Middle East nation foothold in E.Africa?

[ETAIPOS]

Is there any point to capture land in E Africa as power based in Middle East (Byz, OTT, MAM etc) unless you go for WC, of course?

I mean, all the trade from all the nodes south of Horn of Africa flow westwards, to nodes in Western Europe. So by taking this land and developing it I make Spain and Portugal stronger rather than myself, or so it seems.

Or maybe I don't see sth important?

 

[Piotrzeci]

As far as I know there is some gold down there. You can always go for a line of Camps/Shipyards to boost your Land/Naval force limit down there.

 

[Rikissa]

Nice gold mines and it's a good trade node, just collect there

You can also hop over to Indonesia and easily conquer it, for extreme dosh (Philippines -> Moluccas -> Malacca -> Zanzibar)

 

[Piotrzeci]

Yeah, considering you get a free merchant for conquering it anyways you can as well use him.

 

[cuendillar]

Is there any point to capture land in E Africa as power based in Middle East (Byz, OTT, MAM etc) unless you go for WC, of course?

I mean, all the trade from all the nodes south of Horn of Africa flow westwards, to nodes in Western Europe. So by taking this land and developing it I make Spain and Portugal stronger rather than myself, or so it seems.

Or maybe I don't see sth important?

For the Mamluks, it's certainly a good idea to do so for collecting in Zanzibar and the easy access to it. You might even want to make that your primary trade node as Alexandria is relatively weak due to several strong nodes draining it. Zanzibar can be virtually monopolized by controlling Alexandria and Cape, the former is trivial for the Mamluks and the latter is pretty much equivalent to the Cape province.

Constantinople is a much stronger node than Alexandria, so Ottomans and BYZ have much less use of that land, which isn't to say it's completely worthless as has been pointed out before. Just not a key part of the economy in the same way.

 

[Brynjar]

Getting 100% trade power in the Zanzibar trade node is not too hard, and it means you can collect all the money coming from the east. Even at lower percentages, it's a very profitable trade node to collect in. There is no need to develop it though, if by developing you mean increasing development by spending monarch points. It'swell worth building manufactories etc. there if you aim for monopoly in the trade node.