Collections: Teaching Paradox, Europa Universalis IV, Part III: Europa Provincalis

This is the third part of our series (I, II, III, IV) examining the historical assumptions of Paradox Interactive’s grand strategy computer game set in the early modern period, Europa Universalis IV (which is in turn the start of a yet larger series looking at several of Paradox's games and how they treat their historical … Continue reading Collections: Teaching Paradox, Europa Universalis IV, Part III: Europa Provincalis

Collections: Bread, How Did They Make It? Part IV: Markets, Merchants and the Tax Man

Thanks to our helpful volunteer narrator, this entire post series is now also available in audio format! As the fourth and final part (I, II, III) of our look at the basic structure of food production in the pre-modern world (particularly farming grain to make bread), this week we're going to look at how at … Continue reading Collections: Bread, How Did They Make It? Part IV: Markets, Merchants and the Tax Man

Collections: The Lonely City, Part II: Real Cities Have Curves

Last week, we looked at a model for what the countryside around an 'ideal city' might look like. Today we're going to introduce some complications to that model (you will recall, our ideal city existed in a perfectly flat plain of uniform fertility) and see how they change the patterns of land use which in … Continue reading Collections: The Lonely City, Part II: Real Cities Have Curves