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Tough as Camel Thorn - A Südwestafrika Mod

Tough as Camel Thorn - A Südwestafrika Mod is an Althistory Mod, that adds South West Africa (aka Namibia) as independent nation to the Game with unique Focus Tree, Unit Sprites etc.


The newest Update is out!

• Fascist Branch: Take over South West Africa and join the German Reich!
  
• More flavor for existing Branches:
  
  • New Decisions to define the Borders of Post War Germany for the Germany-in-exile Branch.
    
  • The democratic Unite Africa branch should be more difficult now. It also uses Events, which means Colonial Powers shouldn't just release their colonies.
• And more smaller updates and fixes.

BTW: I'm one guy making this mod in my free time. Someone in the comments here asked if I had a website to give me a tip or something similar. For this reason I have created a Ko-Fi page which you can find here:
[ko-fi.com]
I don't expect anything, but if you have a penny spare and you like this mod so much, that you want to show your gratitude this way, feel free to do so.

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The Lore can be summed up pretty quick: When WW1 starts German South West Africa declared Independence and neutrality, which is accepted by both the Central Powers and the Entente. For South Africa, that had hoped to annex South West Africa, this means an increase of Anti-British Sentiment since the British forbid the South Africans to Invade.

I acknowledge this is not the most realistic scenario, but I thought it to be a fun one nonetheless.

Head of Government is Ludwig von Estorff. He was Officer in the Schutztruppe since 1894 and it's Commander from 1907 to 1911. During the Herero War in 1904/05 (that's when the Herero genocide happened) he questioned Trotha's Orders (the basis for the genocide) and believed that crushing the Herero like this was in equal measure cruel and insane. He instead advocated sparing the Herero whom he believed were already punished enough and a complete destruction as wished by Trotha was unnecessary. Historically he returned to Germany in 1911 and commanded a Division in WW1, was wounded at the Eastern Front, and was discharged in 1920 after he participated in the Kapp Putsch, and died in 1943, aged 83. While he was not a model-democrat, he still was on the less extreme side of aristocratic conservatism, so I found him quite fitting as starting ruler.

As mentioned in the "Brief History" in the Nation select screen, South West Africa has a bunch of Problems:

• It is severely underpopulated (even IRL today): On 824 292 km² it has a population of less than 400 000 people (that is a density of less than 0.4/km²) with approximately 30% of the Land cultivable. For comparison historical French Algeria, with a much higher percentage of desert (80%), had a density of 3.1/km² in 1939.
  
• The manpower pool is reduced to 15% of the population, which in turn means you start the game with negligible amounts of manpower.
  
• Furthermore you start with a very low stability as well.
  
• Lastly Infrastructure, Industry and Resources are basically non-existent.

Now to the Focus Tree. As it is now, there are three distinct branches:

• An economic/industrial/research branch (on the left)
  
• A political branch (in the centre)
  
• and a demographic branch (on the right)

The Economic branch is primarily designed to give the player everything they need to build up their economy: infrastructure, civilian and military factories, research bonuses, research slots. It also enables the player to choose between Mauser and Enfield as matériel designer, and to found the Windhuker Maschinenfabrik as designer for anything motorized. Available as Industrial Concern is the Otavi Minen- und Eisenbahn-Gesellschaft or OMEG, which gives you bonuses when building infrastructure and for mining.

You also get several focuses to develop South West Africa by prospecting for Metals and Minerals and exploit your rich diamond and gold deposits.

You can also develop the Territory you can acquire in the political branch.


The Political Branch itself is split again in three main branches:

• African Monarchy, Ludwig von Estorff declares himself King of South West Africa
  
  • Expansionist Route, You try to establish Hegemony over Southern Africa.
    
  • "Historical" Route, You invite western powers to invest into your country, pursue an anti-Nazi politic and join the allies, for that you get some hefty bonuses with offmap factories and more resources.
• Germany in Exile Branch: You declare the Nazi Government in Germany illegitimate and create a German Government in Exile. Two possibilities either as German Empire (in which case you get Wilhelm III as leader) or as German Republic. You join the Allies and crush the Nazis.
  
• African Republic: You enact a republican constitution and become a Paragon of African Democracy, lead on the Decolonization, and try to create a United States of Africa.

As said above, one of the biggest Problems is the fact that the country is underpopulated. After finishing the first focus can enact laws to boost your population growth.

Another solution for the player is to get more people to live in your country. To do this there are several approaches: You can give refuge to refugees from Ethiopia. You can get settlers from Europe (Germany, Scandinavia and the Netherlands, for now) and you can get settlers from the Middle East and India, who are already used to the dry hot climate you have in South West Africa. The exact Number of Settlers you get from the latter depends on the number of countries in the middle east and India. Every independent country gets asked and sends you a random amount of population: either 1 000, 5 000 or 10 000. India can even send you 100 000 settlers.

The amount of settlers you can get from Europe depends on the player, via decisions you recruit an amount of people, the more people you recruit at once the longer you need to wait to get the same amount again. You can do the decisions 20 times.


Using the Indonesian Sprites from MtG, I've created accurate sprites based upon the Uniforms of the Schutztruppe of South West Africa, that were worn in 1914. The standard uniform is based upon the 1896 Corduroy Winter Uniform, while the Desert Uniform is based on the 1896 khaki tropical uniform.

To make the Southern Africa Experience complete, I've added a bunch of new provinces.

• Including: the Boer Republics of Transvaal, Oranje and Natalia, as well as Zululand.

If you encounter any bugs and want to report them, or if you want to propose a change in the mod, or maybe you even want to offer your help for the further development of this mod, you can do this in the reddit thread I linked above.