San/Khoisan Minor Faction - More Ranged Shock Infantry

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.

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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)

5 Likes

Neat. Good work as always, now do the maps :smiley:

Haha, I might eventually. I have a good idea for Zimbabwe but I’d really need to come up with something for Kalahari for the San.

Could Kilimanjaro be like a non sea version of Hokkaido/more impassable highlands.

Madagascar could be like an island California, except drier on the south east and hills and jungle in the north west

Interesting concept

What about Zulu? Would you design them as a major or minor civ?

For me I think they should be a age up option in Griqua civ with the Xhosa being another age up option, along with the Dutch/Boer. But I also think there’s room for improvement there.

I think having a southern African civ should be more a collective than a standout empire. Think more Hausa than Ethiopia in terms of identity.

As the region was less built up Make the civ defensively weak, like not even a palace, but other bonuses to make up for it.