Make Austria-Hungary Strong
An improbably alternate history adventure
I’ve written before of my love for real-life and alternate history. A lot of my Reading Recaps have been notes on history-related books. And obviously I love writing alternate history as you may have noticed.
Enter Tex of the Black Pants Legion.
If you’re not familiar, this group originally formed around a guy who did Battletech lore videos on YouTube. (If you like Battletech, you need to check out that YouTube channel. It’s amazing.) He’s branched out quite a bit since then and does all sorts of stuff, including video game playthroughs. Lately he’s been playing a game called Ultimate Admiral Dreadnoughts where you play as the Commander-in-Chief of a Great Power Navy starting in 1890 for as long as you last against the other great powers of the era.
I have not played the game, but I enjoy watching his playthroughs as they are usually ridiculous and absurdly funny. In the game you are given a budget based on the GDP of your country and you can build ships of all different classes, sizes, and capabilities. You choose which technologies to focus on from a research standpoint, which unlocks different upgrades and weapons for your ships. You can send your navy out to fight across the sea, or you can keep it in your own waters to defend your coasts. It is an interesting game, and I want to play sometime when I’m not completely buried under other obligations (and I have a PC capable of running it without having to sacrifice a chicken to Bill Gates).
I have been particularly amused by a playthrough Tex has been doing lately as Austria-Hungary. Tex was given the challenge of ‘Make Austria-Hungary Strong’ and getting the hodgepodge nation to last until 1950, thirty-two years after its actual dissolution at the end of World War 1. Part 1 of 11 is linked below if you’re interested in this sort of thing. I frequently put it on in the background when I’m working and it provides some good entertainment.
As of the penultimate Episode 11, Tex has created an Austria-Hungary that stretches from Gibraltar across the Mediterranean, up to Lithuania, across the Russian steppes, down to Vladivostok, over parts of the Japanese home islands, most of the major Pacific islands, and covers Australia.
Austro-Hungarian Australia. Yeah, that’s a thing.
Obviously this is a game and thus limited in how much it can portray and how well it simulates real life, but I was inspired to write a little alternate history and throw it up here for folks who might enjoy it. So next time you’ll get a few hundred words of VERY alternate history where a young Franz Ferdinand of Austria-Hungary discovers a hitherto-unknown passion for boats and naval warfare. This is just something silly I threw together, and it may continue, it may not. But it does make me laugh!
Thanks for reading and I’ll see you next time!
Edit to Add: You can read Parts 1 and 2 below!
And read some background on the historical events happening in this time period here:
