Most accurate grand strategy games?
- Thread starter Myth
- Start date
Tallest Skil
Banned
None.
If you want accuracy, it’s hardly a game. If you want a game, by definition it’s hardly accurate. Would you really enjoy being railroaded into history despite your best effort?
That depends on how much you believe history is changable, after all (and we've had many debates here on that subject).
On the other hand, I'd say the smaller the span the game covers, the more likely it is to be "accurate". The larger it is the more butterflies it'll have to account for and that can cause issues.
Actually, I'd probably get some perverse enjoyment out of a game written by some extreme determinists (perhaps some form of Marxist historians) that kept forcing history back on course in second order counterfactuals no matter what I did.
That aside, by realism I'm referring to the attempt to stick as close to what actually would have been possible or likely, just like (good) AH is supposed to do. For instance, a wargame where Sealion works isn't realistic -- not just because Sealion never happened in real life, but also because an attack wouldn't have succeeded even if the German military had tried it.
I agree. The more "realistic" the more difficult it is to end with a result substantially different than OTL. Such a "game" becomes a educational simulation that helps explain why history played out as it did and only detail-oriented grognards find that fun. To me a game needs to be open ended enough that you can radically change history...either by "winning as the Axis" or making a key nation like Germany of the US behave in a radically different way. This creates a fine line between an interesting historical game and a party game like Risk, but its a "risk" I'll live with.