14 DAY TRIAL // I don’t like losing, whether it happens in video games or in real life, but titles from Paradox Interactive, packed with mechanics and concepts, tend to frequently put me face to face with it.
This time Austria, backed by its strong allies, has proved to be more than a match for my Prussian kingdom and its various German minor satellites and the war is pretty much lost.
The big choice right now is whether to push for a general mobilization, which will offer me a chance to boost my frontlines with some new troops, drawn from the poor strata, or to sign a peace treaty with my enemies, ceding a few provinces and paying repairs in order to buy time and maybe return stronger than ever.
My first option would make it pretty much impossible to mount a comeback, because my the war score would allow Austria to take a lot of land away from me, and the very possible strong of upcoming defeats would lead to a push of the Escape button and a load of a previous save.
My second option is more humiliating in the short term because it creates a narrative where mighty, forward looking Prussia has been bested by the southern and backward Austrians, kept from its normal role as the leader of the German peoples.
But if I take peace now and swallow the humiliation, I might be able to reverse the losses I have taken in a few years, push my technology forward some more, train more armies, play a better diplomatic game and then launch another, this time successful war.
A House Divided is somewhat unique because it allows such comebacks after pretty crushing defeats, and this is another simple mechanic that separates Victoria II from other strategy titles, which too often lead players into a fail state.