playing total war games into the night is a core part of any decent civic education and I'm tired of pretending otherwise

How else would 13 year old me understand that you need to expand the walls otherwise squalor builds up?

look clearly SOMEONE needed to teach me about the japanese warring states period and it's not like school was going to

I'm now wondering if Shogun was the reason I ended up the way I am both about history stuff and Japan.

I am sure for at least some folk finding out how deeply anachronistic Ptolemaic Egypt was in Rome Total War got them Into History

of course if you're not careful you end up in paradox games and start having some very deep thoughts about the eastern roman empire

When I first encountered CK2 I realised that it was the game I wanted Total War games to be based on the mods I kept using and have never looked back.

I am an old hand at Paradox games going back to the generation of the original CK and Victoria and was instantly entranced, already being a big fucking history nerd who loves spreadsheets, even when I have issues with them there's just nowt like them

See it’s the opposite for me. Nothing more satisfying than funnelling a bunch of swordsmen into a wall of silver shield pikemen and heavy Syrian archers

One of those things where I ended up understanding it from a game design perspective, but I couldn't really unsee ever again once I'd learned about it.

yeah there's all sorts of things in historical total war that make sense when it comes to game design but don't seem particularly correct (horse archers and cavalry in battles are the big ones for me once I started reading a little about ancient and medieval warfare)

I still have the voice of an Australian woman saying "Public order is very low here and without action there may be a riot!" etched into my brain

I had to make do with playing Civilization and Age of Empires for my education and look how I turned out

a shameful display! etc