How the West (was) won: Unit operations and emergent procedural rhetorics of colonialism in Europa Universalis IV

Abstract

Historical simulation games such as the Civilization, Total War and Europa Universalis franchises serve, formally and informally, as powerful methods of learning history. While extant scholarship has focused on the connections to history, pedagogy and procedural rhetoric, little work has been done to examine the subsystems embedded in the interface and algorithmic components of more complex simulations, such as those present in Europa Universalis ‐ an analysis which is necessary to assess the complex enframing and algorithmic argumentation these games present. This article uses procedural rhetoric, as well as unit analysis, to analyse the constituent components that scaffold into larger procedural arguments made in the popular simulation game, Europa Universalis IV. This shows how the algorithmic implementations, both at a macro and micro level, advance arguments about colonialism, historical determinism and technological advancement, and how the predominant design philosophy of historical simulation games often reinforces simplistic or fallacious models of history.