Sokoto can into space?

[Broetchenholer]

I am always circling back to the first playthrough of the game i did, Sokoto. I am trying to establish them as the dominating force in Africa free of any colonial influence. It took a while until i settled on my current approach but it's now 1899 and i am quite underwhelmed.

So i am looking for some input how to be better.

Where am i:

I like the area i have, i do not like the political situation nor my economy.

How did i get there:

I started with declaring on GB and them forcing me to abandon Slavery. Oh no, better back down. i then gobbled up Benin and Oyo immediately and sucked up to France that was protective towards me. Once peasant movement hit i boosted them an got Tenant Farmers. Then i got religious schools as serfdom was gone. With that done, i managed to get Corn Laws, which was kinda hard cause for some reason not having slaves reduces the need for food, don't know why and the OPMs all brought in more farms. But at some point not building any farms worked. Modernization Movement managed to get me Interventionism, it's quite good at it. However, it took me 2 decades to get a Market Liberal as head of the Landowners and i made the mistake of passing Homesteading with it after Protectionism, making them completely powerless. I got Free Trade out of the Market Liberal before he died and landowners were at 5% then. In the middle i was able to pass Per-Capita-Taxation and Frontier Colonialisation. THe only other 2 things i was able to get was public health insurance (for the SoL) and Racial Segregation and that's it.

In Research and Production i focused hard on literacy and innovation. I quickly learned Centralisation was super important as early as possible and then i did empiricsm to get to two levels of education. And then i focused on Colonisation and then on Quinine. Really not sure on the Quinine, you get a bit of Senegal or Niger Delta out of it but it's just more people and you have a lot. But i wanted to be swole so i did Quinine and then started with Production research.

And that was laaaaaate. I am quite far behind, i am still not recognized because my peoples be multiplying and i can't get GDP up fast enough. The focus on literacy and science also feels like it did not pay off very well, the malus from being unrecognized is huge, isolationism for a long time as well. A lot of effort for then having ~50 tech spread... And my political situation is really bad. I can't get any goverment in power that can do law changes and change Distribution of Power, i have tried 3 times to get state religon removed but the Sunni are at 30 % and the animists are just too weak. I am stuck, stepbro! While playing a european nation it feels like it is harder to not reform everything because the reforming movements are soo strong and scripted, as Sokoto the radical movement has like 0% radicalisation, the nihilists jsut plopped, but it's a bit late.

I would really love to remove State Religion right at the start, but that is super hard because removing slavery means the land owners are super pissed and the land owners losing influence means a government with intelligentsia does not work afterwards. But not removing slavery seems the worse choice. And i seem to only be able to get it reliably when i do it right at the start.

Is there a way to get the AI to force open markets? that would also help, but seems not like they want to do it.

I think if i could get State Religion out early and keep the remaining strategy without pushing hard for quinine, i would be strongest, but i do not see how to get the first part. Any tips?

 

[DWeird]

I've played this start a bunch and the political situation honestly depends a whole bunch on luck. All the Landowner laws are mutually interlocking and getting one of them out early by luck of the draw means you can get even more of them out later. And on the converse, if you get unlucky on your movement-inspired medium chance of success with serfdom, tough luck, you're just stuck with a backwards economy for a decade or so. I think you're doing about as well as can be expected, I usually just stick with the Devout until they wither enough for the industrialists or trade unions to naturally take over a few years before the game ends. Means missing out on a lot of good Intelligentsia laws, but you don't need cultural acceptance laws that badly - the entire continent is home turf for you at Racial Segregation.

Politically, you do have the awesome benefit of having the Devout rather than the Landowners as head of state - if you can reduce Landowner clout enough that they can't support a coup on their own, you can sometimes just beat them down in a civil war and reform things to the point where they can no longer recover.

Where I disagree the most is your avenue of expansion. It does feel good to race the europeans for colonization, but... It costs you bureaucracy, which you won't have, and gives you land that needs even more bureaucracy and construction and in the case of the Sahara sulfur mines, immigration to make work. And it takes a massive opportunity cost in terms of research to get there - you can and should build your entire economy in Benin off steel, tools and engines, but that needs a certain number of mine productivity techs to become a self-spinning engine. Any research not in the industry tree delays that. Centralization is good in that gives you more income to spend on construction, literacy techs are good in that they help you reach beyond the minimum 20% literacy needed to get a pop qualification funnel going (laborer->clerk->whoever). Anything beyond that is probably not worth it.

I didn't see your early game, but you might be able to do more with your infamy management - any land that is not immediately useful, does not have strategic resources you want guaranteed access to (Benin, Ashanti Togo) or does not push you towards better conquest targets (Bagimi, Wadai, Darfur) are all best puppeted or sometimes even just ignored.

Oyo seems like a great prize with its 1.5M pops, but pops are not a limiting factor for the economic and political transformation of your country at the early stage in the game - construction is. Puppeting lets you get additional income that you can turn into more construction, without increasing the number of pops you will need to depeasant while increasing the construction points available in your market by 10 per puppet. Sure, they'll build random crap, but random crap is better than peasants. All for a lower infamy cost!

It can get a little bit dicey if you go for both Benin and Togo, but I do like to try expand towards Egypt, too - getting Kordofan and Blue Nile, maybe Dongola while they're fighting the Ottomans is great! The majority of the population there has african heritage, it'll be built out some degree already and the Nile River modifiers are amazing. Plus, you get easy access to the Ethiopian states - not that good to hold, but having them in your market will allow the growing Benin-dustrial complex to suck up their pops.

 

[evilon]

I don't know if this is the case with Sokoto, but you can (could?) also get some good deals when trading states if you share two states with one of the colonizers, as you get a bonus if you both reduce bordergore. This is fades away as colonial nations are formed though, due to states being integrated.

 

[Shiny Dog]

i am still not recognized because my peoples be multiplying and i can't get GDP up fast enough.

There's one problem right there. You don't want to get Recognized by the ticking, you want it by enforcing war goals on a Major or higher. If you're best buddies with a GP, you can usually have them beat up Netherlands/Spain/Portugal for enough Wargoals to instantly become Recognized.

 

[Rabid]

Sounds like you made the classic error of passing homesteading in a poorly developed state - this makes it much harder to industrialise, use tenant farmers instead. Pass homesteading much later (if ever), when the rural folk are weak.

Unfortunately the optimal path for conquest is the ever-present rush for Transvaal and Oranje, so you must conquer a coastline and then send a navy down to Gaza as soon as possible.

 

[andersonm]

Sounds like you made the classic error of passing homesteading in a poorly developed state - this makes it much harder to industrialise, use tenant farmers instead. Pass homesteading much later (if ever), when the rural folk are weak.

Unfortunately the optimal path for conquest is the ever-present rush for Transvaal and Oranje, so you must conquer a coastline and then send a navy down to Gaza as soon as possible.

Agree entirely, Homesteading is usually a trap in a poor nation. It seems good in the moment because it cripples the Landowners but the +25% farmer strength when you are already heavy into agriculture is going to make it nearly impossible to progress in any other laws, the Rural Folk (& Petite Bourgeois) will keep an iron grip on power and those are not the ones you want if you are trying to industrialize.

 

[Broetchenholer]

I've played this start a bunch and the political situation honestly depends a whole bunch on luck. All the Landowner laws are mutually interlocking and getting one of them out early by luck of the draw means you can get even more of them out later. And on the converse, if you get unlucky on your movement-inspired medium chance of success with serfdom, tough luck, you're just stuck with a backwards economy for a decade or so. I think you're doing about as well as can be expected, I usually just stick with the Devout until they wither enough for the industrialists or trade unions to naturally take over a few years before the game ends. Means missing out on a lot of good Intelligentsia laws, but you don't need cultural acceptance laws that badly - the entire continent is home turf for you at Racial Segregation.

Politically, you do have the awesome benefit of having the Devout rather than the Landowners as head of state - if you can reduce Landowner clout enough that they can't support a coup on their own, you can sometimes just beat them down in a civil war and reform things to the point where they can no longer recover.

Where I disagree the most is your avenue of expansion. It does feel good to race the europeans for colonization, but... It costs you bureaucracy, which you won't have, and gives you land that needs even more bureaucracy and construction and in the case of the Sahara sulfur mines, immigration to make work. And it takes a massive opportunity cost in terms of research to get there - you can and should build your entire economy in Benin off steel, tools and engines, but that needs a certain number of mine productivity techs to become a self-spinning engine. Any research not in the industry tree delays that. Centralization is good in that gives you more income to spend on construction, literacy techs are good in that they help you reach beyond the minimum 20% literacy needed to get a pop qualification funnel going (laborer->clerk->whoever). Anything beyond that is probably not worth it.

I didn't see your early game, but you might be able to do more with your infamy management - any land that is not immediately useful, does not have strategic resources you want guaranteed access to (Benin, Ashanti Togo) or does not push you towards better conquest targets (Bagimi, Wadai, Darfur) are all best puppeted or sometimes even just ignored.

Oyo seems like a great prize with its 1.5M pops, but pops are not a limiting factor for the economic and political transformation of your country at the early stage in the game - construction is. Puppeting lets you get additional income that you can turn into more construction, without increasing the number of pops you will need to depeasant while increasing the construction points available in your market by 10 per puppet. Sure, they'll build random crap, but random crap is better than peasants. All for a lower infamy cost!

It can get a little bit dicey if you go for both Benin and Togo, but I do like to try expand towards Egypt, too - getting Kordofan and Blue Nile, maybe Dongola while they're fighting the Ottomans is great! The majority of the population there has african heritage, it'll be built out some degree already and the Nile River modifiers are amazing. Plus, you get easy access to the Ethiopian states - not that good to hold, but having them in your market will allow the growing Benin-dustrial complex to suck up their pops.

Interesting point. I have to admit that I did not consider vassalizing as an option since my first playthroughs because of the need to conquer them later and how much I hated Diplo plays in this game. Not taking oyo might be a net positive though, but then you need to take a part of borgu to get access to Dahomey, Togo is kinda important.

Completely ignoring colonisation feels wrong, you need colonisation to get recognition anyway, and taking Timbuktu or/ and niger is very useful for the resources, also getting access to western Africa can iron might be a good thing cause benin and Nigeria are not that much. Also there is opium in those hills if you can get it. I agree that rushing quinine is not worth it though. I will see where this gets me.

 

[Cagliostro]

Yeah, it's basically impossible to get recognized by ticking unless you're ridiculously rich; trying to outdo all the German minors Prussia never eats is doomed to failure. War is really the only way to do it, though it helps if you can reduce the bleed to 0 (or at least 1) first, so that you don't have to do it all in one war.

 

[TheDoctor987]

If you have the military strength, invading South America could be a good idea for a few reasons:
- A few million Afro-Brazilian and Afro-Caribbean pops. They both have homelands there so you integrate those states quickly.
- The Catholic pops would create a political movement that would help you secularise your county.
- There is all sorts of useful raw materials, combined with mining or lumber companies, colonial exploitation, encourage resource industry decrees and the manpower from Africa, you should have plenty of raw materials to fuel your industries.
- Lots of coastal provinces to build a big navy, maybe even enough to counter the European ones.

 

[Broetchenholer]

I don't know if this is the case with Sokoto, but you can (could?) also get some good deals when trading states if you share two states with one of the colonizers, as you get a bonus if you both reduce bordergore. This is fades away as colonial nations are formed though, due to states being integrated.

Yeah, i was able to get rich and coastal senegal from french senegal by giving them half of Guinea, inland, without resources and half the population. One of the reasons i like colonizing myself.

There's one problem right there. You don't want to get Recognized by the ticking, you want it by enforcing war goals on a Major or higher. If you're best buddies with a GP, you can usually have them beat up Netherlands/Spain/Portugal for enough Wargoals to instantly become Recognized.

Had to read up on Recognition as i was not aware how to do it by war. If i could get some kind of voting, i could do it. Slavery is gone at the start, GDP will never happen but reading is +1 and SoL top 50 is also not that hard. But it would take a lot of time. Maybe i can try to murder Portuguese congo, want their land anyway.

Sounds like you made the classic error of passing homesteading in a poorly developed state - this makes it much harder to industrialise, use tenant farmers instead. Pass homesteading much later (if ever), when the rural folk are weak.

Unfortunately the optimal path for conquest is the ever-present rush for Transvaal and Oranje, so you must conquer a coastline and then send a navy down to Gaza as soon as possible.

Agree entirely, Homesteading is usually a trap in a poor nation. It seems good in the moment because it cripples the Landowners but the +25% farmer strength when you are already heavy into agriculture is going to make it nearly impossible to progress in any other laws, the Rural Folk (& Petite Bourgeois) will keep an iron grip on power and those are not the ones you want if you are trying to industrialize.

Not quite sure why this is a problem. The way i see it, transferring clout from the landowners to the rural folk is not the worst, at least the rural folk are sometimes useful. At least until now them not agreeing as opposition to something has not been a problem, the issue i have is that the Sunni and the nobility can not beremoved from the government. From a political pov, the only thing homesteading does is transfer clout from Landowners to Rural Folk, right? Or is the issue more with economy?

Thanks for all the input, i already learned a few things

 

[Rabid]

There's a lot of fairly complex reasons why homesteading is bad but a quick summary is that aristocrats provide more reinvestment than farmers, which speeds up your path to industrialisation, and farmers have almost 100% attraction for the rural folk which concentrates clout into one group rather than splitting it.

Similiarly, passing "progressive" army and bureaucracy reforms too early can actually be bad as aristocrats can generate most of your intelligensia clout in the early game.

Yes, the rural folk can be useful for some reforms, but there's no need to build up tomorrow's enemy just to reform a little. An early game Peasant Movement is usually enough to get out of Serfdom by itself.

 

[Broetchenholer]

Okay, good to know, thanks. I will keep that in mind and do not automatically press the button if it's available.

 

[Broetchenholer]

I just got French Government Laws forced on me in 1836, did not want it, wanted Benin, but then i thought let's see what happens. Can someone explain why Intelligentsia dropped from 10% to marginal afterwards? It was described above as unwanted, but there is nothing in the tooltip of the law. I don't have a lot of Bureaucrats yet, so switching Government Administration to them obviously does not do a lot. Aristocrat political strength going down should also affect landowners but they stay where they are.

Ah, i see it, Hereditary Bureaucrats means it attracts more intelligentsia in Aristocrats in urban buildings. I guess Bureaucrats attract a more wide group of IGs then Aristocrats with Hereditady Bureaucracy? Okay. Very unintuitive.

 

[tommynt]

I think the most easy (and bit dumb) way to REALLY increase situation of a poor (African) nation is to conquer one with higher SOL/instustrialized building - so conquering central africa wont do you any favour. As mentioned you COULD puppet it. You need eygpt or south africa/transval, well or north africa which might run into problems with france/other countries ...