Europa Universalis IV Educator's Guide: Gaming in the Classroom

Europa Universalis IV has been used as a learning tool in many global classrooms, owing to its richly complex simulation of early modern history.
Paradox Interactive is proud to have worked with history educator Jeremiah McCall to develop a dedicated guide to implementing EUIV in the classroom, for educators and fans all around the world.
The Educator’s Guide is available in full here: pdxint.at/EU4Educators
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[@MrLaughingcorpse2]

Honestly, I really do recommend your games to people as learning tools. The amount of geography I've learned from my hours in HOI is a bit daft.

[@Readysetheal]

Neat! About time you branched out in that sphere. While games are games first and educational material second, nothing stops from using the game as a visualisation for further explanations. I found history in my school to be rather boring - endless dates, people I don't know nor care, some places and regions I can't find on the map. Now I can! It helped reignite my interest in history in general

[@tinodubois3502]

Es verdad, los juegos siempre han inspirado mi curiosidad historica, no solo los de paradox. Total War tambien.

[@calmkat9032]

I've always wondered why you all haven't done something like this! Though, I had guessed it's because it took me as many hours as a semester of a 3-credit-hour class irl. It'd be neat if this was simply a person playing the game, while hiding most UI elements. I know Ludi et Historia does something similar, though his lessons do require a bit of game and time period knowledge beforehand. And he just zooms in to hide the number-filled edges of the UI, so it's not perfect.

[@Old_Sealand]

My favourite nation with historical missions tree is Teutonic Order. Especially with their Holy Horde government reform.

[@icewolf1911]

Not going to judge this too quickly in a hot take. If it inspires a lot of history then awesome. If it inspires you to asks why did we do this than that and focus on real history that lead to certain questions pressured awesome

[@yazui.i.9368]

I have 3.108 Hours in Eu4 and I know a lot of Geography and places now, because of a game I play in my free time where I want to relax. Adding to that a little bit of History via Missons or Events, this helped me out in History and Geography in Highschool. I can name some cities in Germany, Italy, France, Spain etc. which I never heard of or never knew, so I can recommend to play this game for kids/teenagers/adults, as it is the only game I know which taught me something valuable in an educational sense

[@b-1battledroid674]

I mean the concept is neat, if you like strategy games you can really get some cool trivia about world history from these games, but they only really serve to spark curiosity in you, if you don't care enough to do more in-depth research you might get historical misconceptions engraved onto your mind. Also most school computers are dogshit that can barely run windows, let alone eu4😅

[@plungy]

I still miss the map style of EU2, playing Europa Universalis on a map translate so much better than on a 3D world.

[@peterk9971]

our history class got canceld a lot and unfortunately in the periods that it took place it was mainly about WW2 and the "third reich" (its a very very important topic, especially here in Germany and at no point I want to criticize that it is such a big topic in our history curriculum). it's scheduled two times actually, in the years in the middle of school and somewhat more in the end. sadly that meaned that most lessons that have been canceld would have been about the centuries between Rome and the first world war. Yes, Absolutismus and the French absolut monarchie was briefly mentioned and the earlier events of 1789 but it ended pretty much at that point cause our school was short on teachers and cause of that All that is to say that most of my history knowledge about the time period between 1444 And 1800 is heavely based on eu4 and while eu4 is still alternative history, thinks like the structure of the HRR, Austria-Hungary, Polen And Lithuania, the rise of Moscow and much more, are scenarios based on the real history and if you're a bit careful, eu4 can provide history knowledge surpassing that of most other people. I mean most people have never heard about the Kalmar union or the teutonic order etc .

[@MicaiahBaron]

What in the world is this map mode? I see no nation colors. :D

[@aqua9420]

Europa Universalis IV: Education Edition

[@JonMI6]

This reminds me of how Tropico 5 was just in a course at the University of Warsaw

[@Hippowdon121]

:D

[@H.J.Fleischmann]

This seems like a poor idea... I fear it will give false confidence when it comes to understanding how states worked and history played out, as this game is incredibly top-down.

[@BlueHawkPictures17]

Education in history often means using flawed sources. This educator's guide I assume will be to help with parsing the valuable educational potential of the game from the admittedly gamey aspects that give a false impression of what the era was like.

[@ntnima]

I looked over the guide and it advises the educators to prompt pupils to critique and identify design decisions of the game regarding how it represents dynamics. Fact of the matter is, I’ve been reading articles about how the new generation of students often come into history or political studies with a lot of exposure to games like EU4. I think this guide is a useful type of resource for educators to figure out where and how historical games can be leveraged and integrated into the learning process.

[@Okayeg.]

what do you mean? this game literally shows all the events happened on that time period, i know all of them thanks to this game, its about understanding events that took place on history, not assuming this is how you rule a country

[@H.J.Fleischmann]

@@Okayeg., it shows economic actions being top down, it turns every country into an autocracy, and it makes colonisation a passive map painting exercise. That ignores the other issues such as how it treats demographics and religion. The events are also... Well, mostly random. They give you a broad idea of what is going on at any time in history, but as one good meme pointed out, you can have the reformation spawn in Lappland. Unless a teacher plans to basically just use this as a mapping tool for lectures, this game is an ill-fit for trying to most things.

[@Okayeg.]

@@H.J.Fleischmann from events im talking about stuff like surrender of maine and such

[@InGlo109]

Eu5

[@Ezullof]

Really? REALLY?! When I taught at university, I had to dispel false beliefs that students got by playing strategy games. At the time it was more because of Total War than Paradox games, but still, it was an annoying waste of time. Don't get me wrong. Games, movies, books that use history as a setting are a great way to make people curious and interested. They are still not historical material and should NOT be used in the classroom. That "Jeremiah McCall" guy is actively hurting history as a science. He's focusing on the warfare, he's failing to use historical sources. This is the equivalent of a company going full antivax for me. I won't buy a single game published or developed by Paradox from now on.

[@belisarius3175]

Speaking as a high school teacher: you’re always going to end up using abstractions, analogy, and “low resolution” depictions of your subject matter in order to engage students and give them a *basic* grounding in subject matter they may well be encountering for the first time. At a grade school level, therefore, EUIV may have some potential, and I say this perfectly aware of its limitations in scope and emphasis. I have yet to read their guide however. To be quite honest you’re also missing a teaching opportunity; lean *into* EUIV’s technical and interpretive limitations and use this as an opportunity to reinforce critical thinking and media analysis skills. With a bit of prompting and the right instruction you could get students to ask a lot of good questions and learn what something like EUIV may be missing or omitting for instance.

[@belisarius3175]

@@axiomsofdominion that’s a rather backhanded complement, so thanks for that. but yes, like any educational tool, it would have limitations and need to be used within those.

[@balazs1456]

Those misconceptions were the price for them attending your classes in the first place. Nobody gains interest in history from reading a textbook in a classroom. People gain an interest when exposed to it through movies, interesting stories and facts, games and so on. Much like how they take abstractions from video games at face value, everyone, including you, has believed in certain falsehoods and distortions, temporarily. What matters is that they're eventually corrected, which was the purpose of your job. People rarely encounter historical narratives in their full context and with perfect nuance at first, this is an unrealistic expectation to have. If your interpretation of this video was a proposal of using Paradox games as a historical source, then that is an entirely separate problem.

[@belisarius3175]

@@balazs1456 THANK YOU! Excellently put. As a teacher, I run into the problem of not if, but what, I'm going to compromise on for the sake of getting the most important information they need to know to them. Details, sometimes very important ones, have to be set aside for them to learn later. Expecting a grade school teacher or any of their resources to provide an undergraduate/graduate level summary of a historical topic just isn't a realistic expectation.

[@balazs1456]

@@belisarius3175 Anybody who understands the mind of a learner would agree that temporarily sacrificing important details for the sake of making the subject material digestible for uninvolved learners should be the norm, at least in the humanities.