WC as Timbuktu - Suggestions for a novice player

[DanielGrandi]

Hello everyone! My name is Daniel and I'm a novice EU IV player. It has been quite some time since I started to insist in doing a WC as Timbuktu and I would appreciate if more experienced players would give me tips, not only for Timbuktu, but for WC in general. I guess I should preface this saying that I have only played after the year 1600 in some instances and these were a long time ago (there wasn't even institutions by then).
So, I put some objectives down that would act as a guiding line, but I'm not sure if they are correct for a WC. And these are:

1 - Conquer all West Africa by the year 1500
2 - Conquer India, or at least grab some part of it, by the year 1600

From number 3 onward I have no idea which should be my objectives. I also have some mechanics related questions:

1 - Should I spend Monarch Points forcing institutions to spawn or even speed them up? In my last attempt, I was managing to keep up the pace with mil tech, but both adm and dip were severely behind (I had 2 adm and 5 dip be the year 1530)
2 - Should my first idea be exploration? - the idea is to make a connection to East Africa, so I can expand to India
3 - Should I use the humiliate rival CB to get monarch points or is that a waste of time?
4 - When I reform my government, should I go for republic? I honestly have a huge prejudice towards monarchies governments in this game, because I feels like republics have such a better control of monarch points and such.

I guess this is it for now. I would like to thank any suggestion in advance1

 

[erneiz_hyde]

Yes, you should develop to spawn Renaissance and Printing Press. If you pick Exploration first you can try and form at least one colonial nation in New World (Brazil probably) to automatically spawn Colonialism. Only use Humiliate CB if you are sure you can finish the war with little to no casualties. As for reform, you should just become a Horde.
edit: Wait, I forgot you didn't start with Feudalism, I'm not sure how to deal with that because haven't tried before, except with Oirat but that was easy because the Jurchens have Feudalism so I got it from them. Would waiting for Mali to spawn it before conquering them too slow I wonder?
edit2: Just checked, would spawn by 1495, too slow, and all your lands are deserts so it's very expensive to develop. I think the correct way is to just go guns blazing and conquer as much as you can as fast as you can. Use alliances even if temporary, use loans and pay them with your enemies' gold, and hire a morale advisor if possible. Once you are the clear boss with no one in immediate vicinity to challenge you, you can sit back and start developing institutions.

 

[BoomKidneyShot]

You'll probably need to spawn Renaissance and Printing Press. You can get Colonialism yourself if you move quickly to the coast line and take exploration. If it doesn't spawn for you, then you can simply make a CN in Brazil to cause progress to start on your coastal provinces.

You could convert to Protestant/Reformed to get Printing press though, but Sunni is a quite nice religion...

Going to India is a good goal, but another good goal is conquering Morocco and potentially getting some of the trade coming into the Sevilla node...

 

[DanielGrandi]

Thanks for the answers!

Yes, you should develop to spawn Renaissance and Printing Press. If you pick Exploration first you can try and form at least one colonial nation in New World (Brazil probably) to automatically spawn Colonialism. Only use Humiliate CB if you are sure you can finish the war with little to no casualties. As form reform, you should just become a Horde.
edit: Wait, I forgot you didn't start with Feudalism, I'm not sure how to deal with that because haven't tried before, except with Oirat but that was easy because the Jurchens have Feudalism so I got it from them. Would waiting for Mali to spawn it before conquering them too slow I wonder?

Thanks for the ideas! Maybe I could try to conquer a nation that already has feudalism, although I don't like my chances against Morocco and its allies

You'll probably need to spawn Renaissance and Printing Press. You can get Colonialism yourself if you move quickly to the coast line and take exploration. If it doesn't spawn for you, then you can simply make a CN in Brazil to cause progress to start on your coastal provinces.

You could convert to Protestant/Reformed to get Printing press though, but Sunni is a quite nice religion...

Going to India is a good goal, but another good goal is conquering Morocco and potentially getting some of the trade coming into the Sevilla node...

Thanks for the ideas! Going for Morocco early would also solve the feudalism problem (or maybe after I consolidated my power in West Africa).I will try it out and see what happens!

Also, I forgot to mention that the only DLCs I have are Art of War and Wealth of Nations. Is there any DLC considered crucial for a WC?

 

[Gratak]

Don't think going for Morocco without Feudalism is a valid move. I also think, that you get some Feudalism spread as long as your capital dev is high enough in West Africa. I would advice deving for that at well. Just make sure you don't fall behind your neibhors in mil-tech while doing that.

 

[butatensei]

Your best bet for developing feudalism that I can see is Jenné, as it's a centre of trade that produces cloth and is on savannah, which is the best terrain in the area. Remember to upgrade the CoT back to level 2 too, as it will drop to 1 when you conquer it. Going for Morocco immediately doesn't seem doable, and the nearest grasslands are all the way in Kongo. Also remember to make the merchants happy and influential for another 10% dev cost reduction. Furthermore, with the Cradle of Civilization DLC you will have the Maliki school which is another 10% dev cost reduction.

Explo first is nice if you can get yourself a coast, since you can then get a colonial nation and get colonialism (or spawn it if you're very lucky). I recommend only taking about 3 or 4 ideas in explo though, and then lategame when you don't need the colonist anymore you can drop it and replace it.

As for Humiliate Rival, well Songhai has a lvl 3 fort and is a strong power in the region, Macina has land that you need to take to get to Jenné, and those are your only possible rivals at the start it seems like. I think by the time you will have a good opportunity for show strength, your possible rivals will be too big for it to be worth it. Do try to sneak in a humiliate peace option once though when fighting a rival in a regular war, for the power projection and the age objective.

Republics are good, but it's tough to get max absolutism as a republic, it definitely requires having the republic reforms that give absolutism. By the time you can reform into a republic from tribal though, there won't be enough time. You can however still go republic and just continuously re-elect until you become a monarchy, since that will get you some more mana than just going for monarchy in the first place. Or reform into a horde, which is even better for a WC. You always want 100 absolutism as soon as possible after it unlocks, look into triggering court & country if you haven't already.

In terms of DLC, I recommend Cradle of Civilization for the muslim mechanics, Rights of Man for consorts (avoids regencies) and ruler traits and Cossacks so you can more easily give land to subjects.

 

[Lightwell]

There are a few things you should focus on when starting in this region:

• Getting the gold mines, and placing your capital on one of them (Likely Bure).
• Blazing through West Africa.
• Attacking Iberian CNs in South America to get a CN with their culture and their religion, then having them swallow nearby CNs and feed you institutions.
• Allying small European states that aren't at risk, and getting institutions from them.
• Securing the Ivory Coast, and a major European node like Sevilla or EC.
• Colonizing the African coastline, and heading out East to places like China or India.

These are generally going to be your main objectives. Mali is pretty much just a better Timbuktu, but you do you.

 

[st360]

1 - Should I spend Monarch Points forcing institutions to spawn or even speed them up? In my last attempt, I was managing to keep up the pace with mil tech, but both adm and dip were severely behind (I had 2 adm and 5 dip be the year 1530)

Yes, absolutely force spawn institutions.

Some people swear on waiting institutions to spread, but you're too far away in subsaharan Africa even for them.
You can either spend monarch points developing provinces for lots of permanent + gold and manpower, or spend them on the tech penalty for not having a institution while you're waiting 70 years for it to spread.

Developing a valuable province to spawn a institution can often increase your gold by 20-50% when you're still small. And developing only provinces bunched together means you will have institutions spread lightning fast (institutions spread +0.2 a month on 1/1/1 development provinces, but +2.0 on 30 development provinces). I always spawn institutions around my capital, and after 1-2 institutions that place is full of super developed provinces that spread institutions within 3-4 years and account for enough development to embrace it.

Being ahead on institutions snowballs into less wasted penalties into even more power.

Finally, since you're ahead on institutions, freely offer knowledge sharing to any big nation. The Ottomans will get colonialism one way or another, but if you offer it to them, you will get +20 gold a month for years at a stage where your entire economy is +10 gold a month.

2 - Should my first idea be exploration? - the idea is to make a connection to East Africa, so I can expand to India

Yes.

For a world conquest you want to open many conquest fronts to avoid too much aggressive expansion on any one continent. Expanding everywhere is better than forcing yourself too much in India and getting a huge coalition there.

I would recommend taking exploration first to spawn colonialism in your country and open a front for conquering in the Americas. You can use it to conquer India too, later.

3 - Should I use the humiliate rival CB to get monarch points or is that a waste of time?

It is a waste of time.

The "show strength" peace option (100% warscore for 100 monarch points) is sadly totally not worth it.

However, you can choose "humiliate rival" for 40% warscore in a conquest war. Its usually not worth it (especially on empires bigger than 10 provinces). You need to expand fast when you're small, and when you're big your rivals are so large you get more power projection by conquering their provinces than by humiliate rival.

With that said, you should always be at +50 power projection. If you have trouble getting the last few points, build a few ships and privateer your rivals. Paying 5 ships is definitely worth +3 monarch points a month.

A situation where humiliate rival is better is when you leave your rival 1 province and humiliate them instead of annexing them, and getting that 1 extra province but no humiliate.

4 - When I reform my government, should I go for republic? I honestly have a huge prejudice towards monarchies governments in this game, because I feels like republics have such a better control of monarch points and such.

Im not a expert for republics this patch, but they are terrible for world conquest because they have permanently low absolutism. And absolutism is so important, especially the last few points, due to the way it stacks. You probably wont be able to do a WC if you aren't a super expert player.




One thing I would like to mention: Your biggest priorities should be to go for chokepoint trade centers. The closest ones to you are southern Spain, the caribean islands in America and Somalia in east Africa. Controling any one of those can easily double your income.

 

[grommile]

I honestly have a huge prejudice towards monarchies governments in this game, because I feels like republics have such a better control of monarch points and such.

Depending on your DLCs, this is a fairly minor concern.

Rights of Man lets you chuck crappy heirs in the trash (or abdicate an aging mediocre ruler in favour of your brilliant heir), and once you've got budget to spare, Cradle of Civilization lets you spend ducats to upgrade advisors.

 

[butatensei]

I'm not a expert for republics this patch, but they are terrible for world conquest because they have permanently low absolutism. And absolutism is so important, especially the last few points, due to the way it stacks. You probably wont be able to do a WC if you aren't a super expert player.

Absolutism doesn't get you any bonuses past 100. And you can reach 100 if you can reach 80, because 80 is what you need to get the max boost out of Court & Country, and conveniently that boost is a +20.

If you're an empire-rank great power with full religious unity, that's already a base of 80 provided you've revoked all estate privileges. You can get another 25 from the final republic reform, if you manage to get that far before age of abs. You can also switch from Frequent Elections to Consolidation of Power temporarily for another 10. Then crown land is up to 15.

If you make it to the final republic government reform (keep in mind republics get up to double ref progress with high rep trad) and have high crown land, you can even offset the malus from something like oligarchy. But until you get to that point, you can switch to Noble Republic or let yourself flip into a Dictatorship temporarily.

Point is, you can absolutely reach 100 absolutism as a republic, it's just more work.

 

[EarlKonrad]

Absolutism doesn't get you any bonuses past 100. And you can reach 100 if you can reach 80, because 80 is what you need to get the max boost out of Court & Country, and conveniently that boost is a +20.

If you're an empire-rank great power with full religious unity, that's already a base of 80 provided you've revoked all estate privileges. You can get another 25 from the final republic reform, if you manage to get that far before age of abs. You can also switch from Frequent Elections to Consolidation of Power temporarily for another 10. Then crown land is up to 15.

If you make it to the final republic government reform (keep in mind republics get up to double ref progress with high rep trad) and have high crown land, you can even offset the malus from something like oligarchy. But until you get to that point, you can switch to Noble Republic or let yourself flip into a Dictatorship temporarily.

Point is, you can absolutely reach 100 absolutism as a republic, it's just more work.

Hmm. I'd say it is also important to keep in mind that absolutism got nerfed hard in 1.30 so it is more important than ever to get absolutism to 100 ASAP. I never tried rushing 100 absolutism as a republic so I don't know how much slower they are to get there in relation to monarchies.

Also, can Monastic Orders now reach 100 absolutism? They have some good government modifiers, like WS cost against other religions, that I can see being very useful when WC... but they are also locked out of Empire, aren't they? Pope aside, that is.

 

[butatensei]

Hmm. I'd say it is also important to keep in mind that absolutism got nerfed hard in 1.30 so it is more important than ever to get absolutism to 100 ASAP. I never tried rushing 100 absolutism as a republic so I don't know how much slower they are to get there in relation to monarchies.

The quickest way is to accept demands from particularists and then just lower autonomy everywhere. Alternatively, if you have about 1k dev of territories, raise autonomy in all of them and then state-unstate them (without full-coring) you can also lower autonomy in all those. Government type doesn't make much difference there, as long as you can get your cap to reach 80 when the age starts (so before C&C).

Also, can Monastic Orders now reach 100 absolutism? They have some good government modifiers, like WS cost against other religions, that I can see being very useful when WC... but they are also locked out of Empire, aren't they? Pope aside, that is.

Not being empire-rank means you lose 5 max abs, so yeah I guess they weren't previously able to reach it. With crown land, they now can. But also, there's several reforms at tier 6 which let monastic orders raise government rank, and one of them even gives 20 max absolutism itself. So yeah, you can definitely max out abs as a monastic order now.

 

[DanielGrandi]

Wow, I would like to start by thanking everyone that posted in this thread! You guys/girls gave me a lot of information, which I will look even more into. I will be honest and say I'm not familiar with the absolutism mechanics, but if I understood it correctly it is very important for coring costs/province war score.

So, I tried and this was the best result I got so far:

I'm starting to sneak my way into Central Africa, so I can move to East Africa Both Fulo and Air are my vassals and there are still some minors in West Africa. However, I understand that this won't be a WC run. Mainly because of this:

Once again my technology is simply horrible. I manage to hit feudalism in 1462, if I remember correctly, and Renassaince around 1480-1490. I cored most of the provinces by myself and I can see why I lagged behind so much. Maybe next time I should try not developing to see what happens. I wonder if that works. I will continue this save to see what I can learn from it and try to conquer as much as I can. Maybe next time I should try a nation with better position for it, like Mali.

 

[PhoenixG]

I would say stop expanding and get at least admin tech 5 for unlocking the idea group. Also your goal to finish off west africa by 1500 is the wrong mind set. Early game expansion is the most expensive thing. You would be in a better spot if you have at least admin tech 5 with less clay. The thing that kinda kills the run is your 12 corruption. That should be 0, or close to it. You already lacking mana to do stuff, adding those corruption is a no-go.

I say it again, you expand too fast.

I would say use more vassals at start to save admin. Your main goal is getting admin tech 7 so you can take exploration and admin ideas. That has higher priority than more clay.

 

[butatensei]

In my opinion if you're this early in the game and you're sitting on 700 ducats with no loans, you're probably doing something wrong. With the amount of gold in that region, you can easily get full lvl 2 or 3 advisors, and imo if you're going to get gold soon it's worth having a negative balance at the start just to have at least full lvl 1 advisors. Also get every mana privilege from the estates, and if you have Rights of Man then aggressively disinherit bad heirs. And stay on at least 1 stab and keep your "reduce corruption" slider all the way to the right, corruption is no bueno.

You're suffering from terrible unbalanced research here, probably because you cored too much land yourself and paid a lot of bird for unjustified demands. Fabricate more claims if you can, claimed provinces will be cheaper to core and won't cost you any dip. Also just expand slower as has been said, all you need is to secure gold and secure a coast, try to have a coast and exploration ideas before 1500 so you can have a chance at spawning colonialism. Then get admin tech 7, the second admin idea for reduced coring cost, and now you can afford to expand a bit faster.

Also, don't tech up before you have feudalism, not even mil, just make sure you save enough mil when force-spawning it to get at least one level after you have feudalism. And make sure you're getting as much dev cost reduction as you can get.

But it turns out a lot of dev cost reduction is locked behind DLC... State edicts are Mandate of Heaven, the muslim school is Cradle of Civ etc. Honestly though, if you're willing to spend enough time on this game to do a WC, you might as well get all the DLC, just wait for a sale so most of it will be 80% off. The subscription service is also an option.

 

[DanielGrandi]

Once again, thanks for all the tips! I restarted my game and I would say I'm a much better position at this moment:

I just got printing press (forced it to spawn), I'm managing to keep up with the rest of the world and I also reformed into a horde. I will finish feeding West Africa to my vassal and annex it. I'm thinking in colonising Tuat so I can start being a pain in the ass for the Portuguese.

 

[Lightwell]

Be sure to get as many forts and ramparts up in the Sahara as soon as possible, and add the Defensive Edict to stall the enemy armies. Send out your navy with an army to your land in the New World, recall the navy, and prepare to fight a two-front war to get control of the Iberian colonies.

 

[JKiller96]

For starting moves, declare war on Morocco ASAP (No CB them) and take Tafilalt and possibly Sus as vassals. You can integrate one of them if you have 2 vassals bordering each other. This will grant you a border with Europe more quickly and will make deving for Renaissance in West Africa obsolete as you can dev in Morocco or Granada if you grab it quickly enough and Grenada allies Ottomans.

 

[gia257]

Hello everyone! My name is Daniel and I'm a novice EU IV player. It has been quite some time since I started to insist in doing a WC as Timbuktu and I would appreciate if more experienced players would give me tips, not only for Timbuktu, but for WC in general. I guess I should preface this saying that I have only played after the year 1600 in some instances and these were a long time ago (there wasn't even institutions by then).
So, I put some objectives down that would act as a guiding line, but I'm not sure if they are correct for a WC. And these are:

1 - Conquer all West Africa by the year 1500
2 - Conquer India, or at least grab some part of it, by the year 1600

From number 3 onward I have no idea which should be my objectives. I also have some mechanics related questions:

1 - Should I spend Monarch Points forcing institutions to spawn or even speed them up? In my last attempt, I was managing to keep up the pace with mil tech, but both adm and dip were severely behind (I had 2 adm and 5 dip be the year 1530)
2 - Should my first idea be exploration? - the idea is to make a connection to East Africa, so I can expand to India
3 - Should I use the humiliate rival CB to get monarch points or is that a waste of time?
4 - When I reform my government, should I go for republic? I honestly have a huge prejudice towards monarchies governments in this game, because I feels like republics have such a better control of monarch points and such.

I guess this is it for now. I would like to thank any suggestion in advance1

play Spain, Austria or Ottomans , if you are a novice you shouldnt be able to WC

 

[Lightwell]

play Spain, Austria or Ottomans

Playing as those nations teaches you nothing. Using a rough nation like Timbuktu is how you grow.