Why do malians need to be top 10 civ? Do the devs receive 10% extra revenue when Malians perform better?
Mlalians are an infantry civ. So they received a general buff along with other civs in april patch. But it was not that Malians were unplayable civ like Dravidians or Bengalis on release or any point afterwards. They got a buff on their bonus just because they are an infantry civ. Not that their design needed it. Dravidians instead got an 33% discount wood bonus because the estimated 200 wood was not enough of a bonus to play beyond early castle age. So the bonus is like a patch on a gaping-hole. What Dravidians needed was a re-work of the civ bonus and tech-tree. But that is still pending.
Did Malians really need the gold bonus? They had free pierce armour for infantry which has no historical context. But they were designed to play infantry by dev team. Yet they don’t play infantry beyond feudal age and get +5 attack to cavaly as end-game tech. why were they designed with more pierce Armour then? Can’t they do any off the meta infantry strat like Dravidians are advocated to play? When Devs can be generous with other civs, they need not be so stuck-up on their original wood gimmick for Dravidians.
Devs have given Dravidians unwinnable conditions for the casual player. So the play rate is low. And its not like chinese either who are top 10 for the best players. Both Malian eco bonuses starts helping in Dark age itself if mining gold is done. So, people in the forum are complaining for Dravidians to get better economy bonuses to play better from Dark age too.
Personally I’m against this type of 3 in 1 bonus. They keep pushing the ceiling higher for all strats. Mailians now neither run out of gold like a faster mining civ nor they get a more enduring army using longer lasting bonus for late-game. There is no window of weakness to exploit for the opponent civ. Devs need to be careful before introducing these kinds of bonuses and seeing the effect they should have removed it instead of nerfing to 10%. No wonder they are top10. They have a game-breaking bonus compared to others.
The 100% was suggested in a different thread when their winrate dropped to 32%. The suggestion was quite recent.