Kongo achievement

[TwoFlapjacks]

Is this even possible? 3 tries so far and everytime (after waiting 100 years) when i'm starting to expand/colonizing portugal or castille shows up and obliterates me with one war.

-Theres no way to make an alliance with a european power since castille/portugal/england are the only ones you've seen so far and they immediately attack you.
-Theres no way to westernize because all it takes is 1 or 2 wars and they are not very patient.

Anyone got some tips?

[achmedino]

Origineel geplaatst door Orcon:

For north africa you really need to get in there right when moroco and the mamluks are about to get whiped of the map. Vassle them and then you can war to get cores returned to them. Plus you can feed them algiers and tripoly as they're all the same religion.

Everyone but Morocco and Algiers got taken over in North-Africa in my game before I even discovered that land. Also on the topic of AE, if you've got some good alliances going, you don't really have to care about it, since everyone you might get AE with is in Africa, and there aren't reallt any strong powers in Africa besides the Ottomans, who aren't all that dangerous unless they go super Ottomans (in which case I would advise you to restart the game anyways, since you're probably going to have to take provinces from them anyways.)

[Orcon]

The problem with AE is that once coallisions start forming you get limited in how much you can take per war. This becomes a hassle when you are racing the clock.

[GoodLife]

It's a hard achievement and a lot of luck - the luck depending on how Morocco+Algiers and Tripoli+Mamluks evolve, which differs in every game. The rest stays the same. If you are lucky on Morocco and Algiers, you can take over 95% of the African provinces, the last 5% being a fight with Portugal/Spain/Mamluks - where mamluks are the least probematic

[killerk]

It is not as hard as you think.. i got the achievement in ironman mode for the latest patch on the first try.

http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198033888074/stats/236850/achievements/

Idea Priority

Take exploration as first idea to expand early and once you are catholic when missionaries spread, either ally portugal or spain the first time you meet them.i allied with spain relatively easily. Priority of colonization should always be coastal provinces/islands to block off further colonization from the european powers.

I took trade as the second idea to make $$$ to fund my conquests. Look at putting merchants in Timbaku and Cheapsake bay (conquer the american natives using colonialism CB), with the rest of the merchants diverting traffic to these nodes at ivory coast, carribean, gulf of aden. Trade can also help sustain a oversized naval force to fight the portugese/spanish fleets later on. Trade for me was always more than 50% of my income and funded most of my wars.

Third idea i took was religious idea for the holy war CB and better relations over time

Military ideas should be skipped until you achieve military tech parity with the european powers. You probably need to save and reload get better miliary leaders at the beginning to compensate for the miliitary tech disadvantage.

Vassal Feeding

You need to make full use of the multiple vassal creation, feeding and diploannex strategy to core without wasting admin points. My Strategy was to conquer africa in a counterclockwise direction as the other side was blocked by spain/portugal. I created Ethopia and gave them so many provinces that it had 1/3 of my african provinces before diploannexing them. This also allowed me to control all my upstream trade nodes and make more money, as compared to attacking algiers/morroco first, which are firstly hard to core and do not really give any trade value for yourself since they all feed into the sevilla trade node.

Diplomacy

Always have a powerful european ally at your side..Late game, i was a major threat to Spain/Portual/Ottoman, but managed to live with France/Russia as my ally (rival of spain).
I eventually destroyed the ottomans after 3 coalitions wars against them with the help of Russia and other major catholic powers who pounced on them once they were weak.

Take every opportunity to weaken portugal/spain/ottoman, who will be your main roadblocks to achieving the african power achievement. The most easy way for me
1) Block colonization as much as possible for spain/portugal..Take overseas holdings
2) Embargo them in the trade nodes I controlled and diverted gold away from the carribean trade node to cheapsake bay which i controlled.
3) Attack them when they are weak.. I attacked the ottomans when they westernized.. they had -3 stablity and i was spamming support rebels with like 50% rebel chance rate.. Nationalist rebels freed themselves (epirus, romania etc) from the ottomans and i did not have to waste any diplo/AE/warscore points for that.

I actually achieved the african power achievement in about 1770 with about 50 years to spare. By then, i was the richest and largest nation already (controlled north america and africa)

Happy to answer any other questions you have.