After nabbing Definitely the Sultan of Rum & Uniting Islam with little difficulty in my first ironman game, I decided to aim for one the ridiculous achievements. And as ridiculous achievements go, African Power is one of the slightly-less ridiculous. I almost went with No Trail of Tears, but aside from appearing more difficult, I also doubt it would be quite as fun as uniting Africa.
Because I generally perform better under pressure, I decided to also make this my first AAR. I did play through the first century of the game in non-ironman, to experiment and to gauge exactly what I'm up against (I like my chances), but this is my first real try. It is my hope that, even if I should fail, this will make for a fun read, and hopefully others will learn from any mistakes I make.
With that out of the way, let's begin!
Okay, so we don't exactly have a booming economy here. I see hardly anything, and I literally have no one with which to conduct diplomacy. I know there are other sub-Saharan natives a short distance north, but I won't be able to see them until discovery-spread starts kicking in 50 years from now. What I really need is a colonist, which means I'm going to need a lot of admin points for my first nation idea: 1200x3, while suffering a -2 MP penalty for being sub-Saharin. Hopefully we at least have a decent admin ruler...
Lol no, and his heir is worse. This is going to be a race between me and Europe to eat the African coastline. Fortunately, the Europeans generally go for the Americas first, and don't get serious about African colonies until the late 16th century. Time is on my side. Hopefully.
On the other hand, I do want someone to take at least one province so I can westernize. The sooner I do this, the better; if I can westernize relatively soon, hopefully before the end of the 16th, I can consolidate a strong power base in the surprisingly not-terrible provinces to my north, currently occupied my Mali & company, and start making boatloads of cash via trade.
Luanda would be a perfect province for a European colony: I could completely surround it and it wouldn't block my expansion at all.
I don't know if the AI is this nuanced, but I'm hoping that by clearing out the natives, someone will spot this little gem and colonize it sooner than the others...
..and even if not, I get some army tradition for it. This is going to be an uneventful 50 years. Fortunately, the time will not be wasted. There are useful things I can be doing; mostly setting up the conditions for basic missions, and then completing them, while constantly battling natives in other adjacent provinces for army tradition. With any luck, I'll even manage to get my heir killed.
I'll be awake all night playing. When I'm finished, I'll post an update unless I'm way too tired.
Because I generally perform better under pressure, I decided to also make this my first AAR. I did play through the first century of the game in non-ironman, to experiment and to gauge exactly what I'm up against (I like my chances), but this is my first real try. It is my hope that, even if I should fail, this will make for a fun read, and hopefully others will learn from any mistakes I make.
With that out of the way, let's begin!
Okay, so we don't exactly have a booming economy here. I see hardly anything, and I literally have no one with which to conduct diplomacy. I know there are other sub-Saharan natives a short distance north, but I won't be able to see them until discovery-spread starts kicking in 50 years from now. What I really need is a colonist, which means I'm going to need a lot of admin points for my first nation idea: 1200x3, while suffering a -2 MP penalty for being sub-Saharin. Hopefully we at least have a decent admin ruler...
Lol no, and his heir is worse. This is going to be a race between me and Europe to eat the African coastline. Fortunately, the Europeans generally go for the Americas first, and don't get serious about African colonies until the late 16th century. Time is on my side. Hopefully.
On the other hand, I do want someone to take at least one province so I can westernize. The sooner I do this, the better; if I can westernize relatively soon, hopefully before the end of the 16th, I can consolidate a strong power base in the surprisingly not-terrible provinces to my north, currently occupied my Mali & company, and start making boatloads of cash via trade.
Luanda would be a perfect province for a European colony: I could completely surround it and it wouldn't block my expansion at all.
I don't know if the AI is this nuanced, but I'm hoping that by clearing out the natives, someone will spot this little gem and colonize it sooner than the others...
..and even if not, I get some army tradition for it. This is going to be an uneventful 50 years. Fortunately, the time will not be wasted. There are useful things I can be doing; mostly setting up the conditions for basic missions, and then completing them, while constantly battling natives in other adjacent provinces for army tradition. With any luck, I'll even manage to get my heir killed.
I'll be awake all night playing. When I'm finished, I'll post an update unless I'm way too tired.
