If Age of Empires III were to continue expanding its African civilizations, I believe two major DLCs could bring a much broader part of Africa’s history to the game.
Mediterranean Vespers
The Mediterranean was never a boundary. It was a crossroads.
From the Nile Valley to the Maghreb, North Africa stood at the crossroads of Europe, the Middle East, and the Sahara.
From the Mamluk Sultanate to the Ottoman Empire, from the Barbary ports to the independent kingdoms of Morocco, North Africa was home to powerful states, thriving trade networks, and competing empires.
Three new civilizations:
Egypt
From the Mamluk Sultanate to Ottoman rule and eventually the reforms of Muhammad Ali, Egypt offers a civilization built around the Nile, agriculture, trade, and centralized power.
Barbary
Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli form the heart of a unique North African maritime world.
Master privateering, naval warfare, fortified ports, and the complex relationship between the Barbary states and the Ottoman world.
Morocco
A major North African kingdom that remained outside the Ottoman Empire.
From the Saadi dynasty and trans-Saharan trade to conflicts with Portugal and Spain—and the famous 1591 expedition against the Songhai Empire—Morocco connects the Mediterranean with the wider African world.
The Mediterranean is not the edge of Africa. It is one of its great gateways.
Guinea Tempest
The storm of the Atlantic did not begin in Europe.
Travel south along the Atlantic coast, where powerful kingdoms, cities, and trading networks flourished long before the European colonial empires of the nineteenth century.
Gold, ivory, palm products, and the Atlantic slave trade transformed societies on both sides of the ocean and connected West and Central Africa to an emerging global economy.
Three new civilizations:
Yoruba
From the ancient city of Ife and the great Yoruba city-states to the powerful Oyo Empire.
Build a civilization around cities, religion, cavalry, diplomacy, and the extensive trading networks of the Gulf of Guinea.
Ashanti
Rise from the forests of the Gold Coast and forge the Ashanti Empire.
Harness gold, forest resources, centralized authority, and a highly organized military system to create one of West Africa’s great powers.
Kongo
Enter the world of the Kingdom of Kongo, one of the major powers of Central Africa and among the first African states to establish sustained diplomatic relations with Portugal.
Christianity, diplomacy, firearms, Atlantic trade, and the long struggle surrounding Portuguese Angola bring the battlefield south of the equator.
The Atlantic storm was never simply a European story.
Two DLCs. A New Africa.
African Royals introduced players to the worlds of Ethiopia and Hausa.
But Africa is far larger than two civilizations.
Mediterranean Vespers would take players across the Nile and the Maghreb, into the Mediterranean and across the Sahara.
Guinea Tempest would carry them from the Gulf of Guinea to the Congo Basin, revealing the powerful states and societies of Atlantic Africa.
From Egypt to Morocco.
From Songhai and Hausa to Yoruba and Ashanti.
From the Gold Coast to Kongo.
Africa was never waiting to be discovered.
It was already making history.
Age of Empires III: Definitive Edition — The African story is only beginning.