Socotra: Part 02: 1455-1466: Socotran Profits

I had some trouble with rebels, and the math really didn't work out. My ideas include +1 Infantry Fire, so my infantry should be stupid good early game, but it wasn't really that good against rebels.

I did some testing, and I discovered that the game works in really dumb way now:

• rebels have my bonus!
• every mercenary group has province of origin, and if that province is outside my territory, they do not get my bonus (free company and a few others are "local" and always use your tech)

But none of my mercenaries have provinces of origin in my territory, so I'm getting total crap. This bonus spectacularly backfires, and instead of me having supersoldiers, my rebels have supersoldiers. This is really really dumb, and I'm just learning this. And it especially doesn't work that great with being Ibadi at no religious unity, and going ham on rebels. Oh well.

So I guess I need to either slow down my expansion until I recover some manpower, or alternatively conquer some mercenary provinces of origin. Fortunately at least one of them was in Madagascar, so when I finished conquering it, that's one mercenary group that will have the right bonus.

Ethiopia, who is definitely one of my top targets, volunteered to be my ally, so I promised them some land, and started a big war to really dominate the Gulf of Aden, and destroy any of Kilwa's allies, so I can fight Kilwa in peace. I didn't even have to break my promise, as Ethiopia chickened out halfway through the way, and gave my enemies some of their provinces.

As a result I mostly cleaned up East Africa, and took some of Arabian coast, but Mamluks got most of Arabia by now. Oh well.

I'm still at least 100dev away from being a great power, but I'm already second richest behind Ming. Before even one gold mine, gold mines are stupid good with this bonus. Of custom nation bonuses so far, flat goods produced is insanely good as expected, even if flat infantry fire was a bit underwhelming due to rebel and merc issue. The rest will wait for me to get some idea group, right now I'm spending so many points coring I can't even get tech 5.

I also have enough dev to become a kingdom, but I don't have enough prestige, as I keep giving my heirs swimming lessons. Hopefully I'll roll a better one next time.

Also fun fact, it looks like I completely disabled deving for institutions. So that's going to be a big problem. Cyprus is a decade away from getting Renaissance, and it will only very slowly spread further.

It's a very nice color, we should spread it further. Once I get Kilwan trade centers and gold mines, I might be richer than Ming. At some point I'll look East, but for now there's a lot of quality 1/1/1 clay in East Africa to grab.