Historical Non-Wargames?

Don't get me wrong, I love wargames. I also love history, and I'm not one of those frothing consimworlders who refuse to only read/study military history. I study history, but not exclusively (or even predominantly) military history. So it makes me wonder about games with the historical depth and rules complexity of a wargame about non-military situations. I'm not talking about eurogames with no relevance to the historical concept the game pretends to be about, but more games like Age of Renaissance which is about commerce in the Renaissance.

Does Republic of Rome fill this concept? How in depth is it?

I once had a long discussion with a friend about trying to craft a game about running a Kingdom with a semi-cooperative/semi-competitive nature. Each player would assume a different interest group in the kingdom, and each player would compete for political control of the kingdom and their specific interest group (be it nobles, clergy, etc). I had envisioned France as particularly interesting, as any player working as the King would work towards establishing an absolutist monarchy while the others would work as the Estates general or outside political forces (England, Italy, Austria, etc)

What I'm curious about is having a wargame without being exclusively about war?

I'd be all for it. I think there's a *lot* of room for politics sims... polsims? They could be a ton of fun.

I bet they'd be killer tough to build though. Games like Origins: How We Became Human are in that vein and quite complex, and take a beating because they don't map to the real history very well. Even Battle Games (and I mean the tactical level, not strategic) which have a pretty solid foundation to jump off from rarely map well the the actual results. Builders of those games work very hard to leave things out instead of including them in, because it makes the game more entertaining.

To some extent economic simulations like Imperial or the 18xx games fit your bill, but I think you're more interested in political machinations. Somewhere between Diplomacy and Twilight Struggle is a nice niche waiting to be filled.

Sag.

The possibilities for a new wave of genuinely simulationist historical non-wargames are demonstrated by games like Settlers and Ivanhoe, to name but 2 of my abiding favourites. The US election variant of Twilight Struggle shows that these possibilities are already being realised by creative designers.

civilization springs to mind, as well as material world and kremlin

Kremlin was what I was thinking too, but more historical.

Gary Sax wrote:

Kremlin was what I was thinking too, but more historical.

That would be the Kremlin: Revolution expansion plus some of the variants published in The General [e.g., 12th Party Congress and 1953 Destalinization], which someone is offering up in trade right now, along with the base game, at TOS for, you guessed it, Agricola. It's a pretty good deal if you could bear to part with your copy of Agricola...]

One that's rooted in war but isn't a game of (or really about) warfare is Civ designer Francis Tresham's "Revolution: The Dutch Revolt 1568-1648." It's sort of "Civ Meets Here I Stand in Holland." [It's not a CDG though; it's much closer to Civ in style; and if you're remotely interested, it's worth picking up since Phalanx likely won't reprint it]

Heading off into Euroland for a moment, do either Die Macher or Liberte come anywhere close to that sort of thing? I've not played either [though I recently had someone send Liberte along to me], so I have no idea if they have any connection with their alleged themes or if they're just plain ol' cube pushers...

I was going to mention Liberte as there is a bit of history on the cards. But I think because of what they try to do - simulate an era or series of events where you need a decent period of time to pass so you can see the results of players' different strategies - that these have been more suited to computer gaming or PBM/PBEM.

Two PC games I have are Patrician 2 (or 3) which is about merchant traders in northern and western european ports around the 16th/17the centuries, and Europa Universalis 3 which is a giant civilisation based game over the whole world which Barnes has played a lot but I haven't made any inroads in yet. But I there is a boardgame from the late 90's called the same, Europa Universalis, which sounds like it does the same and takes forever.
There is also a PBEM game by Flying Buffal called Feudal Lords which deals with fifedoms competing against each other, and where you can (from memory) become an overlord of other fifedoms (players) in the game but your vassals also get VPs if you win ... I think, I never played it - just read the rules, I consider commercial PBEM just too expensive ($5+ a turn) in todays age ... anyway, here's a link Feudal Lords @ FBI .

Check out "conquest of paradise" by GMT.

Southernman:

What's your opinion of Patrician? I'm asking specifically about single-player.

This might never come out, but in theory you should keep an eye on Reins of Power by FFG.

Age of Exploration!

no warfare apart from the conquest of the Aztek and Inca EMpires (but actually quite good, since it requires that you first gain some local allies)

Viking Fury aka Fire and Axe. If you leave out the optional cards (Sea Serpent and stuff) then it's a pretty historical game, and while there is fighting it's not really a war game at all. Age of Renaissance would be another suggestion.

I've really enjoyed games like Age of Renaissance (despite how bad I am at it) and Civilization; it really would be interesting to see more games of this type. I suppose I'm looking more for the simulation type of games outside of warfare.

I've never tried any of the 18XX games, but thought they were interesting looking. I've played a few rail games with my father growing up (Empire builder, crayon games, etc.) but never anything as in depth as the 18XX games. How do they play? Are they abstracted? Interesting? Competitive? How well do they function as simulations.

I really enjoyed the concept of 7 Ages (the civ-proper game; fuck civ-lights!) but the design was pretty muddled and came across as sloppy and inconsistent. I think a similar civilization game would work quite well, especially one modeling the rise and fall of civilizations. I always hated computer civ because of the eternal civilizations it produced (Americans in the bronze age? Romans industrializing? Bullshit!) as well as its abstractions. 7 ages was very well fleshed out when it came to individual societies, but failed on so many different ways to make it nearly unplayable.

Maybe the 18XX games are the most historical of the train games as they are about track laying and stocks. On the other hand, the game is more about speculation than railway operations, and the track laying is rather artificial. Railroad Tycoon did that better.