History and City Builders

[Socarhr 6]

Hello guys,

I´m new here and I´m not sure if i´m understanding how it works in general, and less where I should post this topic. I´m gonna introduce myself and my question, so I think is the right forum to do it. If I'm wrong, just let me know and I'll put this topic in the correct forum/

My name is Oscar and I'm a World History teacher in Kyrgyzstan. I'm quite noob in city builders, so I arrived here to learn about this amazing community, I saw some of the modelings and they are incredible. 

So, I arrived here because I'm trying to settle a cool project for my students but I don't know how to do it. My problem with the kyrgyz students is that their culture sometime is quite far from the World History and they feel disconnected to that kind of matters. My idea is create a project where the student will build a new city/state somewhere in the world and this city will survive through the history interacting with all the events. The main goal of the students is create the wealthiest city of the world (or at least of the class). They will win money to spend in new buildings and grow, if they participate during the lessons, if they do the homework, doing good exams, etc. They will interact with the empires and kingdoms, deciding if they want to fight, be friends, or pay tribute.

Well, the main problem of this project is that I don't know how I can create a city for them and they can see their progres and feel accomplished. I tried to use Blender and 3D animation, but I'm really bad on it and I don't have enough time to learn it. So I was thinking in some city builder with a big community where I can get mods of different buildings from different ages and culures. Because that's the point, if the city is in Egypt, India, China or Europe, the Architectonic style should be different too. I don't have thousands of dollars to spend trying different games, so maybe you know a good solution for that. For this yeat I'll need only the Classical Era: Summeria, Greeks, Egypt, China, Rome, etc. but if you need any game or easy tool to do that I'd really appreciate. I think with this ways the students will learn a lot and enjoying the process.

Thanks if you read till here, I hope I express myself properly, and thanks for any kind of advice,

Oscar

  Edited September 27, 2020 by Socarhr  
Mistake

[rivit 3,402]

Hi Oscar - what you're describing is going to be hard to find in one game - because the history part and the building part are often in two different sort of games.

The first that comes to my mind is Age of Empires (the first one). This original is quite old (1997 was for Windows 98/XP) and eventually spawned several follow-ups. I think there's even an on-line version remake. As a prototype interactive civilization game it spawned a whole lot of similar games. They will give you a feeling for the history of various civilizations but the buildings are all pre determined and can be got by achievements in game. Interactions also exist - although for almost all of these games the goal is domination rather than diplomacy. There is a goal to build a 'wonder' and you can invent your own scenarios. While quite elementary by todays standards, its simplicity is actually its strength. Its also a lot of fun to play.

Here are other alternatives

It will depend on the age of your students as to which of these are best - but I played various Age of Empires with my daughters at 8-10 and in no time at all I would get thrashed every time.

[Socarhr 6]

2 hours ago, rivit said:

Hi Oscar - what you're describing is going to be hard to find in one game - because the history part and the building part are often in two different sort of games.

The first that comes to my mind is Age of Empires (the first one). This original is quite old (1997 was for Windows 98/XP) and eventually spawned several follow-ups. I think there's even an on-line version remake. As a prototype interactive civilization game it spawned a whole lot of similar games. They will give you a feeling for the history of various civilizations but the buildings are all pre determined and can be got by achievements in game. Interactions also exist - although for almost all of these games the goal is domination rather than diplomacy. There is a goal to build a 'wonder' and you can invent your own scenarios. While quite elementary by todays standards, its simplicity is actually its strength. Its also a lot of fun to play.

Here are other alternatives

It will depend on the age of your students as to which of these are best - but I played various Age of Empires with my daughters at 8-10 and in no time at all I would get thrashed every time.

Thank you for your answer,

Yes, I can imagine that it would be a difficult task to find it. My students will study the first civilizations this year (Mesopotamia, Egypt, China, India, Greece and Rome), so it would be this Age. I was thinking about Age of Empires, so definitely I'll check it out. Anyway, I want to clarify that the idea use the game to play, use it to create a city. So, I'd create my own scenario make a fast video or picture and show to my students how their city is looking now. I'll put price for the buildings they would like to buy and with excel I'll control their economy by myself.

Thanks again for your info, I think for this year could be good use Age of Empires I.