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Transvaal early game

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Victoria 2 17560 After Action Reports (AAR)
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El Jojo

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Aug 7, 2007
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I hadn't tried to play Transvaal since before HoD and I remember it as being a rather fun game. In HoD though, things are more complicated.

Transvaal has only one brigade which will go unsustained as soon as you start occupying a province and then it takes decades of NF and army financing to get another brigade. The quickest I have managed is 1857 for a second brigade. NFing soldiers also means going for 2% clergy only and not 4%, meaning less literacy increase.

My opening was to invade Oranje first, it takes ages because of the lonely brigade and then it's a long wait because I don't see any opportunities.
Zulu has 9 brigades which is more than enough to crush your brigade early game when the difference between irregulars and regulars isn't that huge.
Oman has three brigades and that's enough also, I tried a few times and they always won the battles even when I could field a +4 general.

So any military expansion seems to require that second brigade.
Alliances are not exactly easy either. Even with +200 relations, UK and Portugal refuse to ally, and it's even harder to get someone else, so no glorious UK doing the job for you (even though I'd still be reluctant to do it because the idea of the UK waging war against the Zulus to help the boer republics is a bit too silly for me).

If I wait until 1858 (and the second brigade!), I can get concessions from Oman and take Zulu,but then I'm very far away for secondary power status which would allow me to colonize and the small uncivs I could easily subjugate are either gone or sphered. Even with a little bit of Egypt and Ethiopia, I still need 30-40 points in score to get to 16th position in 1870. If I miss the colonization of Africa it's gonna be an even harder hill to climb.

Going for prestige techs doesn't help since Transvaal is so far behind in literacy and clergy % that it takes forever to research and the prestige granting inventions are gone, giving +1 there and +1 there, far from enough. Apart from a very lucky situation I don't see how prestige could be gained that way. A few "hard work and toil" events brought me more prestige than all the prestige techs.

So I'm left wondering how to optimize the first 30 years as Transvaal, any ideas ?
 
Firstly, as with any illiterate nation go for Bureaucrats first till 100% efficiency(when the number goes red) than switch to Clergymen to maximize the conversion rate. Secondly, make sure the military expense budget is at 100%, to maximize your natural soldier conversion. Thirdly do still rush prestige techs, sometimes you get lucky and get a few inventions before most countries do so you get those nice +15/10/7.5/5 prestige boosts every now and than, harder for the first 2 prestige techs but starting from the 3rd it becomes easier as the AI doesn't prioritize prestige techs so you're very likely to be the first to invent them thus gain full prestige value. Also you don't really need any other techs early on as you can't really start industrializing that early and you don't have an army to go on massive offensives either, so what else do you really need? Fourthly, while getting into an alliance with a great/secondary power is next to impossible as you rightly said, an alliance with 1 of your neighbors isn't. So for example ally with Oranje than declare war on Zulu and let Oranje and Zulu pit their armies against each other, draining both nations, than just swoop in for the final kill and the territorial concessions. Than backstab Oranje after Zulu went to work on their army and take their land too. You can do the same with Zulu but seeing that Zulu is the strongest of the 3 it's easier to use Oranje instead.

After the above steps you should be able to reach secondary power status, if not than wage a honor wars(humiliation CB) against Sokoto or an Arabian nation like Yemen or Oman instead, building a few transport ships in order to get there. You can also take demand a single concession from Sokoto in order to later establish protectorate after you research Nationalism and Imperialism(Sokoto has 5 provinces, whereas the threshold for establishing a protectorate is 4, so taking 1 earlier will do the trick). Than it's the scramble for Africa, which you obviously won't win but you will certainly expand your borders significantly. Just pray that GB doesn't attack you for Zulu's former lands, they seem to like them, and if they do concede them ASAP as you won't be able to fight GB until very late.
 
I know the basics of admin and clergy, but it sill doesn't help my military power.

Oranje is very weak and I have no problem taking them on my own, but they're so weak they're no use against the Zulus who come unscratched from the war against them, so there's no draining them or pitting them against each other.

The other problem is the influence countdown from UK which will influence Oranje and once they reach friendly status they will intervene, so I have to annex Oranje before that happens and it happens early. (also consider the fact it takes Transvaal almost 3 years to occupy Oranje with only one brigade). Having one brigade means occupation is very slow.

Techwise there's a lot to research instead of prestige (should one want to), the culture techs are important to provide research points, education efficiency and plurality. Some income boosting is necessary to support 3-4% clergy and army financing. Since research is slow, going for the prestige techs is a very risky strategy since it relies on luck while slowly down your education process for decades. Still, maybe it's the only way.
 
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