So, felt like playing some EU over the past week and have a pretty interesting Kongo game going right now. This is actually my second attempt at Kongo recently (and I won't feign being very good at the game), the first I ended after being tossed around by colonial powers after a decent opening (I even had Kongolese Brazil for a while). This time I around I focused a little more defensively, took expansion over exploration as my first Idea so I wouldn't be distracted by any new world shenanigans, and built a fair amount of fortresses so I could make sure that if any colonial powers wanted a piece of me it was going to be quite painful.
And then I waited. and waited. I think it was around 1550 when the first European colony touched down, and as of my current save it's 1630 and there are only 6 European colonies in Africa at all. While I certainly am playing a little part in this (I slowly but surely took up most of the prime ivory coast territory, but since I was playing very defensively I didn't start settling Ivory coast until 1500+), something else was at play. Taking a look at the save screen, there's actually nothing very remarkable about Europe, Tunis ate morocco but everyone seems pretty normal. South America is a different story entirely. Musica has 10+ provinces from Panama down into Colombia, Tapuia has 5 provinces and then there's the 14 province Tupis who appear to be farming Portguese colonies. I thought that was pretty cool, though hurtful that the South American AI is probably playing a better game than I am at this point.
Anyway, a couple questions if anyone feels like venturing an opinion.
How do you cope with tribal governments? Should you revolt to feudal goverments as soon as possible? I really would prefer to have more states but I am having trouble finding the time to drop the 400-600 admin while keeping up with the rest of the world (And my military points, which I am having a hard time spending without triggering unbalanced research).
Also, trade routes. Since I control most of the ivory coast, should I move my capital to a province on the coast and push all my African trade to there? I really hate having a coastal capital but if it makes a huge difference between collecting in both Congo and ivory coast vs. collecting exclusively in Ivory and steering trade everywhere else then I'd consider it.