--- title: Games vs history: tech trees, barbarians, empty lands, wonders and falls — a lesson of Mova's school · trees and pragmatics description: «Games vs history: tech trees, barbarians, empty lands, wonders and falls», a lesson of the history course of Mova's primary school, sentence by sentence with dependency trees and pragmatics. It begins: A strategy game is like a map of the London Underground: brilliantly useful, but the real city ha --- [Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/80-games-vs-history-tech-trees-barbarians-empty-lands-wonders-and-falls/) [home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/) / [History](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/) / Games vs history: tech trees, barbaria… # Games vs history: tech trees, barbarians, empty lands, wonders and falls Lesson 80 of the history course of Mova's primary school: 13 sentences, each with its syntax tree and pragmatics. The lessons are written for Mova, and their agreed trees are part of Mova corpus 0.4 (CC BY-SA 4.0). How Mova does on its tests: [the lesson at school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/school-run/history/80-games-vs-history-tech-trees-barbarians-empty-lands-wonders-and-falls/). - [0](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/80-games-vs-history-tech-trees-barbarians-empty-lands-wonders-and-falls/0/) — A strategy game is like a map of the London Underground: brilliantly useful, but the real city has bends, hills and millions of people the map leaves out; this last lesson of the block checks what Civilization-style games and Europa Universalis get right and what they squash flat. - [2](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/80-games-vs-history-tech-trees-barbarians-empty-lands-wonders-and-falls/2/) — Most of all, games hide the peasants: in farming societies eight or nine people in ten worked the land, while the game shows only kings, generals and merchants. - [3](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/80-games-vs-history-tech-trees-barbarians-empty-lands-wonders-and-falls/3/) — Games are still good teachers of some things: maps and geography, trade-offs, cause and effect, and the habit of thinking «what would happen if»; Europa Universalis even ends in 1821 with no win button, a bit like real history, which has no finish line at all. - [4](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/80-games-vs-history-tech-trees-barbarians-empty-lands-wonders-and-falls/4/) — So play, then check: use the game as the first page, and books, museums and the people whose history it is as the rest of the story. - [5](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/80-games-vs-history-tech-trees-barbarians-empty-lands-wonders-and-falls/5/) — Real inventions depended on needs, accidents and resources, not a fixed tree; some were even forgotten, like ways of making Roman concrete in western Europe, so history could have gone differently. - [8](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/80-games-vs-history-tech-trees-barbarians-empty-lands-wonders-and-falls/8/) — The list of Seven Wonders was made by ancient Greek writers; of the seven, only the Great Pyramid of Giza still stands, and it was built by thousands of workers, many of them paid and fed, not by one ruler alone. - [9](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/80-games-vs-history-tech-trees-barbarians-empty-lands-wonders-and-falls/9/) — Many Maya cities in the southern lowlands declined around 800 to 900, but millions of Maya people live today and speak around 30 Mayan languages. - [10](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/80-games-vs-history-tech-trees-barbarians-empty-lands-wonders-and-falls/10/) — Real rulers lived ordinary lifetimes and passed power to others, and a change of ruler often changed a country's direction. - [11](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/80-games-vs-history-tech-trees-barbarians-empty-lands-wonders-and-falls/11/) — History has no finish line and no winner; it keeps going, and we are part of it. - [12](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/80-games-vs-history-tech-trees-barbarians-empty-lands-wonders-and-falls/12/) — Empires like the Ottoman Empire, the Habsburg lands and the British Empire included many peoples, languages and religions, not one people in one colour. - [14](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/80-games-vs-history-tech-trees-barbarians-empty-lands-wonders-and-falls/14/) — In farming societies most people, often eight or nine in ten, were farmers. - [15](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/80-games-vs-history-tech-trees-barbarians-empty-lands-wonders-and-falls/15/) — Real diplomacy used letters, gifts, envoys and royal marriages; in the Amarna letters, from about 1350 BCE, kings of Egypt, Babylon and others call each other «brother» and ask for gold and gifts. - [16](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/80-games-vs-history-tech-trees-barbarians-empty-lands-wonders-and-falls/16/) — Games can teach geography, trade-offs and cause and effect, but they simplify, so it is wise to check them against books and people who know the history. - ← previous: [Worries and hopes: climate, the UN, space, AI, and is the world getting better?](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/79-worries-and-hopes-is-the-world-getting-better/) - next →: [Alice's Victorian world: tea, croquet, pocket watches, shillings and chimney sweeps](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/81-alice-s-victorian-world-tea-croquet-pocket-watches-shillings-and-chimney-sweeps/) - ↑ back to [History](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/)