Try
Anno 1404 and it's prequel
Anno 1701. This series is about trading and things what you're looking for. They're playing in 1404 and 1701 A.D., so right in the era what you're looking for. It's basically about economy with very little battles. It's about how to make a small village to a prospering town and later how to expand your little empire. Anno 1404 is the newer one, released not long ago, so I would suggest to try that one. In this one, you get a detailed picture about how things may have worked in that era. Beware. This one is a really pretty game, but it's a bit addictive to. You just play and play and you haven't noticed you've already played for four hours.
If you want accurate tactical games, try the Total War series (Shogun: Total War, Rome: Total War,
Medieval I-II: Total War, Empire: Total War). From this series, the Medieval I-II would be your game. This one is presenting war of the eras nicely.
And also there is
Civilization 4. It's very accurate, but it can't offer many things what the upper mentioned ones may can. It has many expansions and it has many historical missions, but it's also presenting our entire history from the beginning to the future.
Or my last advice, try
Empire Earth I and II (Forget the third episode). Empire Earth is the game which is presenting all era of mankind from prehistoric, through medieval to our times and beyond (Different then Civ4). It's rather a real time strategy, but there are very good historical missions in this game too. It's a very good game (Empire Earth is one of my favorite RTS.
). In this game you can find everything from Centurions and Hoplites, through Knights and Cavaliers to B-17 Flying Fortress and F/A-18C Hornets. It's a really good game as you're managing an entire empire from the very beginning to the very end (Through 15 eras, overall 500,000 years and there are app. 14 different civilizations in it.). In scenario you can select which era is that you'd like to play (There is app. four playable eras from the fifteen which is just about the medieval age. If you want, you can play all four medieval in order to see how the units and the society may evolved.). And this game also has a sister game, called as
Rise of Nations. It's almost the very same, yet different as Empire Earth. But it's the same perfect program in this genre. The difference is the historical missions and the details. Both Empire Earth and Rise of Nations are giving different measure to different things and maybe Rise of Nations is a bit more accurate and giving more details about development, trading and the society. I love that one too and it's also my favorite.
So my advise list is:
Anno 1404 (Building, Trading, Agriculture, Society and Diplomacy... could be your #1 candidate)
Empire Earth 2 and
Rise of Nations (Military, Trading, Society, but foremost Evolution)
Medieval II: Total War (Detailed military tactics)
Civilization 4 (Evolution, Tactics, Agriculture and Society Management. Detailed, but quite different then Anno 1404. Personally I suggest Anno 1404 instead.)
