Mali has been pretty easy to play since they started institutions. I'd pick up exploration first as Mali since its only achievement I know of is to have 4 colonial nations in South America.

Exploration, Innovative, Quality and another military tech, then you're probably done with the game.

I never found inflation control to be that useful since even for Mali once you get the snowball rolling gold should be pretty small % of income and not cause too much inflation for an occasional inflation advisor to handle. Mali is probably one of the closest cases though.

Well I wrapped up my Ming run last night. I'll post map pr0n and AAR later maybe.

One highlight was that I personally wiped Portugal and her colonies from the planet. Feels pretty good. Didn't really come close to WC though. My pacing was terrible and by the end I was hemorrhaging mandate.

I did manage to mostly wipe out Russia though, with quite a bit of help with my awesome ally Bohemia.

With that, I think I'm gonna try Portugal next because I want to maximize the colonization experience. I'm reading Reddit et al for hints, and some people are saying to immediately dump England as an ally, befriend Castile and France and keep it that way and use them to do some of the heavy lifting in North Africa, while others are saying to merk Castile and take Sevilla trade node & New World trade center province. Anyone wanna weigh in on which of these options (or neither/something else) is preferable?

More generally, if I want to focus on the colonization sub-game, is Portugal preferable to say France, Castile/Aragon (Spain), or GB? During my Ming run these were literally my only competition for colonies (other than Russia in Siberia and who cares about that?).

My first couple games learning were with Portugal. If you're colonizing and don't want to worry about wars, I'd definitely just buddy Castille. They won't break it if you don't, and they're handy for bludegoning Morocco to death (and however far east you bother to go from there).

The main reason to dump England early is so you don't get sucked into the England-France war, with France usually allied to one of Castille or Aragon, who, well, will mess you up.

Portugal is good at colonizing at least partly because you get the explorer to start the game so can scout everything out and hit the colony button as soon as you get the idea. Their second idea bonus adds colonial range which is huge for hitting the Caribbean early without going the long way around.

I haven't tried Spain but they get a extra colonist partway through their idea set (when you are Spain, not Castille) which is obviously really good.

Ming is pretty micro intensive with the tributary/mandate system. I tried it and it was just boring.

Portugal is definitely a great beginner nation. It is a colonial powerhouse and you can start fielding basically infinite mercs by mid 1500s and conquer every small nation you find outside of Europe. By 1600s, you should be able to accept (maybe even culture shift to) some Indian culture and get enough manpower to go with the money to seriously think about breaking with Spain and conquer Iberian Peninsula or take over Spanish colonies (though there isn't much benefit to this since with light fleets and presumably Morocco you should be taking most of Sevilla node's trade anyway)

Actually Castille and Spain share idea set, so Castile gets the colonist too. Castille/Spain is probably the best colonizer since are quite a bit richer and stronger than portugal AND they can delete portugal very early, gaining full control of the sevilla trade node.

Portugal gets bunch of missions and events that help with African and Asian colonization though, most importantly the Goa event that gives nice foothold to India.

I recommend against deleting Portugal entirely as CAS/SPA. Best thing to do is to vassalize Portugal once it gets exploration because you get double the colonists in effect early on and everything is routed to Sevilla which you dominate anyway.

Yeah, I'm finding trade a little annoying as France - I have total control on Bordeaux, but I can't dominate in Champagne (home node) or English Channel (would be desirable to have my trade capital there) or Genoa. I recently fought a huge war against Spain for the spoils of, like, 4 of their lowlands provinces and that still gave me enough AE that the entirety of Europe will coalition me if I lift a finger in the next 50 years.

France is at the same time bit in bit awkward and in great position, as it is between 2 end nodes. Ideally you'd focus on only one direction and steer everything there. English channel is bit closer and easier to dominate, but to optimize it you need lubeck, which means going towards HRE. Genoa on the other hand is often the most valuable trade node in the game, but you really need to take sevilla completely to get all sweet new world trade.

narf, you're obviously right

Thanks guys

So basically if you want to colonize and you're deciding between Castile and Aragon choose Castile?

(I detest Castile's color)

Also a possibly-interesting thing of note, in my Ming game South America was mostly controlled by Spain, except for a big chunk of Columbia which was controlled by GB. But most of Brazil was controlled by "Castile" even though Spain formed and the other Spanish colonies were named for Spain. It was called "Castilian Brazil." Is that a bug?

No, that's just the colonial nation formed before Spain did. The name won't change even if the parent country does.

I'm playing aragon now and I found taking north africa pretty easy. You can get a CB because you share water border. My plan is to expand west through moracco and go from there. We'll see how it goes. I missed out on the vs spain quest line and we have been allies since the start.

I'd actually say Aragon is stronger of the two Spanish nations, but bit more boring to play. Starting with 246 ruler means you'll be hitting MIL tech 4 and 5 first in the world which let's you do whatever you want in the region. Aragon has much fewer events and worse mission tree, which makes it bit boring to wait for ADM 10 to unify Spain.

Started Portugal last night and got 4 provinces from Morocco. Good gods the coring costs

As Portugal you should probably just not fight Morocco, they are pretty strong and there is very little to gain. If you want to fight them, take only the provinces which you have a permanent claim on as that gives -25% coring cost (so 125% effective cost).

Much better war to wage is a no cb war vs Mali and to expand into gold coast region.

Or just wait a bit, colonize Cape Verde, and do it with the CB. (But then I’m no fan of no-CB wars).

There are some useful Moroccan provinces — if nothing else take their bits in Sevilla trade node, including the center of trade in Tangier; they also have a gold mine. One thing I didn’t try yet is lest getting a vassal down there to deal with the icky bits (and hold all the north African crap clay).

I think Algiers(?) is fairly decent vassal to release, they have like 5 cores in the region.

Reason you take Morocco is because there's literally nothing else to do early game while you wait for colony range so you can explore West/South

This is closer to history I think yet in my games they are always bitter enemies

Heh yeah this for sure, I'm burning through years waiting for mp to recover and no one to fight, just got Exploration though so I'm colonizing that little Arguim plot of land

This. In a couple playthroughs I force released Fez and fed it annoying Berber provinces but it was still really annoying and there isn't much to do early on with Portugal other than waiting for colonies to finish.

FYI, Cape Verde >> Arguim for first colony for two reasons:

1) Better (slightly) colonial range to Brazil
2) No natives to have to kill.

It also gives you ability to fabricate on Mali which in most games is valuable.

doh I totally missed Verde

I'm already colonizing the trade node at the tip of Brazil now though so it worked out. I've also got one right next to Mali land.

It's 1489 and I'm just perma busto. Can't even embrace Renaissance even though it's present everywhere. I've been over 3 digits in ducats like twice total