An article and two sites:
Jan van der Crabben: ‘Civilized Education‘
From Firaxis: ‘Educators’ Exchange‘
and from Kurt Squire, doyen of Civ-for-education: CivWorld
“This is a site for people interested in using Sid Meier’s Civilization for learning academic content, including history, geography, or even game design. We have custom-designed game scenarios, curricula, case studies, and experts on using Civ for learning. Our goal is to help players, students, parents, and even teachers use the game at home, in after school centers and maybe even classrooms.”
I’m in the process of writing up my latest thoughts on using Civ IV in the classroom (and especially, for distance education!). My biggest mistake in my initial foray (link on my publications’ list) was in not thinking carefully enough about assessment and what exactly I was trying to assess. Who knew that university students would balk at playing a game for marks? Watch this space…
Electric Archaeology 
Interesting stuff! I think it has a lot of potential too but am still struggling to find appropriate applications in higher education, beyond introductory 1st year level. It would be good to explore this further for sure and certainly what you say about thinking through the learning outcomes is essential.
Did you see my earlier post on how a game-in-the-classroom assessment rubric might be designed?
The key to games-in-the-classroom is ‘the metagame’, the discussion surrounding the game (and not so much the playing of the game itself, though that will remain important). For instance, I could imagine asking students to check out some of the Caesar IV forums and their discussions of the game’s economic model (and playing the game for a while too to develop their own views on that) – and then reflect on various recent works on the Roman economy. How does the game model differ from the academics’ models? Are there points of similarity? The game requires a high degree of micromanagement – how were Roman estates, towns, etc managed… and so on…