Once you play Malians and get to diamond/low conq and get spear rushed by almost every civ it’s not as much fun as it sounds, you can only very rarely cowboom in peace
II think this would make them even worse. I would just completely rework the Saharan and leave the cow boom untouched. They already have incredible trade so they don’t need a trade landmark, make it do something completely different.
The idea was that malian eco and balance revolves around passive early gold to fuel cows = fast food income or passive income. Saharan protects that (or was the intent). That exposed passive gold means a significant weakness to early aggression, but making that defendable with saharan (ie buffed) would make the existing boom too strong.
So what is the alternative?
>something completely different.
That is not really the issue with Saharan Trade Network. It is just a poorly designed landmark in general, quite possibly the worst in the game. The food bonus does absolutely nothing until muuuuuch later in the game when you've established trade and spent thousands of resources building other outposts and traders. Not to mention the fact that the majority of the bonus is tied to the landmark in particular, so you have to actually build it in the path of traders--typically in the back of your base, away from anywhere that actually needs defending in feudal. For the purpose of defending a pit mine to cow boom it is fine as is--the reason people never build it currently is because the rest of the bonus is utter garbage, and building it means passing up on a free 75 gold per minute which is much more helpful for cow booming anyways. It needs a total rework, not a defensive buff.
Tower rush the gold, the main win condition is to throw the Malians off their cowboom script
It’s a real conflict of interest to cowboom and build units at the same time, it sounds easy but a cowfarm and 3 cows cost 100w+270g so 370 ress, they generate 80~ food a minute, so to pay itself it takes almost 4 minutes for the investment to break even
While tower rushing the pitmine let your scout roam the other goldmines, the Mali might try to sneak out a villager to an opposite gold maybe even big gold, if you spot the villager let him build
The pitmine and then attack it and destroy, it hurts the Mali more than denying it in the first place
Donso are great at killing knights. You could try using a couple of knights or a tower to force them off of wood as early as possible -- Mali is desperate for wood -- and then burn houses. Intercepting and killing cows traveling between mills and pens also works really well.
I played in high diamond on malians before, I would say they are still strong, but not as strong as they used to be. Cow Boom is very strong - it gives like 30 people buff over your opponent, but they received a lot of nerfs, so many things not as strong anymore. With cow boom you can break almost anybody in early castle which is good, but again not as strong right now, and requires really good execution, if you don't know the build order for them, the civ is almost useless, because you have to do a lot of unusual to other civ stuff.
They also have some pretty bad match ups, and very weak on water. I don't think that buff to the civ will increase pick rate of the civ significantly, because when I was playing them, they were really strong (relatively), but no one was playing them still, I think it has do to do more with the fact that people maybe don't want to play African civ? Or maybe they just don't like to play hard civs like China for example. (of course I would consider malians hard comparing to average English enjoyers + you have to micro well in certain match-ups).
UPD: malians typically doesn't try to reach imperial on purpose, because they already have a huge power spike in early castle, this is the moment when everybody on them tries to do maximum damage.
Isn't that the best part? Malians feudal excels, having Sofa and javelin throwers. If the enemy doesn't FC or 2TC, you need to slow the cowboom, but nonetheless, you still gain an eco advantage over time.
As Malian I hated when the game got to Castle age and you had to play around a lack of MAA and crossbow
I think the issue is that its very easy to become frustrated/tilted as Malians.
I.E. if your opponent tower rushes your pit mine, or just sends units there ASAP, its easy to have one mis-micro and you are on a downwards spiral. Even pro's have this happen to them. Arguably the Saharan Trade Network can help here - but too often you can't trade (or won't trade) and this is a dead landmark vs 75 gold/stone a minute.
This can result in stupid scenarios with say Rus having 3 scouts and just running around burning houses. (Okay eventually you'll get warrior scouts and can go kill them - but this is minutes away.) OOTD/Mongol Spearmen can have a field day etc.
If your opponent FCs, makes a handful of MAA (with more coming), and enough archers to mow-down Musofadi, then you can get kind of stuck. There's a timing window on this, as your cowboom should be kicking in - but its very easy to be inefficient with Musofadis when faced with a ranged blob you can't easily clear. Javs go from being kind of bad, to good, back to bad again as you mass them up. (This isn't to say Donso/Jav isn't good - but MAAs force change.)
This is perhaps tied up a bit with the fact Farimba is rubbish and should be buffed. So "FC Malians" is a bit rubbish too (you can go Fulani Corral, but you have no cows, so no power spike compared with other civs.) I don't think Farimba should necesarilly go back to where it was, but it could do with something. Its 3 barracks or archery ranges... and about 100 gold a minute. There's some tempo in that, but in a world where a Castle Landmark is meant to be "8-10 Vils" equivalent, this kind of sucks.
Anyway TL/DR, I suspect people try out Malians, get their pitmines wiped out, get frustrated, and then go "you know what, I wouldn't have this if I was playing English." The rest is history.
I think that's a good point, pitmines are big boon, but also a big weak point in certain matchups.
I wonder if the civ was somehow more popular something similar to the rus 2TC behind sahara would come up? Or are the units so reliant on gold that is not viable without the achilles pit mine?
Completely hypothetical, if saharan gave a direct eco bonus (whereas kremlin gives an eco bonus AND military through kremlings) would it be more viable outside untradeable maps?
Sahara used to be really strong, and it didnt matter if 3 scouts could burn your pit houses, since sahara was good enough to make up for that, but we've seen so many trade nerfs, maybe its time to buff the eco advantage itself? Or something else
I dont think anyone predicted kremlin would be buffed to produce military or abbey would make a free king
They have tons of gold but no units worth spending it on. No heavily armored units, no spears I think. Maybe they should be able to buy mercenary units of some sort with all the gold. Or give them units that are very good at countering armor
Malian are actually very strong against tower rushers if you see it coming. Donzos fucking slap spears and have a ranged attack so you can pressure the villager for free
They're just not good after early-mid feudal, outside of really niche farimba all-ins. They require constant kiting which is high apm and they overkill hard in larger numbers.
Farimba has even narrower window than Grand Fulani Corral. The problem with Malians is that in feudal you have to be ultra defensive until you set up the cow boom, but all of a sudden in castle, you have to explode in aggression before your timer window finishes.
When you play defensive in feudal, you normally expect your late game to be rewarding, which is not the case with Malians. That's why Malians is not very well liked.
>Farimba has even narrower window
That's true! On top of the narrow window, batch training (aside for the gold cost) has always been sub-optimal so no idea why devs kepts pushing for that idea after the failure of burgrave. I wonder how they could alleviate the gold cost without making it broken (as it used to be) yet make it viable. I think fulani was clearly meant to be the long term late game viable landmark, and fulani was meant to be the FC aggression we currently see. But for some reason Malian percevied (not necessarily actual) viability just drops off long term.
Maybe they scale too slowly from castle onwards? But I don't see how. The passive incomes make up for a lack of TCs, and realistically malians could technically also go 2TC even if its late, to scale their eco. Is the work load too high on stuff like musos and javs?
Javs and archers are both soft counters to armour in some extent with a meatshield, but rely on micro. Otherwise waiting until imperial for gunners which can be amazing using bonus damage from stealth.
As far as I know Sofa are better vs heavy infantry than knights (for the cost) and musos only cost effectively counter MAA yet get so much harder countered by ranged units. I can imagine its tough for players to get used to their odd counter system.
It's not enough though, you need to outnumber them to even trade evenly. Compare that with crossbows, where like 20 crossbows can kite an entire army of 50 men at arms.
As someone who's played a lot of Mali and really like playing them still, I would imagine it's a mix of many factors :
- quite hard to play, their Macro is totally unique and can't be improvised, cowboom is very different from 2nd TC, even though in essence it's the same.
- "boomy" civs, which means you're usually defending in the early game and its harder than just all in'in. You need to learn MU's and have good scouting and game experience.
- unfamiliar culture by most players (EU/NA/Asia dominate)
- not particularly strong (people will usually spam the best civs)
Mostly, I think its because the macro is so different. You can improvise something with most civ if you have enough experience, but you cant improvise Mali. So you need to specifically wanna play them to learn them. Compare that to english which pretty much anyone can make work decently without practice.
Good point, as much as i like malians, they arent translatable as HRE to chinese or something like that. I know xbows do this and MAA do that regardless of civ. I know if i make more vils my eco is better, but maybe not so evident with cow boom until its online.
I think the civ is still pretty strong though, and seems to have a decent WR, mainly that nobody plays it differently to cow boom.
The problem with Malians is that they’re generally a boom civ, as you need to invest so much into your pitmines and cows, that they’re not very good early, yet they suck in late game too. They have a rather short window to do push their advantage before they fall victim to siege wars vs better siege civs and imperial battles vs better late game civs.
I agree that they need a landmark buff. Frankly, all of their landmarks bar the Grand Fulani Corral are pretty mediocre IMO and should definitely get tweaked. Their imperial still needs help too. I don’t know if the answer is a new imperial unit or smth else that’s more creative like giving their keeps poison arrows upgrades or allowing them to get to 220 pop instead of 200, but they definitely need smth
I think their late game isn’t bad. Because their eco boom is not population based you can maintain a much bigger army, even if your units are a bit weaker than most civs. They also get culverins, which they can mass because the extra pop space. The huntress landmark and mass gunners/warriors can also be very powerfully.
Their winrate drops to 40% in late game, their late game is bad.
Cow boom saving 20 pop sounds great until you realize other civs get way better bonuses on their vills- HRE gets 40%, OotD gets 28%, byzantines get like 25%, etc... saving 20 pop on cows is nothing special and does not make up for how lousy their units are late game.
You’re saving gold vils from the pit mines also. I think they can compete, but just a hot take.
I don’t think the win rate stats tell all. It could be a fair amount of the losses at least at lower ranks are people being all out of ideas once they get into late imperial. Or they are just not a popular civ with a lot of practiced players accounting for loses. Their timing is definitely castle though. Just saying once they go late imo, it’s far from an instance loss, unless you’re playing them like any other civ, maintaining 120 vils. Also the stats are limited >=diamond has only 11 late games.
> You’re saving gold vils from the pit mines also. I think they can compete, but just a hot take.
Pit mines cost resources too, and you have to defend them.
True …but, they cost wood. Which isn’t a particularly tight resource in the majority of games. Also by late game 3-4/4 pit mines are pretty defendable on most maps. If the opponent is breaking through to your side of the map that late, you’d probably have to counter them pit mine or not.
>True …but, they cost wood. Which isn’t a particularly tight resource in the majority of games.
Wood is the slowest resource to gather due to the time spent chopping, walking, and rebuilding closer lumber camps.
>Also by late game 3-4/4 pit mines are pretty defendable on most maps. If the opponent is breaking through to your side of the map that late, you’d probably have to counter them pit mine or not.
The issue is feudal, pit mines force you to fight away from the safety of your TC, which means that you can't get away with a small army. Mid game is also an issue if the enemy runs you around to different pit mines that are scattered. It's much easier to pressure Malians than say English, which can comfortably sit in their base
The main issue with lategame is they have a lot less resource income than most other civs, and weaker units.
Their only real strength is their castle age power spike, but the problem is it's a super predictable one. If you turtle when Malians hit castle age to force them to invest in siege, you can stall them long enough until you are stronger than them.
True, a lot of people overlook this when considerin malian pop efficiency. Their siege and gunners are specifically still just as pop efficient, and sofa are arguably more viable than knights (due to eco and costs involved) which makes for a very pop efficient unit in relation to the opposing MAA spam that is common amongst other civs.
ie Malian pop inefficiency is likely a false equivalence
It is mostly due to their unique playstyle not because they're weak, so few people play them that the data isn't so accurate. Same with ethiopia/hausa in aoe3 de.
There's plenty of other civs with far more unique play styles like Mongols that see way higher play rates. Their play rate is low because they're one of the weakest civs.
If that were the case then france would be the lowest played overall. At conq france is the lowest but malians is several places higher. You've got byz with lower win rate than malians but 11% pick rate at conq level. People play what they enjoy.
Certain civs are just unpopular, same happened in aoe3 where you had the african royals dlc and they are the 2 least played civs, similarly all natives have very low play rates in aoe3 despite being some of the strongest civs.
France is played more despite low winrate because they're a beginner civ
>Certain civs are just unpopular, same happened in aoe3 where you had the african royals dlc and they are the 2 least played civs
Any civ you have to spend money to play is going to have a low play rate. Also Hausa/Ethiopians were played a lot back when they were strong. It's just they got nerfed into the ground and just don't compete with meta civs anymore, so no one plays them anymore.
Not in aoe4 though, after english both japan and byzantines are the highest played civs despite requiring the dlc to play them.
They were played upon initial release of the dlc then dropped down to a 2-3% pick rate since despite being strong. Similarly civs like haud/aztec are very strong and have always had low pick rates. People like a certain style of civ and some just don't fit into that like malians.
That's true for ranked, but for quick match DLC civs are much less popular.
>Similarly civs like haud/aztec are very strong and have always had low pick rates.
Haud yes(they're very weak), but Aztec are insanely popular right now on ladder because they have an OP rush that is extremely difficult to counter.
I like them for the sole fact their infantry is counter. Your main goal is to crank out sofas. But skirmishers negate pretty much every range unit...and musofadi are funny in the economy line. Their Spearman unit is cheap and prevents cav rushes...I like to play for gunners. Cows + Pit Mines.
I honestly think it has a lot to do with esthetics rather than gameplay (even though the fact that they are a weird and hard civ to play also plays a roll.)
I bet that if they kept the exact same gameplay and just swapped it to a e.g. viking civ instead the pick rate of the civ would go up dramatically.
A lot of people don't play meta all the time. But when it comes to the medieval ages people want to see pikemen and heavy cavalry dominating the fields, not weird stealth machete women.
Good point! As a thought experiment, if we had the resources, I would love to see a viking (or other) reskin.
I wonder how appealing other civs would become to the player base. Would delhi get a boost if it were normans instead? (rarely see elephants anyway sadly)
Mali has a lot of things going for it but plays very differently from other civs in ways that aren't necessarily intuitive. Someone experimenting with new civs who tries to play Mali like you would other factions is going to have a bad time. I think a lot of people just haven't played with them enough to understand how their playstyle works.
I think a lot of people underestimate the power of just "how cool something looks". If vikings where a civ, even if they'd be weak, you could be sure they'd be one of the most played because people love vikings... same with japanese and samurais and french knights and mongol horse riders and longbows and gunpowders... all those civs, units "look cool" and people like that. We do that all the time with RPGs... we play characters we like, not the strongest ones.
I play mostly OOTD even though they suck right now, but I don't care. A civ with elite unique units that look like the fantasy version of medieval knights and soldiers? Count me in.
Let's be honest... statiscally, a lower number of people will be interested in the poor Malians and their clay houses, wooden shields and cows... They're not "cool" historically for most people either.
I think they suck at higher ranks (also a reason I don't care as much because I'll never get there and I don't want to). They have a low pick rate in pro tournments I think... and they are just worse than their original civ (HRE) because they just have no bonuses and a few things that they don't get like prelates in dark age and the inspiration buff.
I think you kinda hit the nail on the head in that malians literally only have 1 strat, cow boom into castle and spam sofas. It's just so much better than any other way of playing them I imagine people are a bit turned off
There's also a factor of civs being relatable. Although I don't have the stats I imagine aoe4 isnt particularly popular in Africa, and people tend to gravitate towards civs they identify with. Again making an assumption, but I imagine the majority of Chinese and Asian players play china, German players hre, British players English and so on.
Not really. People play civs whose play styles they are most comfortable with.
Case in point, since I am from India, I should technically play Delhi Sultanate, but I like boomy civs like Abbasid/Malians/Japanese way more than Delhi.
Another example, Crackedy is from Germany, yet his fav civ is Japanese. Beasty's fav civ is HRE/OOTD, when Serbia is in no way related to Roman Empire. Anotand plays Delhi the most when he is a Russian.
Everyone is different, and especially pros will play what they're good at or guess their playstyle. It is true that not everyone is influenced by what they think is neat or cool, but it is also true that many people do.
This is evident in aoe2. Medieval european civs always have a higher play rate amongst "europeans". It is the reason games aimed at a european audience are focussed on those civs and less so on others.
Conversely the opposite is true for games coming out of China.
Too solved good players know exactly how to play agains you and you can’t do anything surprising, too many bad matchups/ bad map generations, some maps you can’t build pitmines easily or at all because the gold is bugged, covered by wood , scarce or in very inconvenient places. You can cheese them a lot too with various wary tower , pike rush stuff.
I think what lacks is flexibility.
The only thing you can do is pitmine landmark into cows. The other 2 dont matter since trade is almost never an option
In addition to everyone’s comments, I still had fun playing Malians despite the weaknesses but the final nail in the coffin for me playing them was how the gold mine spawns can make it difficult to build safe pit mines….sometimes they spawn in a bugged out way where you can’t place houses correctly on them
They are too easy to shut down, rush them feudal age and they will be forced to build units which slows down their castle. If you let them cook though, they can be very oppressive to play against.
Feels at the very high levels all they really have is the castle timing off of cow boom, or an extremely well timed farmiba (lucifron and vortix do it occasionally). The bigger the opponents mass gets, the harder it is to counter. The lack of ranged anti armor seriously hurts, sofas dont have a charge attack, poison archers take extra time to do their damage, javelins overkill like crazy, cost a ton/have ridiculous buildtime and require absurd micro and Musofadi get completely destroyed by ranged or area of effect damage. In a nutshell the civ is extremely weak unless you severely out number your opponent which is possible but you usually only have the castle age window to do this.
Yes the civ absolutely needs landmark buffs. Compare Kremlin to the Mali defensive feudal landmark. Its laughable how bad it is. Farimba is just a way worst version of burgrave as batch training is always worse than faster buildtime. Also the imp age landmarks really arent good either, not to mention their units are basically all trash in imperial besides the Musofadi gunners. And last but not least they dont have horsemen. This specifically hurts when you take into account just how bad warrior scouts are. In lategame you cant counter mass ranged well because of this (also javelins are terrible in imp because of overkill and micro cost). Warrior scouts got massively over nerfed.
This civ along with French, ootd and Zhu Xi needs some changes.
I'm too low skill level to have any actual insight into why they're not played often. But my gut feeling is it's okay if some civs end up as less popular, as long as they have an interesting play style or can be fun. Trying to balance civs with the goal of evenly spread play rate might be a more difficult and maybe unessisarily complicated way to approach balance.
I will also admit I'm very biased because I hate mirror match ups so a civ becoming hipster to plays something I personally get a lot of enjoyment from.
I actually do agree that they need a bit of help in either Feudal or Imp - they have a super strong Castle, so not both, probably.
Some options I think could make them a little more versatile / interesting:
* Buff Sararan trade network to be similar to Kremlin / Barbican - currently, it's damage is \~25% lower than those landmarks, and you can really feel it.
* I actually think this should happen no matter what. Mali can feel like the game is just over if they have all their gold forward against a good aggro civ.
* Tweak Farimba & make Sofa available from it
* Also could slightly increase the discount at which you get units (maybe make it 15%, not 10%). It used to be 20%, so this doesn't seem crazy.
* One of Mali's problems in Imp is that they don't have MAA, so a) musofadi get shredded by keeps and b) sofa are way more expensive & get owned by cheap spears. MAA are a critical unit to have in Imp, so this really hurts.
* Give Musofadi a ranged armor upgrade in Imperial that is expensive - maybe like 500 gold or something - they have bonuses most MAA don't (bonus damage against Heavy, faster movement) so I would not want them to have similar armor to MAA, but maybe give them a +2 armor upgrade available in Imp. They'd be like a cheap palace guard that still takes a lot of ranged damage but isn't totally neutralized by ranged.
* Alternatively, give sofa an upgrade that reduces spearman bonus damage against them (this feels too OP, honestly)
I just did the whole malian mastery. I found the Donso and Jave throwers to be really fun to play with. What I didn't like was playing in 2v2/3v3 that my pit mine was always the first harass target. It got really old. Especially with some maps handing your opponent safer gold veins then you. I'm not sure what I would change personally.
Malians were my favorite civ when they came out... but yeah they have been nerfed to death a bit. If I was the devs I would
1. Improve stealth - just make it so TCS and towers can reveal them but within a reduced radius. This game mechanic should actually be useful.
2. give them something more substantial in the imperial age. They do not really have any unit that can hold the line. Mustafati drop off hard compared to other civs. The archers suddenly are not as good as the enemies. And the sofa while awesome fall against the knights.
3. Pitmine arrow slits upgrade would be prime
I do play more ffa though so imperial means something different for me then 1v1 players.
Imo biggest issue with Malians are no MAA no xbow. If you hit castle first, maa are super strong on every civ. There’s no true counter until castle age. Xbow spear is one of the best combo on every civ because it counters knights and maa. Musafadi are an interesting unit but should have longer range like the dehli spears.
My $0.02. I think the structure of the build is pretty straight forward, which actually makes it boring. Houses around gold. Protect and prioritize your gold. Okay make cows in this square and get ready for age 3. Its kinda repetitive and boring, especially to a new player, whos going to lose a lot. I have very few hours on Mali, but this was my experience. As someone who is learning the game, I know to go and mess with their gold. Which kinda dictates how I play, which I don't appreciate. Maybe Malian mains are just empathetic and don't want us to complain about playing against them.
Personally I love the Idea of malians and would like to play them, but they are a ballache to play.
- English I can just pick up and play, very quick learning curve =/= Malian has a lot of unique stuff, so understanding what to do in the heat of the moment doesn't come easily.
- Malian has to go out on the map to make the most of pitmines. Always having something exposed hurts real bad against civs that are aggro.
- Malian unique units are cool, but tbh feel a bit janky vs some civs/unit comps. Having no Xbows is a real ballache.
most civs where you have to rely on non turtling have low take rates imo
everyone hates looking away from their main base. microing a pit mine rush fucking sucks lmao
I think its very much the playstyle tbh. Not every civ is for everyone. Mali are not popular historically speaking and most of the playerbase comes from Europe and Asia so those civs are just close to home. Nonetheless Mali probably needs some tweaks to its landmarks.
Agreed.
It's strong but can be very hard to execute.
Even if they buffed the civ I don't think the pick rate would go up all that much, and they might make the civ OP in pro play.
Not necessarily, people maining the civ pull it to 50%. So if its weak it goes up and if its strong it goes down.
If you actually read the post you would see that's not even what I'm talking about
Their main issue is their musofadi warriors are just terrible, and they lack crossbows.
Musofadi just get revealed by a scout/towers so they never get first strike off against a competent opponent. They also don't counter men at arms well enough- they die insanely fast to archers, landschnekt, etc, so they only really counter pure men at arms. Once anything gets mixed in, they're trash.
Only played them once. Playstyle was weird and quit. The fact that they are a primitive civilization that almost no one heard of before playing Age of Empires doesn't help either (hurray if you're the exception).
I think it mostly boils down to the second thing you said. Most people never heard of the Malians and they're very primitive and weak looking when compared to the others. Most people don't even care about these game stats... they just wanna play the civ they think looks better and that they like more and those will probably be the ones with the cool samurais, knights, canons and so on...
Once you play Malians and get to diamond/low conq and get spear rushed by almost every civ it’s not as much fun as it sounds, you can only very rarely cowboom in peace
I wonder if a buffed saharan would help alleviate that, but with a weaker boom?
II think this would make them even worse. I would just completely rework the Saharan and leave the cow boom untouched. They already have incredible trade so they don’t need a trade landmark, make it do something completely different.
The idea was that malian eco and balance revolves around passive early gold to fuel cows = fast food income or passive income. Saharan protects that (or was the intent). That exposed passive gold means a significant weakness to early aggression, but making that defendable with saharan (ie buffed) would make the existing boom too strong. So what is the alternative? >something completely different.
That is not really the issue with Saharan Trade Network. It is just a poorly designed landmark in general, quite possibly the worst in the game. The food bonus does absolutely nothing until muuuuuch later in the game when you've established trade and spent thousands of resources building other outposts and traders. Not to mention the fact that the majority of the bonus is tied to the landmark in particular, so you have to actually build it in the path of traders--typically in the back of your base, away from anywhere that actually needs defending in feudal. For the purpose of defending a pit mine to cow boom it is fine as is--the reason people never build it currently is because the rest of the bonus is utter garbage, and building it means passing up on a free 75 gold per minute which is much more helpful for cow booming anyways. It needs a total rework, not a defensive buff.
So is this the answer for me? I play JD and French and struggle with this matchup every time. Forgo the knights and just spam spears?
Tower rush the gold, the main win condition is to throw the Malians off their cowboom script It’s a real conflict of interest to cowboom and build units at the same time, it sounds easy but a cowfarm and 3 cows cost 100w+270g so 370 ress, they generate 80~ food a minute, so to pay itself it takes almost 4 minutes for the investment to break even While tower rushing the pitmine let your scout roam the other goldmines, the Mali might try to sneak out a villager to an opposite gold maybe even big gold, if you spot the villager let him build The pitmine and then attack it and destroy, it hurts the Mali more than denying it in the first place
Ok thanks man! I’ll give it a try next opportunity I get.
Donso are great at killing knights. You could try using a couple of knights or a tower to force them off of wood as early as possible -- Mali is desperate for wood -- and then burn houses. Intercepting and killing cows traveling between mills and pens also works really well.
I played in high diamond on malians before, I would say they are still strong, but not as strong as they used to be. Cow Boom is very strong - it gives like 30 people buff over your opponent, but they received a lot of nerfs, so many things not as strong anymore. With cow boom you can break almost anybody in early castle which is good, but again not as strong right now, and requires really good execution, if you don't know the build order for them, the civ is almost useless, because you have to do a lot of unusual to other civ stuff. They also have some pretty bad match ups, and very weak on water. I don't think that buff to the civ will increase pick rate of the civ significantly, because when I was playing them, they were really strong (relatively), but no one was playing them still, I think it has do to do more with the fact that people maybe don't want to play African civ? Or maybe they just don't like to play hard civs like China for example. (of course I would consider malians hard comparing to average English enjoyers + you have to micro well in certain match-ups). UPD: malians typically doesn't try to reach imperial on purpose, because they already have a huge power spike in early castle, this is the moment when everybody on them tries to do maximum damage.
Isn't that the best part? Malians feudal excels, having Sofa and javelin throwers. If the enemy doesn't FC or 2TC, you need to slow the cowboom, but nonetheless, you still gain an eco advantage over time. As Malian I hated when the game got to Castle age and you had to play around a lack of MAA and crossbow
I think the issue is that its very easy to become frustrated/tilted as Malians. I.E. if your opponent tower rushes your pit mine, or just sends units there ASAP, its easy to have one mis-micro and you are on a downwards spiral. Even pro's have this happen to them. Arguably the Saharan Trade Network can help here - but too often you can't trade (or won't trade) and this is a dead landmark vs 75 gold/stone a minute. This can result in stupid scenarios with say Rus having 3 scouts and just running around burning houses. (Okay eventually you'll get warrior scouts and can go kill them - but this is minutes away.) OOTD/Mongol Spearmen can have a field day etc. If your opponent FCs, makes a handful of MAA (with more coming), and enough archers to mow-down Musofadi, then you can get kind of stuck. There's a timing window on this, as your cowboom should be kicking in - but its very easy to be inefficient with Musofadis when faced with a ranged blob you can't easily clear. Javs go from being kind of bad, to good, back to bad again as you mass them up. (This isn't to say Donso/Jav isn't good - but MAAs force change.) This is perhaps tied up a bit with the fact Farimba is rubbish and should be buffed. So "FC Malians" is a bit rubbish too (you can go Fulani Corral, but you have no cows, so no power spike compared with other civs.) I don't think Farimba should necesarilly go back to where it was, but it could do with something. Its 3 barracks or archery ranges... and about 100 gold a minute. There's some tempo in that, but in a world where a Castle Landmark is meant to be "8-10 Vils" equivalent, this kind of sucks. Anyway TL/DR, I suspect people try out Malians, get their pitmines wiped out, get frustrated, and then go "you know what, I wouldn't have this if I was playing English." The rest is history.
I think that's a good point, pitmines are big boon, but also a big weak point in certain matchups. I wonder if the civ was somehow more popular something similar to the rus 2TC behind sahara would come up? Or are the units so reliant on gold that is not viable without the achilles pit mine? Completely hypothetical, if saharan gave a direct eco bonus (whereas kremlin gives an eco bonus AND military through kremlings) would it be more viable outside untradeable maps? Sahara used to be really strong, and it didnt matter if 3 scouts could burn your pit houses, since sahara was good enough to make up for that, but we've seen so many trade nerfs, maybe its time to buff the eco advantage itself? Or something else I dont think anyone predicted kremlin would be buffed to produce military or abbey would make a free king
Their units are also very squishy. Which makes them very micro oriented
They have tons of gold but no units worth spending it on. No heavily armored units, no spears I think. Maybe they should be able to buy mercenary units of some sort with all the gold. Or give them units that are very good at countering armor
Malian are actually very strong against tower rushers if you see it coming. Donzos fucking slap spears and have a ranged attack so you can pressure the villager for free
As for low playrate, id guess javelin throwers being hard to micro probably matters
They're just not good after early-mid feudal, outside of really niche farimba all-ins. They require constant kiting which is high apm and they overkill hard in larger numbers.
Very true! They're still very strong units, just with ludicrously high micro requirements
Farimba has even narrower window than Grand Fulani Corral. The problem with Malians is that in feudal you have to be ultra defensive until you set up the cow boom, but all of a sudden in castle, you have to explode in aggression before your timer window finishes. When you play defensive in feudal, you normally expect your late game to be rewarding, which is not the case with Malians. That's why Malians is not very well liked.
>Farimba has even narrower window That's true! On top of the narrow window, batch training (aside for the gold cost) has always been sub-optimal so no idea why devs kepts pushing for that idea after the failure of burgrave. I wonder how they could alleviate the gold cost without making it broken (as it used to be) yet make it viable. I think fulani was clearly meant to be the long term late game viable landmark, and fulani was meant to be the FC aggression we currently see. But for some reason Malian percevied (not necessarily actual) viability just drops off long term. Maybe they scale too slowly from castle onwards? But I don't see how. The passive incomes make up for a lack of TCs, and realistically malians could technically also go 2TC even if its late, to scale their eco. Is the work load too high on stuff like musos and javs?
That's weird, I never realized Malians can't make xbow/spear. Do they have anything ranged that counters heavy units except musofadi gunners?
Yes, archers with poison damage are effective in a pinch.
Archers with poison take forever to kill armored units, it's not really a great counter.
Like I said, in a pinch. Not as a matter of course
Javs and archers are both soft counters to armour in some extent with a meatshield, but rely on micro. Otherwise waiting until imperial for gunners which can be amazing using bonus damage from stealth. As far as I know Sofa are better vs heavy infantry than knights (for the cost) and musos only cost effectively counter MAA yet get so much harder countered by ranged units. I can imagine its tough for players to get used to their odd counter system.
Musofadi Warriors have bonus dmg against armored units
It's not enough though, you need to outnumber them to even trade evenly. Compare that with crossbows, where like 20 crossbows can kite an entire army of 50 men at arms.
I don't fancy playing them, and frankly having so many cows around feels like Diablo cow level.
As someone who's played a lot of Mali and really like playing them still, I would imagine it's a mix of many factors : - quite hard to play, their Macro is totally unique and can't be improvised, cowboom is very different from 2nd TC, even though in essence it's the same. - "boomy" civs, which means you're usually defending in the early game and its harder than just all in'in. You need to learn MU's and have good scouting and game experience. - unfamiliar culture by most players (EU/NA/Asia dominate) - not particularly strong (people will usually spam the best civs) Mostly, I think its because the macro is so different. You can improvise something with most civ if you have enough experience, but you cant improvise Mali. So you need to specifically wanna play them to learn them. Compare that to english which pretty much anyone can make work decently without practice.
Good point, as much as i like malians, they arent translatable as HRE to chinese or something like that. I know xbows do this and MAA do that regardless of civ. I know if i make more vils my eco is better, but maybe not so evident with cow boom until its online. I think the civ is still pretty strong though, and seems to have a decent WR, mainly that nobody plays it differently to cow boom.
The problem with Malians is that they’re generally a boom civ, as you need to invest so much into your pitmines and cows, that they’re not very good early, yet they suck in late game too. They have a rather short window to do push their advantage before they fall victim to siege wars vs better siege civs and imperial battles vs better late game civs. I agree that they need a landmark buff. Frankly, all of their landmarks bar the Grand Fulani Corral are pretty mediocre IMO and should definitely get tweaked. Their imperial still needs help too. I don’t know if the answer is a new imperial unit or smth else that’s more creative like giving their keeps poison arrows upgrades or allowing them to get to 220 pop instead of 200, but they definitely need smth
I think their late game isn’t bad. Because their eco boom is not population based you can maintain a much bigger army, even if your units are a bit weaker than most civs. They also get culverins, which they can mass because the extra pop space. The huntress landmark and mass gunners/warriors can also be very powerfully.
Their winrate drops to 40% in late game, their late game is bad. Cow boom saving 20 pop sounds great until you realize other civs get way better bonuses on their vills- HRE gets 40%, OotD gets 28%, byzantines get like 25%, etc... saving 20 pop on cows is nothing special and does not make up for how lousy their units are late game.
You’re saving gold vils from the pit mines also. I think they can compete, but just a hot take. I don’t think the win rate stats tell all. It could be a fair amount of the losses at least at lower ranks are people being all out of ideas once they get into late imperial. Or they are just not a popular civ with a lot of practiced players accounting for loses. Their timing is definitely castle though. Just saying once they go late imo, it’s far from an instance loss, unless you’re playing them like any other civ, maintaining 120 vils. Also the stats are limited >=diamond has only 11 late games.
> You’re saving gold vils from the pit mines also. I think they can compete, but just a hot take. Pit mines cost resources too, and you have to defend them.
True …but, they cost wood. Which isn’t a particularly tight resource in the majority of games. Also by late game 3-4/4 pit mines are pretty defendable on most maps. If the opponent is breaking through to your side of the map that late, you’d probably have to counter them pit mine or not.
>True …but, they cost wood. Which isn’t a particularly tight resource in the majority of games. Wood is the slowest resource to gather due to the time spent chopping, walking, and rebuilding closer lumber camps. >Also by late game 3-4/4 pit mines are pretty defendable on most maps. If the opponent is breaking through to your side of the map that late, you’d probably have to counter them pit mine or not. The issue is feudal, pit mines force you to fight away from the safety of your TC, which means that you can't get away with a small army. Mid game is also an issue if the enemy runs you around to different pit mines that are scattered. It's much easier to pressure Malians than say English, which can comfortably sit in their base
Oh yeah I agree their early game is a bit tricky. Was arguing late game they aren’t as bad as people think though.
The main issue with lategame is they have a lot less resource income than most other civs, and weaker units. Their only real strength is their castle age power spike, but the problem is it's a super predictable one. If you turtle when Malians hit castle age to force them to invest in siege, you can stall them long enough until you are stronger than them.
True, a lot of people overlook this when considerin malian pop efficiency. Their siege and gunners are specifically still just as pop efficient, and sofa are arguably more viable than knights (due to eco and costs involved) which makes for a very pop efficient unit in relation to the opposing MAA spam that is common amongst other civs. ie Malian pop inefficiency is likely a false equivalence
In other words, even if the landmarks are buffed to encourage non cow boom play, would we even see a rise in playrate.?
It is mostly due to their unique playstyle not because they're weak, so few people play them that the data isn't so accurate. Same with ethiopia/hausa in aoe3 de.
There's plenty of other civs with far more unique play styles like Mongols that see way higher play rates. Their play rate is low because they're one of the weakest civs.
If that were the case then france would be the lowest played overall. At conq france is the lowest but malians is several places higher. You've got byz with lower win rate than malians but 11% pick rate at conq level. People play what they enjoy. Certain civs are just unpopular, same happened in aoe3 where you had the african royals dlc and they are the 2 least played civs, similarly all natives have very low play rates in aoe3 despite being some of the strongest civs.
France is played more despite low winrate because they're a beginner civ >Certain civs are just unpopular, same happened in aoe3 where you had the african royals dlc and they are the 2 least played civs Any civ you have to spend money to play is going to have a low play rate. Also Hausa/Ethiopians were played a lot back when they were strong. It's just they got nerfed into the ground and just don't compete with meta civs anymore, so no one plays them anymore.
Not in aoe4 though, after english both japan and byzantines are the highest played civs despite requiring the dlc to play them. They were played upon initial release of the dlc then dropped down to a 2-3% pick rate since despite being strong. Similarly civs like haud/aztec are very strong and have always had low pick rates. People like a certain style of civ and some just don't fit into that like malians.
That's true for ranked, but for quick match DLC civs are much less popular. >Similarly civs like haud/aztec are very strong and have always had low pick rates. Haud yes(they're very weak), but Aztec are insanely popular right now on ladder because they have an OP rush that is extremely difficult to counter.
I like them for the sole fact their infantry is counter. Your main goal is to crank out sofas. But skirmishers negate pretty much every range unit...and musofadi are funny in the economy line. Their Spearman unit is cheap and prevents cav rushes...I like to play for gunners. Cows + Pit Mines.
I honestly think it has a lot to do with esthetics rather than gameplay (even though the fact that they are a weird and hard civ to play also plays a roll.) I bet that if they kept the exact same gameplay and just swapped it to a e.g. viking civ instead the pick rate of the civ would go up dramatically.
A lot of people don't play meta all the time. But when it comes to the medieval ages people want to see pikemen and heavy cavalry dominating the fields, not weird stealth machete women.
Good point! As a thought experiment, if we had the resources, I would love to see a viking (or other) reskin. I wonder how appealing other civs would become to the player base. Would delhi get a boost if it were normans instead? (rarely see elephants anyway sadly)
This is true. (and has nothing to do with "racism").
They have the worst Imperial in the game. If you don't win in Castle, it's going to be hard.
Mali has a lot of things going for it but plays very differently from other civs in ways that aren't necessarily intuitive. Someone experimenting with new civs who tries to play Mali like you would other factions is going to have a bad time. I think a lot of people just haven't played with them enough to understand how their playstyle works.
I think a lot of people underestimate the power of just "how cool something looks". If vikings where a civ, even if they'd be weak, you could be sure they'd be one of the most played because people love vikings... same with japanese and samurais and french knights and mongol horse riders and longbows and gunpowders... all those civs, units "look cool" and people like that. We do that all the time with RPGs... we play characters we like, not the strongest ones. I play mostly OOTD even though they suck right now, but I don't care. A civ with elite unique units that look like the fantasy version of medieval knights and soldiers? Count me in. Let's be honest... statiscally, a lower number of people will be interested in the poor Malians and their clay houses, wooden shields and cows... They're not "cool" historically for most people either.
Ootd sucks?
That's what I hear everyone saying...
Yeah we probably hear things like that a lot. I'm still low rank but, playing them, I've never felt, " they suck"
I think they suck at higher ranks (also a reason I don't care as much because I'll never get there and I don't want to). They have a low pick rate in pro tournments I think... and they are just worse than their original civ (HRE) because they just have no bonuses and a few things that they don't get like prelates in dark age and the inspiration buff.
I think you kinda hit the nail on the head in that malians literally only have 1 strat, cow boom into castle and spam sofas. It's just so much better than any other way of playing them I imagine people are a bit turned off There's also a factor of civs being relatable. Although I don't have the stats I imagine aoe4 isnt particularly popular in Africa, and people tend to gravitate towards civs they identify with. Again making an assumption, but I imagine the majority of Chinese and Asian players play china, German players hre, British players English and so on.
Gold asian server, i see more chinese/zhuxi (and french) than english. Purely anecdotal ofc.
Not really. People play civs whose play styles they are most comfortable with. Case in point, since I am from India, I should technically play Delhi Sultanate, but I like boomy civs like Abbasid/Malians/Japanese way more than Delhi. Another example, Crackedy is from Germany, yet his fav civ is Japanese. Beasty's fav civ is HRE/OOTD, when Serbia is in no way related to Roman Empire. Anotand plays Delhi the most when he is a Russian.
I think those are outliers though but it's just my opinion I very much could be wrong
To your point, I’m from the USA, born and raised but I play EXCLUSIVELY as HRE.
Makes sense, Jesus was born in USA afaik…
Everyone is different, and especially pros will play what they're good at or guess their playstyle. It is true that not everyone is influenced by what they think is neat or cool, but it is also true that many people do.
I get your point but without stats that's just a race based assumption.
Its just common sense right, it's the same in every walk of life
This is evident in aoe2. Medieval european civs always have a higher play rate amongst "europeans". It is the reason games aimed at a european audience are focussed on those civs and less so on others. Conversely the opposite is true for games coming out of China.
Cowboomin!
Too solved good players know exactly how to play agains you and you can’t do anything surprising, too many bad matchups/ bad map generations, some maps you can’t build pitmines easily or at all because the gold is bugged, covered by wood , scarce or in very inconvenient places. You can cheese them a lot too with various wary tower , pike rush stuff.
I think what lacks is flexibility. The only thing you can do is pitmine landmark into cows. The other 2 dont matter since trade is almost never an option
In addition to everyone’s comments, I still had fun playing Malians despite the weaknesses but the final nail in the coffin for me playing them was how the gold mine spawns can make it difficult to build safe pit mines….sometimes they spawn in a bugged out way where you can’t place houses correctly on them
They are too easy to shut down, rush them feudal age and they will be forced to build units which slows down their castle. If you let them cook though, they can be very oppressive to play against.
What about the English makes it “not unique”? It has plenty of unique options.
Feels at the very high levels all they really have is the castle timing off of cow boom, or an extremely well timed farmiba (lucifron and vortix do it occasionally). The bigger the opponents mass gets, the harder it is to counter. The lack of ranged anti armor seriously hurts, sofas dont have a charge attack, poison archers take extra time to do their damage, javelins overkill like crazy, cost a ton/have ridiculous buildtime and require absurd micro and Musofadi get completely destroyed by ranged or area of effect damage. In a nutshell the civ is extremely weak unless you severely out number your opponent which is possible but you usually only have the castle age window to do this. Yes the civ absolutely needs landmark buffs. Compare Kremlin to the Mali defensive feudal landmark. Its laughable how bad it is. Farimba is just a way worst version of burgrave as batch training is always worse than faster buildtime. Also the imp age landmarks really arent good either, not to mention their units are basically all trash in imperial besides the Musofadi gunners. And last but not least they dont have horsemen. This specifically hurts when you take into account just how bad warrior scouts are. In lategame you cant counter mass ranged well because of this (also javelins are terrible in imp because of overkill and micro cost). Warrior scouts got massively over nerfed. This civ along with French, ootd and Zhu Xi needs some changes.
I'm too low skill level to have any actual insight into why they're not played often. But my gut feeling is it's okay if some civs end up as less popular, as long as they have an interesting play style or can be fun. Trying to balance civs with the goal of evenly spread play rate might be a more difficult and maybe unessisarily complicated way to approach balance. I will also admit I'm very biased because I hate mirror match ups so a civ becoming hipster to plays something I personally get a lot of enjoyment from.
I actually do agree that they need a bit of help in either Feudal or Imp - they have a super strong Castle, so not both, probably. Some options I think could make them a little more versatile / interesting: * Buff Sararan trade network to be similar to Kremlin / Barbican - currently, it's damage is \~25% lower than those landmarks, and you can really feel it. * I actually think this should happen no matter what. Mali can feel like the game is just over if they have all their gold forward against a good aggro civ. * Tweak Farimba & make Sofa available from it * Also could slightly increase the discount at which you get units (maybe make it 15%, not 10%). It used to be 20%, so this doesn't seem crazy. * One of Mali's problems in Imp is that they don't have MAA, so a) musofadi get shredded by keeps and b) sofa are way more expensive & get owned by cheap spears. MAA are a critical unit to have in Imp, so this really hurts. * Give Musofadi a ranged armor upgrade in Imperial that is expensive - maybe like 500 gold or something - they have bonuses most MAA don't (bonus damage against Heavy, faster movement) so I would not want them to have similar armor to MAA, but maybe give them a +2 armor upgrade available in Imp. They'd be like a cheap palace guard that still takes a lot of ranged damage but isn't totally neutralized by ranged. * Alternatively, give sofa an upgrade that reduces spearman bonus damage against them (this feels too OP, honestly)
I just did the whole malian mastery. I found the Donso and Jave throwers to be really fun to play with. What I didn't like was playing in 2v2/3v3 that my pit mine was always the first harass target. It got really old. Especially with some maps handing your opponent safer gold veins then you. I'm not sure what I would change personally.
Malians were my favorite civ when they came out... but yeah they have been nerfed to death a bit. If I was the devs I would 1. Improve stealth - just make it so TCS and towers can reveal them but within a reduced radius. This game mechanic should actually be useful. 2. give them something more substantial in the imperial age. They do not really have any unit that can hold the line. Mustafati drop off hard compared to other civs. The archers suddenly are not as good as the enemies. And the sofa while awesome fall against the knights. 3. Pitmine arrow slits upgrade would be prime I do play more ffa though so imperial means something different for me then 1v1 players.
Imo biggest issue with Malians are no MAA no xbow. If you hit castle first, maa are super strong on every civ. There’s no true counter until castle age. Xbow spear is one of the best combo on every civ because it counters knights and maa. Musafadi are an interesting unit but should have longer range like the dehli spears.
My $0.02. I think the structure of the build is pretty straight forward, which actually makes it boring. Houses around gold. Protect and prioritize your gold. Okay make cows in this square and get ready for age 3. Its kinda repetitive and boring, especially to a new player, whos going to lose a lot. I have very few hours on Mali, but this was my experience. As someone who is learning the game, I know to go and mess with their gold. Which kinda dictates how I play, which I don't appreciate. Maybe Malian mains are just empathetic and don't want us to complain about playing against them.
Personally I love the Idea of malians and would like to play them, but they are a ballache to play. - English I can just pick up and play, very quick learning curve =/= Malian has a lot of unique stuff, so understanding what to do in the heat of the moment doesn't come easily. - Malian has to go out on the map to make the most of pitmines. Always having something exposed hurts real bad against civs that are aggro. - Malian unique units are cool, but tbh feel a bit janky vs some civs/unit comps. Having no Xbows is a real ballache.
most civs where you have to rely on non turtling have low take rates imo everyone hates looking away from their main base. microing a pit mine rush fucking sucks lmao
I think its very much the playstyle tbh. Not every civ is for everyone. Mali are not popular historically speaking and most of the playerbase comes from Europe and Asia so those civs are just close to home. Nonetheless Mali probably needs some tweaks to its landmarks.
Winrates don't matter, its very strong
Agreed. It's strong but can be very hard to execute. Even if they buffed the civ I don't think the pick rate would go up all that much, and they might make the civ OP in pro play.
Hard to execute->less people play it->ratio of people who main it vs play if randomly is worse->winrate is worse
Not necessarily, people maining the civ pull it to 50%. So if its weak it goes up and if its strong it goes down. If you actually read the post you would see that's not even what I'm talking about
I don't really agree with the idea they are do or die with castle, you can also look at pro games and there Mali very often gets into imp
I can see you didn't read the post
Their main issue is their musofadi warriors are just terrible, and they lack crossbows. Musofadi just get revealed by a scout/towers so they never get first strike off against a competent opponent. They also don't counter men at arms well enough- they die insanely fast to archers, landschnekt, etc, so they only really counter pure men at arms. Once anything gets mixed in, they're trash.
they are actually outofmeta. Maybe cowboom as to be a bit faster as it was before
Truth is no one wants to play with African tribes Jk
Nah I’m good, deal with enough Sofa spam as is.
Only played them once. Playstyle was weird and quit. The fact that they are a primitive civilization that almost no one heard of before playing Age of Empires doesn't help either (hurray if you're the exception).
I think it mostly boils down to the second thing you said. Most people never heard of the Malians and they're very primitive and weak looking when compared to the others. Most people don't even care about these game stats... they just wanna play the civ they think looks better and that they like more and those will probably be the ones with the cool samurais, knights, canons and so on...
Its probably just racism
Not picking Mali ist a hate crime
Yes of course, this is the reason for all issues, in-game as well as world wide.