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NA v1.2 In 1453 you have 3 provinces, situated right in the middle of the sahel. Sahara to the north, malaria to the south, bigger african tribedoms to the side, things are looking grim. However, there's also much potential for the only monarch in 1000kms to grow and conquer.

The Good:

- You're a monarchy. That counts for so much against your rivals. All strategies for playing a backward nation revolve around westernisation (or a play style that is as boring as it is ingenious). However, even with westernisation, you'll never get over that abysmal tribal government unless you have the ungodly fortune of triggering the convert to monarchy event with Napoleon's Ambition. As Songhai, that's not a problem, if/when you westernise you'll be able to run away with west africa, provided the Europeans don't pose to much a threat.

- You're isolated. This is bad as well as good, but I count it as good because you have a head start on your plans of domination before most europeans relise you exist. If you're using Magna Mundi, the head start is even longer.

- Gold. There's lots of it around, you just need to take it. Don't let it inflate your currency too much though, you'll pay for it in the long run. Still, Gold income is better then trade and production seeing you won't be making a fortune on that any time soon.

- Stability. At least for the first phase of your game when Songhai is small. You can move your slider, change to a feudal monarchy and swap ideas like trading cards, stability will shoot right back up in no time.

The Bad:

- African tech group. Research will move at a snails pace for a long time until you westernise or turn Songhai into a trading super power. On the flip side, so will your immediate neighbours, so don't feel pressured until Portugal starts moving south.

- African culture group. Your home grown troops will always be inferior to Western, Eastern, Muslim, Indian, Chinese and New World ones (well, maybe not New World) but having a number of provences neighbouring Western colonies will let you churn out whatever soldiers they are.

- Money. There will never be enough of it. Gold is your best bet followed by trade followed by tax/production.

- General crumminess. Sorry, can't be helped. Stick it out.

[edit] Optimism between a rock and a hot place

What's your first move? First, move that slider. I always like to move mine to innovative no matter who I am, but you could really use those colonists in a few decades to inch closer to a European colony, maybe buck rationale and go for Naval or Free Trade; stability will bump back up in no time. Probably don't hire some advisors, money is too valuable for the moment. Set up your auto-send merchants to Timbuktu. Mint nothing and pour every ducat into government research, now wait 13 years or so.

You're too weak militarily to attack anything stronger then a broken toothpick. With barely enough manpower to make a division and no where near the economy to maintain some, don't build a huge army unless you're about to use it straight away, and if so maybe use mercenaries. Diplo-annexing is viable but at your size, most Chiefs would just as soon annex you. Use every trick in the book to earn relation points without sending gifts, which means giving and taking military access, royal marriages and alliances. African chiefs also have somewhat short lives, so you get about +25 relations when the king dies and you renew royal ties, free. Just be careful about getting caught up in a succession war. Try to vassalise Oyo & Benin; Mali & Hausa are too damn big. If you're allied to Mali and/or Hausa, seriously consider disbanding your army althogether, you need to avoid going broke.

Once you have your national idea, choose quest for the new world and convert to a feudal monarchy, which helps with the manpower problem. Explore everywhere you can, in 1.2 you can't flee native battles into terra incognito, so you'll have to tolerate not going further then adjacent provences, have a big and overly expensive army to kill them or jump in & out of native provences to hopefully trigger the discovery of an adjacent provence. With any luck you'll make it to a new centre of trade like Ndongo, Lisboa or Andulucia and send the rest of your merchants there.

If you get lucky you might be able to annex someone and grow that way. Hausa, Kanem, Oyo, Ashanti & Benin are all targets, Mali is too darn big. If you do it will be the end of quick stability, but you'll have a bit more wiggle room. Once you are bigger, hope for Westernisation.