What is the story with Austria?

[theknightirish]

I am playing Austria. I have repeatedly hammering the Ottoman Empire and by 1870 I have pushed into Albania and Serbia. At the end of the last war they offered me Libya but I refused because I am never quite sure about Austria and colonies.

So what is the story about Austria and colonies? If I had accepted Libya would it have been useless to me?

[HerrDan]

If you play with historical SOI (sphere of influence), yes it would be useless, even worse, it would damage your prestige over time. Austria didn't want colonies, it concentrated its efforts in Europe, it wasn't easy to manage an Empire composed of so many "nationalities", so the austrians didn't "have time for colonization", besides they never had a navy that would allow them to do so, and neither support from the other powers.

[HerrDan]

This is Wikipedia, so it's not THAT deep, but can give you some nice informations about the Austrian Empire:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austrian_Empire

[loki100]

I am playing Austria. I have repeatedly hammering the Ottoman Empire and by 1870 I have pushed into Albania and Serbia. At the end of the last war they offered me Libya but I refused because I am never quite sure about Austria and colonies.

So what is the story about Austria and colonies? If I had accepted Libya would it have been useless to me?

Its a little bit more nuanced. With the historical SoI constraint the only way to an Austrian colonial empire is to take it off someone else. At the start you will have negative legitimacy but if you hold it for long enough, the validity of your claim will slowly rise and once it reaches 0, you gain prestige for your colony.

Now, in truth, the regular loss of prestige is pretty minimal so its not really a reason not to grab a colony but as Austria I'd be very pragmatic about what I took. You ideally want colonies with hard to buy luxuries or exotic foodstuffs (coffee, tropical fruits, sugar), as that will ease meeting your domestic demand. Now it needs to be explored (ie its not visible on the map at the start) but Libya does have one tropical fruit resource (just east of Benghazi), but otherwise is pretty worthless. If they start offering Yemen, take it (opium and coffee).

Basically its an idea to grab stuff you are not entitled to if either it contains nice goods or fits into your growing colonial empire (pre-1880s, you need refueling points and so on when moving fleets/troops around).

So its quite feasible to end up with a decent Austrian colonial empire, grabbed by conquest, and to make some valuable gains from this

[Kensai]

I wish negative SOIs gave a lot more negative prestige points to make historical colonization priorities valid. That said, it is great that the Philippes allowed for some flexibility here and left it to the player take the bullet and think strategically if a colony might be profitable (economically or militarily) some time in the future.

[HerrDan]

I wish negative SOIs gave a lot more negative prestige points to make historical colonization priorities valid. That said, it is great that the Philippes allowed for some flexibility here and left it to the player take the bullet and think strategically if a colony might be profitable (economically or militarily) some time in the future.

Agreed here, the austrian empire colonizing Africa, for instance, sounds VERY weird. But then again, some players like this kind of flexibility, but in my opinion the penalty for colonizing ahistorical places could be a little harsher.

[Q-Kee]

Personally, I do not play PON as reenactment of history, but enjoy the possibility to alter it by making different decisions which I think better, or just by executing the same decisions better (which, tbh, is much more simple in a game than in 19th century reality). I like to play the historical loser in any AGEOD game and win.

So, playing Austria, I now have the second biggest colonial empire and it provides sources for commodities otherwise (nearly) unobtainable, and bases around the world to resupply ships should I need to send them anywhere. I play the Großdeutschland mod, but even if I were "only" Austria I would have done the same. Most of my colonies are war bounties, but since Kensai scripted me access to the most colonial decisions Austria would not have otherwise I have made a few myself too. I have turned off SOI, but yes, even if they were turned on it would not affect me overly much, and the more decisions played the better SOI becomes anyways.

Lybia is actually not bad, there is 1 site for nitrates (Austria itself has only 2) and 1 for tropical fruits. What is more important is that it gives you a land base for operations against French Algeria, and (Ottoman or British) Egypt, and a naval base closer to the western Mediterranean to fight the French fleet.

Yemen, as far as I have seen, is not an Ottoman colony yet (1874), so don't bother with it right now IMO. Also as long as there is no Suez canal it is too far from the Austrian ports.

[HerrDan]

Personally, I do not play PON as reenactment of history, but enjoy the possibility to alter it by making different decisions which I think better, or just by executing the same decisions better (which, tbh, is much more simple in a game than in 19th century reality). I like to play the historical loser in any AGEOD game and win.

So, playing Austria, I now have the second biggest colonial empire and it provides sources for commodities otherwise (nearly) unobtainable, and bases around the world to resupply ships should I need to send them anywhere. I play the Großdeutschland mod, but even if I were "only" Austria I would have done the same. Most of my colonies are war bounties, but since Kensai scripted me access to the most colonial decisions Austria would not have otherwise I have made a few myself too. I have turned off SOI, but yes, even if they were turned on it would not affect me overly much, and the more decisions played the better SOI becomes anyways.

Lybia is actually not bad, there is 1 site for nitrates (Austria itself has only 2) and 1 for tropical fruits. What is more important is that it gives you a land base for operations against French Algeria, and (Ottoman or British) Egypt, and a naval base closer to the western Mediterranean to fight the French fleet.

Yemen, as far as I have seen, is not an Ottoman colony yet (1874), so don't bother with it right now IMO. Also as long as there is no Suez canal it is too far from the Austrian ports.

Nobody said here a player should be forced to play historically, if you want to play "sandbox" you just "turn off" the historical restrictions . And definitely it has nothing to do with "winning or losing sides", but rather on what the countries were historycally, of course you might "win" with a faction that actually lost in real history, if not it wouldn't be a game after all.

The thing is, when you play a historical game, specially a deep one like Pride of Nations, it's an amazing oportunity to feel in the place of controlling a given country in the 19th century, and there are many traits that countries had/have that defines what the country is/was, so playing Great Britain is a completelly different experience from playing Russia, for instance, they have many different characteristcs, Russia is backward, but has a huge territory and a huge army and it's so cold in there, so let's say I want to feel in place of the Tsar in 1880 because it'd be so amazing to control a country like Russia at that time, and as a historical game, and as I said before playing Russia will be a different experience from playing Great Britain, or France, and that's the amazing thing with historical accurate games, you can feel the atmosphere of the time and of the game with its different factions, so this is different from having "generic" countries, like Sid's civ games or VickyII, where every country has more or less the same possibilities, so let's say you want to build dreadnoughts as the Boers, that's not a problem really...I have nothing against anyone who wants "to paint the world their color", it's your game after all, I just mean that it's a waste playing like that, and it's just my opinion after all.