So, OOC AAR today. A reasonably good session for Ethiopia, which ate Swahili and Mutapa (well, I will only finish eating Mutapa when the AI, which picked up a defected animist province on the other side of the continent and is therefore unannexable and stubborn, caves and agrees to cede its capital) and did some colonizing and some successful diplomacy. I got several border disputes which offer cores on neighboring lands; I declined one with Tripoli, because I don't intend to attack them, but another in the Mutapa area was a welcome core in the province that will become my National Focus when I can next move it, Barwe. Unfortunately, probably as an unintentional result of the pregame edits Ethiopia received, the national focus counted as moved in 1399 even though I didn't, and so has been stuck in my capital so far and unavailable to help with converting or colonizing. I will get to move it pretty much first thing next session, though.
Sadly the eating of Swahili and Mutapa, while it added territory and income to Ethiopia, also came with major cost requirements as all the new lands needed to be forted up. The forting is done now but was not kind to my treasury. Even with National Bank and ADM 9-enabled wartaxing during all the wars of pagan-eating, inflation has been mildly growing; we also lack access to all the excellent Masters of Mint floating around the Latin and Muslim tech groups' advisor pools, and have to grow our own at home. Forts cost about a thousand ducats last session, and I will welcome the opportunity not to have to spend that money any more.
Eating those two in several smaller bites rather than huge gulps did, however, have the benefit that I was able to avoid tons of rebels running around capturing vast swathes of unforted land and causing havok and nationalism lasting till doomsday.
The Ethiopian military has grown significantly and will continue to do so, as it is still only about average compared to the ROTW and on the small side by European standards. Another unfortunate strain on the small Ethiopian census tax, but there's no helping that; our provinces have nationalism and are far apart in travel times, so multiple armies are needed to police them, and then, of course, there is the need to guard against attacks which can come anywhere along Ethiopia's long coast. All in all a large army is needed. Our manpower has expanded somewhat as well, and we're reasonably well off in that area, well ahead of the ROTW average though behind all but Tripoli in Europe. However, further growth will be limited to what I can get from buildings for a while, as the South African coastal provinces that I am currently colonizing have 0 base MP.
In foreign affairs, Ethiopia's western neighbor and ally, the Republic of the Kongo, has also done a decent job expanding, which is good news for us. Other friends, the Romans and the Spanish, also seem to have done well, and sit firmly in the world's leading ranks for income and manpower. Ethiopia and Tripoli also reached an agreement on borders in the Sudan area, that should be able to avoid any conflict between us. That's a major benefit to us both, I think; a house divided cannot stand, and all, and the African lands start too poor to allow us to waste our limited resources with infighting. We'll need every magistrate we can get to turn this crap into gold, and if we're destroying each others' work the winner will just be left with crap.
Ethiopia has a while to wait before cores on its recent gains start coming in, and until then the census tax will remain lower than I would like. I envy Brunei its fortuitous inheritances and the Europeans their high-basetax cores. However, minting is making thing work for now, and the inflation gain isn't unmanageable. Our lands have high attrition for invaders and we have the income to support a fairly large army. Overall I can't complain too much about Ethiopia's situation.