Europa Universalis IV

Furry said:

Kilwa is pretty fun if you do. They are a surprisingly rich nation which helps level the playing field against Europe if you do colonial. Stuff like their tree pushes.

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Started playing Kilwa on Very hard. So far its one of the most fun campaigns I've played in a long time. Some interesting shit happened. Portugal expanded weakly, Spain didnt get its Aragon PU and got relegated to a 2nd tier power. England completely dropped the ball, they even invaded me in Western Africa once and I just bought a bunch of mercs and beat them off and took their Africa colonies, plus some of their Caribbean colonies (i never had plans to expand to the Caribs but whatever). France somehow got a PU over Austria for a couple decades. Lithuania is still an independent state. Monster Persia took a big chunk of Middle East (never seen them do that). For the first time in all my playthroughs, Ayathuuya is firmly in command of a good chunk of Malacca. Morocco got real big, invaded Portugal and took some of their home provinces. Japan never formed, the Hosokawa and Ashikaga are still fighting over who will be daimyo and its already the Age of Absolutism. Saxony and Lubeck both own a dozen provinces each. Naples is still around and is pretty big. Estonia is an independent country, lol

I'm currently #3 ranked power after Ottomans and Russia. I ended up taking expansion and exploration ideas and expanding into South Africa and Malacca/Moluccas ASAP to get a foothold in the trade nodes and then started expanding through the Kongo towards Ivory Coast to set up my end trade node there. Moved my main trading city to Cape of Good Hope while doing that, then moved it again to Gold Coast. Colonized everything in Moluccas, Malaccas and Australia after taking over every island in West Africa and Indian ocean to deny European powers access to the Spice Islands (they still got to Australia by going through the Pacific Ocean). Took plutocratic ideas at the time because I wasnt fighting a lot, but then got bottlenecked hard on mil points due to a shitty run of Sultans. Military was insanely weak for a while, only now catching up in 1600s. I could have easily been taken out by Morocco or Nubia (who got real big) but I ended up allying them both for protection. I'm keeping them both as allies for a buffer against Ottos and Spain/Portugal and have no plans to expand north into Africa. Going to start focusing on taking over most of Malacca and then moving up north along Indochina, towards China. I'll consider this game won if I end in 1821 as the #1 Great Power or if I snowball quickly enough in 1700s that no one will have a chance to catch up.