AGEOD Forums

It is mid-1886 and I am still playing the Scramble for Africa scenario as Great Britain.

Germany managed to declare protectorate status in Mombasa and Dar Es Salaam while I was busy elsewhere. I countered by playing lots of colonial actions in those provinces, building structures and deploying troops. I also established a Colony in Nairobi (and therefore all of Kenya, apart from Mombasa, it seems).
My understanding is that - whatever level of colonial penetration I achieve, I cannot 'trump' Germany and declare a protectorate over Mombasa (eg) while they still have one?

So is my only option to go to war with Germany? I thought there might be a way to come to a 'gentleman's agreement' over Mombasa with them?

Any ideas?

You can still reverse the situation without war. What you need to do is continue your "investment" in colonial penetration in said regions and wait until Germany tries to declare them colonies. Then play a stake! Try to win the crisis that might ensue. If you do (winning by both Domination and Just Cause) you will get the colony out of their hands, no questions asked. Of course your relations will take a dive and if the crisis spirals out of control you might even go to war...

But this risk is part of the fun: you have to be audacious if you want to steal colonies diplomatically!

Thanks Kensai,

I will give that a go - I see 'Stake' as an option on the Colonial thing, but have never been able to play one... I guess it will become available when I have enough penetration?

It will become available to be played (green) on the capital region of the rival colonial area, when a rival nation tries to declare it protectorate or colony and you have enough Colonial Penetration (ie interests) in that area. The turn after, if successful, you will get the crisis interface where you will select the diplomatic decisions to play. You can be defensive or aggressive or choose other options.

As Kensai says, "if successful". This is important, as the stake card seems to fail a lot in the game (or we didn't understand the proper usage). When playing the MP game, we played the card quite a few times, but not make crisises occured.

So what happened then? Did you get the stake?

If successful (not very often in the MP game), then there is a crisis, and you play the card game. If you win the crisis, you win the protectorate/colony. If I remember correctly, you need to win the crisis card game by domination (just cause doesn't factor into it). I could be wrong, it's been a while since I have tried that.