They were those bastards who nearly dominated the Ottoman Empire and all of the western Mediterranean region in my recent EU4 game. They listed me as a rival for nearly 200 years without ever waging war, which, in hindsight, was a blessing.
Those games have taught me so much about history and geography. On a game map you have to fill in every bit of territory with whatever state was there at the time, not just ignore it the way the history you're taught in school can.
Games like EU4 often make me think about the role that video games have in education.
It seems as though all educational games are created with a primary goal of "education" and a secondary goal of "fun game". The result is always an unfun game. What if the ordering were reversed? Create a fun game, then try to tack on some educational elements after the fact.
Perhaps some games like this already exist. I'm sure you could make a claim that Minecraft is a fun game that also teaches resource management and spatial awareness.
Games often have the opposite problem of trying to be balanced that can harm the educational aspects, think Civ and Total War. EU4 and most paradox games have asymmetric starts that make it both more realistic and offer some great a-historical challenges.
This reminds of me "Typing of the Dead". It's like the arcade shooter House of the Dead, but instead of a light gun, you use your keyboard and shoot zombies by typing words to kill them. Pretty fun way to work on typing speed.
