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.