Are the Total War games good for learning a bit of history?

I learned loads of history from AoEII. The voice-acted cutscenes gave all the campaigns a lot of character which meant that they gave you a nice framework of that history.

How are the Total War games in that regard, right now I'm most interested in Medieval 2 and Empire.

The games give historical background via text for pretty much every aspect. The games themselfs are not exact history, espcailly Shogun 2 which is more a fanatical take on Japanese history,.

Having said that, Fall Of The Samurai is interesting in how the game gradually chances are your culture progresses towards Westernization. The map itself, your units, commanders and even the music gradually shift towards something different, it's very cool, taking advantage of games interactivity.

Play Valient Hearts for a history lesson.

I think you meant fantastical.

not at all. other than the factions that exist in the game... the way things progress are completely left up to you, which innately will not follow actual historic events.

The series features specifically scripted scenario's, Napoleon itself is essentially a story mode. Regardless of "do what you want", the game around it is laced with accurate historical information.

the game does have "historical battles".... which are pre-designed scenarios meant to represent actual historical conflicts.

HOWEVER.... you still play the conflicts however you please, directing your army in the manner that you see fit.... which is not accurate to how the conflict actually played out. you can even lose these battles while playing the side that won.... which again, is not historically accurate.

like i said, the existence of the factions in the game is historically accurate. even a lot of the units are historically accurate for each faction. the things that actually happen in the game are not. names, dates, events... generally not historically accurate. it isnt even accurate as to when said factions rise to power and fall out of power.

Yes they are decent for history but not the best obviously... not like a textbook =)

Try Rise of Nations: Thrones and Patriots

Developing an interest in history? Yes
Learning history? No

Again I'm not expecting accuracy, AoE2 set up each campaign with a lot of character and context that gave you a nice general idea of how things were and went down.

They are good for getting a general idea of a historical period with geography, general tech of that time period etc etc.. Anything very specific, heck no.. These games are for entertainment first after all.

It's about re-writing history, not learning it! :D

I don't really care for the history, really wish they'd include a mode that was like Civ instead of Battles and Historical setups.

Historical concepts, like armies and tactics, borders (at a specific time, at the beginning of the game), and a few other things.

But as for who did what and why, no.

Yes but not from the games directly but rather from the community at twcenter

In stainless steel (top mod for m2tw) forum for example there were plenty discussions about why do the roman/byzantine uber cavalry unit and general were/are so uber compared to the rest of other heavy cavalries at the era; in the end it was accepted to be that way (with actual historical evidence gathered from internet!) and instead the community figured other way to rebalance the mod...

Major mods like europa barbarorum series went to the extend of gathering real university grade information on historical facts about cultures and present them as previews for the factions intended to be included in the mod

There were usually great discussions took place there whenever it was to decide which factions should take precedence over another to be included for mods, as well as something like units...

It was a great example of superior pc gaming community before they killed the modding