Language/Multiple-languages/Culture/Video-Games-with-Real‐Life-Civilisations
Some video games feature various cultures of the world, and they are successful.
There are more and more scandals in the gaming industry, including integrating spyware in the game. Always keep your eyes open.
https://www.polygon.com/2018/6/20/17485762/red-shell-spyware-pc-games-controversy-steam
https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/events/red-shell-spyware-controversy
Here are some of these games which score on Metacritic is above 75 as well as known an open-source game not rated on Metacritic. If you are interested, you can pay a visit to these sites to find more information:
https://www.fandom.com/topics/games (the community is on the right side of the search result)
https://www.metacritic.com/game
https://store.steampowered.com/
You may have noticed that I prefer the British writing “civilisation”. This is because of typing convenience: if I type “civilization”, I must move my little finger from “z” to “a”; if I type “civilisation”, this can be avoided.
This page has a sibling Language/Multiple-languages/Culture/Video-Games-with-Real‐Life-Locations.
Main
Sid Meier's Civilization
This franchise is an important example of 4X (eXplore, eXpand, eXploit, and eXterminate) games.
You can choose a civilisation and develop it to compete with others. Each civilisation has its own leader with some unique features. There are barbarians, who will attack you; city states, which you can befriend or conquer.
It is turn-based. In each turn, you can order your units to do something, you can order your cities to construct a building or train a unit. You can also develop technologies, then unlock new features, step by step.
There are natural wonders which gives you bonus if you build a city near it. You can build world wonders, which can be built only once. If it is in progress when another player finished it, it will be cancelled automatically.
You need to pay attention to your coins, resources, and your people's happiness. Accumulated happiness will lead to a Golden Age, providing many bonuses. There are points of culture and religion. With cultural points, you can unlock policies, and when it comes to industrial era, you can choose an ideology. With religious points, you can found a Pantheon first, and later found a religion or enhance it through prophets, spread it through missionaries and protect it through inquisitors.
If you have accumulated enough great person points, then some great people will be born, including artists, musicians, writers, engineers, scientists. They can provide some cultural points or buildings. Great generals and great admirals will be generated through warfare, who are helpful strategically in a war.
There are more than one way to victory, so you don't need to fight a war to win if you like.
What's more, there is a Civilopedia, with introductions about those civilisations. You can spend hours on it if you like.
Note that the reviews of Civ VI are more negative than Civ V.
There are 3 open-source or freeware games based on early generations of this series:
Europa Universalis
This grand strategy franchise is truly worldwide.
You can choose a nation and start the game. Each nation has its own modifier on six aspects.
Its religions are distinctive, while in Civ a religion is all build by the player and thus does not relate to the reality at all.
With extension packs, some nations have their distinctive ways of playing, which makes it more realistic.
It is very complicated to play the game. You need to spend hours, lose the game several times to get used to it. As a beginner, you'd better pick a European nation. Otherwise, you will probably be subdued by European colonisation.
Expansion packs are indispensable if you want to fully enjoy. The price of all DLC is more than 10-folds of the original game.
A similar franchises made by Paradox Interactive are Hearts of Iron (HoI4 is banned in PRC for whatever possible reasons), an unrealistic World War II game, though being unrealistic is not its purpose; Victoria, an early work about the beginning of the modern time.
Crusader Kings
Another game of Paradox Interactive.
It is based on medieval Europe, North Africa, Western and Central and South Asia. Comparing to EU, CK focuses on individuals, which means that you need to make decisions as a person instead of a god-like being.
Just like EU and HoI, DLC are required if you want to fully enjoy.
The Elder Scrolls
This franchise is so famous that any introduction here is redundant.
Some players have discussed how the cultures in game are based on those in reality. But it seems that people don't have enough knowledge about cultures around the world. This is a valuable but not the only discussion:
The peak of this series is considered to be Oblivion and the runner-up Skyrim, if you attach more importance to the general performance over graphics.
Assassin's Creed
This is an era-crossing action game franchise, with impressive adventure and bug fix patches.
Its Unity and Chronicles are heavily criticised. The receptions of the other are not even.
Far Cry
It is an open-world FPS series. You can experience the cultures in different regions and enjoy killing fools.
FC3 is the peak of the series, and its system requirements are not too high.
Tomb Raider
It is an action game series. Different historical sites to explore. Solving puzzles is its merit.
Age of Empires
It is one of the most successful multicultural RTS franchise. Don't expect it to be very historically accurate.
Mount & Blade
Experience the life in the medieval period or some other periods.
Some people guessed Warband factions in real life, but in Bannerlord, it's all made clear:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_%26_Blade_II:_Bannerlord#Story
Total War
This is a RTT series. Each of its work focuses on an era, also Warhammer.
Wargame
To be precise, it's not multiple cultures, but nations. It just doesn't worth the effort to create the new page “video games with real life nations”.
Its setting is cold war becomes hot war. 3 games in the series, Red Dragon contains 21 nations, but no Taiwan. Red Dragon is comparable to People's General, which also cares about Asia-Pacific, has 20 nations and is the last work in the series, too.
0 A.D.
It is free and open-source.
It is an RTS about 13 ancient civilisations. More civilisations will be available in the future, said on the official website. There are mods of more civilisations already: Delenda Est, Millennium A.D., Terra Magna.
Although there is an “A.D.” in the name, the civilisations in the official version are “somewhere along the timeline of 500 B.C. to 1 B.C.”
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