Merina "AAR"
For the impatient, here is a link to the
gallery.
Sorry I did not really take a lot of screenshots, writing an AAR was not planned until I noticed that it could be interesting at the end.
Mod: VeF (All current expansion DLCs), current version
Ironman: No. Had to reload a few times during the critical phases.
WTF Is Merina?
Yeah, never heard of it either before I started. It is a small sized tribal nation on Madagascar.
The Plan
My plan was to pick the worst possible thing, a tribal state with neighboring more advanced nations and see how far I can get with that.
My first try was using Jolof (west African), but it soon turned out that any tribal state on mainland Africa will be eaten by its bigger, more advanced and mostly Muslim neighbors. Nothing except sick luck can prevent that. Or mad loaning, which at least to me is just too much exploiting the game that early.
So I decided on a second try to form the nation of Madagascar, using Merina. But that is unfortunately not possible in the game (forming Madagascar). Oh, well.. "Merina" has a nice ring to it, anyway, so I went with that.
Tech & Ideas
Merina starts at modernization step 2 of 7.
Ouch. I still had clubs when the first neighbors started getting cannons and guns.
For the most part of the game, my brave soldiers were armed with spears and I had to outnumber my enemies usually at something about 5 to 1
to even have a chance at winning the fight.
Obviously, I went for Innovative ideas and Quantity army. Innovative because... well you try modernizing without it, have fun. And Quantity because no amount of discipline and leadership can make up for the difference of spears vs. guns & cannons. Numbers, however, can.
I also went full mercanitilism, but more on that later.
"AAR"
- Conquer Madagascar.
- Get allies in mainland Africa.
- Get a foothold in mainland Africa.
- GROW.
- Survive European invasions.
- GROW MORE.
The first step was rather easy. Get an ally on the island, conquer everything else, then swallow the ally.
What probably kills any attempt at doing this with a mainland tribal are stronger neighbors. Being an island = no dangerous neighbors. In theory, I could have tried going full trade from that point on. Read the trade part to see why I did not.
The second step is vital to the third step. You will see why.
The third step was the first hard one. While you are relatively save on the island, all "entry points" to mainland Africa - at least those reachable before knowing more of the map - are guarded by technologically far superior Muslim nations. In my case that was Kilwa, which was probably a lucky nation (at least it did grow like crazy along the coast until most east African coast was Kilwa). Attacking them on my own was totally out of the question.
So I spent many years becoming bros with other tribal nations west of Kilwa. I those were not present, I think the whole plan would have failed.
In the end, I was allied with Zimbabwe, Luba and Kongo. Now I had to wait another 10 or 20 years until Kilwa was at war with another Muslim nation to the north (probably Warsangali), and used that distraction to attack with my allies.
I felt cheap for such a backstab, but at least it was a big success. Managed to grab a large enough chunk of the east African coast to almost double my total provinces.
From that point on, it was step
4: Growing!
With my allies and a now weakened Kilwa, it was not too difficult. At some point, my western tribal buddies decided to hate each other and be at war constantly.
So I decided to end the mess by taking sides, which gained me all of Zimbabwe. And boy, would I need that...
Step 5! Surviving the onslaught.
The fifth step is probably the hardest thing I have done in EUIV so far. There are harder challenges, but those may be outright impossible.
At some point between 1500 and 1600 Spain or Portugal come knocking at the southern / eastern African door.
Wait.... Spain OR Portugal? How about Spain ALLIED with Portugal AND half of seafaring Europe?
Yeah, right. I actually faced a full naval invasion of both Spain, Portugal, Two Sicilies (largest part of Italy at that point) and many other smaller nations.
Remember that Merina starts with modernization 2/7. All I had at this point were spears (actually, I upgraded from clubs to spears DURING the first invasion).
While I had lots of ships and was the naval power of SE Africa, all I had were canoes. No heavy war ships for tribals. Only trade, galleys (worthless in Africa) and light war ships. My allies were all land locked, but even if not, they would have been worthless here.
So, I knew that they would reach my lands. In large numbers. Totally superior to my units. And they must not get a single province or that would be the beginning of the end.
Solution: Click dat loan button! Like a maniac.
I won the first invasion by having doomstacks of 120+k total to beat back again and again and again the 10-30k stacks the invaders would send in. When the larger stacks hit, those were the points when I had to reload a few times. If you win more battles than you lose, your war score will eventually rise enough to end with a White Peace. But keeping so many soldiers (mostly mercenaries of course) paid for such a long time requires above mentioned loans. SO many of them.
I still paid back loans 50 years after the first invasion. And naturally, had no money to buy more standing troops, buildings, etc. I did manage to grab some more provinces in Africa, though.
Yes, right, first invasion. There was a second one. Not happy with the result of their first attempt, Spain tried again. It went by pretty much the same, except with far less troops incoming. "Only" Spain and Portugal this time, the others were busy in European wars. Thankfully.
Of course, I had to go crazy on loans again, but not as much as in the first invasion. They probably learned their lesson afterwars or I had grown enough to not count as an easy target any more. Whatever the case, I saw no more conquest invasions by Spain or Portugal against me in the entire game.
This allowed me to eventually recover from all those loans and follow the last step: Growing, growing, growing.
You all know how this goes and once you reach a certain power you can plan your conquests pretty well 10 or 20 years before they happen.
In the glorious year of 1745, I was finally fully modernized and from then on had cannons and guns, with the same manpower I had before. You can see the results in the picture above
I think I could have waged more wars, conquer more stuff, but I played conservative and carefully.
There actually was one more war against Spain and Portugal. This time it was me attacking, to get the southern African tip that Spain held since 200 years or so.
Their navy was till superior to mine, but their "invasion" armies had no chance against an army that only needed to outnumber them 2 or 3 to 1 to be successful. After enough losses, Spains allied White Peace'd out one by one until they finally gave in and I got my SE African tip.
After that I decided to focus on my other African neighbors instead as they were far easier targets than anything European.
Oh, I also grabbed some colonies nobody wanted so far. A few in Indonesia and most in Australia. That's it. I was kinda late to the party.
The Result
There are still a few years to go, but I will ride towards Spain for holiday on Monday and will not play EUIV all the day there
My income is so ridiculously large by now that I could go full WAAAAAARRRGGHHHH!!! on half the planet and see how far I come until the game ends...
My standing army is something about 200k and that is roughly half of my limit. At peace time.
But in any case, I would say that reaching rank 9 (with the potential for more) with a tribal starting at modernization 2/7 is actually a small achievement
Trade
Trade in SE Africa sucks. Big Time. I had access to one trade node (Kilwa), which is definitely not a great one (at least not until the 1700s).
Focusing on becoming a trade power would not really have yielded anything, really. Also, have fun becoming a trade power with canoes for the largest part of the game...
I went for full mercantilism. In the beginning, that secured me enough income to last through the most difficult phases (getting a foothold) and in the late game that still gave a large income boost. Especially since I built all trade buildings in my provinces.
Religion
I could have tried to change my religion to one that gives some benefits. But I decided not to, because of the LULZ.
Animism world power is just too damn tempting
So what does Animism do?
- -50% province defense: This was a problem during Spanish / Portuguese invasion attempts. At that point, my best weapons were still spears (vs guns & cannons), and the time the invaders took for the provinces helped a lot in recovering manpower. More time would have saved some coins. But other than that, this was never really a problem, as I picked opponents carefully.
- -50% core creation time on my provinces: LOL. Who cares?
In total, I would say that the worst disadvantage was not having an advantage by religion.
But hey, look at that... fastest growing religion next to Catholicism
My Mistakes
Not THAT many, I would say. I usually play not taking any loans at all, except at war times should it become necessary. And I feel that this ends up with a far more stable nation (not even considering that I had merely 1% inflation at the end).
I could have been more brave and attack some other nations earlier. Of course, I also lost a few armies which could have been avoided by more tactical positioning and slowing down time to do so. But I did not.
What About Europe
Obviously out of my reach, so I did not care for the most part, but some things developed not really historically.
I find it especially hilarious how the Order Of Saint John annihilated Turkey and Greece and became an actual power in the area. They even have some colonies.
Also, that small one province minor Oldenburg has a significant part of South America. And northern Russia. Go figure.
Hopefully this gets some people to not always play the same boring European nations. Other things are possible.
