Was the gold mine in Morocco really THAT important?

[Beagá]

I´m asking this because it´s so easy to get rid of the bullion famine event by conquering it as Spain or Portugal. Was it THAT productive that it could stop the famine? Is it gamey?

Also is it crazy to invest armies in Morocco? When you get all the moroccan provinces and add them as accepted culture your income is VERY good for 1500. Aiding that colonization effort.

 

[Big Bad France]

The ability to create trade companies in Morocco does make the land a lot better than it used to be. I wouldn't make it a top priority for Castile, but it's probably a good idea for Portugal to expand there ASAP. Castile is better served just taking the north coast for its mission tree to get the +15% morale bonus, and then conquering in Italy and France while colonizing. I view Morocco more as land that you can add to a trade company while you wait on AE to cool down on land you are trying to state.

 

[Beagá]

Ok but what about the Gold Mine? Was It really relevant by the game's time?

 

[Big Bad France]

I believe you end the bullion famine by finding any gold mine outside of Europe. It doesn't have to be Morocco's.

 

[Beagá]

I see. But what is the history of that Mine?

I think Gold mines should be completely able to be exhausted and the good changed. I doubt that Mine went beyond the 1600s but I'm curious.

 

[BadOrc]

Many of the ”Gold mines” in EU4 where actully silver mines in RL. Atleast when we talk about Europé.

 

[EarlKonrad]

Many of the ”Gold mines” in EU4 where actully silver mines in RL. Atleast when we talk about Europé.

You are correct. EU 4 represent both silver and gold mines as gold producing provinces. The tooltip tells you this.

Regarding OP's question, I don't know but I'd hazard a guess that Morocco's mine would not have been enough, considering how the vast majority of Africa's precious metals historically came from the Sub Saharanian portion of the continent.

Something that I wonder is if in this time period there was any particularly big gold/silver mine in the Egyptian territory.

 

[RichardOlcese]

Yes. It's a silver mine.
Imider (Imiter) is a commune in the Tinghir Province of the Drâa-Tafilalet administrative region of Morocco. At the time of the 2004 census, the commune had a total population of 3936 people living in 507 households.[1]

Imider is known for a big silver mine (the seventh biggest producer of silver in the world, and the biggest mine in Africa), exploited by SMI (Société Métallurgique d'Imiter), of which the Moroccan Royal family is the main shareholder. In 2012, the village organised sit-ins to reclaim a part of the wealth extracted from the region by the mine.[2]

Imider - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Tinghir - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[RichardOlcese]

Expanding on my previous post, Moroccan currency pre-Saharan trade (that is, Saady dynasty), was mostly silver currency (dirham) produced with silver from that mine.

Dirham - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[KaiserJohan]

Interesting read

 

[Beagá]

Expanding on my previous post, Moroccan currency pre-Saharan trade (that is, Saady dynasty), was mostly silver currency (dirham) produced with silver from that mine.

Dirham - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Many thanks. So guess It makes sense to keep It a valuable asset.

 

[Froonk]

Bullion famine shouldn't be broken by any of the old world mines. Especially not North African silver mines which were already in circulation in Mediterranean. Might as well make Serbian mines break it at that point.

 

[Meglok]

Bullion famine shouldn't be broken by any of the old world mines. Especially not North African silver mines which were already in circulation in Mediterranean. Might as well make Serbian mines break it at that point.

If you are keeping it historical, ending the bullion famine should be limited to outside Europe AND Asia. Silver and gold flowing from Europe to Asia to buy trade goods was the main culprit causing the famine. The Black Death and Hundred Years War didn't help either.

The Portuguese developed African trade routes from about the mid 1400s that helped ease a lot of the shortage, bringing in needed silver from North Africa and gold from the Gold Coast. The discovery/looting of gold and silver in the new world by Spain after 1500 ended the famine for good.

 

[Cancerofthehead]

It was a significant source of silver in the Middle Ages (and is not negligible today).

But it was also tied to the European economy already (there was plenty of trade between the Islamic and Christian worlds).

So I think the bullion famine should not be ended by it. The Malian good mines I would say are arguable. But Kilwa or New World seems best to me.

 

[Battlex]

I´m asking this because it´s so easy to get rid of the bullion famine event by conquering it as Spain or Portugal. Was it THAT productive that it could stop the famine? Is it gamey?

Also is it crazy to invest armies in Morocco? When you get all the moroccan provinces and add them as accepted culture your income is VERY good for 1500. Aiding that colonization effort.

It's any goldmine even if it has 1 dev so it doesn't really matter how significant the mine was then or now. Morocco was already heavily integrated into the European trade network, but the capture of the mine would still cause a great change in the flow of trade, so perhaps the bullion famine could also rely on needing a minimum percentage of trade power in that node. Making Morocco harder to conquer would be an easier way of stopping the mine from ending the bullion famine imo, as well as giving the tuareg and berber nomads more flavour

Trade goods diversifying would be nice, especially as provinces become more and more developed representing vast urbanisation, and we already have some trade goods changed via mission tree (valencian Silk) but I doubt paradox would change it much

 

[Big Bad France]

If you are up against the AI, Mali's mines are just as easy to trigger the event with and there are a lot more of them. Even against humans, nobody can beat Portugal to Mali unless another human is playing Castile and making it a point to rush the mine in Morocco.

 

[Battlex]

If you are up against the AI, Mali's mines are just as easy to trigger the event with and there are a lot more of them. Even against humans, nobody can beat Portugal to Mali unless another human is playing Castile and making it a point to rush the mine in Morocco.

That requires lots of ADM to core that far inland, as well as risking coalitions, whereas kilwa and Zimbabwe are relatively easy once you've got the colony with the trade centre just south, and even get free claims

 

[Cancerofthehead]

That requires lots of ADM to core that far inland, as well as risking coalitions, whereas kilwa and Zimbabwe are relatively easy once you've got the colony with the trade centre just south, and even get free claims

You can conquer and core the Malian gold mines far faster than you can colonize your way around the Cape to Kilwa.

It also isn’t very out of your way, you want the entire Ivory Coast node anyway, in fact you probably want to be collecting there until you remove Castille from the game since they will take too much of the Sevilla node. Then you are only a couple provinces from the gold mine. Unless you are no CBing and full annexing non-cobelligerents I can’t see any AE issues grabbing it.

Even when bee lining for Asian TCs in 1.29 I would get the Malian mine cores long before I reached Kilwa. And it would fund much of my African colonization until I can get trade flowing.

 

[Big Bad France]

Yeah, if I am playing Portugal, the gold mines in Mali are priority one. You can fabricate from a colony, so you can get them pretty much immediately after unlocking your first colonist.

 

[Battlex]

You can conquer and core the Malian gold mines far faster than you can colonize your way around the Cape to Kilwa.

It also isn’t very out of your way, you want the entire Ivory Coast node anyway, in fact you probably want to be collecting there until you remove Castille from the game since they will take too much of the Sevilla node. Then you are only a couple provinces from the gold mine. Unless you are no CBing and full annexing non-cobelligerents I can’t see any AE issues grabbing it.

Even when bee lining for Asian TCs in 1.29 I would get the Malian mine cores long before I reached Kilwa. And it would fund much of my African colonization until I can get trade flowing.

Why would you move your home node to ivory Coast when your control of sevilla will increase and so you can benefit from Spain's colonies? Even if Spain half Asses colonialisation then sevilla will become the most valuable node in the world and so you can get global trade spawn there.

Conquering Mali early on is hard due to the tech not being so different, and as you don't get auto claims you're wasting lots of ADM and dip that could be spent on exploration and then getting expansion unlocked early on.

If not MP then the loans you accrue in the time to past Cape is easily payable once you've taken kilwas centre of trade