What is the difference between a Bulgarian Bagain 2HS and Malian Champion in the Imperial Age, since they both have armor upgraded and bonuses…
Bagains (spelling wrong?) Gives melee armour. Malians champions have extra pierce armour. Different types of armour means they do good versus different units
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Considering all the questions you’ve asked recently, maybe watch some more high level YouTube play or something, as it sounds like you are trying to improve. There’s also the AoE2 wiki for questions like this.
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Malian champions end up with 8 Pierce Armor, so they are less vulnerable to enemy archers. Fully upgraded Arbalesters deal 10 pierce damage, which gets reduced to 2 against Malian Champions. Bagains 2HS only have 6 PA (with Gambesons) so they take 4 damage per shot, double the Malians.
Malians are much better against low to medium attack ranged units than other swordsmen, including incoming town center fire. However they will still die pretty quickly to high pierce attack units like castles and gunpowder.
However for melee damage the Malian Champion ends with the standard 4 armor and 15 attack (missing Blast Furnace). The Bulgarian swordsmen get 9 melee armor and 16 attack. This means if the two units fight each other the Bulgarian 2HS hits for 16-4=12 damage, while the Malian Champ hits for 15-9=6 damage, or half. This more than makes up for the HP difference and the Bulgarians clearly perform better against melee enemies, including infantry and cavalry.
Side note, do you (all of you) think Malians’ champions have been weakened (comparatively) with the introduction of Gambesons?
It could be seen as an indirect nerf, since it allows other civs to have similar effect on their Longsword, even if MAlian bonus start from feudal age and scales in castle and imperial.
Anyway, I think the indirect nerf is largely compensated by the gold mining bonus.
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Yes, but they seem to have done pretty well overall in this patch. The gold bonus is nice, and I like the slight buff to Gbetos. In a way the Gbeto serves as Malians’ archer substitute, and is one of the few ranged units unaffected by Gambesons since they deal melee damage.
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