Early game is relatively easy as no one in Western Africa is stronger than Mali but it gets challenging mid game once you make contact with the colonizers.

MAJOR CHALLENGES

Tech

• Starts with 50% tech penalty for not embracing Feudalism at the start.
• Starts with level 2 techs.
• Will have to develop basically all institutions, unless you get lucky
• Starting ruler 1 0 0 and with a 1 1 1 heir.
• All nations in Western Africa start in the same tech group
• Depending on your future rulers, you might have to focus hard on mil tech
• Focusing on just 1 tech can cause unbalanced research leading to high corruption
• Build some trade depots, stock exchanges, manufactories and universities when time arrives, for institution spread.
• Improve relations with the earliest colonizers. They might offer you knowledge sharing if you get lucky. It costs 10% of your gross monthly income, but it’s well worth it.
• Spare 100 admin points to convert your government to Iqta. It gives you lot of bonuses if you have strong vassals which synergizes well with first Malian national idea.

Economy

• Richest nation in Western Africa
• Most of your income comes from the 2 gold mines, means lot of inflation. Then you will get a third gold mine from Kong, which means even more inflation.

To summarize, along with the tech disadvantage, you have to deal with the potential for high corruption and high inflation, a very bad cocktail. Because to buy down corruption you need money and high inflation makes everything more expensive. And to buy down your inflation you need to spend admin points and high corruption increases all power costs. So keep a close eye on both those modifiers and don’t let them get too high.

‘MAL DE MER’ MALI (Colonization strategy)

OPENING MOVES

1. Get level 1 advisors. Preferably inflation reduction guy.
2. Disinherit your heir.
3. Focus admin for monarch points. You are going to beeline to Admin tech 5.
4. Before you set your rivals. If you want early game to go easier, restart until Songhai hasn’t rivaled you, so you can ally them. You will still do very well even with Songhai as your rival but with them on your side it’s really easy mode. In my experience, Songhai rivals you about 50% of the time.
5. Set Jolof, Macina and one of the two Jenne and Kong as your rivals.
6. Ally Timbuktu and Songhai, if they haven’t rivaled you. You actually don’t need any more allies than just Timbuktu.
7. Start fabricating on either Jenne or Kong, whoever has weaker allies. I usually prefer Kong because after vassalization, I can feed them provinces from the smaller southern nations. It’s easier to expand in that direction.

CONQUEST

• Declare on Kong or Jenne whoever you decided to fabricate on. And vassalize them. If they are allied to one of your rivals, humiliate them and get some power projection going.
• Subsequent wars will depend on alliances around you. Target the one who has the weakest allies.
• Declare with humiliate CB whenever possible in the early years. Show strength gives you 30 power projection and 100 of each monarch points.
• Fulo appears sometime around 1470s by an event. Start fabricating immediately. Take them out before they get any alliances going. If Macina and Jolof are still standing, you can vassalize Fulo as they have cores on both these nations so you can use the reconquest CB.

For this exploration heavy playthrough, you are trying to get to the first idea group fast, so conserve admin points and don’t take any provinces for yourself. Give everything to your vassals. Also, don’t have more than 2 vassal for this playthrough or you will risk them getting disloyal.

Your conquests will be a bit delayed because you will focus on colonizing, but you should still have all the Western Africa in the first 100 years or so.
COLONIZATION

• Beeline Admin tech 5 -> take exploration ideas -> switch focus to diplo points generation -> take the first and second idea -> take diplo tech 3 for the colonial range -> take the third idea -> switch to mil focus
• Get an explorer and explore the Americas as soon as possible. With this strategy, you should be able to do all this by 1480.
• Start colonizing Brazil. And fabricate on the natives. You can easily get 3 provinces from them, which means you only need to colonize 2 provinces to get your first colonial nation.
• Check the colonialism tab and see if you are missing something to spawn colonialism. You might have to develop one of your coastal provinces. If you get lucky, you might spawn colonialism.

IDEAS

1. Exploration
2. Economic- Take the first three to get inflation reduction first and finish it up later when you have spare admin points
3. Defensive- For morale
4. Expansion/Humanist/Quality, depending on your situation.

This early colonizer strategy is more successful if the European colonizers don’t arrive early and if you spawn colonialism. So it has a lot of RNG element to it.

THE MENACING MALI (Expansionist strategy)

Opening moves are mostly the same as last play style. Except you will focus on mil tech till tech level 4. Then switch to admin. And try to develop feudalism by around 1460.

Almost always be at war for the first 50 years or so. AE is not an issue as the nations have different cultures and religions. And if manpower starts getting low, start hiring some mercs.

Slow down the conquest for techs. Full annexation of all Western Africa by 1500 is possible, but that means you will lag behind on admin and diplo tech, leading to unbalanced research and corruption. Take your time and catch up on admin and diplo tech and develop feudalism and colonialism slowly.

Central Africa conquest-

Leave Benin or whoever is the southern most nation in your area alone till they ally Kongo. Then attack them and take just one province from Kongo, so you get a foothold there.

You can hop to Eastern Africa similarly.

Morocco event on Tuat-

Around 1540s, Morocco gets an event where they get a core on Tuat. This could be an opportunity to take some North African land if Morocco is weak.

IDEAS

1. Economic- I always open with economic and get the first three ideas first for inflation reduction, then finish the idea group up later.
2. Defensive- for the extra morale
3. Exploration- you still have to colonize some provinces. For example the two provinces in the east so you can start your eastern expansion.
4. Humanist- Rebels are a real problem and Africa is a big place. It takes a while for your armies to march around.

Next Quality, Offensive and admin. Order will depend on monarch points and tech situation.

DEALING WITH EUROPEANS

You will encounter the colonizers by late 1400s and they will be an existential threat if you don’t deal with them timely. Here are a few ways to handle them.

1.Improve relations-

• Keep improving relations as soon as you encounter the first colonizers
• Also keep improving relation with Morocco since the start. You might want to ally them later if they are the biggest nation in North Africa.
• Ally at least one colonizer. This is key, you have to ally at least one of them and hope they are doing well in Europe.

2. First attack-

• One of the colonizer might attack you early game
• You will be couple of mil techs behind them, but you are still small enough that you can defend easily
• Get your armies to the coast and take out any landing party. Usually AI only brings in 10-15 stacks at a time early game, which makes it easy
• If you don’t let them siege down the war goal, you can get a lot of money from them in peace deal.

3. Alliances-

• Only way to deal with subsequent European attack is by alliances.
• Strong allies in whoever is the strongest north African nation. Mamluks are another strong choice.

4. Best defense is attack-

• Find an opportune time when the European power who has colonies near you is busy in another big war. Declare on them and siege down the war goal.
• You should be able to get enough war score to at least get white peace, which means you don’t have to worry about them for 5 years.
• If you get lucky, you might be able to get all their colonies near you, which means they won’t have a foothold in Western Africa making your future wars easier.

5. Live to fight another day-

• If all else fails and a country like France declares on you mid game, there’s not much you can do about it.
• Consider giving them a few provinces. You won’t be able to fight one on one anyways, so there’s not much point in fighting.
• Consider selling them a province they have claim on before they attack you. This will hold them off for few years, while you can look for new allies.

Playing in Africa has its own challenges and the game play also differs from what you get in Europe. Hope this guide helps out newer players looking try their luck with Mali!