I was a games shop quite recently where a kid was making his mum buy him Age of Empires II on the grounds that he 'needed it for homework'. Whether or not it was true I just about fell over at the gall of the lad/ guilability of the mother or the incredible negligence of the teacher.
That said, my brother did his degree in history and he can't get enough of Civ. He has weird tactics based on real life though that don't work too well mind you.
Also, the first time he played Sim City 2000 he started in 1900 and spent the first fifteen years setting up his town so it would deal with a war economy well...I thought it was quite charming that he couldn't work out why the newspapers never mentioned the Great War.
Hey I just thought, why do you never get Zepplins in the early years of Sim City, that'd rock!