I created a mod a couple of years ago in Civ IV covering the world in 1492 and conquest of the Aztecs by Cortes for a course taught by Ed Webb on empires. \u00a0Overall, I was extremely happy with capabilities offered by games. \u00a0Virtually all of the variables within Civ IV regarding civics, technology, religion, demographics and foreign relations can be altered to create a historic scenario. \u00a0That being said, even a complicated game such as Civ IV is still a great simplification. \u00a0However, having students play the game then critique its short comings gave them a great opportunity for goal oriented research and critical analysis. \u00a0In this case, the center piece this analysis was the book, “The Conquest of America: The Question of the Other” by Tzvetan Todorov which emphasizes the importance of the “belief systems”, a variable not included in the mod. \u00a0The other principle factor was the role disease played in weakening the Aztec forces.<\/p>\n
My only regret was that I didn’t have the students create the mod themselves. \u00a0When all was said and done, I’m pretty sure I learned the most about the both the Aztecs and Europe during the time period. \u00a0Everything from the relative size of the Iroquois, the collapse of the Mayan Empire, the lingering effect of the plague on European populations, and the cultural\/religious within Europe and North Africa had to be researched. \u00a0The students were let off rather easily in comparison.<\/p>\n
Anyone interested in playing the mod can download it here<\/a>. \u00a0Keep in mind, that my mod was actually a modification of an existing mod. \u00a0Credits and resources are referenced in the ReadMe<\/a> file. \u00a0Finally, for those interested in creating their own mods, we’ve published our notes on the modding Civ IV workshops during the NITLE sponsored conferencing on gaming at Dickinson College. \u00a0The introduction to modding is here<\/a> while the hands on worksheet for creating your first mod is here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I created a mod a couple of years ago in Civ IV covering the world in 1492 and conquest of the Aztecs by Cortes for a course taught by Ed Webb on empires. \u00a0Overall, I was extremely happy with capabilities … Continue reading<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":776,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[64,8163],"class_list":["post-275","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","tag-games","tag-mod"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/edtech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/edtech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/edtech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/edtech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/776"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/edtech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=275"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/edtech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/edtech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=275"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/edtech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=275"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/edtech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=275"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}