"African Power" achievement, attempt #6

[RadRussian]

I tried playing as Kongo many times but I had 5 serious attempts all of which ended up with me being annexed or left with two provinces.
I played it in v1.2 and v1.3 and though 1.3 made it much easier for Kongo to convert to Christianity/change gov't, it didn't help with Castille and Portugal attacking you whenever they have a chance. Even after I changed my gov't, I need to have core adjacent to a colonizer.
So, if I postpone westernization and lock Africa so they won't have a CB on me, how big do I need to be for them to respect me enough to accept alliance. I know there's no formula for this, but do you think colonizing entire coast and vassalizing those nearby will be enough?
Are there any tricks to making friends with colonizers?

 

[unmerged(184583)]

yea I would say rush for exploration, get as big as you possibly can. Settle down once you get a border with a colonizer. If you have a choice in the matter, be sure to get a border/westernize from a nation that does not have exploration completely fleshed out (you can check this in the ledger, page 1). Get up past your forcelimits if you can afford it, basically puff your chest and look as big and mighty as you can so they might just look somewhere else. Once you catch up in tech its business as usual.

 

[RadRussian]

yea I would say rush for exploration, get as big as you possibly can. Settle down once you get a border with a colonizer. If you have a choice in the matter, be sure to get a border/westernize from a nation that does not have exploration completely fleshed out (you can check this in the ledger, page 1). Get up past your forcelimits if you can afford it, basically puff your chest and look as big and mighty as you can so they might just look somewhere else. Once you catch up in tech its business as usual.

So the strategy I'm likely to follow is to stay away from colonizers until I grow arbitrarily large. But there's a problem if I eat Muslim provinces which I won't be able to convert, they will decrease religious unity and keep spawning rebels. Converting to Sunni was also attempted but it significantly decreases my chances to ally colonizers.

 

[Korashy]

You want the muslim provinces to be your vassals. That is important because they will have better troops than you. Your number one priority is survival, if you have to pay portugal 4k to stop the war with you, that's just how it is. Remember that taking colonies in a war only costs you about 2WS each later.

 

[Rey]

When this game came out, you only needed to start a game as Kongo to get this achievement

 

[Golladan]

Improve relations with the european powers as soon as you meet them. With the permanent relations boost you get with Portugal when they bring catholicism I don't see why they would be delcaring on you. And it shouldn't be too hard to ally them. Once you do, then the other europeans should leave you alone. I actually managed to block off Europe from touching much of Africa, and have colonized all the way to Australia. England has the 3 provinces between Morocco and Mali. Portugal has Ceuta, Tangiers, Cape Verde, the 2 Mali coastal provinces and an inland one, and another colony 1 province from Mali (which I colonized around so they can't go inwards).
My current issue is that I don't think I will have enough time to take over Mali, Hausa, Kanem Bornu, Swahili, Adal, Yeme, The Mamluks, The Ottomans, Morocco, Algiers, Tunisia, England, and Portugal before 1821. Specially when my vassals keep losing any land I feed them to rebels and the wars I get into drain my manpower completely (even with mil buildings built in all my provinces). It also doesn't help that I have 2 provinces that is constantly attacked by natives for some reason (bug?).

This is how Africa currently looks. I just got out of a war with Swahili (hence my low manpower) and Portugal drew me into some colonial war against England but I don't really care about that.

Only wars I've had with the europeans were 2 wars against England (including the current one) which were just me "helping" Portugal.

 

[RadRussian]

With the permanent relations boost you get with Portugal when they bring catholicism I don't see why they would be delcaring on you.

I tried to ally them, my diplomats never left their capitals. In my last game I had 160-170 opinion with Portugal but their attitude was neutral so I could not ally them or Castille or anyone. Portugal soon rivaled me probably because she had a colony next to my province.
I think I'll give it another try but don't like strategies based on luck.

As for your situation, I'd just westernize and by the time you catch up with technology, you'll have no problem defeating anyone with European tech. Manpower is always a problem for NA and Africa but it's not deadly.

 

[QzY]

at what year do you start, if i may ask. i started in 1444 and was bored after 50 years already, of fast forwarding. did get many pretender rebels though.

 

[unmerged(184583)]

at what year do you start, if i may ask. i started in 1444 and was bored after 50 years already, of fast forwarding. did get many pretender rebels though.

oh yea, any tribal african or new world will be mostly fast forwarding until you can either colonize or westernize.

As for RadRussian, I never said avoid colonizers, heck you need them. You just don't want to share a border with them until you are catholic and preferably never if you are pagan and they have the exploration ideas completed. Obviously you don't want to be muslim, that will pretty much mean instant death.

My aztec game, where I actually almost achieved the sunset invasion achievement I really just got lucky with some catholic conversion event, It would have be nigh impossible to convert quickly enough any other way. After that, it was actually pretty easy, just business as usual. The only problem is time, you have to be quick or you will likely run out of it before achieving your goals.

 

[Dadvester]

I have a game ongoing as kongo where i have 100 years left and own all but north africa and some islands. I went for colonization and grew as large as i could. I got lucky with portugal finding me fast, my rulers dieing earlier and some pretender rebels who had a 4/4/5 leader who lasted decades.

A good start is a must, but its mostly luck. If mali has blobbed then you will have major problems but if there are still some independent nations there then its easy.

i also westernized ASAP and stayed Catholic and constantly improved relations with Portugal and Spain. and now have equal Dip and Mil tech and full defensive ideas. I have currently come off it as the Ottoman Blob attacked me and has twice my troops so i need to plan. I used the War/Vassalize/Intergrate strategy barely annexed as to save Adm points and AE.

Does any one know if i have to core all the provinces or just own them to complete it?

 

[urhokalevikekko]

Staying at -3 stability especially if u dont have a good ruler or heir is a good idea, you might get a good pretender or you might get the palace coop event to fire which lets you kill ur ruler or heir.

As soon as you get to admin tech 4 try to colonize the island off the coast of cameroon, makes it a lot easier to block the rest if you don't let portugal or castille get that island. Improve relations with portugal and castille to the max and guarantee their independence for the extra +10 to get to an even 100 so you can enforce peaces if opportunity arises. You will need vision of the opposing war leader so start exploring Europe, this also gives you prestige.

Accepting the missionary event should give you another event in 10 or so years which converts your national religion too and that also changes your goverment to despotic monarchy so no need to reform goverment before westernizing. Once you are christian it's fairly easy to keep at least one colonial power as your ally, just remember to check for any opportunities for peaces you could enforce to build up trust. Before colonizing next to castille or portugal for westernizing you really wanna have built up a solid alliance with them. After westernizing its just a matter of grinding it out, not much to it. Just remember to complete innnovative before 1650 or so to get the egalite fraternite liberte event to fire. The -20% tech and more for diplo and admin tech discount should enable you to fully catch up in tech.

 

[RadRussian]

Thanks everybody.
I haven't realized that trust helps you get an alliance untill now. Now I have more confidence what to do mid-game.
Now my main concern would be converting land to proper religion. I've noticed many of provinces have base tax of 8 or higher, so if I am to convert them, I'll need to complete religious ideas which I'm not very excited about. I could also try to have my vassals convert those without -2 culture penalty or make certain culture acceptable but I think I'll still need to go for religions ideas.
Still, counter-reformation lasts for like 150 years only (please confirm/deny) and I doubt I'll be able to convert all provinces by that time.

 

[Juggernaught]

Unfortunately your fate with Kongo depends on the rng of the rulers you get. It is extremely boring doing nothing for almost 150 years. Pass 2 shaman decisions and reroll the game until you get a 5 admin heir at least.
I have had several attempts with them and my best one was colonizing everything south of Mali up to cape with Spain finally deciding to dow me even tho i was catholic
Just make sure you keep your relations up with colonizers.