Been trying to play more with Saracens recently and have been struggling to know when is it actually worth making mamalukes? Their main strength seems to be against Cav but you have cheaper and stronger camels that do the job just as well. Whilst I find them ok for hit and run against infantry like halbs and champs they are so short ranged that it’s much harder to pull off than with cav archers.
So yer was wondering when are you supposed to use them and in what compositions and how to micro ?
Major advantage of Mameluke over heavy camel is that you can stay away from halbs and win vs them because of the ranged attack.
Mameluke + Siege Onager (esp with counterweights) is a deadly army for arena.
Against elephants they are good also (if you have space to micro)
IMO they are simply Camels-But-Better. You could ask the same thing for other units, e.g. why use Plumes, when Mayans already have great Arbalesters? Why use Boyars, you already get a very strong Knight (and Hussar) spam as Slavs.
One thing as well is that Mamelukes, because they have range, are much stronger against ranged units as they’re not restricted by pathing. Camel Riders (which are already mediocre vs Arbs) can’t all attack at once, while Mamelukes can.
The only downside is if you’re against Shrivamsha Riders, though in mass Mames will still shred.
A big Mameluke army is very scary and very hard to stop.
I general mames as a cavalry-type UU have it kinda hard to shine these days.
You see it with a lot of other cav type UUs like tarkan, boyar, leitis… It’s often just better to make knights or camels when you want to use that castle age powerspike.
It’s pretty sad that I forgot about Tarkans while trying to think of other cav UUs 
(especially when back during conquerors era Tarkans were my fav UU…)
But don’t mamalukes struggle against halbs unless you micro really hard and have a long run way ? Other than that are there other scenarios where they perform better than camels given the major difference in cost? Not doubting you guys just trying to get my head around it.
Disclaimer I predominantly play open maps
Mamelukw a’re vastly better at sniping HVTs like siege or monks, compared to camels. They’re better in general at killing anything that isn’t cav, compared to camels (upwards of 33% more damage, Nevermind the range advantage)
Usually if I’m against a cav civ I’ll mass camels and suppliment with mamelukes as time goes by. They’re a force multiplier like step lancers are(as they automatically up the dps of a combat group without interfering with bumping), and share all the same upgrades as camels, so there’s no loss in adding them to camel armies if you don’t have the time to micro mamelukes separately
If they’re mixed with camels the cheaper sturdier camels will usually die first saving your expensive mamelukes
And lastly, as far as UU go, elite mameluke is a cheap tech, meaning it’s not that punishing teching into both h camel and e mam in incrementally, Or only one since the UT buffs both anyway.