Mali Has Been on Life Support

Age of Empires IV IV - Discussion
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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:

  1. secure powerful turtle eco
  2. 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?

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Malians simply don’t have enough time to boom at the highest level but they are actually great for anything below conqueror where you get left alone a lot more.

You also are completely right about the archers, the poison damage archers are just ridiculous units in terms of DPS and you really don’t need much else to win.

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I purposefully picked an older stats b/c I wanted a large sample size; sort thru this and see mali win rates consistently remains below 50% at all ranks.

This statement you suggest is not supported by aoe4.world.com statistics; I hope 80k data points are suggestive.

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The ladder win rate doesn’t correlate to the strength of a civ, rus and china have had relatively low win rates on ladder but are considered strong by pro players.

I as a high ranked player can fully utilize the strengths of malians, your average gold 3 does not they immediately start making cows regardless of the opponent they face, same with pit mines. Malians have a very strong eco and now with recent buffs have options whether that be 2tc or trade. Also the skill ceiling of the civ is much higher, they aren’t an easy civ to play like french or english due to the unique units, there is no maa you can spam and win and there’s no crossbow either.

The civ is strong just not noob friendly.

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you just said both things? Which is it? So in my attempt to marry your 2 statements I’d have to assume the civ is only useful by pros? And thats a good thing?

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You can watch beasty play malians and see that it is possible to play them very well at the highest level but there’s a huge skill variation between a pro and conq 3.

Just because a civ is great at lower levels doesn’t mean people use them correctly, malians have everything they need to be strong throughout the ranks but because of their different units/playstyle people don’t play them correctly.

I think good, intelligent rts players that practice with them can certainly make full use of them, but your average gold 3 cannot so they will always be lower ranked in win rate at lower levels despite being strong.

Average gold ranked english enjoyer that spams longbows and man at arms if he tries to play malians, he immediately builds all the pit mines possible, gets vills on gold and immediately starts producing cows but this civ doesn’t have stronger tc’s or network of castle bonus and is vulnerable to early pressure. He see’s a sofa as a horsemen and makes them against crossbows, he thinks musofadi are man at arms and gets wiped out when massing them.

Unfortunately just the difficulty of the civ makes them bad in the hands of a novice, this will always be the case with the more difficult civs like china.

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I dont think you’re listening to what I said?

Let me repeat what you said to express that I understand you. You’re convinced the pro’s are the true testament to a civs true strength, and how the civs might perform at any other level less than pros isn’t necessarily knock on said civ?

if that’s what you said? i ask the question? Why is it ONLY the pros can channel the strength of said civ? why can’t even the 1700 elo player channel said strength? And let’s say ONLY the pros can do it with this civ? Is that good for the game if a civ is regulated to pro exclusive use? So no other player base is allowed to enjoy the civ and WIN?

I didn’t merely suggest just the gold 3 player is struggling to be successful with the civ? I supposed if you looke up the ladder 1v1 rank stats from today all the way back to Jan 2024 you will find each rank (bronze,silver, gold, plat, diamond, conq, and conqIV !!) each have a LOSING RATE? With the picture above giving you a snapshot result of 80 thousand 4 hundred and 20 data points strong, suggesting? The vast majority of the players are woefully struggling to “channel the strength, that so far only the pros… can do consistently?”

Also something not mentioned, but worth mentioning? Even the pros have absymal win rates (by comparison to pros avg win rates) when it comes to Mali vs Abbasid; Mali vs Delhi; etc etc? Maybe the pros need to become more pro?

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Malians will have lower win rates at even pro level because they are just less played, very few people main malians.

I’m sure there are some gold players that are excellent for their rank with the malians but the civ is just extremely unpopular for the most part.

If you’re convinced malians are bad, what do you think is bad about them or causes so many losses? I see a civ that can trade very well and very safely with good bonuses to trade, if it’s not a trade map then you can 2tc and secure your second pit mine with that tc. Alternatively you can FC with the corral and do a massive cow boom and then spam units.

It’s good on water due to passive gold, good at trade, good FC/boom, good at 2tc.

Is it vulnerable to knight civs? No because you have the best spearman in the game, is it bad vs the gold 3 speciality the longbow rush? No because you have the javelin thrower that hard counters ranged early on.

Theres no glaring weakness of the civ, in fact it is extremely versatile.

The only possible weakness of the civ is in post imperial where other civs eco catches up but in 1v1 this is a very rare occurence.

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Where is your data that helps you believe this?

Where is your data that helps you believe this?

Where is your data that helps you believe this?

Where is your data that helps you believe this?

You didn’t interact with my idea that, “Is it that only pro’s can channel this strength?”
You didn’t explain away either how 80k data points is moot in this discussion about wins? At the end of the day it comes down to wins, right?

You also didn’t interact with, “Is a difficult civ that only a very very very small select group of ppl can use to success, is GOOD game design?”

Also it’s a glaring oversight in my opinion, that you’d think some of the perks you picked out about the civ, must have clearly been missed by the larger set of players that have been attempting to play this civ at all ranks going all the way back to Jan 2024?

Let’s pivot for a moment to reference English civ. (Personally I hate English…)

English is a well design civ; it’s an entry level civ that also has exceptional versatiliy at the highest end (pro level). It gives every rank something to do, something approachable/challenging for said ranks. It has decent matchups and just 1 or 2 less favorable MU’s, even then we’re talking 60/40 at worse; not like Malian that has 3+ MU’s close to 70/30?? ENG IS A GOOD CIV DESIGN IMO.

EDIT:
I want to reiterate
I believe a lot is still in motion and this patch is too young to call Mali absolutely dead as seasons passed! I still believe MAYBE siege changes might fill in some mali gaps in a way that the majority of the mali player base can capture.

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The pick rate of malians is always the lowest or the second lowest, it is a very unpopular civ due to its vastly different mechanics. Same was true of the native/african civs in aoe3 DE.

The data of a civ being good at trade or on water is it’s bonuses. Otherwise it would be generic. Malians get passive gold while fishing which is huge, for trading extra res from toll outposts and extra defense from the cheap javelin emplacements. 2 TC with no need to gather stone and most of the gold required generated passively while you age up,

Not sure what the data thing is about but as far as I’m aware there isn’t a way to sort win rate by strategy used so we must look at the bonuses the civ has that make it better at something than another civ. Malian trade is obviously better than english trade due to the bonuses I mentioned for example. Malians are known for their FC/cow boom.

As I said before low win rate does not mean a civ is bad just that people are bad at playing it. It’s exactly the same with china. Whether it is good game design to have civs with higher skill ceiling I don’t know but there are many civs to choose from so I’d say it is nice to have the option to play and learn these more complicated civs if you want to and if not you can play french or english etc.

I don’t think it is an oversight because many of the perks are very new to malians, only recently has 2tc become viable and only in this last patch has trade become good again, fishing bonus was also a fairly recent change. So there is very limited time with the new options and due to the very low pick rate theres very few games played with these playstyles being viable.

Now with the nerf to siege that effects other civs more than malians who rarely made siege and now should you come up against siege you can easily destroy it.

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So again you agree with th concept that a civ skill FLOOR (not ceiling…) should be so high that you need be a pro to get it??

High ceiling means the best players can really maximize. But a high floor means the vast majority will not be successful? China is a bad example imo bc china only struggle on the ladder in lower leagues but had as high as 60-70% win rates at th higher end, sub pro.

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I think it is fine as there are a huge amount of civs and you can choose an easier 1 if you want. It’s good to have the option to learn a more complicated civ if you wish to put the time in to learn them.

China was also 4th lowest win rate at conqueror.

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Malian Cattle Ranch need to be cheaper they need to access that pasive food as soon as posible since most of the civs get their gather bonuses instantly.It can be 25 wood like the houses.

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Or 50 wood, but 100 wood to build a corral seems excessive to me too.

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if anything should be done, it should be to expand their versatility; recently they received a nerf to their cow boom; aka too safe and potent. More should be done to make their trade viable on open maps; and their water play; or even make a realistic FC famriba option. For example revert the famriba to a cheap burgrave on top of the unique units! But of course it can only train the unique units so its not a fully infantry landmark, but at least it wont be a mere 5k 1 unit production building.

Mali could do well to get a Burgrave like play and it would definintely be a change in pace.

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Bro this thing you said isnt a solution because what happens if i want to play with other landmark?

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I don’t think the game should just be balanced for pros because they themselves are not balanced.
Ruthlessly AoE4 is a high skill based game. The top 10~ players have a comically high win rate versus the rest (and if we go with tournaments I think you could narrow this down still further). This continues to be true if you then go down to the next best 20 players versus the rest and so on.
The very top of the game could therefore be divided up into Conq IV, Conq V and Conq VI. You wouldn’t talk about civ balance when a Diamond player played someone in Gold II - the skill differential makes it meaningless - so why does it come up here?
Maybe you could lock say Marinelord and Beasty in a room and make them play game after game to try and find the balance in all the matchups with different opening builds etc, but this isn’t practical.

If a Civ is overperforming from Gold to Conq, its almost certainly because its getting a powerspike earlier/more consistently than the other civs. (This can be described as “easier to play”) And vice versa, if a civ is underperforming from Gold to Conq its probably because its not getting a power spike, or that power spike is harder to consistently achieve.
I.E. years ago China had the worst win rates on ladder, but pro’s considered it the best civ. Why? As far as I can remember because it had the best late game eco+unit combo. (Palace Guard, Handgunners, Nobs+Bombards.) Getting to late game for the pro’s wasn’t overly difficult as they knew how to drag out games, not overcommit etc. But for less skilled people on ladder, there were countless hurdles to navigate if you wanted to play that way - and in turn a strong tendency to just die, hence tanking the win rate. (Zhuge Nu all ins by contrast were a lot easier to do.)

I feel the problem with Mali is that their eco bonus is tied to pit mines. Spawn matters for all civs - but it matters even more for Mali if their gold mines are all half way across the map towards your opponent.
Secondly, if you get pushed off gold, the civ almost collapses. You lose your free gold. You can’t make javelins, you can’t make Sofas (okay in Feudal an unusual/not great choice) and more importantly you can’t make cows which is your other eco bonus. (Okay if you’ve taken the Mansa Quarry you’ll have a constant trickle - but its not adding up to much.)

So you have to carefully balance expanding your economy while still making enough troops not to be overwhelmed. Other civs can retreat to safety of their TC (either for a time, or in the case of the farming civs, forever). Malian not so much. Sure - some of the best players in the game can manage this quite well. But frankly in tournaments we sometimes see them screw up by overcommitting or making the wrong units and consequently just dying in a way we don’t usually on other civs.

This raises another issue - if feudal sofa are “bad” - then what are you going to harass with? You can waddle Donso/Javs across the map, but if you get caught out they are dead. If they are out of postion and your opponent does a run by into you base with cavalry, they are never catching up. You are stuck on the defensive which is rarely a good place to be - especially for playing in gold-conq versus the pros. Certain civs will just outboom you. (Tbh few people expect a Sofa/Archer all in, and it can catch people out, but I don’t think its mathematically “good”).

I don’t know if Malian Trade or 2TC opens up significantly different gameplay in certain matchups. The idea of covering the second pitmine with your 2nd TC is interesting to me - but it feels like it would be suicide against a vaguely competently executed 1 base all in. Even more resources commited - and even more resources now almost certainly lost. I’d like the tower landmark to be good - and I think it is useful in lower leagues if you opponents keep on going full baboon into your initial pitmine (which I feel is what tanks Malian play rates as it can become very miserable to play game after game). But trade is map dependent - if you can’t trade, its really not contributing anything. (Maybe there’s a build with lots of towers with the 75 gold javelin emplacement? But it feels unlikely.)

FC into Farimba feels pointless. You get no eco bonus. You get a unit upgrade but you don’t have any of that unit. All 3 are nice to have, but hardly represent an instant power spike compared with what the other FC civs tend to get. Likewise FC into the cow landmark when you have no cows is pointless (sure it will eventually get power if you fill back in, but this seems inefficient because it is.) You don’t even get Knights/MAA to very quickly punish someone who’s massing feudal units. Veteran Sofa are good after Imported Armour, but that’s a 500 resource upgrade so its all taking longer to kick in. Poison arrows is good too - but at 675 resources again this is a non-trivial cost and offers no instant power spike.

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The cow landmark?? Then you cow boom. I dont understand?

I said mali needs viable versatility. Right it’s only a turtle boom civ every game that manages to be successful. Since we want to use the pros, check their records and see how many games you can find where mali won?? And it was not the standard cow boom into cow landmark.

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I agree the farimba should still work like it used to, perhaps to a lesser degree now you get the unique units however currently in most scenarios it still isn’t as good as the corral.

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You dont get what im trying to say buffing that landmark dont fix the mali in general.