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[Neonivek]

Yeah from what I am gathering the answer really is... that games like that are pretty much non-existant.

[Puzzlemaker]

Chinese history is FASCINATING.  I wish they covered it more, and more games were based on it.  Seriously, it's so interesting.

[FritzPL]

C2C: Caveman 2 Cosmos mod for Civilization IV. Amazing care for obviously useless, but still fancy-to-know details about cultures, which just makes it dwarfy.

May I ask, what do you need the knowledge for? A school project? Or personal entertainment/self-realization?

[Neonivek]

It is just sort of the style I am looking for.

A game where learning about the culture is somehow, either intentionally or unintentionally, part of the game. A game that sort of transports you to another time and place without the thick 4th wall. Most games just super impose the modern day onto their settings or disconnect you from the setting in such a strong way that it really could have taken place anywhere and changed minor details.

I want a game where if you inhaled you might even think you could smell what that peasant was cooking.

[Trollheiming]

Sadly, yeah. The guys at Creative Assembly aren't history professors.

Rome: Total Realism mod is rather nice though, since they DID have history professors as part of the dev team. I love that you can play as one of the Indo-Greek Bactrian kings, using modified hoplite tactics plus Asian elephants and Central Asian horse archers.

I do agree that RTR was pretty awesome and stuck decently close to history. I also used to like turtling on the map edge as the Bactrians. Overall, I think vanilla RTW was the last high quality CA product. I even forgive them for the Ptolemids in chariots.

The vanilla of the rest of the series, on the other hand...

No, but they do tend to hire multiple experts for whichever game they are working on, as well as acquiring source texts for the design phases.For the most part the Total War games reflect the situation of the time they are set, although concessions are made for gameplay reasons (and in some cases ratings reasons).

The Total War series ever since M2TW has been made by brutally stupid developers with no love of history. There were no experts. The series has actively spread disinformation that even a child could pick apart. For example, this loading screen gem:

"The Constitution only gives people the right to pursue happiness. You have to catch it yourself" -- Thomas Jefferson

An American school child would point out that T.J. wrote about the pursuit of happiness in the Declaration of Independence, not the Constitution as claimed, and moreover he declared it to be a god-given inalienable right. He wouldn't then turn around and claim with amazing hubris for the time period that this prize, which he identified first as coming from on high, was now the gift of the Constitution, which actually doesn't allude to happiness at all. It's a jaw-droppingly bone-headed fake quote that alone could throw the validity of all other quotes into question. But there are so many other bad examples. 

The most buffoonish by far is the description of English longbowmen in M2TW. The background info for that unit actually repeated the groan-inducing urban legend that the vulgarity of the middle finger arose as a response to French knights cutting the index fingers off British archers, so the archers stuck out their middle fingers and said, "We can still pluck yew. See? PLUCK YEW!"

Kid you not. Load up M2TW and that claim is actually in the text somewhere. I was devastated that this was being passed to millions of less-discerning gamers as "history" when it's pretty corny and obviously an urban legend. The middle finger arose as an insult probably due to a vague similarity to genitalia, not corny pop-history connected to English longbowmen. 

The person making the loading screen quotes and the background info for units has been phoning his job in for quite some time. This is a buyer beware for the Total War series. Play these games because they're fun. Never repeat anything in them on a history exam! There's no real push to maintain accuracy, even when it has nothing to do with the gameplay.

[jhxmt]

The most buffoonish by far is the description of English longbowmen in M2TW. The background info for that unit actually repeated the groan-inducing urban legend that the vulgarity of the middle finger arose as a response to French knights cutting the index fingers off British archers, so the archers stuck out their middle fingers and said, "We can still pluck yew. See? PLUCK YEW!"

Kid you not. Load up M2TW and that claim is actually in the text somewhere. I was devastated that this was being passed to millions of less-discerning gamers as "history" when it's pretty corny and obviously an urban legend. The middle finger arose as an insult probably due to a vague similarity to genitalia, not corny pop-history connected to English longbowmen. 

Funny, I've never heard that urban legend in reference to the middle-finger gesture, only to the (much more localised) two-finger gesture - but yes, again, it's absolutely just an urban legend, as a simple five minutes on Wikipedia would have demonstrated to whoever was researching it.  Interestingly, the actual origin of the gesture is something "that we will probably never know" (as per Desmond Morris' quote in the relevant wiki article).  That's still no excuse for perpetuating false origins, though. 

[notquitethere]

I think a study showed that people playing Morrowind had much greater recall about plants and whatnot after playing for the same number of hours as people studying the same facts by reading. Basically, video games are always edutainment, whether they like it or not. Can't think of many good historically grounded games. Uh... a lot of people talk about Unreal Life, authentic ancient Finnish roguelike.

[Owlbread]

AoE III is unabashedly full of shit, both fluff and crunch.

Listening to Morgan Black's Scottish Gaelic is like listening to Ted Heath giving that speech in French back in the 70s i.e. terrible.

[LeoLeonardoIII]

If I understand right, you don't require historical accuracy, but in-game cultural immersion for whatever culture the game gives.

In that case, Outcast is neat and it's like a shooter but plays slowly and is also like an adventure game. The alien culture gets a pretty good treatment and you actually need to learn stuff about it to solve some puzzles. That said, I'm only at the third world or something because I got a little bored with occasional crashes compounded by a save system that has a delay for an animation and so discourages saving.

Basically what I'm saying is, if Outcast had a standard FPS control scheme and you moved about twice as fast and it had a quicksave I'd be pretty darn happy with it.

[Shades]

Kid you not. Load up M2TW and that claim is actually in the text somewhere. I was devastated that this was being passed to millions of less-discerning gamers as "history" when it's pretty corny and obviously an urban legend. The middle finger arose as an insult probably due to a vague similarity to genitalia, not corny pop-history connected to English longbowmen. 

M2TW was not made by the uk creative assembly team, but a different team in australia (which is currently called sega studios australia). Although there are historically wrong bits you could have picked from a game they actually made, even so the titles are well research and mostly accurate.

[Neonivek]

If I understand right, you don't require historical accuracy, but in-game cultural immersion for whatever culture the game gives.

Yes

[thegoatgod_pan]

Europa Universalis is a very accurate and well-designed sandbox of the world where you can jump in at any point after 1399 (in the base game) and develop your economy and power as any country you want: from the powerhouse Spanish Castille to a minor kingdom in what is today Nigeria. It is only super immersive if you consider a good model of medieval economics and politics immersive, otherwise each country is pretty similar to each other country.

[Tilla]

The Assassin's Creed games are good for this. There's a huge encyclopedia of background info they provide on many characters and events.

Obviously you just have to take into account that none of the things actually happened because of you.

Gotta second this. AC series has made me look up bits of History I didn't know several times

[Neonivek]

Indeed assassine's creed works. Though I was hoping for something stronger in that regard especially since the game often only sporatically uses the setting outside buildings.

[Sonlirain]

China... let's think...

Jade Empire is set in faux China (some characters seem to even speak chinese but i can't tell since it sounds like gibberish to me.).

Then if you like citybuilders there is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emperor:_Rise_of_the_Middle_Kingdom
Made by guys who generally made GOOD citybuilders. And if i remember right they usually had a built in encyklopedia in their games.