues 500-something vs. 700-something
>We get wiped off the map in a matter of hours
>All hail the Butter King!
>F

I don't believe that is historically accurate in the slightest.

>>3394380
I did the mistake once of joining Swadia as a woman. Never again.

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>>3386262
>>3387443
These. EU2 has so much historical events (compared to the others) it's worth playing just for that.

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It sure as hell won't teach you military history :
>move army here
>wait for the battle to finish
>repeat
hurrrrr

>>3395939
holy Reddit Batman

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>>3395943
>Old memes are reddit now

>>3386537
I haven't played either of these games so I don't know exactly where they're based but unless it's an actual map of Europe or the World, I don't think this would be a good place to learn geography.

>>3395966
It's a complete world map, fairly well divided into provinces that represent actual divisions and it represents their predominant make-up ie whether the region is hilly mountainous, arable land, etc... Of course there is some abstraction going on there, but it's pretty accurate

>>3395946
you sound pretty reddit
go back to r/ParadoxPlaza

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>>3386790
This is the normie opinion.

I'd say it's good at giving you a general "Feel" of historic time periods, much like the Total War series. But Paradox games are best for teaching you historical geography. Before I played CKII, I didnt know any countries beyond WWI. Now I know about things like Navarra and shit.

Honestly, Paradox games should only be used to spark your interest in history or for you to have fun pursuing "what-if" scenarios.

tldr, the games are fun but sort of ahistorical and should only be played if you are interested in history.

>>3386790
>Getting your political opinion from goddamn videogames
You're a sad man

They're not a bad way of getting people interested in it. My little brother saw me playing CK2 a few years ago and picked it up himself. He comes over to my place every couple of weeks to pick out a new book to read, it makes me happy.

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>>3386476
>tfw in HOI IV the "historical" event sequence causes the Soviets to cause WW3 in 1946 by invading Poland, Turkey, Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan

Not a good, but best and only way.
We need more dlcs/mods for different regions tho.

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>it's not historical because usually the X country get stronger

Lol at this autism, Paradox games are pretty good at history on their events, I discovered more about my own country history than on my old school books, specially because they have some propaganda and try to hide some things.

>>3386790
I would like a game which is a mix of Tropico series and Paradox, this way I could ruin an entire nation but my family would still in power, this way I could be the king of hell instead of a pleb in paradise, CK 2 could be like that, but I can change the inheritance to a far relative and from a Duke I suddently become a king, that's pretty stupid.

>>3386254
Not at all, however they will give you a great framework to place historical events in time and space when you read about them.

>>3390103
>hurr durr anyone who doesn't buy into modern nationalism is a postmodern
wew fucking hew ladidad