San/Khoisan
The San are a people from southern Africa that live a very archaic hunter-gatherer lifestyle. Their high endurance hunters and foraging lifestyle would make for an interesting minor tribe and make way for an expansion to new regions.
Location:
The San inhabit the majority of the African regions that have not yet been represented in the game. There are also some isolated tribes such as the Hadza that inhabit already represented areas like the Lake Victoria map. Regions like Kalahari, Cape, Miombo, Veldt, Namib, and Zimbabwe shown below could all be enabled with the addition of this one native faction.
Unique Unit: Bushman
The San or “Bushmen” practice persistence hunting which involves chasing an animal long enough to cause heat exhaustion. When the animal is sufficiently tired, they strike with spears or short-range, low-power bows. Their arrows don’t even have fletching to improve accuracy and rely mostly on poison coating to kill. This style of hunting with lots of running and mid-range weapons would be very well represented in a ranged shock infantry unit. This would make the Eagle Runner Knight no longer the only unit in its class.
Techs:
Persistence Hunters - Villagers and Native infantry move faster
Desert Foraging - Hunts and berries +5% gather rate and +10% yield
San Rock Art - Reveals all mines on the map +10% yield for mines
Nguni Cattle - Ships Sanga Cattle of a quantity that increases with game length (would represent the Khoekhoe pastoralists if they are labeled as the Khoisan instead of just San)