So I figured why not try my hand at this with my own flavor of non-Slop. I promise every last word and hastily google researched piece of data predates ai or so I hope… anyway… no AI. I repeat no AI and no piss filter images because yuck!
South of the Sahara is an arid stretch of land, going from Atlantic to Indian Ocean, there is sand and nomads on camel caravans, yet hidden in the sand like a pirate treasure is a vast array of wealth in the form of gold and salt. From these reserves some of the most powerful kingdoms shall rise up. You take to this stretch of Africa and ride camels and find the poisoned flowers needed to carve an empire and learn the best way to extract salt!
Take on the might of the Songhay as you control lake Chad and train mighty armies melee armies both on land and at sea. The Tongue Farma is a javelin throwing camel rider whose shots lack accuracy much like the Arambai but their bonuses against gunpowder and horses help with their lower power. In the rivers, train a navy backed by the Kanta, a transport ship that has the old stats prenerf that transport ships had and acts as a drop point for fishing ships.
Bring glory to the Kanembu, with mighty horseman armies in quilted armor that puts full plate to shame. Train the Chima Gana, an armored cavalry whose discipline lets him defeat other cavalry and camels and resist anti-cavalry but leaves him with a weakness akin to shock units abd all this power comes at an extra half pop slot usage. And the mighty Imperial Lifidi to get the edge on the rest of the area compared to the usual Lifidi tech for your Mandekalu!
Raid the arrid landscape as the Mossi. It sounds like I took a look at the green on a rock and made up a name. I didn’t! Train armies of mobile camelry, melee and at range, including the low damage but armor ignoring camel mounted Nakomse. Back up your plunder with siege forces to destroy your enemies!
And the Dagban takes the tail end at the cusp of the arid lands where camels might not dare. Train armies of archers and lead the forces of Kanbonsi armed with a gun weapon and missile resistance to deal bonus damage against both archers (except skirmishers) and Gunpowder. This civ could be called Dagomba instead.
Train and build new regional units.
The Berbers get their own truly unique unit in the Blackguard an infantry who increases the armor of nearby blackguards and camels and does extra to cavalry and especially spearmen.
The camel archer has lost some power but still is a mobile ranged unit with bonuses vs other mounted archers. Berber Camel Archers do get some damage bonuses to make up for the lost power and lost UU status!
Build Saltworks to in lieu of mining camps to scour the desert for salt and gold. Weary and injured units standing nearby can use a curative for healing and the building as though it were a single target monk doing healing, and those who garrison inside find themselves healing faster than in most structures. It gathers gold or stone from all nearby nodes of either resource at a very slow speed automatically. Costs a fair bit of wood and doesn’t add any pop slot so be meticulous!
Apply desert plant poison with Poison Archers who don’t do much up front damage but slowly poison any target that is alive except for Skirmisher type units doing damage over time.
Mandekalu are a horseman akin to the steppe lancer who possesses more durability and up front strength but is slower and has slightly less extra range. Eventually you can research Lifidi which essentially is a quilted overcoat that takes a set number of hits before it is destroyed leaving the Mandekalu underneath to keep fighting! The Kanembu get the Lifidi tech automatically and can research an upgrade to the tech that gives the Lifidi shell that much more staying power.
A few civs may enjoy access to camel scouts or Imperial camels but never both!
So… why these civs?
The Songhai are an easy choice. The big one. The civ here that both exemplifies the wealth of the Salt and gold ladened Sahel, and the civ that also shows how gunpowder can downfall a civilization when used properly for it is at Tondibi that the Songhai met its downfall to Berber hand cannons scaring a horde of stampeding cattle. The Songhai campaign is Aksia the Great! Where he ascends to spread Islam and fight off Mossi and Kanembu invaders all while going on a pilgrimage to Mecca that leaves his empire in debt. This beginner friendly campaign can help you adjust to the use of camel archers and most importantly has a scenario as a training ground for Saltworks as you return from Mecca a broke and in debt man and need to collect as much salt and gold asap to refill the coffers but don’t have the villager training capacity to get the inflow but extra lumber. This lets you build as many Saltworks as you can to quickly refill your gold supplies before the dunes run dry!
Take the Kanembu and take Idris Alooma out to reform an otherwise well oiled heavy cavalry machine with the likes of gunpowder. Learn to master the Mandekalu and Lifidi in his campaign to maintain control and make connections with the Ottoman Turks.
The last campaign is both a Dagbon and Mossi campaign. Both of these names sound like they come out of Star Trek, and autocorrect agrees with my sentiment as well. But by consolidating 2 civs into one campaign you take Princess Yennenga, born of the Dagbon kingdoms with ambition that brings her north into the sub-Sahara to develop the kingdom of Mossi, which under her lead, may need to see you return to her father’s lands to commence conquering it after spending time accommodating to the abundance of horses and especially of camels that are rarer where the Dagban live. Yennenga, will travel back and forth swapping what civ she belongs to a few times. There are of course issues with the Malian and Songhai as well and the Tuareg of Berber descent whose caravans you can plunder for quality resources and extra quality camels. But you could surely besiege their towns… right?
So who got cut and why?
Ghanese/Sonninke: I hate to let them go as they are the trifecta in what is modern country of Mali (modern Ghana iirc doesn’t fall in the boundaries of the medieval Ghana and the Dagbon are there instead). It is the civ I could most see as the civ without caravans because they get the replacement “Move faster” civ bonus and a strong focus on the local Fireball Lilies and Poison Arrow vines. But they just don’t fit the campaign structure yet. Definitely one you could see logic for a Caravanseri just because of all that traded salt!
W/Jolof/Senegal: They got some tasty rice and an interesting eastern African maritime and infantry focus, something lacking from sand lavender land that doesn’t grow many crops… but not yet my friends. Ndiadiaye Ndiaye (of course I used Copy/Paste as I should’ve done for Yennenga) is a legendary founder of the Jolof empire and probably way more historically tangible than El Cid!
Benin Oyo and Yoruba: 2 or 3 civs that just feel a tad too out of the area at least tech tree wise. By the time you find these civs you need to start integrating some more Tsetse based military compensations for horses. Sure, the Yoruba had cavalry but they were a trade commodity and you don’t really have time to leave your horses unarmored and prone to enemy weapons when the tsicking tsime tswarm ts encroaches. Okay that joke was terrible, no notes! This would mean stables without scout cavalry but if you want some sort of Feudal heavy cavalry I’m terrified if it’s not just distributed camel scouts.
Hausa: Literally just limited space and I’d hate to just force it to be Armenianized where it becomes not cavalry because everyone else sorta is to some degree! The Dagban at least have recourse to be less horse enthusiastic. The UU baffles me but maybe some sort of Fulani marksman?
Mauritanians: You could argue they’re ancient and Carthage hired enough to enjoy and embrace the Dromon but many might just call them Berbers of another country.
Gao: I hate lumping them into the Songhai because we can have 4 Nords but 3 civs clustered in the area of Lake Chad is too much!? Who knows.
Eastern Africas: the civs along the Indian Ocean have much more interaction with European traders and Arabian Peninsula beyond a rare pilgrimage to the holy land. In fact the Sahel does stretch all the way from Atlantic to Indian Oceans so a few civs technically fit the bill. But I’d rather give the horn its own love. I had considered one civ of the Eastern coast just so Ethiopia wouldn’t be lonely with no buddies to share architecture with. Heck if there was room for a fifth I’d probably add one from here, probably Nubians, so the African structures could have a distinct style delineating North East from the Western side.
Vandals/Saracen/Mamluk branchoffs! Interesting potential but those civs don’t really have much connection with the Sahel beyond a few skirmishes and trading. It’s not a disdain for Vandals or their Alan allies, as both are civs I have a heavy fondness for their gameplay potential with defiant regionals out of the norm but this isn’t their time to shine
South of the Sahel: civs like Swahili, Xhosa, Mbundu, Kongolese, Zimbabweans and so forth, there’s more than you think. They really need their own regional toys and a few expansions since it’s very not desert for camels and too tsetse for horses, but it’s not American enough that these people don’t know what gunpowder is or how to have used it… or how to have stolen it or traded for some as the oriental pathway opened up. Kongo made Portuguese invaders lives miserable and even gun squads suffered in the jungles against Zimbabwe as well. Just don’t cram this all into a Bantu. That would be like having one civ called Indian… we never had something that stupid… did we?!
Look, let me be Frank for a second and say Bourgogne! …………Now that that joke is out of my system I can stop being as civ and instead be real with ya: I think we could venture into Africa for 4 or so expansions and still not be finished.
But for now we got this. This dive into the land that divides the Sahara and the southern part of the so called dark continent.
TLDR: African civs, burn AI that steals your grey matter. I weep that that’s the low bar but I’ll never sink below it