A town in the savanna, on the coast

With what grows here (millet, pulses), this land can feed a town of about 40,000 people from farms less than a day's cart from its walls, about the size of Cologne around 1300.

Build a town in the savanna, on the coast

A town of 10,000 here

Its grain comes from 13 km around, 1 day by cart (comfortable). 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 25 km around, 1.5 days by cart (strained). Grown to 150,000 people, its grain comes from 48 km around, 2 days by cart (strained). A city of 1,000,000 cannot live off this land alone.

In history

Kilwa Kisiwani, an island off the savanna coast of present-day Tanzania, was founded in the early 9th century and by the 14th was the strongest city of the Swahili coast. Ibn Battuta, who came in 1331, called it one of the most beautiful cities in the world. The island had no river and drank from wells, some used for over a thousand years. Its topsoil was poor, so it bought millet, rice and meat from the mainland, paying with cloth and spices from overseas, and it sold gold, ivory and slaves across the Indian Ocean. In 1505 a Portuguese fleet under Francisco de Almeida besieged and sacked it.

Far to the east, the savanna coast of Arnhem Land in northern Australia had seasonal guests. From about 1720, perhaps earlier, fleets of praus from Makassar in Sulawesi arrived each December on the north-west monsoon, about a thousand men a year. They camped on the shore to boil, dry and smoke trepang, sea cucumbers for Chinese buyers, and sailed home four months later. They traded cloth, tobacco, metal axes and knives, rice and gin with the Yolngu, who supplied turtle shell, pearls and cypress pine, and some of whom worked for them as trepangers. Licence fees, customs duties and probably overfishing wore the trade down; the last prau left in 1907.

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 and iron. 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 45%, fish 50%, gardens 5%. That is some 3,000 livestock units on 45 km² of pasture, and about 730 fishers in 180 boats. Hearth estimate.

What makes it hard

• The coast does not feed the town. Grain and meat come from inland peoples, and a trading city that quarrels with its hinterland goes hungry.
• On a limestone island there is no river: every household depends on wells, and the wells must be guarded and kept clean.
• The monsoon sets the calendar. Ships leave with one wind and come back with the other, and a fleet that misses its season waits half a year.
• A rich harbour draws foreign warships. One fleet with guns can besiege and sack the city, then leave a garrison to hold it.
• Distant governments can strangle a trade without firing a shot: a licence fee here, a customs duty there, and the boats stop coming.

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, and the water lets it 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, Fish, Salt fish (at a cost), Pearls, Shipyards (at a cost)

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 quays: Medieval Harbor District (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, A town in the savanna, on a river

By city size

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

Sources

• Wikipedia contributors, Kilwa Kisiwani, Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 2026. en.wikipedia.org
• Wikipedia contributors, Kilwa Sultanate, Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 2026. en.wikipedia.org
• Wikipedia contributors, Kilwa District, Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 2026. en.wikipedia.org
• Wikipedia contributors, Macassan contact with Australia, Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 2026. en.wikipedia.org
• Wikipedia contributors, Arnhem Land tropical savanna, Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 2026. en.wikipedia.org

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