Side note, but I did not realize how unoriginal Warcraft was, until looking at these.

Medieval RTS games have a special place in my heart. But I'm almost convinced it's because of nothing but pure nostalgia, being the first RTS I ever played.

But no. It's the same reason I have a soft spot for the LotR movies, and for forests and earthy colored clothing in general, and wool clothing. There's something so... wholesome about it. Or simple. Or, je ne sais pas... preter-nostalgic?

Economics is something I think about all the time when playing these games or reading fantasy. We know that the ratio of farmers to non-farmers in the medieval period was something like 29:1. But so little thought is given to just the sheer amount of work and space it took to fill mouths and clothe bodies.

I'm glad there was a mention of Banished, which does a decent job of capturing the slow struggle of subsistence living. It cannot be understated how many games Banished inspired - of them Manor Lords probably comes the closest to something historically accurate. And definitely fits the author's interests in a non-linear, non-grid based city builder.

There is a more recent game that can be used as reference to a city-building experience called Manor Lords. You are basically building your village from scratch in the wilderness and it really looks like a medieval village.

It is fascinating that players would actually reject the game if it showed the true straight roads and planned layouts. We have a mental model of the Middle Ages that is wrong but we still demand that products match our expectations. The truth feels like a glitch because it breaks our immersion. We care more about the feeling of the past than the data.

Also, it is logical that we optimize the past to make the gameplay loop satisfying. Real history was full of system failures like floods and unfair taxes that prevented any real progress. We code these simulations to give players a sense of progression that the actual people never had.

There were no electronic computers in the middle ages - so of all the computer games course are inaccurate! ;-)

Interesting insight, I personally am not a fan of medieval builders for that many kinda seem like reskinned modern builders, though to be fair modern city builders are also historically inaccurate, you can basically do anything without political ramification, no nimbys, hoas, ceqa…

Next they'll be telling us that dragons, wizards and elves are not accurately portrayed in medieval RPGs.