Have you wondered if it’s possible for the Coptic faith to rise to one of the world’s largest religions? Or if the colonization of Africa and India should be done by Europeans – well look no further this is the rise of the Coptic empire of Ethiopia.
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Before we begin the minions of Ethiopia wish to sing: “All hail Yaqob! All hail Yaqob! Oh, Yaqob, can you see by the dawn's early light.”. A 6,5,5 king will give you a great start! On that note make his inbred son a general, so that he will hopefully die and give you a better heir. Or watch your empire sink back into the dark ages.
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First of all there are 3 main goals that you should focus on as Ethiopia in the early stages of the game.
1. The first is the consolidation of home turf
2. Colonize (first towards West Africa) and as soon as possible South Africa
3. Gold, gold, gold - conquer all lands between Ethiopia proper and Mutape so you can get all the nice gold provinces. At this point of time you will have a whopping 5 in total.

Restart until you get an inquisitor advisor – explanation will follow under colonize.
1. Ally Aloida and help them beat Makuria when the time comes - even with this much land you can diplo vassal them later on and until then they are a great meatshield against Mamluks.
2. Now it’s time for some quick wars! Hopefully you will get missions to help you conquer Kaffa and Medri Bahri! Just take the country with the corresponding mission (typically Medri) and as soon as you get the peace deal start the next war against Kaffa they will still be a rival. But as you will outgrow them very fast and you want to declare before you lose them as rivals. I usually start out by conquering Medri Bahri and vassalising Kaffa
3. Next war is against Adal. There is no reason for much explanation here on how to win as you will wipe them off the board easily. You should take Degenhabur, Assab and Tajura. This will allow a war with Yemen. Yemen should be a priority as they are often getting bashed by Najd and Oman, so you want to establish a foothold on the Arabian Peninsula ASAP. So that you can conquer towards Mecca (+1 missionary).
Sometimes you will be thrown off by alliances with the Mamluks. More on this in conquest phase two.

When it comes to ideas I start out with Exploration in order to get a lot of colonies, which will be core Ethiopian high yielding provinces fast. Secondly I chose religious as you will have to do A LOT of converting in this game. As an extra bonus you now have the holy war casus belli against EVERYONE.
The first colony should be . This way you can conquer all the way to the nation of Pate. The next 2-3 colonies should be towards West Africa and this as soon as you can allocate the troops for it. It’s tough to begin as your troops are just as poor as the natives. Why then move towards West Africa? Well the empty land you see will form under the banner of Funj shortly after 1500. So take as much of it as possible.

You want to conquer Pate as this is the key province you need to core in order to colonize Inhambane. This will allow your next colony to be founded in South Africa that has a base tax of 7 and trade hub – and it will your future Capital btw. After South Africa you want all the coastal provinces so that you will disallow Spain and Portugal power in the South African trade note.


Here you can see that I managed to colonize South Africa ½ a year before Columbus sets foot on the West Indies :)

You will have to watch when the inevitable war between Mamluks and Ottomans break out as this will have priority above all else! You need to conquer as much Mamluk territory as possible (preferable Jerusalem (maybe that will be in war #2)). This will give the 4th missionary. At the very least you need to exclude Ottoman access to Africa.
The conquest of the Arabian Peninsula is a tricky affair – Hejaz is the country that holds Mecca. it’s going to cost you diplomacy points and aggressive expansion as they will probably be allied to the Mamluks and one or two unlucky minor states that are going to be your way in. Declare war on the minor take the area around Mecca so they will move their capital and there you are – you will have to rinse and repeat. DON’T force them to give up their alliance to The Mamluks as they might then ally Ottomans.
If you can vassalize what’s left of Yemen then that will allow them to get territory back from Hejaz in a cheap way.
With the conquest of Degenhabur you can now declare war on Wasangali and Ajuuruan.

With the colonization of Inhambane and the conquest of Pate you will probably be bordering Kilwa now - maybe also Mutape. If you have Mutape as a neighbor good for you! Sail troops down there and make him a vassel. Next you but the squeeze on Kilwa and you should be able to walk all the way from South Africa to your Capital.

Unfortunately I weren’t fast enough for Yaqob to experience it, we had to sail his coffin back from the Mutape campaign. This is the empire on his death bed.

Hejaz and Aloida are vassels