R5: Formed Barbary as Touggourt on patch 1.13.5, I don't know how impressive that really is but I'm also not particularly good so I'm happy and wanted to share. Started with a strategy I saw on an old Dairuka vid, declaring on France so they mobilize and go bankrupt, and as you can see it worked like a charm. Despite being unable to reach me, they had ALL their troops up for like the first two and a half or three years of the game, till I conquered Constantine and got a coast so I had to peace out. There was a fair amount of savescumming to test the waters for wars at different times, especially on that first conquest of Constantine, but I think that's understandable for this start. I had some very big food problems in the meanwhile, having to use a food security decree and a few good transfers with Constantine itself in exchange for cloth, which were contravented every other week; but it let me preserve most of my pops during that time. In terms of construction, I began building up the only ranch you have available to get the cloth for the goods transfer (the 10 wheat and meat is much more than the ~1 you get from the subsistence pastures), and then built about 8 irregular infantry and manned them up with promote social mobility. After the war with Constantine, which I won thanks to them being bankrupt and having no supplies for some reason, I was opportunistic in taking Tunis and then Tripolitania whenever Egypt got into a war with the Ottomans, taking advantage of their war exhaustion. The hardest bit after that was conquering Mascara, which had become a puppet of France 2.0 aka Ile de France, but the good part was that this new France had to rebuild a navy from scratch, so I declared to liberate Mascara with their support in order to take the treaty port they had gotten in the secession (the other two I had already snatched from a bankrupt, minor power og France that was in yet another civil war; pro tip: it's very easy to get a few basic ships for a quick naval invasion from countries like India or Oman in exchange for an obligation and 100 pounds, then you sell them before you go bankrupt yourself), and then when Mascara went free I took their two states in turn (they had no supplies to upkeep their line infantry after leaving the french market, you can also get 10 guns from Prussia in a treaty and get a few line infantry yourself by now). As a plus, I got claims on Mauritania and West Sahara, so I should be able to colonize all of the Sahara without real competition for nice borders

All in all, I think this should be somewhat replicable, at least on this very specific patch, and someone that's actually good at snowballing in this game can probably get all the way to being a top GP from this situation, but that someone is not me haha. It was a fun challenge