Exploring Africa
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Today, I’m bringing a thread to discuss many proposed civilizations that could be included in a potential future Age of Empires II DLC.
This thread mainly focuses on Africa, which is often underrepresented in the AoE2 scene.
I have listed the existing African civilizations that are already in the game and provided a brief introduction to each one.
I have also shared my thoughts on what criteria should be used when introducing a new civilization into the game.
Lastly, I have discussed some African civilizations that have been proposed for the game, such as Ghanaians/Wagadou, Songhai, Hausa, and Kanembu.
Each of these civilizations has their own pros and cons that should be taken into consideration.
I very much enjoyed reading what you wrote here, very informative.
And I fully agree how dull campaigns are when only one single civ is present which is why I really don’t like Malian and Ethiopian campaigns.
Though no idea which ones would I pick since I don’t want too many new civs.
Like, safest bet would probably be something like eastern African expansion with Somalis and Swahili (think 2 civs per DLC are enough).
Names are recognizable and marketable, information exists and plenty of interactions with existing civs.
West African choices are a bit more obscure and unknown for general population, even though I really would like if Malians fought something other than Malians in their campaign.
Bantu itself is too broad and basically just linguistic grouping, like if there was the Indo-European civ.
Kongo, Zimbabwe and Swahili are notable on their own anyway, enough maybe for a Bantu expansion, but as you mentioned they kinda are more notable after AoE2 period.
Probably the most unlikely are Vandals even though it kills me that we have Goths, Huns and Franks but not them.
Vandals definitely fit the original intended time-frame before AoE2 increased the scope.
I’d like to put forward the suggestion that at this point in the game, I’d say that not having a historical empire (depending how you want to define it) is no longer a requisite for inclusion.
One notable example are the Italians, which are representative of the various northern Italian city-states, many who never developed an actual empire, nominally or otherwise.
Other civs like Bohemians arguably also never developed Imperial ambitions.
Additionally.
I think the lack of true external interactions for some civs wouldn’t necessarily rule out the lack of integration into their respective campaigns.
There are several instances throughout the current campaigns where the designers have opted to use culturally similar civs as the base civ in the interest of adding more NPC variety.
The vanilla Barbarossa campaign is probably the most notable example, though most civs have since been replaced with their correctly aligned culture as the expansions have come out.
I know this fanbase has a huge preference for historical accuracy but the campaigns have already demonstrated several uses of artistic liberties for the sake of playability.
Including something like the Kanembu would give an excuse to maybe swap out a few minor players in the Yodit and/or Sunjata campaigns, while you could do vice versa for the Kanembu campaign.
>A civ recently added to aoe3, it was never an Empire per se, but a number of cities united (or quarreling) around trade, with Kano being the strongest city.
It competed with Kanem-Bornu and Mali Empires for trade, but there are no records of wars between them, nor any kind of interaction with any other aoe2 civ.
Thats not really quite true.
Idris Alooma had wars against Kano, and both Kano and Zazzau had periods of expansion during the timeline.
>The remaining of the dynasty migrated south in 1380, and only Bornu remained under their rule.
This smaller Kingdom lasted more than 500 years (this makes an overall thousand years of Kanem-Bornu or Bornu Empire), although with higher political instability.
The Kanembu actually recovered Kanem by the mid 15th century and supposedly the empire peaked during the late 16th century under Idris Alooma.
They also werent as isolated as you seem to think.
The Yao sultanate was also supposedly a powerful empire in its own right, we just dont have that much info about them, and as I said before Kanem fought against the Hausa too.
Yes, the Berber tribes or Sao city states they fought werent anything too impressive but the Kanembu still were a pretty cool empire.
I think either Yoruba or Beninese/Edo should be included because the gulf of Guinea was kind of its own region very diferent from the sahel.
Beninese also expanded a bit (and the gulf has a very high population density so those lands were actually quite valuable), they just never ,created an empire.
The Zimbabweans could have a cool campaign based on oral traditions but its true they didnt fight any existing civs.
The Kilwa Sultanate united most of the Swahili coast
The Vandals I believe used camels tho.
Also another civ I think could work is an Ugandan civ, a civ representing the diferent peoples of the Great Lakes region who had a bunch of diferent kingdoms
Instead of “Bantu”, I’d recommend using the Banyoro empire near the Great Lakes.
They had a unique relationship between the jungle and food production due to their region being suitable for banana production.
It also has a neat potential interaction with cavalry.
Also, for Oyo, we have almost their entire history, in great detail, provided by a member of the Yoruba royal family during the turn of the 20th century. (Samuel Johnson’s History of the Yorubas).
Oyo’s military power was only based on cavalry in the plains, and it was unusual since a rainforest-based empire couldn’t sustain its horses (various diseases) and had to continually buy new ones from the Kanuri.
Within its territories, it benefited from its infantry, light archers, disease, floods, hill-oriented construction, and massive earthwork defenses.
It was nigh-impenetrable as an outsider.
Benin is just an offshoot that used a few of their techniques.
Kind of like the way we’re exposed to Japanese and Chinese culture through Japan.
Pretty good post, I agreed with most of it.
I like that you actually consider campaigns when proposing civs, something that I find most people don’t actually do lol.
The devs most likely won’t release a civ without a campaign, so it should pretty much be a requirement.
I’d like to see all of these civs personally, and also the Mossi perhaps.
Could definitely think of campaigns for all of these civilisations, as well as historical bases upon which to design their in game militaries and economies of you want any info on that.
Only major disagreement I have is that “Bantu” is not a good civ idea to encompass Kongolese, Swahili and Shona.
These cultures were far too diverse to be grouped together in any way that would be accurate to the history of these civilisations.
An accurate “Bantu” would have to have a terrible navy, one of the best navies in the game, poor defences, amazing defences and be expansionist and military-focused whilst primarily being economically focused, were it to accurately represent the major Bantu cultures.
Would rather just have representation for one southern African civ, such as the Shona, than have them umbrellaed inaccurately.
Great write up!
I always love a well-thought out civ concept, or in this case, multiple civ concepts.
My personal Top 3 from Africa would be Somalis, “Swahili”, and Kongolese, for a combination of the reasons you mentioned.
Mostly I’d be intrigued to see how the dev’s can create additional non-cavalry civs without making them feel like re-skinned American civs.
Also, thank you for not including anything about Battle Elephants!
It’s my pet peeve when reading an African civ concept.
My top picks would be Swahili, Zimbabwe, or Kongolese.
I think Southeastern Africa is one of the most viable regions to develop.
They have interactions with the Ethiopians, Saracens, Turks, Hindustanis, Chinese, and Portuguese.
I really like this post because it helps dispelling the myth that Africa’s size directly correlates to its civ potential.
Making things more objective like this makes it easier to know what we can expect coming from it.
Also, minor detail which can be ignored by know what’s going on, but another region on the map for North Africa would be cool to make more explicit that’s is a competely different beast than the rest.
I am sold on Vandals and Bantu.
Here in Brasil it is used the word Bantu to talk about the african culture brought by the portuguese.
I would also love to see more African civs in the game and really enjoyed your post, but I have a few thoughts I’d like to share (in addition to those already mentioned by others here):
First of all, I would say that the issue of campaigns being fought against mirror civs would resolve itself by adding more civs from the region.
If AoK started from a Chinese or Islamic point of view, Europe (reference for majority here) would likely be relegated to Byzantines and Franks (maybe Italians and Vikings too) as everyone else in medieval Europe would be either too similar or irrelevant from a non-European perspective .
Related to this, the OP’s map, while useful, falls short of reality.
As the second largest continent, Africa has [many peoples](https://photos.app.goo.gl/cLMA8ACDYE9xBziR7).
How many of these could have made kingdoms that have not yet come to our knowledge due to a myriad of factors (lack of writings; texts still untranslated, hidden in private collections, or destroyed; archeology still in its infancy on the continent, etc)!?
Now, just to give you an idea, compare these images of the Sahel that we know with the OP: [here](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sahelian_kingdoms#/media/File:WestAfrica1625.png) and [here](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sahelian_kingdoms#/media/File:CentralEastAfrica1750.png) Although I don’t know of any maps that show this, this entire Sahel corridor was connected commercially, and also with North Africa (I’ll look up the discussions I saw about the diffusion of technology from Nubia to the Sudan region to post here). [This site](https://www.oecd.org/swac/maps/maps-atlasofthesahara-sahel.htm) has some maps showing these connections between cities and some empires in West Africa.
On personal research, I’ve put together a few sites that might be useful to devs for info and pictures if they want to include new African civs:
* The African section of that [forum](https://historum.com/history-forums/african-history/) is a whole gold mine for anyone wanting to learn more about Africa.
I mostly recommend reading user Ighayere’s posts (he hardly ever has a post without at least some interesting information or a book recommendation).
But there are also a number of users who contribute to sensational discussions.
* These sites [here](https://zimfieldguide.com/mashonaland-central/mutapa-mwenemutapa-monomotapa-state-its-heyday-c1480-–-c1623) and [here](https://isaacsamuel.substack.com/p/the-kingdom-of-mutapa-and-the-portuguese) have articles about Mutapa (the second one has other kingdoms as well) with maps showing the surrounding kingdoms and some interactions that could serve for campaigns.
* [These images](https://imgur.io/a/f93Ei) show the various kingdoms of the Horn at the time of Imam Ahmad Ibrahim al-Ghazi, which I propose as a campaign for Somalis.
I haven’t been able to see it yet, but Jeffrey M.
Shaw recently wrote a [book](https://www.amazon.com/Ethiopian-Adal-War-1529-1543-Conquest-Abyssinia/dp/1914059689) specifically about the Ethiopia-Adal wars that will likely be helpful.
* I also found some information about the military aspect of the Swahili (though not my favorite choice) in the book [Swahili pre-modern warfare and violence in the Indian Ocean](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/349662603_Swahili_pre-modern_warfare_and_violence_in_the_Indian_Ocean ) by Stephane Pradines.
* As for Benin, they also had a desire for expansion.
I suggest the book **The Military System of Benin Kingdom, c.1440-1897** by Osarhieme Osadolor if you want more information on this.
The book is free and the author separates it into defined periods, so just read the period you want.
* For Kanem, I had a request for sources answered on [r/askhistorians](https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/qlz3rt/books_on_kanem_bornu/) last year.
I haven’t had time to read most of it yet, but the information is on jstor.org, which only charges a free registration.
* And as for Kongo, we can use Afonso I’s rise to power as a campaign.
Historian John K.
Thornton has written a completed biography of him that will likely come out this year.
He also wrote this [book](https://www.amazon.com.br/Warfare-Atlantic-Africa-1500-1800-Thornton/dp/1857283937) about the military aspect of Kongo and other Atlantic kingdoms.
That’s just what I remember off the top of my head.
As you can see, there’s a lot of information about African kingdoms that we can use, it’s just that it’s scattered around the web.
Very well thought and presented post.
I really enjoyed it.
For the same reasons you mentioned I consider as priorities the following civs:
1_Somalis
2_Kanembus
3_Shonas/ZimbabweansAs a personal preference, I’m not a fan of including civs that emerged and peaked in the latest portion of the timeframe (XVI century).
And despite lacking in campaign content, I consider shona to be a great opportunity to design an intresting out of the box civilization, representing their grographical isolation un regards to the other civs as unorthodox gameplay.
please devs im african-civ-starved just gimme new african civs even its just 2 in a small dlc :(((
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