Ah haha that is awesome to share in that experience. It is one of my most played games. I am educated in computer science so I spent years trying to think of how I would make civilization myself.

In fact I still go around thinking about how I would model technological innovation, trade etc. Kind of a big job though. I keep thinking of maybe making it into a board game. You can buy lots of high quality graphics for board games and piece together from various asset stores online today.

Unfortunately I never studied history but I have grown up in a family with history fans. My dad and my brother studied it. My wife majored in history. Maybe it was a good thing it didn't study it. I know from studying computer science that school can sometimes excel and making anything you love boring. Hahaha. It is challenging to make things engaging though, but I try myself. There are certainly some authors and teachers who do an amazing job.

I did actually have a very good history teacher in high school. My best teacher was my physics teacher though. I loved how childish he was. He loved cool stuff just as much as us teenagers.

What part of history did you focus on in your studies?

Oh I should mention I was also pretty much into history from childhood because of my dad. He would tell all these stories about pirates, knights and castles. I noticed many of my fellow class mates lacked this from home. They never got all those cool stories, movies etc which made the past come alive. Instead history for them was just an endless number of dates and years.

I have really wanted to write a novel on set in a sot of alternative history. When you read history there are so many exciting thoughts you can get about what if things were different. One of my next articles will probably be about what would the world look like today without fossil fuels. Once you know a lot about history and technology you can make sort of half-decent educated guess and that is a lot of fun.