Malagasy Civ Concept

HoopThrower · August 18, 2026, 11:54pm

Madagascar!

Yes, that big island off the coast of Africa, the one with the lemurs and Baobab tree roads and whatnot.

I’m no here to talk about the flora and fauna though, although I’d love to see one or more random maps set in the island as well.

No I mean the people living there.

Why do I find this island so interesting and special as to open a new civ design thread?

Well, this…

(Here’s the rest of the article if you want to keep reading.)

Well, they were an industrial power. One of the very few that existed outside Europe during this time period. Well, the Merina Kingdom was one at the very least, but more on that later, let’s talk about my civ design.

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Civilization bonuses

Starts with a Livestock Market Builder, a House Builder, a Zebu Cattle with 400 food, and 6 additional Zebu Cattle with 135 food; all Trading Post sites visible
No villagers, specialized buildings gather resources, houses construct buildings.
Can trade livestock in the Livestock Market for wood, coin, or influence
Choose Alliances to advance in Age
Minor civilization units, technologies, and Mercenaries’ costs are replaced by influence. Native warriors are upgraded automatically.

Techtree

**
Town Center**

-Labor Camp Builder

–

-Fortified Cities

-Stranger’s Quarters

-Blockade

-Spies

Labor Camp - Name Pending. Basically replaces the house, providing 10 population, but also constructs any building, such as:

- Town Center

- Labor Camp

- Lumber Camp

- Mining Camp

- Tranoambo

- Livestock Market

- War Camp

- Port

- Watch Tower

- Palace

- Levied Bowman

- Levied Spearman

Livestock Market

– Zebu Cattle

–

- Hardened Iron Axes - Selective Logging - Blackwood Trade - Ebony Exports

- Placer Mines - Amalgamation - Gold Purification

- Tribal Societies - Royal Hunters

- Selective Breeding

- Royal Banquet

- Transhumans

- Cow Loans

Field

Tranoambo - Granary Replacement. Still does what the Granary normally does, but also they can gather food from all sources and can build fields as well.

-Field

–

-Village Dogs - Snares

-Subsistence Farming -Swing Plow - Vegetable Carbon

-Crop Rotation - New World Crops - Cash Crops

-Large Scale Farming

- Tantara Ni Andriana: The next Alliance you research, or are researching, will Age Up 50 seconds faster.

- Kabarye Advisors: Mpanandro further boost gather rate for camps.

- City Walls

- Fanompoana Labor: Rate at which your Camps produce Influence is increased.

Mining Camp

- Tantara Ni Andriana: The next Alliance you research, or are researching, will Age Up 50 seconds faster.

- Kabarye Advisors: Mpanandro further boost gather rate for camps.

- City Walls

- Fanompoana Labor: Rate at which your Camps produce Influence is increased.

Lumber Camp

- Tantara Ni Andriana: The next Alliance you research, or are researching, will Age Up 50 seconds faster.

- Kabarye Advisors: Mpanandro further boost gather rate for camps.

- City Walls

- Fanompoana Labor: Rate at which your Camps produce Influence is increased.

War Camp

Zazavao: Azap sort of unit, Pikeman with a ranged attack that’s good against Light cav.
Voromahery: Strong, tanky musketeer, has slight multiplier against all cav in range.
Felika: Skirmisher.
Maranitra: Merina Royal Palace Guard. Attacks with exploding Javelins which act as grenades, obtains a multiplier against artillery when upgraded in range.

Port

Fishing Canoe
Battle Canoe
Cannon Boat
War Dhow

-

Gill Nets - Long Lines
River Skirmishes
Heavy Riverboats

Wall

City Walls

Watch Tower

Colonial Swashbuckler
Colonial Gunslinger
Colonial Oppressor

-

Nomadic Bandits
Sentry Tower → Guard Tower

Palace

Levied Gunner
Kongorevo: Small portable mortar that fires rockets which deal negligible damage, but stuns enemies it hits.
Mercenaries

-

Imported Cannons → Local Production: Rather than improving their cannons so they cost less influence, they just improve them so they can train them for regular resources.

Alliances

Column 1	Column 2	Column 3
Sakalava	(II) 1 Native Embassy Builder and 300 Influence (III) 7 Fihitra (IV) 9 Fihitra (V) 17 Fihitra	Sakalava Fihitra available at the Palace and Native Embassy. Sakalava Rebiki Dance Battles and Sakalava Fitampoha Rites available in your camps.
Merina	(II) Camp Builder and 100 Food, 200 Wood and 200 Coin. (III) Camp Builder and 200 Food, 200 Coin, 200 Wood. Coin. (IV) Camp Builder and 300 Food, 300 Coin, 300 Wood. V) Camp Builder and 700 Food, 700 Coin, 700 Wood.	Kingdom Builder available at Town Center. Sacred Guns and Forges of Amoronkay available in your camps.
Betsimisaraka	(II) 7 Goats (III) 7 Semi-Fattened Goats (IV) 9 Semi-Fattened Goats (V) 18 Semi-Fattened Goats	Goat available at the Livestock Market Betsimisaraka Kabary and Betsimisaraka Ancestors of Mankind available in your camps.
Pirates	(II) 2 Watch Tower Builders. (III) 2 Watch Tower Builders, each Watch Tower spawns a small Treasure. (IV) 2 Watch Tower Builders, each Watch Tower spawns a medium Treasure. (V) 2 Watch Tower Builders, each Watch Tower spawns a large Treasure.	Pirate available at the Watch Tower and Privateer available at the Port. Libertatia and Letter of Marque available at your camps.
Swahili	(II) 1 Mosque Builder and 400 XP. (III) 1 Mosque Builder and 600 XP. (IV) 1 Mosque Builder and 1000 XP. (V) 1 Mosque Builder and 2000 XP.	Prangi available at the Palace. Coral Construction and Kilwa Chronicle available at your camps.
Indians (available for Fortress Age)	(III) 1 Indian Market Builder and 500 Influence. (IV) 1 Indian Market Builder and 800 Influence. (V) 1 Indian Market Builder and 2000 Influence.	Mahout Lancer and Howdah available at the Palace. Goa Followership and Good Will Agreements available at your camps.

Column 1	Column 2	Column 3	Column 4
Javanese (Available for Industrial Age)	(IV) 10 Javanese Spearmen and 2 Cetbang. (V) 20 Javanese Spearmen and 4 Cetbang.	Javanese Spearmen and Cetbangs available at your War Camps. Kraton Guards and Lantakas available at your Camps
French (Available for Imperial Age)	(V) 1 Arsenal Builder and 6 Gendarmes	Gendarme Available at the Palace. French Napoleonic Era and French Army available at your Camps.

Prangi: Mercenary Abus Gun, but twice the stats like a normal mercenary, not like the Cannoneer.
Fihitra: Native unit, similar stats to Line Infantry.
Rebiki Dance Battles: Training Infantry units generates Influence.
Fitampoha Rites:You gain Influence from each unit you’ve lost so far.
Sacred Guns: Gunpowder Infantry gain +10% attack and hit points.
Forges of Amoronkay: Sends a Tin Prospector Wagon for every 5 minutes of gameplay, up to 30.
Kabari: Significantly buffs your Hero in combat and it gains an aura that buff hit points.
Ancestors of Mankind: Each Hunting Camp spawns 3 Lemurs.
Libertatia: Sends a Corsair Captain, who can build Town Centers and Trading Posts, Town Centers gain the ability to Spawn Treasures.
Letter of Marque: Upgrades Pirates to Buccaneers, which get +12 Line of Sight, a ranged attack and can gather crates, Privateers generate 0.5 gold per second; Buccaneers and Privateers get +3 attack multiplier against treasure guardians and can collect treasures with doubled resource and XP yield.
Coral Construction: Constructing buildings provides 10% of their cost in coin and influence.
Kilwa Chronicle: Receive again all income you’ve obtained from Trade Routes so far, doubles the yield of trading posts.
Goa Followership: Each subsequent shipment will bring a Villager.
Good Will Agreement: Elephants take less population space and are cheaper.
Kraton Guards: Pikemen get +20% attack and hit points.
Lantakas: Artillery, buildings and ships get +15% attack.
Napoleonic Era: Enables the training of 20 Sans-Cullotes in Town Centers and Napoleon Guns at the Palace.
French Army: Ships 15 Gendarmes

HoopThrower · August 19, 2026, 12:21am

So this civ design probably needs a lot of explanation.

Let’s adress the elephant (bird) in the room.

No villagers!

I wanted to try something really avant-garde here and as such I decided to portray industrialization in a very unorthodox way. That is to say… well, factories, plenty of them.

All of the civ even, your entire economy based off production buildings, no villagers whatsoever. If nothing else it makes for a very memorable civilization.

But enough about that, what about the unit roster?

Well…

Andriana:

For the explorer, it’s surprisingly straight forward. Now another peculiar thing about the Merina Kingdom is that they never established a cavalry corp. They did import horses though, which were used by royalty.

African explorers are, so far at the very least, members of the lower nobility. So bada bim bada boom, we’ve got our Andriana explorer. Can cause chaos, has the fealty aura, you know, the works.

Zazavao: The Rank and file of the Merina army, they’d look like the Auxilieres from that convenient reference image.

In the 18th century the main military tactic of the Merina army was actually to do night ambushes, starting battles by firing their guns and then spearing down anyone caught unprepared. Pretty effective, very different from what you’d see in European battlefields because, again, no cavalry, also for the most part little artillery, so most action was fought through squad tactics, that’d evolve a lot over the next century of course.

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Voromahery: The pride and joy of Radama I, the Voromahery were the first soldiers that supported him during his campaigns of conquest, were regarded with a village of their own and became basically a hereditary caste of soldiers. They became a sort of elite among the standing army of the Merina kingdom, on account of being the first professional soldiers. Heavy infantry of course. They’d look like the “Soldats” from the reference image above.

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Felika: Basically the malagasy word for skirmisher. Did I mention the malagasy army westernized right? Right at the beginning of the 19th century, along british lines. Down the decades they began producing their own guns, and uniforms, and gunpowder. Anyway, by the time the french colonized them, they already had a pretty sophisticated army. The reference image above is from the tail end of the 19th century.

If it weren’t for the funny hats they liked to wear they wouldn’t look unlike any of the askari soldiers form the colonies in the continent.

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Maranitra: The royal guard of the Merina Kingdom. Best of the best, the royal guard was actually separated in several corps, such as the palace guards and the ones that supported royalty during expeditions. People reading OP may go… exploding spears?!

Well, yeah, those are historical too:

These assegais were so constructed that when they were thrown they always fell point downwards. A detonating cap, with a French nail fixed into it, then caused an explosion. They were dangerous weapons, and only the boldest men would handle them, after they were shown the effect produced by the explosion.

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Kongorevo. Well, the image at the post of OP spoiled it, the Merina were also fabricating their own rockets! That said however, although it says they were congreve style, they were fired in a much different manner than the ones ingame, as per the description, it seems they used some sort of small mortar as the way to deliver them.

There seems to have been a surviving example in the royal palace in Antananarivo, however, as far as I know it was lost during the fire of 1996.

Fihitra: So of course the Merina Kingdom wasn’t the only one to exist in the island. Although by mid-19th century they had unified most of it. Most didn’t mean all. Their main rival was the Sakalava people, who controlled the western ports and for the longest time they seemed to have the upper hand over the highlands kingdom.

Clever diplomacy by the Merina and eventually straight up larger numbers allowed them to gain the upper hand and reduce the Sakalava to a few coastal settlements.

At any rate, the Felika were the royal guard of the Sakalava people, funnily enough the reference image is the first one that comes up if you try to look up “malagasy warriors” which probably doesn’t help much towards the image of the island as it doesn’t look as westernized as his Merina counterparts. That said, it helps a lot visually.

HoopThrower · August 19, 2026, 12:42am

Mpanandro: Forgot the obligatory healer unit each african civ has. (Probably?) Trained from Camps, they can build walls, and have decent combat stats, sort of like a ranged Warrior Priest.

Gameplaywise the civ was designed deliverately to not have cavalry. Not in the sense of replacing it with Assault Infantry, but literally just not… have cavalry. Their amazing, unraidable eco is compensated by the fact that they also have poor raiding capacities themselves. You’ll need to be clever around artillery, but fortunately you’ll have plenty of options to work around that, as the Merina are also an artillery civ, to the point where, if you play your cards right, you can access as many siege units as the ottomans.

Again, this was meant to be a very avant garde civ design.

And yes, I’m talking in past tense because I was making a mod to make this civ playable, I went as far as get some buildings done:

But the issue of animating the buildings became a massive roadblock and eventually I literally forgot about the whole ordeal.

I did build a proof of concept of it though, so I know the design as I did, crazy as it is, is doable.

For further reading, I profusely recommend listening to the History of Africa podcast series on Madagascar.

As for the unit names, most were taken from the book “coutumes guerrieres et organisation militaire chez les anciens malgaches” which I’d also recommend reading if you… uh… understand french. Second part is all about the Merina Kingdom specifically and included a glossary, pretty convenient.

Maybe I will finish the civ someday. It’s a bit of a white whale of mine.

I’d need money though, at the very least to hire voice actors for the malagasy unit lines, so don’t expect it coming any time soon lmao.

BaphometSLM · August 20, 2026, 5:03pm

Very interesting concept! I can see good research has been made. I like the no villager characteristic, which is very unique. However, the saved pop space would be massive. How would you balance your military in consequence? Lower base stats? Higher pop cost?

Very nice job.

SirBarnzy1 · August 20, 2026, 6:50pm

Lots of great content there - I’ll also echo the interesting take on no villagers. I’d love to play them as they sound infinitely more interesting than some current civs.

As a complete pirate nerd, it’s good to see some legit pirate linking there. Although Euro/American pirates (Roundsmen
) hung out with the Betsimisaraka (well, more than hung-out - Malagasy-Pirate children, kingdoms, royalty etc) due to them being coastal, the Merina still benefitted as a large portion of firearms (and much social/economic change) made their way inland.

It’s a shame there’s no Pirate Captain (or even Roundsman) model as Barbary-flavoured Corsair Captains are a little out of place, but as it’s a Libertalia-themed card, it can probably get away with being a little abstract.

An Advanced Trade Post wagon (or a tech of similar result) wouldn’t look out of place for the Pirate alliance - it would make a good nod to Ile Sainte Marie, Ranter Bay, Fort Dauphin and their pirate trading posts (often armed with cannon) and kinda complements their building focus.

HoopThrower · August 20, 2026, 7:55pm

Probably just make the camps take population slots like Paraguay from WoL tbh.

M00Z1LLA · August 20, 2026, 8:30pm

How exactly is this supposed to work with the rest of your design?

M00Z1LLA · August 20, 2026, 10:39pm

No villagers whatsoever seems a little bit out there just for the sake of it.

What about instead doing something based on fanompoana and the tangena ordeal?

“Ranavalona used the traditional practice of fanompoana (forced labor as tax payment) to complete public works projects and develop an army. She had a standing army of between 20,000 and 30,000 Merina soldiers, whom she deployed to pacify outlying regions of the island and expand the realm. The combination of regular warfare, slavery, disease, difficult forced labor and the practice of tangena (a harsh trial by ordeal using a poisonous nut from the Cerbera manghas tree) resulted in a high mortality rate among both soldiers and civilians during her 33-year reign; by some estimates, the country’s population may have declined by as much as half.”

Some kind of mechanic where you expend villagers to temporarily boost production would fit that. Like quickly constructing buildings for free or empowering units/buildings at the cost of the villager taking damage or even dying in the process. Churning through villagers to rapidly build infrastructure or temporarily juice up your production could make for an interesting playstyle that would fit with Ranavalona’s brutal reign. All that could still fit with your industrialization focus too as you expend and weaken villagers to crank out production buildings and rapidly train armies. Might actually be more feasible as you could get away with fewer unique buildings.

Fanompoana - Could be something like the US levies, but every time you do it your villagers get a little bit weaker.
Tangena Ordeal - Some kind of ability that empowers (or some other benefit) but it causes the villager to take poison damage for a variable amount of time. Maybe the effect could be even stronger if the villager is killed by it? Combine that with progressively weakening villagers and you’d be killing quite a lot of them.

The Kongo was another place where they just kept importing new people into the meatgrinder so maybe a similar mechanic could apply to a civ like that.

HoopThrower · August 21, 2026, 12:36am

From a scripting PoV I don’t think it’s easier to implement whatsoever.

I think it’s sort of doable, with some trickery, but I’m not sure if I can implement it as you’re suggesting it.

Some kind of mechanic where you expend villagers to temporarily boost production would fit that. Like quickly constructing buildings for free or empowering units/buildings at the cost of the villager taking damage or even dying in the process.

Like this I’m not sure how I would do it.

That said, the idea of having to spend your villagers to construct buildings does sound very enticing for a Kongo civilization. I would have to figure out what’s the trade-off.

As for Goa Migration… completely forgot it existed lfmao.

Maybe they can only get villagers only through that, it’s not like it’d break the civ.

M00Z1LLA · August 21, 2026, 11:10pm

Yeah I don’t think all of it would necessarily be doable as I had described. Was kinda just spit balling ideas.

A boost to nearby units after a villager death is doable I think. You’d just have to have them spawn a placeholder unit upon death that gives an aura to the nearby area. An empower ability that self harms is probably a lot harder to pull off.

Another way could maybe be to have a different unit administer the ordeal. Like a judge/priest kind of unit that applies tangena to your own unit that will buff them but has a 50% chance of killing them. Idk if a friendly fire attack with a critical hit chance to randomize damage is feasible. Could probably do a buff with a poison like attachment but that might also affect enemies. Ideally it would transform the unit but I don’t know how that would be possible to do.