This guide was contributed by one of the Discord users- lazyboy007

Morocco has been the subject of many changes – including the releasing of multiple subjects – in the 1.28 patch. Having a very unique position as the strongest north African nation aside from the Mamluk, with no impending threats at game start and many expansion routes, this nation has ridiculous potential for a strong colonizer and conqueror.

This guide will focus on an expansionist route, including a solid starting strategy and a loose guide on what to do once the beginning phase is done.

Phase I – The first 2 (or 3) wars

Objective– Annex Tlemcen, Cripple Castile

Opening Moves-

1. Check your rivals. If France rivals you, restart. If you can’t rival Tlemcen, you can restart but it’s not necessary. Rival Castile, Tlemcen and any french rival. If the French rivaled Castile, you should rival Portugal.
2. Grant Diet on the Amirs, take mil points and do not do any other interaction – you may need to grant them a piece of land later on putting them too high in influence.
3. Grant Monopoly Charters on the Merchants, give Demnat to the Clergy. Seek Support, Recruit Minister and Inquisitor and take the 150 admin points.
4. Develop Sale once (preferably mil dev, the adm and dip routing cuts it close) and Tetouan twice (1 mil and 1 dip) and give them to the Burghers. Grant Monopolies, Grant Generalship and Recruit Minister, then take dip points and Ask for contributions.
5. Send your navy around all coastlines within 3 sea tiles and start plundering. AVOID ALL french provinces at all costs, you don’t want to anger them. Build 3 galleys and 5 infantry.
6. Royal Marry Marrakesh, send a diplomat to France and one to spy on Granada, claim Granada as soon as you can then recall and set to improve with vassals.
7. Take Lenient Taxation, unpause the game, watch your navy and royal Marry Talifalt. If you have the money, take the boarding naval policy. Set your national focus to military points.

Tlemcen War-

• Wait for your navy to finish looting and declare on Tlemcen right away. This war should be easy.
• If Tunis allied Granada, set your vassals’ behavior to aggressive and move your troops on both forts. Otherwise, set them to siege and clean up their army. This situation is rare, so it will not be discussed in depth.
• Almost always Tlemcen will ally a Berber minor, quite often Djerid, whose land Tunis desires. Call Tunis in on promise land once your troops are moved to both forts and you have sieged Figuig, Kasdir, Oujda, Mers el Kebir and Wehran.
• Once Tunis is called in, they should focus the Berber minor. Use your navy to move your troops to Ouarsenis and Tittery.
• If Tlemcen starts trying to siege your vassals, ignore them. Most often however they will flee inside Tunis and fight them. Leave them at it. It is important to engage Tlemcen as little as possible here as your manpower cuts it short.
• If needed recruit levees from the Amirs, which will make them disloyal. You can counter this by giving them any of your other low development provinces.
• As soon as you can, separate peace the Berber minor. If Tunis did not desire the land and gave you the occupation of the capital, vassalise them. This will be useful later. Otherwise, only take money and war reparations.

As soon as this is done, finish sieging and retreat your troops. It is time to attack Granada.

Granada War and important events-

• Once Tlemcen is done for and you have claimed Granada’s capital, declare war. You should make this war swift. Occupy the lands without confronting the army of Granada.
• During this time, the Wattasid revolt event should fire. Take the “Kill them all” Option. This event is usually followed by the “Stirrings in the South event”. Take the 1 stab.
• Once Granada is sieged, leaving Marriya out, let your troops stay in their lands.
• Once the pretenders from the Wattasid chain fire, turn off your forts, set your vassals to passive and let them win. This will fully replenish your army and give you a competent ruler (most of the time).
• During that time, watch Castile carefully. They might declare on Granada, at which point you should instantly peace out and full annex Tlemcen (giving Figuig back to Talifalt). Start coring your land and sit on Granada a bit longer.
• The Ottomans should have switched to friendly by now (100+ opinion), and so should France. Recall your diplomats and prioritize your vassals from now on.

If Castile declared on Granada, great! You get a free defensive war with Tunis on your side (despite no land being given, oh well). If not, vassalize Granada anyways and ally France and Ottomans. You will go over your relations limit by a lot, but this will be fixed soon. At this point, skip the next step.

Castile War-

If you managed to get this war, then awesome! You’ll be well on your way to forming Andalusia. This war should be quite simple. Don’t be greedy, taking Sevilla and Huelva should be your priority. Cordoba, La Mancha, Jaen and Cadiz are great if you can afford to take them. La Mancha has a gold mine so this is a big bonus. This war is easy to win and hard to 100% so chunking them a little should work out enough. Make sure to demand they break their Portuguese alliance if they’re allied. Give any land needed to Granada, your admin might be cutting it close.

If you enter this scenario, you’re close to snowballing the game to infinity. Ally France and Ottomans and get to the next section.

Phase II – Finishing The Berbers and chill

Objective– Owning all the lands in North Africa bar Tunis and Mamluks

At this point you should be in a strong position, whether you got to attack Castile or not. Take this time to calm down a bit, regain your manpower, tech up adm and dip tech.

• If Tunis is a valid rival, rival and insult them. This will make them break the royal marriage. If not, simply break the alliance. Start claiming their lands, in particular Mitidja.
• Use your diplomatic reputation to diplomatically vassalise Touggourt if you haven’t obtained a Berber vassal before, use their claims to eat all of the minors and give them the land.
• Once January 1454 hits, start annexing Talifalt. They’ll take a few months. Once they reach 100%, call back all your diplomats and annex Marrakech and Sus.
• Chill and take admin tech 5. From here your run will inevitably vary a little bit. Check the Ideas section for further information.

Phase III – Killing Iberia or Africa

Objective– Building a power base. Form Andalusia.

You are now at a point where you’re the indisputable greatest power of the region. With two beefy allies on your side, you can now attack Portugal with ease. Wait for a moment when England is somehow busy and unwilling to join, then attack (or take England on headfirst. Beware though your fleet can’t win). Your priority is to take Ceuta, Lisboa, Evora, Beja and Algarve. Those will be important to your mission tree and the forming of Andalusia. Take some of the Atlantic islands if you can.

• If no opening appears in Iberia, you can always follow your mission tree to get claims in Western Africa and expand in there. This is easy clay, but quite poor.
• At this point, you should be in a position where you can attack Mamluks and/or Tunis. Always call in the Ottoman against Mamluks, in order to truce lock them and gimp their expansion, they will soon turn into rivals of yours.
• If Tunis allies the Ottoman, which is quite likely, attack them during one of your Mamluks wars and peace them before the Mamluks.
• As soon as your Castilian truce runs out, (or if you missed out on the early Castile war or if they got the Iberian Wedding event, as soon as you see an opening) attack them and call in France. Portugal will have allied them again, and they might have other allies, so this could prove to be a difficult war.
• Take what remains to form Andalusia, annex Granada and BAM you’re a force to be feared now.
• Bonus step: If you can, declare on Portugal and vassalise them to get an amazing colonizer vassal.

Challenges

Manpower and money

• You have bad land, and the region isn’t much better. Rely on gold mines and estates and beware of inflation.
• With constant warfare your manpower will be very low. Don’t hesitate drilling in any downtime and milking the Amirs and Professionalism for manpower.

Aggressive Expansion

• Your Iberian AE might become ridiculous quick. Make sure to walk the line on the coalitions and to improve relations where needed. Be certain that France remains your ally until you form Andalusia or even later.
• If you follow your missions in Africa and attack Mamluks and Tunis at the same time, you will quickly find yourself in a Sunni coalition. This is not hard to avoid at all and the coalition can be defeated, but you should still keep it in mind.
• In some situations, your AE can reach high enough points that your allies might not join coalition wars. Be wary.

Warfare

• Your national ideas at game start suck, and your land is not rich enough to build good army composition.
• Early Defensive ideas are recommended. Quantity is NOT a good idea, as you will just drown yourself.
• You army quality is worse than the Iberians, in particular on the morale front. Engage them in smart ways and use your allies.

Iberian Wedding/Burgundy

• In many games, these will kill your run.
• It is suggested to use the Ottoman and France when possible to break apart this unholy beast.
• Supporting Pretender rebels in Aragon can help.
• Having Castile form Spain is actually a good thing, as their ideas suck, so you can prioritize releasing Naples and eating Aragon if you wish.
• The Burgundian events can ruin your run. Do note that when Castile gets the area, it often happens that Austria, Poland or GB rivals them. Use these as potential allies.

Ideas

1. Exploration- You should always take this as your first idea. You are in a prime position to take on a ripe new world, and forming Andalusia moves your capital to Europe, allowing you to use African trade companies. You can also take Suez from the Mamluks and use Exploration to reach India early, which is an EXTREMELY high priority for WC runs.
2. Defensive- Necessary idea group. You cannot afford quantity and the other groups don’t work as well early game for Morocco.

I would suggest always picking those two first. The rest are loose ideas on how to complete the idea set.

• Economic- Quite useful for Morocco, even in WC runs.
• Trade- Can replace Economic in many cases, You are surrounded by rich nodes.
• Admin- ALWAYS take these in your first 4 idea groups if you’re going expansionist. Andalusia get CCR in its ideas, and this stacks wonderfully. You also reach the territory cap quickly when expanding in Africa, and the +5 states definitely help.
• Humanist- Almost required. Religious doesn’t work well with Morocco’s position and the cost of conversion.
• Expansion- If you’re going full on colonist this can barely work.
• Diplomatic/Influence- Recommended, works wonders in conjunction with the Iqta government.
• Offensive/Quality- Your late game idea groups.

General mid game expansion tips

• Finish off Iberia ASAP. Focus India as soon as you can, with off chance wars following your missions and African nations. France can be a decent target later on.
• Break the Ottoman alliance once Mamluk is dead. Seek help from an eventual Timurid (if alive) or Russia to take them down.
• The New World is easy to take as Morocco. Using Portugal as a vassal and attacking GB/France will give you complete uncontested control over the continent.
• African trade flows straight into your nodes, but Collecting from trade is still better than pushing along to your home node. This is due to the fact that neither of your nodes are end nodes and that you will struggle getting 100% influence in either.
• If you want to, completing the Moroccan mission tree before forming Andalusia is a very viable strategy. The African claims are strong for expansion.

I hope this guide helps! I have done about ~50-ish runs with this strat, and about a fourth of these ended up on a successful note. Morocco is definitely unique to play and quite fun as well. Good conquests to you!

Written by: lazyboy007