Divided Empire

The video game Victoria 3 is a historical, and often times ahistorial, 4X grand strategy video game by Swedish developer Paradox Interactive. It is meant to depict the period of world history from 1836 to 1936, including events such as the middle and late industrial revolution, American civil war, the scramble for Africa, the first world war, among numerous others. Emerging from the Napoleonic wars as one of the great European powers of the age was the Austrian empire. In reality, the history of the Habsburg monarchy was very tumultuous during the period portrayed. In Victoria 3 however, the Austrian monarchy often remains stable and even when it undergoes significant economic and social reforms when controlled by the player, the empire often exits the fires of nationalism comparatively unscathed. This essay intends to describe the limitations of the model in Victoria 3, as well to recommend changes that might better represent the unique history of the dual monarchy.

The version of Austria present in Victoria 3 has many issues owing to its internal structure, or lack thereof. To better understand these issues, we should compare it with another example that exists in 1836, that being Förenade Konungarikena Sverige och Norge, the personal union between Sweden and Norway. The two countries are depicted as separate entities with a shared market and military policy. This is a fitting interpretation as the two countries had separate legislatures, citizenships, and two different constitutions (Stråth, 2005). The only shared institution was the foreign department, due to the shared foreign policy. This is similar to the situation in Austria-Hungary. During the 1867 compromise, the empire was partitioned into Austrian and Hungarian domains. These areas were refereed to as Cislethania and Translethania respectively. Similarly to Sweden-Norway, Cis- and Translethania shared foreign policy and military and had a common customs union and currency. But at the same time they had two different parliaments, selected their own ministers, and maintained wholly separate judicial systems (Steven, 2006). In Victoria 3 however, when the citizenship law Racial Segregation is passed and the Hungarian population ceases to be discriminated against, an event fires that transforms the formerly Austrian empire into Austria-Hungary, and making Hungarians a so-called primary culture in the new nation. What should instead occur is that Hungary should partially secede from Austria, falling under a personal union similar to that of Sweden-Norway. This should also motivate the player to avoid the compromise at all costs. The solution to the Hungarian question is very therefore similar to Sweden-Norway, and the game should aim to reflect the downsides of the union rather than merely giving it benefits. Paradox should put more effort into depicting the division present between the two parts of the dual monarchy.

Nationalism did not merely threaten the empire from its eastern parts, but nationalists calling for the creation of a German nation occupied a large share of the empires attention. In 1848, the Frankfurt Parliament’s revolutionaries created the first German nation, laying claim to all areas encompassed by the post-Napoleonic German Confederation, including the predominantly German-speaking parts of Austria (Heikaus, 1997). Due to the large non-German minorities in the empire, a new German nation would require the Habsburg monarchy to surrender large portions of their territory in exchange for a new unstable state. Their unwillingness to do so prompted German nationalists to seek an alternative solution for a united Germany not encompassing the Austrian lands, a Kleindeutsche Lösung as opposed to that of Großdeutschland. The other major German power, Prussia, also controlled significant non-German groups, but these were considered small enough to possibly Germanise through the Ostsiedlung that had occurred during the middle ages (Nipperdey, 1996). Victoria 3 models this struggle of Groß- and Kleindeutschland through the war goal of German Leadership. This does a very good job of representing the Austro-Prussian war in the event of a Prussian victory, but fails to model the situation of a possible Austrian-led Germany being formed. If Austria should emerge as the victorious party in a question of German leadership, it would also entail the expulsion of all non-German regions from the empire. The Austrian player should therefore be forced to decide between retaining their non-German lands or fight a series of wars to unify the various smaller German states. This choice will not be as attractive to the Austrian party as it would to the purely expansionist Prussia, but that would only serve to mimic historical incentives. The forces of nationalism should therefore be strengthened to further weaken the Austrian state’s expansionist abilities.

The period in which Victoria 3 plays out is one which sees the primacy of large European empires (Paradox Interactive, 2022). In the game, one uses the “Colonial Administration” institution to slowly conquer the land of decentralized powers. Practically all European nations have the required technology to enact the legislation required for such a colonial effort in any region they have an interest in, with the main obstacle being competition with other imperial powers. But in reality obtaining colonial possessions was far from simple. On a superficial level, the fact that one of the European great powers of the Victorian age did not posses any major overseas colonies appears very strange. But this was due to the lack of firm coöperation and control within its European domains, and the comparative lack of sea access. The troubles with domestic ethnic conflict has already been mentioned, but it is worth it to note that Hungarians were not the only large minority in the empire. There were also large numbers of Poles, Czechoslovaks, Ukrainians, Slovens, Romanians, and Italians. These contributed to the fragmentation of any effort to obtain colonies, even after 1867. Secondly, while Austria-Hungary had access to the sea, the dual monarchy was never a true naval power. This lack of ships made it harder to project power far away from home. For Victoria 3 to tackle this the number of interests a country can declare should be even more strongly tied to the size of a country’s fleets, perhaps even as a share of the global total. While the game makes a noble attempt to limit colonialism, it is ultimately not enough to model the difficulties of the dual monarchy.

The Victorian and Edwardian periods are ones of profound change not only in Europe, but in the world as a whole. The challenges of modeling something as complex as this while still creating an engaging experience for a player trying to construct a national economy and shape their own society are of course tremendous, but it is likely still possible for the unique trajectory of Austria to appear as it was in history. The empire faced many difficult obstacles both from its multi-ethnic makeup and from the nature of its geography, and it was partly these obstacles that caused the archaic and enigmatic monarchy to collapse in the fires of the great war.