Historical Games

It would be really nice if there was some kind of historical Sims-like game out. One that looked maybe like Sword of the New World but one where you can play in different time periods and be able to control and customize your character like the Sims games. Of course this game should be more historically accurate and realistic that SOTNW, but still with the same amount of creativity as far as characters and clothes are concerned. Ideas like this make me wish I had some input in game development though. I've been playing Uncharted Waters Online. IMO it's better than SOTNW, but the sailing parts it can get a bit dull, and some of the quests require a lot of time and traveling. Character customization is pretty good though, much better than the stock characters of SOTNW. I've tried playing Voyage Century, but the tutorial was practically non-existent, and the game play wasn't very exciting (when you start you have to kill crabs on the beach in order to get gold). So far the best history game I've ever played was the Age of Empires series, especially AoE III. I was literally addicted to this game until college cured my of my hard core gaming habits, that and the fact the Microsoft shutdown Ensemble Studios, the creators of the game. Still haven't tried to play any of the Civilization games, since I just feel that they are just copying AoE (I'm pretty sure AoE was the first RTS game out there). Railroad Tycoon is pretty good too, although there are no characters involved, just building railroads. Sid Meier's Railroads is pretty good too; the graphics are nice and the trains look very realistic. However, the game play is not quite as good as the RT series.