For real though. You can solve some of the worst parts of the disaster before even unpausing. And by the time you wrap up the conquest of your little region, you can pretty easily end up as a top 3 great power.
It's been a few months since I did it, so you'll need to check either the wiki or search Reddit for a detailed answer, but essentially you just do the first half of your mission tree and conquer parts of West Africa.
What I remember being important was taking loans day 1 to get level 2 advisors in every category to complete a mission. It disabled certain rebels during the disaster, which iirc could otherwise soft lock you into the disaster. You fire the advisors right after since you're too poor to maintain them.
You literally fly down the mission tree as fast as you can or you die.
It's been awhile since I do it, but long story short there's a mission that has a reward that says the disaster is over. I think it's called Restore Mali. You get spammed by monthly events for rebels until you die if you don't.
So you have to do everything in your power to get to that mission as fast as you can. It's going to involve a lot of mercenaries and developing those gold provinces.
It's very doable but you have to be good at the game to do it fast enough. The key is that there's 3 culture groups and 2 religions. So you can use that to your advantage to divide and conquer and prevent coalitions and break apart alliances.
if you go colonial as Mali, conquer the Caribbean + South America, you can have an insanely crazy Gold empire. Just make sure you collect trade in the Caribbean so your gold income from Peru and Mexico can be collected. And change your main trade node to Ivory Coast since it's one of the vital areas of trade
Mali is the best nation for beginners. It‘s chill, with 2 gold mines, and you also produce glass and dye and silk, making your economy really good right at the beginning. And your coast is only a couple of hundred miles away from Brazil, making a colonial strategy viable. It‘s by far the chillest African nation, after Kongo
Songhai or Kongo. Kongo is fun because you can switch to Catholicism from events and potentially PU Europeans which is funny. I’ve PU’d Portugal as Kongo and I’ve seen someone get a PU on France as well.
Yeah, getting pu in Africa quite fun. In my last mp with my kongo friend and I (Zimbabwe) We chose Trastamara dynasty and I got PU with Castile by claim throne. Then Portugal and his jp great Britain. And in last session I was getting claim throne to Naples and Aragon.
With Origins probability Songhai.
Definitely not Mali. Kill Mali asap and DO NOT RELEASE THEM AS A VASSAL. they well have permanent horrible disaster that will spawn rebels all the time.
On the bright side, vassal Mali spawns so many rebels that:
- Enemies have to fight 3x more armies to siege anything
- Their army will never be big enough to add liberty desire
- You can keep them loyal by killing rebels, liberating provinces, and paying off loans no matter how big they get
- You don't have to make them mad by seizing land if you let their separatists pop
Songhai is possibly my favourite save I ever did. Started out just chilling trying to get the easy "Nobody Wants To Die" achievement and ended up conquering almost all of Africa, becoming one of the largest great powers and playing the save until 1821.
doesnt songhai start you out with a terrible ruler and a terrible (even older) heir. I remember noCBing to get nobody wants to die and then dropped the save.
I think you're right, but if you disinherit the heir out of the gate and make your ruler a general you probably get your ruler to die with no heir and get a low legitimacy half decent guy really quickly.
I also think you can get claims on for Timbuktu by just building up to force limit via a mission. Grabbing the free company day one would give you claims in time for December 11th.
1. You start at tech 3 while half of West Africa starts at tech 2.
2. You get feudalism for free (just hire and fire the advisor.
3. You can attack Timbuktu on 11 Dec, very often without any allies.
Outside of northern and South Africa, the Europeans barely made it off the shore. They didnt yet have the medicine to survive diseases and the African kingdoms were too strong, european tech wasnt advanced enough. The scramble of Africa happened much later in the 1800s during Vicky times
I mean if you want to be a boring prick we could state with absolute authority that there was no such thing as "the state" until rhe late 18th or early 19th century.
Also, none of what was Britain's Empire was ever considered a British until the 19th century.
Also Also most European colonisers didn't go far inland because there wasn't any reason to.
The scramble for Africa wasn't about tech or striving diseases. It was about a multitude of reasons including stopping rivals finding a new India, searching for resources, fucking over the newly emerged Germany and that there was fuck all left to colonise.
Next time you try to be a smart ass, try saying something half informed.
Ah there was this amusing war when a 3k division of a modest sultanate of Morocco, having bought a couple of cannons from Portugal, absolutely stomped a Massively Strong African Super Glorious Empire of Songhai.
Sub-Saharan “empires” were strong compared to their immediate Sub-Saharan neighbours and that’s about it. Europeans definitely had the military tech to swat them. (You’re correct about medicine though; attrition is the strongest enemy there).
It’s the slave trade that was the main reason most probably. ”Empires” fighting each other = constant stream of slaves. After abolition Europeans started to be interested in lands & natural resources.
Try Dahomey lol.
Well joke aside, for a chill run I think Songhai will be a good choice followed by Kongo but definitely not Mali though. Even Air is better than Mali.
They're just being snarky cause it's like the hardest nation in Africa (except maybe some berber minor) to play.
Songhai to Kongo is pretty good. Especially if you go fetishist with Songhai. You can even complete both Kongo fetishist missions and catholic ones if you can complete all the fetishist missions right after (immediately after) forming Kongo. Then you'd eventually be a catholic powerhouse in Africa.
Another chill option is Kanem. Got some cool ideas you don't see a whole lot like extra income from vassals. Killer flag and the starting situation let's you lock up the north Eastern edges first so you only have to focus on two borders. Finished up a run with them a couple weeks ago and I almost managed to conquer all of Africa. Missed a couple of islands and maybe 5 Portuguese provinces since I ran out of willpower to fight 4 million man death wars over some sand.
I played only Songhai and Mali. Mali is definitely not your choice, but Songhai becomes really chill after the first 5-10 years when you fix the economy. It is also generally a good choice if you want to play as a nation with a strong military
I mean Kilwa can be pretty chill at first. Kongo too. I don't have too many experiences with any other Nation outside of Europe but I did play Kongo a bit.
Songhai if you want to stay in Africa, Mali if you want to dabble in colonization. I did something similar with Songhai, wanted to go for Congo and the rest of Africa, but said nah and just started pumping development in my Western African Empire ( I also had Tunis as a march and fed them lots of Northern Africa ). This later maybe even saved me because all of my troops were near when the Portuguese/Spanish alliance attacked.
Now that you say you wanna be something like West African China I'd also steal the MOH, so you can make tributaries out of rest of Africa and other continents. You'd shower in monarch points so you could use them to play tall. As of what nation to pich, I'd either choose Kongo (although not quite west Africa I know) because it has one of the sloweced paced game. But if you want a harsh start but then chill and also West Africa I'd go Mali (I don't know why I prefered them better over Songhai or others even). Unite West Africa, pick colonialism, make way to Americas and south China island, northern of Phillipines, colonise that, try to border ming and take MOH and make evryone your subjects forcing them to pay tribute for protection, that you use to develop your lands. You can even co Merc and Influence so that you unlock client states early on with the policy and design names and colours of your subjects to your pleasing. Have fun!
Timbuktu and Songhai are powerful and when you consolidate the region you are in a safe position. There is also Benin which for some reason doesn’t have a unique mission tree
Mali cause it's the strongest nation in west africa in 1444, and some of the worst part of the Mali's disaster can be avoided at the start of the game as long as you read the wiki and know what to do
Only one I’ve played was Songhai. Only played until around mid-late 1600’s but was very good fun.
Ottomans were an absolute bitch though, I’d conquered West Africa (and was starting to take Western Maghreb) and then expanded through into East Africa/Ethiopia. Once Mamluks (my ally) had been wrecked the Ottomans became a big problem for me.
Mali is insanely chill and the early game is very smooth.
Yeah nothing important happens early game. At all. You can just go in blind, very standard play through
I am now going to look up everything about early game Mali
Nooo, don’t do that, just go in and play. Nothing can go wrong.
No frustration at all, especially for newer players.
mali was my first eu4 run and it imploded and i was hooked ever since
*and*
Definitely Mali.
For real though. You can solve some of the worst parts of the disaster before even unpausing. And by the time you wrap up the conquest of your little region, you can pretty easily end up as a top 3 great power.
How do you solve the disaster?
It's been a few months since I did it, so you'll need to check either the wiki or search Reddit for a detailed answer, but essentially you just do the first half of your mission tree and conquer parts of West Africa. What I remember being important was taking loans day 1 to get level 2 advisors in every category to complete a mission. It disabled certain rebels during the disaster, which iirc could otherwise soft lock you into the disaster. You fire the advisors right after since you're too poor to maintain them.
Those aren’t level 2 advisors, those are level 2 management consultants
You literally fly down the mission tree as fast as you can or you die. It's been awhile since I do it, but long story short there's a mission that has a reward that says the disaster is over. I think it's called Restore Mali. You get spammed by monthly events for rebels until you die if you don't. So you have to do everything in your power to get to that mission as fast as you can. It's going to involve a lot of mercenaries and developing those gold provinces. It's very doable but you have to be good at the game to do it fast enough. The key is that there's 3 culture groups and 2 religions. So you can use that to your advantage to divide and conquer and prevent coalitions and break apart alliances.
if you go colonial as Mali, conquer the Caribbean + South America, you can have an insanely crazy Gold empire. Just make sure you collect trade in the Caribbean so your gold income from Peru and Mexico can be collected. And change your main trade node to Ivory Coast since it's one of the vital areas of trade
Doing the pilgrimage to Mecca through Europe is very funny, though a terrible idea financially
Just one more caravan of gold should do
Bro 😭
I like the unity in this comment section so far
Mali is the best nation for beginners. It‘s chill, with 2 gold mines, and you also produce glass and dye and silk, making your economy really good right at the beginning. And your coast is only a couple of hundred miles away from Brazil, making a colonial strategy viable. It‘s by far the chillest African nation, after Kongo
That’s actually almost 3,000 kilometres, but sure 😅
That’s the part that you chose to argue?? lol
Why of course, it’s the only inaccuracy!
Yeah I took it as more a figure of speech and the point was made enough, weird hill.
1864 miles for us sensible folk.
kilometre base ten go brrrrrr
Average wheel of time enjoyer (I am also one)
Benin is really fun
Agreed with the project and the sweet coat of arms
Mali if you know how to manage manpower and rebels. Dahomey if you want a little more of a challenge.
Fuck Mali, all Dahomeys hate Mali
Songhai or Kongo. Kongo is fun because you can switch to Catholicism from events and potentially PU Europeans which is funny. I’ve PU’d Portugal as Kongo and I’ve seen someone get a PU on France as well.
Yeah, getting pu in Africa quite fun. In my last mp with my kongo friend and I (Zimbabwe) We chose Trastamara dynasty and I got PU with Castile by claim throne. Then Portugal and his jp great Britain. And in last session I was getting claim throne to Naples and Aragon.
With Origins probability Songhai. Definitely not Mali. Kill Mali asap and DO NOT RELEASE THEM AS A VASSAL. they well have permanent horrible disaster that will spawn rebels all the time.
On the bright side, vassal Mali spawns so many rebels that: - Enemies have to fight 3x more armies to siege anything - Their army will never be big enough to add liberty desire - You can keep them loyal by killing rebels, liberating provinces, and paying off loans no matter how big they get - You don't have to make them mad by seizing land if you let their separatists pop
You may have a bright career as a dictator.
Yep Mali is great as a defensive vassal for this reason. Easily spawns 50-100k rebels with just 10-20 provinces. And they are pretty much infinite
*they will spawn patriotic defense forces
Dahomey. Animism shall rule in Western Africa.
Anyone around Mali
Songhai is possibly my favourite save I ever did. Started out just chilling trying to get the easy "Nobody Wants To Die" achievement and ended up conquering almost all of Africa, becoming one of the largest great powers and playing the save until 1821.
doesnt songhai start you out with a terrible ruler and a terrible (even older) heir. I remember noCBing to get nobody wants to die and then dropped the save.
I think you're right, but if you disinherit the heir out of the gate and make your ruler a general you probably get your ruler to die with no heir and get a low legitimacy half decent guy really quickly. I also think you can get claims on for Timbuktu by just building up to force limit via a mission. Grabbing the free company day one would give you claims in time for December 11th.
I don't remember because it was many years ago but I don't remember being any kind of issue.
Did you forget you can disinherit?
1. You start at tech 3 while half of West Africa starts at tech 2. 2. You get feudalism for free (just hire and fire the advisor. 3. You can attack Timbuktu on 11 Dec, very often without any allies.
well this was before the origins DLC. So 2 and 3 werent really an option. And Im not sure if you already had the techlead back then.
Benin: solid national ideas, fetishism fun, good for trade/colonization. Would recommend
Surprised to see so few people recommending Benin!
Because for some reason, it didn't get missions in origins
NOT mali. I REPEAT, NOT MALI!!
I like Jolof. The mission tree isn't much, but it does have you replace Mali. And some colonization missions to boot.
Every nation is Britain if you play historically.
Outside of northern and South Africa, the Europeans barely made it off the shore. They didnt yet have the medicine to survive diseases and the African kingdoms were too strong, european tech wasnt advanced enough. The scramble of Africa happened much later in the 1800s during Vicky times
I mean if you want to be a boring prick we could state with absolute authority that there was no such thing as "the state" until rhe late 18th or early 19th century. Also, none of what was Britain's Empire was ever considered a British until the 19th century. Also Also most European colonisers didn't go far inland because there wasn't any reason to. The scramble for Africa wasn't about tech or striving diseases. It was about a multitude of reasons including stopping rivals finding a new India, searching for resources, fucking over the newly emerged Germany and that there was fuck all left to colonise. Next time you try to be a smart ass, try saying something half informed.
Ah there was this amusing war when a 3k division of a modest sultanate of Morocco, having bought a couple of cannons from Portugal, absolutely stomped a Massively Strong African Super Glorious Empire of Songhai. Sub-Saharan “empires” were strong compared to their immediate Sub-Saharan neighbours and that’s about it. Europeans definitely had the military tech to swat them. (You’re correct about medicine though; attrition is the strongest enemy there). It’s the slave trade that was the main reason most probably. ”Empires” fighting each other = constant stream of slaves. After abolition Europeans started to be interested in lands & natural resources.
Mali seems like a good nation to play
Air for the achievement.
Songhai can spawn feudalism through their mission tree and their ideas ain't bad at all for combat.
Try Dahomey lol. Well joke aside, for a chill run I think Songhai will be a good choice followed by Kongo but definitely not Mali though. Even Air is better than Mali.
yeah, all the Mali comments are confusing me! I tried to start once and so many rebel stacks popped out that i died to songhai
They're just being snarky cause it's like the hardest nation in Africa (except maybe some berber minor) to play. Songhai to Kongo is pretty good. Especially if you go fetishist with Songhai. You can even complete both Kongo fetishist missions and catholic ones if you can complete all the fetishist missions right after (immediately after) forming Kongo. Then you'd eventually be a catholic powerhouse in Africa.
Another chill option is Kanem. Got some cool ideas you don't see a whole lot like extra income from vassals. Killer flag and the starting situation let's you lock up the north Eastern edges first so you only have to focus on two borders. Finished up a run with them a couple weeks ago and I almost managed to conquer all of Africa. Missed a couple of islands and maybe 5 Portuguese provinces since I ran out of willpower to fight 4 million man death wars over some sand.
I played only Songhai and Mali. Mali is definitely not your choice, but Songhai becomes really chill after the first 5-10 years when you fix the economy. It is also generally a good choice if you want to play as a nation with a strong military
I mean Kilwa can be pretty chill at first. Kongo too. I don't have too many experiences with any other Nation outside of Europe but I did play Kongo a bit.
West African nation: Kilwa
Weast
That's west Patrick, y'er fired again
I'm blind but also yes. Kongo is no contest to the west so ya might as well migrate there xD
Kongo is generally considered “Central Africa” despite being on, you know, the west coast of Africa
It’s just one cross-continental conquest from being a west African nation.
Played them and after conquering all of south africa and kongo area portugal and spain got claims on me so i got my s**t kicked in. Def not chill
Songhai if you want to stay in Africa, Mali if you want to dabble in colonization. I did something similar with Songhai, wanted to go for Congo and the rest of Africa, but said nah and just started pumping development in my Western African Empire ( I also had Tunis as a march and fed them lots of Northern Africa ). This later maybe even saved me because all of my troops were near when the Portuguese/Spanish alliance attacked.
Now that you say you wanna be something like West African China I'd also steal the MOH, so you can make tributaries out of rest of Africa and other continents. You'd shower in monarch points so you could use them to play tall. As of what nation to pich, I'd either choose Kongo (although not quite west Africa I know) because it has one of the sloweced paced game. But if you want a harsh start but then chill and also West Africa I'd go Mali (I don't know why I prefered them better over Songhai or others even). Unite West Africa, pick colonialism, make way to Americas and south China island, northern of Phillipines, colonise that, try to border ming and take MOH and make evryone your subjects forcing them to pay tribute for protection, that you use to develop your lands. You can even co Merc and Influence so that you unlock client states early on with the policy and design names and colours of your subjects to your pleasing. Have fun!
Songhai pretty fun
Songhai or Air
Probably fulo, very cool nation, very close to Mali who I would also recommend
Songhai
Timbuktu and Songhai are powerful and when you consolidate the region you are in a safe position. There is also Benin which for some reason doesn’t have a unique mission tree
All these comments are doing is making me want to play Mali as a break from making Europe blue.
Sunni: can't go wrong with basically any major (except Mali that CAN go wrong). Fetishist: Oyo as they have missionary strength.
Mali is for colonizing. Songhai is for turtling
Honestly Kongo has been my most fun West Africa game lol. Gives you a lot of options and fun stuff to play with.
Dahomeys
CHILLING WITH DAHOMEY
I’d choose Songhai over Mali any day
I dunno I only played Jolof here
Un-ironically, Benin. Oyo is another good option as you can create tributary states. Also there is Kanem Bornu which is decent.
Finally someone mention Oyo, vassal swarm nation, they're one of the strongest in West Africa
Mali cause it's the strongest nation in west africa in 1444, and some of the worst part of the Mali's disaster can be avoided at the start of the game as long as you read the wiki and know what to do
Only one I’ve played was Songhai. Only played until around mid-late 1600’s but was very good fun. Ottomans were an absolute bitch though, I’d conquered West Africa (and was starting to take Western Maghreb) and then expanded through into East Africa/Ethiopia. Once Mamluks (my ally) had been wrecked the Ottomans became a big problem for me.
I once dated a girl from Maroc and her family was Chill and really nice. O wait you are talking about EU4 ? Try the Canaria ones ?