A town in the savanna

With what grows here (millet, pulses), this land can feed a town of about 6,300 people from farms less than a day's cart from its walls, about the size of Winchester around 1300.

Build a town in the savanna

A town of 10,000 here

Its grain comes from 32 km around, 1.5 days by cart (strained). About 420 villages and 79,000 country people farm it, and the town keeps about 40 scholars. Grown to 40,000 people, its grain comes from 63 km around, 3 days by cart (fragile). A city of 150,000 cannot live off this land alone.

In history

Great Zimbabwe, in the hills of the southern African plateau, was settled from about AD 1000 and built in stone from the 11th to the 15th century. Its Great Enclosure has dry stone walls up to 11 m high, laid without mortar, running some 250 m. Water came from dhaka pits, closed hollows used as reservoirs, wells and springs, which together could hold more than 18,000 cubic metres. Farming and cattle fed the town; gold from the plateau, carried to the Swahili coast, made its rulers rich. Older estimates gave it 18,000 people at its peak, but a recent survey suggests it never passed 10,000.

Kano, in the savanna of northern Nigeria, began its walls under Sarki Gijimasu, who reigned from 1095 to 1134, and finished them in the mid 14th century. They stood perhaps 9 to 15 m high and about 12 m thick at the base, with 15 gates. In the 15th century Muhammad Rumfa founded the Kurmi market, where traders from Tripoli and Ghadames came for cloth, leather and pottery, and where slaves were bought and sold. Beside the Kofar Mata gate, indigo dyers worked pits said to be more than 500 years old. The main crops of this savanna are sorghum and millet, suited to its low rainfall.

How large a city?

Living there

Its woods spare enough to burn: about 3,500 tonnes of wood a year for its hearths and workshops. Provisional figure.

Its market sells grain, spices, herbs, maize and wool, and buys timber, iron and salt. About 42 market towns stand in its countryside.

About 30% of what its people eat does not come from the fields. Of that share: herds 90%, gardens 10%. That is some 6,000 livestock units on 90 km² of pasture. Hearth estimate.

What makes it hard

• No river at the gate: water comes from pits, wells and springs, and the town must dig and keep reservoirs that last through the dry season.
• In the dry season a hot, dusty wind blows from the desert, and the rains come in one season only. Sorghum and millet are the crops that endure.
• A savanna town lies open on every side. Kano spent more than two centuries raising its walls and gates.
• A town that lives by selling gold far away is at the mercy of distant buyers. When demand falls, trade drifts to rival towns, and royal kin who lose a succession quarrel leave to found dynasties of their own.

Hard years

About one year in 8, the harvest falls below four fifths of a normal one: the town is short of some 470 of the 1,600 tonnes of grain its land gives it, with no water to bring the gap in. A plague that kills 39% of the town, as the Black Death did in Europe's towns, would leave about 1,200 km² of its fields idle.

What it can make

Grain (at a cost), Flax (at a cost), Spices, Dye plants (at a cost), Orchards (at a cost), Herbs, Maize, Wool, Horses, Cattle and hides (at a cost), Cheese, Pigs and bacon (at a cost), Goats, Honey and wax, Ivory

What its land cannot give, a town here must buy: timber.

What it lives on

Millet, Pulses

Underground

What a city digs depends on the rock under it: Granite, Volcanic rock, Ultramafic rock (peridotite, serpentinite), Schist and gneiss, Marble, Limestone and chalk, Sandstone, shale and clay, Salt beds, River gravels and sands

Found here

Gathered (Rerum): African Buffalo Hide, African Buffalo Meat, Agave Leaf, Amaranth Seed, Baobab Bark Fibre, Baobab Fruit, Baobab Leaves, Beeswax Block

Hear it

• The town: Fantasy Medieval City (album RPG Ambiences Vol. 6)
• The market: Medieval Village Marketplace (on Patreon, Guardian tier)
• The countryside: Walking in the Grasslands (on Patreon, Guardian tier)

Savanna in Biomes: plants, animals, hazards and sounds

The same climate

A town in the savanna, on a river, A town in the savanna, on the coast

By city size

1,000, 3,000, 10,000, 30,000, 100,000, 300,000, 1,000,000

Sources

• Wikipedia contributors, Great Zimbabwe, Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 2026. en.wikipedia.org
• Wikipedia contributors, Ancient Kano City Walls, Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 2026. en.wikipedia.org
• Wikipedia contributors, Kurmi Market, Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 2026. en.wikipedia.org
• Wikipedia contributors, Kofar Mata Dye Pits, Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 2026. en.wikipedia.org
• Wikipedia contributors, Sudanian savanna, Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 2026. en.wikipedia.org

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