Regionals for African Civs

Age of Empires II: DE II - Discussion
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The worlds stwrt of humanity! Lets mke it seem unique.

For the most part the eastern coast close to Arabia is pretty closely Arabic in its playstyle so leave it alone. But the more west and south you go?

Lets start westward with the most unique aspect of all

Saltworks
Civs Possible: Malians, Songhai, Ghanese, Nigerians, Hausa, Kanembu, Mossi, Yoruba

At 150w, the Saltwork replaces the Mining Camp but unlike the 125w dropsite replacements, this one doesn’t add any housing. Instead, the Saltworks functions as a healing and defensive source: Salt flows in from all nodes within its radius and gold and stone are trickled into your resources without villagers working. Now granted this method is slow as heck even if it works multiple nodes in radius at once! It gathers them but you’d be a fool to not use any villagers of your own. And if that’s not enough multiple Saltworks can gather at the same time from the same nodes.

Granted this can be expensive, and one villager will gather faster than 3 Saltworks so keep that in mind. The other thing is that Saltworks are healing. They heal nearby villagers and those garrisoned inside heal about 2.5x faster than in a castle!

This is a big shift mind you. Still it can help you field the gold heavy armies that roam the desert with armored cavalry and infantry alike!

Assegai
Civs Possible: Yoruba, Swahili, Kongolese, Zimbabweans, Yoruba, Nguni… Somalia?

An area where most cavalry cannot go to Tsetse flies, the Assegai spearman is pulling a lot of double duty as the scout, the spearman and the skirmisher. When in Dark Age, these faster spearmen with some level of PA dont get any cavalry bonuses yet, nor the ability to shift to min range throwing. After Feudal? yea this unit unlocks a bit, being trained in both military buildings, and the only difference between them: the form the unit starts in. It costs a flat 40f/40w and thankfully it doesnt have suffer bonuses for “vs spearman” or “vs skirmisher” but as far as function goes? It’s okay. Most Africans still have gunpowder so while this unit plays the job of all 3 trash units, it doesnt crunch their potential unit lineup into next to nothing. There’s still heavy infantry, archers and gunpowder tech possible!

So, what IS the Assegai? It’s a sort of African light spear that was used in the region, good for both stab and throwing and an excellent hunting weapon for what it’s worth. Some civs at the corner of Tsetseality could be users of this spear but still be privy to the existence of horse and camel. This could put an interesting conundrum on their military arsenal and their starting scout possibility!

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Civilization Concepts
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My idea was to have the foot scout unit be called the Mpombo Scout, and it’s a unit that has 1 range from Feudal Age onward. The Assegai would be a mobile foot javelineer, mostly filling the cavalry archer role, but with a very slight anti-archer bonus.

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It doesn’t have garbage offensive stats.

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I just want more African civs. There’s still a lot to do and unique design possibilities offered there, as @DynasticPlanet5 shows.

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It’s like the Ratha. It swaps the roles. I hope you arent mad about that or looking to shoot me down before I can make my mark one day

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So it’s a fast trash unit that counters archers, cavalry, and monks but doesn’t take any bonus damage itself? Sounds pretty OP, almost a universal counter unit. How are you supposed to counter it?

If it’s your starting scout I think, similar to Eagle Scouts, it has to win one-on-one with scout cavalry, since they will be faster.

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I apologize if I didnt make a banger idea. I know moat deva dont make mistakes the first time so I have no right to be proud of myself. I shall delete this thread if people are angry

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It has to swap stances like a Ratha. Perhaps there’s a small cooldown before you can shift in and out of meleE

I can understand if you’re angry at me. Nobody likes a person who makes mistakes

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I will delete this and hope you can forgive me

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Look just lets leave all this dispute alone. Im just trying to civ craft at a higher level

Its hard to feel proud when someone finds a flaw in my work ergo my existence

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If you can’t take criticism, you can’t be an artist. Real artists listen to critiques and constantly strive to improve. I get the impression that you think your frankly lackluster ideas are perfect in every way and much better than everyone else’s, so no one can possibly criticize them. Learn to be self-critical and to take feedback.

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I’m not angry with you, and nor do I dislike you. Apologies if it came across that way. I was just trying to point out a problem that you didn’t seem to have thought about.

That’s a possibility, but to me it sounds quite clunky (I find the weapon swap mechanic clunky already), and I’m not totally sure it would solve the problem.

Since they’re fast and ranged, they can’t be countered by infantry, and since they also have a melee attack, they can’t be countered by siege weapons either. Their low cost and easy availability means monks won’t make a good counter either. That leaves you with archers or cavalry. As I mentioned before, I think they have to be able to beat scout cavalry in Dark Age (otherwise if your enemy finds your assegai with their scout cavalry, they can always kill him), so making them anti-cavalry but countered by archers/skirmishers seems like the natural choice.

That does raise the question of what these civs do against enemy skirmishers, though, since (if I understand correctly) they wouldn’t have their own cavalry.

No, it doesn’t get the weapon swap until Feudal Age. (Not sure if they’d auto-upgrade when you reach Feudal Age, or whether you’d need to upgrade them separately, but either way I think this would be ok.)

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I thinks i got the solution: shock infantry armor. Whether throwing javelins or spearing cavalry they are infantry units (their ranged attack still fights pierce armor) meaning that in a way THEY counter skirmishers who have no bonus against them. But regardless of form you gotta run from most sword type infantry!

Lets make it even more interesting: they only get a bonus vs skirmishers in melee!

It also means yhey stalemate against Hand Cannons but by then you should be in good shape with things like archers or scorpions to trade better vs them

Or they only have the condotiori infantry armor so guns cnt hurt them as well if those units are too dangerous

It wouldnt even be unreasobale for them to understand as they interacted with guns

Slingers though? Dunno

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Given how slavery was the keystone of many african kingdoms (be it for local uses or to export) : how about that :

Slave raider : light fast infantry, very weak vs regular units but a bonus vs villagers. Yields some gold when killing a villager (as if capturing then selling the villager) or trade units.

A purely raiding unit.

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Could work, although since they’re fast and ranged they could still kite infantry. You’d need to test it to see how it works out – probably in an actual game context, not just artificial scenario editor testing.

Another option would be to split it into two units: one a spearman/skirmisher hybrid that’s a normal speed for a foot unit, and a separate scout unit. But I guess your aim is to make an infantry scout that is notably different from eagle scouts (and champi scouts), so I guess you wouldn’t want to do that.

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So a stat spread carefully curated:

Hp of 50 with 2 dmg and +2 vs shock armor, +3 vs cavalry and +2 vs camels. This way it should trade evenly vs eagle and do better than the other scouts who are otherwise hust faster. Technically Eagles are also faster so it might need more damage against them.

These bonuses increase in feudal to gain an extra 7 vs cavalry, 6 vs camel, 3 va skirmisher in melee and some elephant bonus. While numbers are weaker than spears the fact is this unit is both more expensive food and woodwise and strikes faster amd doesnt fold to archer

The spear thrower form gets some missile armor and does like base dmg of 2 with +5 vs archers and has a min range too. Isnt an archer itself. It also rof 2 instead of 3. Has only 3 range instead of 4 but its fast enough to close the gap.

In Castle Age you can upgrade to improved Assegai amd then in Imperial to Elite. Both have hetter stats but hit for hit they fall behind skirms and spearlines respectively but the versatility and speed goes a lot further.

Numbers arent final.

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So melee and ranged modes have completely different bonus damage? I guess that’s what I expected – melee mode has similar bonuses to a spearman and ranged mode has similar bonuses to an archer.

So it benefits from infantry armour upgrades, forging-line, squires and arson? What about fletching-line upgrades for the ranged mode? Thumb ring? (I don’t know what the best answers to these questions would be, to be honest.)

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It would benefit from the ranged attacks for ranged mode as it still does missile damage. Just not archer armor. Oh and possibly not arson if it turns its ranged attacks into building slicers

Needing infantry armor is a disadvantage because it costs more than archer armor.

So: Infantry armor. Forging line for melee. Fletching for range dmg/range. Chemistry for range dmg. Ballistics for range accuracy. Squires for speed. NOT thumb ring or Arson regardless of form.

I wonder if the saltworks is fair. Not sure the node reach or siphon rate would be fair. Would be really good for gold rush as you dot the center with salts

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Does it automatically generate gold and stone, or does it automatically draw resources from nearby mines?
If it works the first way, I think it should take up population. If it works the second way, keeping the gold/stone income even when there are no nearby villagers (like after running from a raid) feels kind of overpowered.

Not all of those civs were famous for salt mining. Roughly speaking, salt was abundant in the north, whereas gold was abundant in the south. Some of them actually became wealthy because they had plenty of gold but little access to salt, so they focused heavily on the gold–salt trade and made money from it (e.g. via strict taxation). The Mali Empire and the Ghana Empire are good examples. (You mentioned the Ghanaians, though I think calling them the Soninke would be more accurate.)

I’d say perhaps it might be simpler to reflect salt extraction, storage, and trade as a civ bonus for a single civ, rather than having multiple civs share a mechanic. For example, starting in Age III, a civ could gain gold per second equal to x% of its stone stockpile. That would encourage the civ to actively mine stone (symbolizing salt) to increase its gold trickle. Depending on the situation, players could either keep stone stockpiled to earn gold or spend it on fortifications when needed.

In my African civ concept, I’ve assigned this bonus specifically to the Kanuri (Kanembu), whose Bornu Empire was the primary producer and supplier of salt. Additionally, their ruler built ribats extensively in the late 16th century to strengthen their rule and protect trade routes. Having the ribat be this civ’s unique tower upgrade or replacement also echos the gameplay of using stored stone to build fortifications when necessary.

Putting balance aside, the Yoruba and Somalis both employed cavalry, such as the Oyo Empire of Yoruba having heavily armored cavalry with elaborate decorations. A foot equivalent really seems necessary only in the Bantu regions, such as the Kongolese, Ngunis, Shona (Zimbabwe), and Swahili.

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I’m reading about the Oyo Kingdom now. Do you happen to know if they used elephants in combat?