It's called a metaphor. If you can't handle those, let me put it another way; real history is no challenge because you already know what happened and how.
The challenge in playing Civ is not knowing what is going to happen but having a reference of real history as a guide.
I think you are privileging what actually happened unreasonably much, here. History's a long chain of accidents and consequences.
History is a long chain of successions and rewards.
What it's about. fwiw, is how the circumstances around a civilisation's starting point, in terms of resources and geography and so forth, affect that civilisation's growth and development. very much worth reading and thinking about in terms of how the range of variation in Civ works and how it could be improved.
Ethnic variation and language of the various civilization superorganisms and the way they interact is a worthwhile book to read. Especially if it's published in grammar that is not latin based such as Arabic or Chinese.