Mali win rates have been abysmal for several, several patches now across the rank board with niche favorable matchups on a backdrop of horrid MU’s (Abbasid, Ottoman, Byz, etc…). And these observations hold even up to conq as far back as Dec 2023 patch according to aoe4world.com statistics (which is well before the TC now costs gold concept ppl have been flirting with).
Next mali playstyle is likely the most linear playstyle of all the civs, imo very much lacking in viable versatility. Which again i believe lend to their lobsided success.
Following that is their unique unit roast which does NOT in a real game setting answer every military composition question, cost effectively. They are often thrusted into situations where victory is only achievable if their rich eco can sustain a steady onslaught of units (and the fambria really puts a damper on that wonderful eco in a way you cant ignore?).
Finally let’s consider posion damage. I’m of the impression that the posion damage concept was supposed to be a stop-gap dmg to alleviate not having a crossbow unit to directly deal with armored units from range. While musofadi can in a vacuum deal with armored units cost effectively, they absolutely struggle to maintain said effectivity in the present of range damage and bodyblocking and kiting (aka the armored units do a dance to expose the musofadi to range damage and outlast them). a bit of a tangent, but borderline relevant, javelin throwers quickly becoming an inefficient way to deal with enemy range predominantly because of the low attack speed and massive overkill. So most large engagements end in mali softer frontline getting pelted and deleted before either the enemy front or th enemy backline sufficiently dies?
Since they refuse to give mali a maa or a crossbow or a standard horseman, i assumed sufficient posion should have closed that gap? Technically… if you play funny math, posion veteran archers OUT dps standard crossbows VS +4 castle age heavy units when you factory in DPS vs Heavy, per cost, per training time; which is an unnecessarily complicated way of saying, if you had to keep fielding and re-field the one or the other unit, the posion archer would provide 3% more dmg in said scenario.
This is all very consistent with the mali theme:
- secure powerful turtle eco
- and overwhelm the enemy with cheap and quickly trained units.
But the formula only seems to have been effective at S teir tournament where MUs are highly calculated? Meanwhile even the 1700 elo conqueror players not able to consistently reproduce this success across the 16 MUs going as far back as jan 2024(if you’re looking just for conq4 success)? Maybe we need to tweak it?
But to be completely fair, soo much is already in flux that it would have been improbable to predict mali would continue to struggle more or less in the same ways. For example if springalds turned out to be super exceptional vs melee infantry this would allow sofas to last longer as a front which would absolutely lend a hand to posion dmg raining down on all units.
Example posion archer backline springalds backline donso and sofa front. Enemy spears would get deleted, then posion could be reverted to enemy backline to help donsos outlast enemy knights, then mali overruns?