A town in the savanna, on a river

With what grows here (millet, pulses), this land can feed a town of about 20,000 people from farms less than a day's cart from its walls, about the size of Toulouse around 1300.

Build a town in the savanna, on a river

A town of 10,000 here

Its grain comes from 18 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 35 km around, 1.5 days by cart (strained). Grown to 150,000 people, its grain comes from 68 km around, 3 days by cart (fragile). A city of 1,000,000 cannot live off this land alone.

In history

On the Niger, in present-day Mali, Ségou became the capital of the Bambara Empire in 1712. Its founder, Bitòn Coulibaly, turned a young men's association into an army swelled by runaway slaves, built a fleet of war canoes to patrol the river, and taxed in cowrie shells. When the Scottish explorer Mungo Park reached the river there on 21 July 1796, he found four towns on the two banks, all behind high mud walls, with flat-roofed clay houses, mosques in every quarter and, he reckoned, about 30,000 people. The king's slaves ferried travellers across at ten cowries a head, a considerable revenue, in long canoes made of two hollowed trunks joined end to end.

Far to the south, the kingdom of Mapungubwe grew where the Shashe meets the Limpopo, in present-day South Africa. A wet period from about 1000 to 1200 brought game, and the Limpopo's floods spread nutrients over the floodplain, where people grew sorghum, millets, groundbeans and cowpeas and drove their cattle away from the fields in the growing season. When drought came, the elite moved around 1220 onto the flat top of Mapungubwe Hill; by 1250 about 5,000 people lived around it. The Limpopo carried no boats, but traders followed it toward the coast.

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 59%, fish 35%, gardens 6%. That is some 3,900 livestock units on 58 km² of pasture, and about 510 fishers in 130 boats. Hearth estimate.

What makes it hard

• Whoever holds the crossing holds the town. Every traveller pays the ferry, and a stranger waits on the bank until the ruler gives leave to cross.
• Rain years come in runs. A wet century fills the floodplain with fields, game and tsetse flies; when it ends, drought can drive a whole capital to move.
• Herds and crops want the same land. While the grain grows, the cattle must be driven away, often onto neighbours' pastures, which ties the town to them.
• Not every river carries boats. Where it cannot, traders walk its banks, and when the trade routes shift, the town can lose them.
• A river is a road for war as well as trade. A ruler with a fleet of war canoes patrols the water, and the towns along it fall under his hand.

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, 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 the coast

By city size

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

Sources

• Wikipedia contributors, Mapungubwe, Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 2026. en.wikipedia.org
• Wikipedia contributors, Ségou Empire (Bambara Empire), Wikipedia, 2026. en.wikipedia.org
• Mungo Park, Travels in the Interior Districts of Africa, performed in the years 1795, 1796, and 1797, W. Bulmer and Co. for the author, London (Project Gutenberg eBook #74976), 1799. www.gutenberg.org
• Wikipedia contributors, Mungo Park (explorer), Wikipedia, 2026. en.wikipedia.org
• Wikipedia contributors, Ségou, Wikipedia, 2026. en.wikipedia.org
• Wikipedia contributors, West Sudanian savanna, Wikipedia, 2026. en.wikipedia.org

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