Of all the historical strategy games from these two competitors, which one is more on the plausible side? And why?
Lets just put this in context:
In 1750 if you capture Paris, Quebec and Strasbourg in EUIII you're a good way to getting a strong victory, but could still easily lose ground to France.
In Empire Total War you've completely and irrevesibly wiped out the french nation.
Where on earth did the Marxism comment come from?
I have actually never had a left wing government in Victoria II. In a game as Japan I had full voting rights and an excellent education system but ended up with more people voting conservative at the end of the game than at the beginning. As Austria-Hungary (later Greater Germany) I had to put down multiple anarchist and communist rebellions, although oddly enough I never had a nationalist revolts. In the ten year period of rebellions I ended up with hundreds of thousands if not millions of people dying in the uprisings (which were so massive it was more like a civil war) and had so much economic damage done that my factories had to exist on subsidies for the rest of the game due to the huge losses of workers and consumers.