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Very little of what has just happened feels particularly good. Are the Nri clique going to band together and face off the Malians, or will they keep fighting each other and get picked off one by one? And amongst all this we've got ourselves a new oba trying to establish her position. Quite the mess.
 
Well things turned rather chaotic very very quickly - I can only imagine things are going to get pretty bad pretty quickly at this rate.
 
Magha Nkem of Iguo-Benue, 1003 - 1022
Magha Nkem of Igbo-Benue [1]

Born: 956
Reigned: 1003 - 1022


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It is written that, of the many women that Apia II loved, his daughter Nkem was the most beloved by far. One of Apia’s biographers writes that he “saw to her education personally.” It is more correct to say that she was always underfoot, reading scrolls without permission and eavesdropping on her father’s discussions with the holy men. Her father was charmed by her interest, and when she began making pronouncements on the divine to the wise ancients, his amusement was plain.

With her father’s indulgence, Nkem began to put on airs, known to order about children much older than her. Pious Orisans would say that, in her pride she placed herself above even Ọlọrun, a grave sin indeed. This arrogance would prove to be her undoing more than once. When Ekwefi died in 984, Nkem was in many ways the most capable of Apia’s children, the most learned and compassionate. But she expected her brothers and sisters to kneel to her, and this they would not do. It was a fundamental reason why opposition to Chisom never coalesced.

As Oba of Borgu, also, Nkem frequently alternated between tantrums and condescension, alienating her ajapadas and leaving fertile ground for an uprising. Her treacherous daughter, known in those days as Nkem the Younger, was quick to take advantage, rallying the disaffected nobles of Borgu in a bloodless coup. Nkem the Elder was forced to flee back to Igbo-Ukwu, with only a few servants, whereupon her sister Chisom placed her in house arrest pending execution.

Nkem would spend years as her sister’s captive, expecting on any day to be burnt at the stake as a traitor to her sister’s throne. She would say later that her time in captivity was the most formative period of her life, where she was forced to reckon with her mistakes. In Borgu, she concluded that she failed to cultivate the good will of her ajapadas, and that she failed to move ruthlessly against her daughter’s coup. She had been too high-handed with potential allies, and too soft with her rivals. These were not mistakes she intended to repeat.

With the death of Chibueze, Nkem found herself in a treacherous position. She was now next in line for the throne. But precisely for that reason, Chisom might finally be motivated to execute her traitor sister in order to keep her from the throne. Nkem had a letter smuggled out to her daughter’s holdings in Nikki, proposing an alliance and a path out of the wilderness for both of them. Mother and daughter began to plot regicide. [2]

******

Whatever Nkem’s hopes were upon assuming the throne of Igbo-Benue, she soon found herself in the gravest crisis for the dynasty in over a century. Kaya Magha Yasiboy Cisse of Mali claimed over thirty thousand warriors to his name, compared to Nkem’s twelve thousand, a nearly three to one advantage. Nkem commanded the loyalty of many formidable champions and her personal retinue was made up of the finest warriors on the continent, but they could not by themselves make up the disparity.

Nkem ordered her warriors to avoid the main Malinese force while marching directly for their capital, gambling that she might be able to bargain for peace with a valuable captive or two. The Igbo champions did not know the territory half as well as their enemies, however, and the Malinese army caught them out in a pair of bloody battles fought in the shadow of Mount Hombori in November, 1004. The Igbo lost over seventy-five hundred warriors in the fighting itself, while some two thousand more died of starvation in the Sahel during a long retreat.

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The devastating losses at Hombori forced Nkem to rethink her strategy. Some of her advisors now recommended that she pay homage to the Kaya Magha, but she was not ready to give up. Instead, she ordered a scorched-earth strategy. Igbo warriors burned the savannah, poisoned wells, befouled watering holes and led devastating raids on the Malinese supply lines. And in hopes of throwing the Malinese command in disarray, she ordered the assassination of Yasiboy himself.

This ruthlessness went against some fundamental element of her character. Apia II had considered her the most compassionate of his children, and she was never able to order the death of another casually. Her grandson Chima wrote that, of all the mourners at Oba Chisom’s funeral, Nkem’s grief was the most sincere. She could not afford to weep over the death of a Malinese warrior, however. She chose to mute her conscience through carnal excess, and for the last two decades of her life her bed was rarely empty.

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The scorched earth tactics cost many thousands of Malinese warriors their lives, from starvation and disease. Modern estimates suggest that the Malinese in fact suffered five thousand more casualties than the Igbo. On more than one occasion, Yasiboy offered his warriors a blistering harangue to head off a potential mutiny. These signs of incipient disorder gave Nkem hope that the death of Yasiboy would throw the Malinese into chaos and offer an unlikely path to victory.

On November 23, 1009, Nkem’s agents successfully poisoned food offered for the Kaya Magha and his command staff. Yasiboy Cisse had been the most powerful man in Africa for thirty-two years, and his war against the Igbo-Benue had promised to nearly double Mali in size. Instead, he died feverish in his tent on the verge of his greatest victory. The Malinese warriors were angry, and starving, and far from home. Their advance might have crumbled here.

Unbeknownst to the Igbo agents, however, Yasiboy’s eldest son Bunama had been bedridden that day with a migraine headache, and had not eaten dinner with his father. As the Malinese soldiers began to turn on each other with suspicion, Bunama--now Kaya Magha in his own right--appeared before them and in a heartfelt speech asked that they not let his father die in vain. His appearance ensured the success of the Malinese advance.

With Kaya Magha Bunama’s accession to the throne and the Malinese occupying the western half of her kingdom, Oba Nkem could see the writing on the wall. On January 12, 1010, Oba Nkem appeared before the High King of Mali to offer her submission and place her family’s lands under his command.

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The Malinese terms of surrender were in truth quite lenient. The Kaya Magha had lost his father and over ten thousand warriors in his last war against the Igbo, and was reluctant to relive the experience. He left Nkem as Magha over the Igbo, with her territories intact, so long as she provided a yearly tribute of gold and offered up her warriors to fight for High Kingdom. He even invited her to serve as one of his advisors.

Magha Nkem traveled to Akwar to sit on her liege’s council. She had long lunches with her younger sister Salaama, playing the charming guest and supportive friend to the woman she had widowed. She treated with Bunama, her nephew as well as her liege, with the humility of a supplicant and the warmth of a supportive aunt. She found the rituals of Soninke court tedious but she applied herself to learn them and in time became Bunama’s confidant. (This tentative bid for influence might have been sundered had Bunama ever learned the truth about his father’s death. She quietly sought out those who had known of her involvement and saw to their silence, with gold or the noose. [3])

These acts of submission left her seething, no doubt. It was against her nature to recognize any man as her superior. But she felt duty-bound as the leader of the Nri kingdoms to protect her patrimony as best as she knew how. Playing the political game in Akwar gave her realms twelve precious years of peace, years that she put to good use.

In the year 1000, Igbo-Ukwu had a population of roughly twenty thousand people, equivalent to that of medieval London. [4] The population had long since outgrown the simple palisade that Oba Nri-Alike had erected a century before. The central market was also far too small, and with few Igbo officials to step in, disputes between merchants were common and hard to resolve. Nkem insisted on new defenses, surrounding the larger city with improved walls as well as a dry moat. She also expanded the market and dispatched local Orisan clergy to resolve disputes and ensure the use of honest scales. Creditable accomplishments, to be sure, but Hombori cast a long shadow.

One November night, her wits failing, Nkem was found wandering the streets of Igbo-Ukwu. When her grandson came to collect her, she looked at him with eyes full of hope, asking if there was news of battle in Mali. “I forced a kind of smile,” Chima wrote later, “and said that we had the Kaya Magha on the run for sure. Her eyes brimmed with tears as I led her barefoot back to the palace, and she died that night dreaming of victory.”

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[1] It is historical convention to refer to the Nri kings that offered homage to the Malinese Kaya Magha by the Malinese title.
[2] Igbo nobles at the time primarily blamed Nkem the Younger (later, Magha Nkem II). It was in keeping with Nkem the Elder’s new ruthless approach that she let her daughter be hated for a crime that both had been involved in.
[3] Much of what we know of this period comes from Nkem’s grandson Chima Nri, a keen observer of court and her closest confidant late in life. Chima’s recollections would form the basis of a Nri family chronicle.
[4] In game terms, London and Igbo-Ukwu had the same development. Akwar and the surrounding areas are even wealthier, equivalent to southern Italy, and I have to admit that I find this pretty galling.
 
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In game terms, losing a subjugation war to an AI leader with a higher-tier title is far from the worst thing. As we'll see, it opens up interesting possibilities in the future, particularly under the rules of confederate partition. But I couldn't imagine that anybody in the Nri dynasty would see it in quite that light.

Also, as my main county gets more and more developed, I am at a loss for how to imagine it. We are at this point still officially tribal, and so Igbo-Ukwu is considered a 'tribe'--but what does a tribe that is as wealthy as a medieval city look like? Vaes Dothrak? In any case, I imagine that it has to be pretty built up to make the eventual decision to go feudal seem like a natural outgrowth of what exists, just like I imagined that pagan faiths aren't simply 'reformed' one day without a lot of build up.

(I have been thinking a bit how church/state relations might be evolving now that the Orisan faith has been established for a little while. When I get the right leader I would love to get into that.)

Making everyone champions is the natural way though. All the weak ones die while the strong ones get even stronger :)

Good point. Let the young ones earn their place on the throne.

Very little of what has just happened feels particularly good. Are the Nri clique going to band together and face off the Malians, or will they keep fighting each other and get picked off one by one? And amongst all this we've got ourselves a new oba trying to establish her position. Quite the mess.

It was a grim period, no doubt, and as we can see, the worst was yet to come.

Well things turned rather chaotic very very quickly - I can only imagine things are going to get pretty bad pretty quickly at this rate.

"Things turned rather chaotic very very quickly" - that's life under confederate partition. Never a dull moment.
 
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Sometimes you just have to fold. It does offer some interesting potentials, as you say. All in all a rather tragic figure.
 
This is a fascinating AAR, and I really enjoyed it! Can't wait to see what happens next.

I just took a turn on a succession game on another forum and I liked how it forced me to take my time and really get to know the characters. But I found myself wishing I could keep going! I think an AAR is for me.

I really liked your choice of a narrative tone -- as if this is written in a history book about the subject written years later. I think I might need to steal that idea ;)

Keep up the great work! :D
 
Well, then. Subject it is. Perhaps some hostile takeover via murder or plots at the end? ;)
 
Not ideal to lose the subjugation war – but hardly the worst thing either, as you say. Plenty of opportunity now for the Nri clique to build up their power and influence under the protection of the Malian high king.
 
Africa and Europe in the time of Nkem II
Africa and Europe in the time of Nkem II

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Nkem II’s reign coincided with an unprecedented period of political centralization and intellectual ferment in sub-Saharan Africa. The volume of internal trade expanded dramatically under the Cisse monarchs, and Maghrebi traders sailing under the Malinese flag became a common site in Asturias, Occitan city-states, Byzantine Tunis, and the great merchant republics of Italy. Kaya Magha Bunama sent a trade mission to Constantinople in 1025 to negotiate trade rights; the Basileus received the envoy with grave courtesy, respecting if nothing else the size of Mali’s army.

In turn, the people of the Mediterranean world traveled to sub-Saharan Africa in increasing numbers. This influence was primarily felt in Akwar, which served as a natural hub for trade from the Mediterranean to Benin, but many sailed down the Niger River to Mali’s wealthy southern coast. Europe was not the only new source of trade. Political consolidation in East Africa had led to the rise of mighty Coptic kingdoms in Nubia and Abyssinia, and the Horn of Africa was dominated by the Somali empire of Ajuraan. [1] This caused a spike in overland trade via Darfur, as well as from Europe. In the small foreign quarter of Igbo-Ukwu, one might find a Capuan priest in an argument with a Somali wadaad, or a Greek haggling with a Nubian.


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Scholars in 11th century Mali were quick to notice that chaos was enveloping much of Europe, even as Africa was becoming more centralized. The collapse of the Karling empire and the Danish invasion of England had destroyed what central institutions existed across much of western Europe, leading to a true dark age. Even the Catholic church was beset by pagan invaders and local heresies in what had been West Francia. [2] The western church was secured only in the heartlands of Germany and Italy, where powerful kingdoms like East Francia and Bavaria still held sway. Things were little better in the Muslim taifas of southern Iberia, although Sunni Islam civilization was secured by the Muslim Visigothic kingdom of Asturias. Much of eastern Europe was dominated by non-Christian tribes, including the Tengri chiefs of Poland and the Jewish Khazar khans of Ruthenia. The ancient Byzantine Empire proved an exception, having established lucrative trading colonies in Tunis, Egypt, and Crimea, although they were weakened from years of warfare with the Damascusid caliphate.

Scholars in Akwar, Benin and Igbo-Ukwu began to wonder if there was a uniquely African way of ordering society that had proved superior to the crumbling civilization of Europe. One or two overheated writers began to speculate about a pan-African empire uniting the peoples from the Maghreb to Mogadishu under truly African principles, although Kaya Magha Bunama was quick to discourage such talk. This was to some extent simple chauvinism, which faded with the chaos that followed Bunama’s death. But the notion that there was something one might call a ‘natural unity’ of the African peoples had a long shelf life.

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[1] In 1020, the Ajuraani High King had held a conclave of the leading wadaads in Mogadishu, which approved a Waaqi holy text and an orthodox creed. This was of particular interest in Orisan shamans, and leading clergy from the neighboring faiths began a long tradition of ecumenical discussion and disputation.

[2] And by pagans, I don't just mean Vikings, I mean guys like this:

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daaaaaang, those are some big empires! Some of them may disappear though. I had a massive Jewish Khazaria too but it got swallowed up by Moldovia and Rus.

I do love seeing the AI reform pagan faiths in this game. Adds a lot to emergent gameplay I think.
 
Continental Europe doesn’t look too bad if you accept that ck2 was probably a bit too lenient on the whole state integrity front anyway, but man the British Isles are interesting. How on earth did Andalusian scotland happen?

Also a very nice touch to imagine the scope of contact between the Mediterranean and the African kingdoms. Mali is looking terrifying, so it’s understandable the non-African states would at least take it’s calls for recognition seriously.
 
If you would like a closer look at the British Isles:

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I hadn't been tracking changes in Europe much over the course of the game to date, but I suspect that the most notorious 867-start-date feature, those Viking colonies, is at issue here. I expect that there were a lot of smaller Norse chieftains who took land here and there over Western Europe, and then were vulnerable to claim-CB or subjugation CB wars from one of their many neighbors, which led to somebody else taking over those scattered colonies and then expanding again.

After 150 years of that, and adding in the collapse of Catholic strength west of Bavaria, there are a bunch of seriously weird European AI rulers out there. I've seen French Suomenusko counts, that Berber/Viking/Irish emir that I pointed out above, Andalusian Scots, etc.
 
Cheers for that. Strangely heartened by the fact that amongst the bizarreness my would be home province of Derby is its own little free county.
 
If it ever comes up, I may include a bit about the fiercely patriotic peasantry of Derby, who fought off invaders of all stripes, be they Norse, Welsh, Andalusian, Tengri-worshipping Poles...
 
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Well that is an absolutely disgusting map. Makes me want to play earliest start Ireland to see how much madder it can get than the tutorial.
 
Ahhh! Hurts my eyes precious. Hurts my eyes!

:D

Some parts of Western Europe are seriously messed up.
 
Magha Nkem II of Igbo-Benue, 1022 - 1032
Magha Nkem II of Igbo-Benue

Born: 973
Reigned: 1022 - 1032


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Nkem the Younger was forty-nine years old when she ascended to the throne of Igbo-Benue, and she had been in the cut-throat business of Nri dynastic intrigue for thirty years. She had famously deposed her own mother at the age of eighteen and then murdered her aunt ten years later. When her mother sat on the throne in Igbo-Ukwu, Nkem had been her spymaster and loyal enforcer, and rumors of her activities during the Malinese war and afterward were legion.

Nkem II became notorious for her ability to break the will of her mother’s prisoners through ingenious tortures. Most did not survive. Beyond that, the scope of her activities was mysterious, and all the more terrifying for that. People said of her that she had informers everywhere, even in Akwar, and that nobody could keep their secrets from her. They said too that those she wished to die would be dead for sure. It was not public knowledge that she had poisoned Kaya Magha Yasiboy, but that and many other deaths were suspected of her.

For all that, Nkem II did not have the dark reputation of her ancestor Ezimilo. To the people of the Niger river delta, she had the singularly good taste to despise her Malinese liege. Nkem’s public attitude towards the Cisse monarchy was just short of insulting. In private moments, she was worse, referring to the Soninke as ‘barbarians’ and their Bidaic gods as ‘absurd.’

When the elder Nkem died in late 1022, Nkem II became magha in her own right. Relations between her and Bunama were truly toxic. Her mother had thought that cultivating good relations with their liege was crucial to secure the Nri dynastic holdings. Nkem II thought the opposite: Bunama was in her mind fundamentally a coward, and he would submit to any manner of indignities before risking civil war. When he begrudgingly named her as his steward, she felt vindicated.

Bunama was by this point distracted by larger concerns. His brother Yasindé had long served as a Malinese envoy to the Damascid caliph, during which time the young prince had gone native and become a devout Sunni Muslim. Back in Akwar, Yasindé cultivated a clique of bold young Muslim nobles, primarily from the Maghreb, who wished to rule Mali by Islamic principles. Countering them was a large array of Bidaic and Orisan nobles, united for the moment by a common foe. Prince Yasindé claimed that he wished only that his brother the Kaya Magha would know the truth as he did. Bunama conceded that this was not treason, but he had his brother carefully watched.

Beyond that, the ever-present matter of the succession was foremost on Bunama’s mind. The empire of Mali was the largest it had ever been, but the Kaya Magha was plagued by concerns that it was too large. He was able to keep the empire united through his own credibility as a warrior, but after his death it seemed all too plausible that the empire would split apart. With these weighty matters on the Kaya Magha’s mind, he decided to swallow his anger at Nkem II’s repeated insults. She was a defeated old woman, bitter and impotent. She complained and rolled her eyes and acted petulant, but she did not dare move against him, and that was the most important thing.

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The Kaya Magha was half right. Nkem II did not dare to move against him, but not because she was defeated. Because of his daughter Kilia.

Princess Kilia was a charming young girl who had a way with courtiers, and even many in the Nri dynasty professed themselves enchanted. The Soninke did not accept queens as readily as the Igbo and Yoruba people did, but they had been ruled by queens before and Kilia promised to be one of their most cherished. She was, indeed, Bunama’s only daughter, and given the age of his wife and concubines she was the only child he was likely to have.

To Nkem, this was entirely unacceptable. It was so easy to see how the Kaya Magha could grant his entire empire to this (in her words) ‘simpering fool’ and thus doom Nkem and her family to another generation of submission. So it was not that she wished to leave Bunama alone, she simply wished to kill his daughter first.

Of course, this was easier said than done. Bunama was a very protective father, and his daughter was ever surrounded by maids and tutors and an assortment of maiden aunts and spinster sisters. She rarely played outdoors. Courtiers joked that her taster had his own taster. To get at her, Nkem would need a man on the inside.

This was a puzzle that Nkem wrestled with for quite some time, until she had a sudden revelation. Kilia was a very dutiful child, all knew this. As a result, she regularly paid homage to Mangala, the creator god, and Sourakata and the other traditional gods of the Soninke people. Yasindé and his clique were attentive to the young princess, but they could not relish the thought of a young pagan queen reigning for another generation.

Magha Nkem identified a likely young firebrand in the prince’s orbit, but the man was quick to insist that Yasindé himself would never harm Kilia. The prince adored Kilia, and believed that she could be brought to see the light if only he and his supporters cultivated a good relationship with her. They went out of their way to spoil her. In fact, Prince Yasindé, in the manner of kind uncles everywhere, was in the habit of sneaking Kilia her favorite caramel coconut balls without her parents knowing. His manservant was required to have a few to hand at all times.

Nkem saw her opening. From there, the task was simple.

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Kilia’s death was swift and heartbreaking to the court at Akwar. As Nkem had expected, Prince Yasindé and his Muslim faction drew most of the suspicion, but the prince’s grief was raw and unforced and the Kaya Magha could not believe that his brother was responsible.

Within a year, Akwar was rocked by a second revelation. The Kaya Magha’s favorite concubine, now in her early forties, had retired to the countryside and given birth to twin boys, Yasiboy and Junkunda. Nkem was pleased: two heirs were far better for her purposes than one. The Kaya Magha was naturally overjoyed, and he was if anything even more doting to his new children.

He would not, however, live to see them take their first steps. Kaya Magha Bunama was thrown from his horse in a freak accident while hunting with noble guests from Asturias. His neck was shattered, and he died instantly. [1] Bunama had led his people to victory over the Igbo and the Kong. For the last twenty-one years of his life, he had been the most powerful man in the known world. Now that empire was in the hands of two infants who had not yet been weaned.

With Bunama’s death in 1032, events in Mali quickly spiraled out of control. Yasiboy II was crowned Kaya Magha of the High Kingdom of Mali in his father’s place with all the proper Bidaic rites. However, a faction of Orisan nobles smuggled Prince Junkunda and a wet-nurse to their holdings in the south coast. There they proclaimed Junkunda the Kaya Magha of a southern, Orisan empire known as Guinea. The Sunni faction then proclaimed that only a strong presence on the throne could save the empire of destruction, crowning Yasindé the Kaya Magha for an Islamic Mali.

With three factions claiming the throne, the chaos that Nkem II had longed for was finally here. Much like her rival Bunama, however, she did not live long enough to take advantage. On October 31, 1032, the crafty old magha suffered a massive heart attack and died the same day. It would fall to her son Chima to lead the Igbo people through the bloodshed that was coming.

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[1] It is tempting to suspect Nkem II of Bunama’s death too. Surely she wanted it to happen, and it is quite possible that she had engineered it in some fashion. All we can say is that Nkem was happy to brag about her exploits to her (usually horrified) son Chima, and this alone she kept silent on.
 
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In game terms, losing a subjugation war to an AI leader with a higher-tier title is far from the worst thing. As we'll see, it opens up interesting possibilities in the future, particularly under the rules of confederate partition. But I couldn't imagine that anybody in the Nri dynasty would see it in quite that light.

In my initial play through I was facing a potentially unwinnable war as the petty King of Strathclyde, the Isles were gobbling up every small ruler around me which. My only safe option was to swear fealty to alba, it really did open up an extremely interesting game after that took me something like 4 generations and 3 failed rebellions to overthrow my liege. I can definitely say playing as a vassal is a lot of fun now
 
Fair cop: in the game, Kilia was like 20 when she died, not a child like I make it sound here. But I was channeling my inner Cersei and I felt like that worked better.

Also you can see more or less what I was hoping for. Mali had gotten so big that confederate partition would naturally split it into two empires, Mali and Guinea, provided that the Cisse had two heirs. And the Nri lands put together take up 60 out of 90 provinces in Guinea, so I would be much more powerful than my liege at that point. Of course, then the baby that ruled Mali had to go to war with the baby that ruled Guinea.

Sometimes you just have to fold. It does offer some interesting potentials, as you say. All in all a rather tragic figure.

I think of the first Nkem as tragic, also. She was in many ways conscientious and responsible, but likely she will be regarded as a failure to posterity.

Well, then. Subject it is. Perhaps some hostile takeover via murder or plots at the end? ;)

Maaaaaaaaaybe.

Not ideal to lose the subjugation war – but hardly the worst thing either, as you say. Plenty of opportunity now for the Nri clique to build up their power and influence under the protection of the Malian high king.

And under the protection of three high kings, even.

daaaaaang, those are some big empires! Some of them may disappear though. I had a massive Jewish Khazaria too but it got swallowed up by Moldovia and Rus.

I do love seeing the AI reform pagan faiths in this game. Adds a lot to emergent gameplay I think.

Oh, same. I'm always rooting for the pagans to get their act together, even when they're against me. I did a CK2 Roman Empire run and I hated to go against the Germanic empire of Britannia.

Also a very nice touch to imagine the scope of contact between the Mediterranean and the African kingdoms. Mali is looking terrifying, so it’s understandable the non-African states would at least take it’s calls for recognition seriously.

True! And they are also quite wealthy, which has its own draw.

Well that is an absolutely disgusting map. Makes me want to play earliest start Ireland to see how much madder it can get than the tutorial.
Ahhh! Hurts my eyes precious. Hurts my eyes!

:D

Some parts of Western Europe are seriously messed up.

I know! That map of Europe is so wacky I just had to share it. It makes me want to do a European campaign just to save them from themselves.
 
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Well this certainly feels an opportune moment to reap the rewards of having sowed a little chaos in the realm. No doubt Nkem will have wanted to get to work herself, but alas the fates had other plans (who said poetic justice was dead?). Let’s see how Chima fares.