Mali Has Been on Life Support

Age of Empires IV IV - Discussion
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The idea isnt the landmark alone will address all mali issues but it would offer a different playstyle immediately, if implemented?

I never said “the only thing they need to do is this one thing and everything mali will be resolved.”

Let’s switch gears.

Mali’s worst matchup by far is against Abbasid! Why? Abbasid has a stronger and faster growing eco. Abbasid unit composition offers the exact answer to everything Mali with the camel archer and ghulam at the forefront of said solution. (Personally all cav archer units…and maybe standard knights…need a population increase).

Fast castle famriba with burgrave like production speed AND the freeborn units maybe the exact solution to Abbasid turtle boom? That’s one of the ways HRE handles Abbasid’s turtle boom. And it would be slightly stronger than HRE burgrave bc veteran maa aren’t as fast as freeborn and don’t have as high range armor. With 7 armor on freeborn you can sit under the TC and take 1 dmg per arrow; all that idle time will add up!!!

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Beasty malding per usual BUT notice the complaint. He’s saying the matchup is unfair (mali vs Abbasid). And if you rewatch th whole match you can hear him admit several times that he was trying really really hard to win!!!

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Solution cattle ranch should be 25 or 50 wood i prefer 25,freeborn should be open by the start and Farimba Garrison should give improved version of it.

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Your idea would further cement the singular playstyle? Cow turtle boom is all the civ can do, now; with cheap ranches like you suppose would buff something they literally just nerfed.

I’m saying mali has versatility issues, aka do something other than turtle boom, i.e. feudal all in, land grab, fast castle extra.

Switch gears.

Freeborn is a great meatshield unit, but at an eco opportunity cost of 400 food per min in castle, that’s expensive. Although freeborn in concept is a malian maa, freeborn’s soft counter is heavy unit?? Which a bit counter prodoctive, bc freeborn has a bonus vs light but will have hard time NOT being a frontline unit. Its not fast enough to easily flank like cav do. With other civs maa provide a tankier front like crossbows archer shell out the DPS. while pricy posion archers offer the highest dps of any other, price for price, posion archers still do not meet the dps of crossbows vs predominantly heavy unit enemy frontline.

Another point, if you wanna play mali eco advantage and efficient unit advantage then just got mega mass sofa archers then mix in javs as the enemy switches more and more into crossbows. Which then again begs the question what are the freeborn doing? Especially at a cost of 400 food per min opportunity cost??

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Last night i rediscovered a tower rush maliain strat i use to dabble in back when malian first came out. I believe now this strat is much stronger bc of the javelin emplacements!! This means with decent micro you can defend the towers with donso sofa warriors scouts, aka cheap and mobile units.

With this type of early tower pressure you can copy a mongol like early aggression into safer boom!

Example. You cut down your first stragglers tree all 150w, but you only build the pitmine and 2 houses. You immediately go scout you enemy to see what he’s doing and to figure out a good FRONT landmark tower drop. Around the 2:30 or so mark you pull 8 to 10 vills to trek across the map to first drop a safety tower, one you can retreat to immediately if the enemy pulls everything to defend against your landmark drop. The safety tower needs to be exactly next to your build spot so you can pop in and out. This even works vs byz bc if they pop ther villager attack buff they lose their torch abilities which means they do less dmg to your safety tower.

Lets consider the innate investment necessary to pull this off. 10 villagers pull across the map with no WB means it will take about 60s to reach the front side of the enemy base, thats 60s × 10vils =600Vil-sec gather time invested. Next to slam down the landmark with 10 villagers takes 57s build time so that’s another 570Vil-sec gather time invested. For a grand total of 1170Vil-sec. This is a lot of relative resources gathering time invested! But lets contrast all this with what the enemy may have to do to deal with your towers. Standard civ 4 vil landmark build time is 95s so thats 380Vil-sec, next most civs need to build a bsm and collect resources to research siege engineering; 150w BSM and 175 res siege engineering, then a production building to make an infantry unit to build the siege and finally the cost of the multiple siege, let’s say 2. 150+ 175+150+80+400= 955 resources! And the truth is…2 rams dont protect themselves which means they need a reasonable size army to def the siege?

So on paper you can easily see for most civs it is exceptionally pricey to deal with a tower landmark drop and in most cases the enemy will be forced to just move away as that will initially be th cheaper and safer alternative to dealing with a successful tower landmark drop.

But let’s say the dude decides to NOT engage the landmark, and just moves away? Well now you need to read the situation, is there a safe opportunity for you to go back and turtle boom? Fc tech advantage and use the tower for trebs protection? Basically a successful drop doesnt need to only payoff with the enemy immediately trying to siege your landmark down. The vision alone is extremely viable as you can significantly leverage the info to consistently counterplay.

Edit
These are th civs NOT to do this strat against ever!!
English will kill you…
China buikds faster so they will counter bbq your towers
Mongols always open up aggression
Rus is a toss up since you can’t know before hand which landmark they will make, therefore bad idea vs them
Ottoman military school opener will mean they have 3 spears out by the time you would have reached their base
Ootd*, if ootd open up spears, this strat is moot, also ootd villagers are hefty so, you need exceptional execution.

This strat works amazing vs:
HRE especially if you get lucky and drop this on the woodline nearest their chapel.
Delhi, their researches take take too long initially and if you’re hampering their woodline you’re putting them in a blender.
Abbasid, if they’re going the standard 3tc eco wing, a tower om their woodline isnt something they can ignore which means 2-3tcs get a deferment.
Ayyubids, eco wing same thing as Abbasid.
Juicy will just die to this
Japan if you can also deny gold, all the units japan needs to contend with mali requires gold.

Also dont do this vs frenches not bc it wont work but bc mali std play already has an exceptionally high win rate vs frenches.

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I’m not sure these proxy builds ever really work unless you get a perfect spawn (say you can cover 2-3 of their local gold mines so they end up with nothing.)

Or at least that’s been my experience of people proxy-Barbicaning since the game launched.

The issue I think is that if you pivot to an all in on seeing it, then the Blacksmith/Siege Engineering/Rams aren’t wasted. You were going to get them anyway to go all in. By contrast the Proxying player is down a lot of resources - and whether they back that up with army, or try and boom behind it, they are relatively behind where they would have been. So barring some major micro mismatch, you quickly stomp the proxy building - then advance on their base and end the game.

The more I use Freeborn the more I like them. What they are is a unit that can’t easily be hard-countered. They’ll lose in a straight up fight to Knights/MAA, but not especially quickly (you can just run away from MAA at least) - and you can make Donso/Musofadi from your barracks so they can easily be added in as required. They mow down archers/crossbows and they don’t die under TCs. Arguably Sofa achieve the same thing - but then Sofa are hard countered by spearmen/crossbows. Sure you can go Sofa/Archer/Jav etc - Mali clearly existed before this change. But I think it can mess up your opponents preferences given how a lot of factions like massing archers/crossbows.

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Drush in general are absolutely map dependent and this is why i suggest you immediately go scout enemy base looking for that preferable spots to drop the proxy.

And exactly true that bbq rushes has existed from the start and use to be so strong that they forced tose landmarks to be 8 tiles away from main tc… but they messed up!! The center of the landmark is where the tiles are counted from but the landmark’s range attack is calculated from its edge. Which means you can perfectly fit the landmarks as close as possible to the tc and hit everything that comes out of the main tc front side… this aside.

That’s the macro game. If you see the enemy is mounting to push rams then you dont go back and boom, you have a pseudo defender advantage esp with mali repair speed.

Lets go over the investment again but this time lets approx everything to apparent resources assuming a genric 0.66 resources per sec villagers effective gathering rate.

Mali proxier:

10vil, 60s walk, 47.5s landmark build =1075×0.66=709.5 apparent resources.

Non Abbasid china ootd foe:
4vil, 95s build on landmark= 380×0.66=250 apparent resources
Bsm 150w, siege engineering 175 resources, 2 rams 400w, (not counting the military production nor military units bc this time i assume the mali proxier is matching in order to defend the landmark)=725 resources .

Total vs total the one attempting to kill the proxier has to out spend considerably!!! 709.5 vs 975

And landmarks dont go down easily, 10 villagers can pop one of those rams while both play the mini game of in an out vs the range dmg from thr landmark.

Edit i forgot to add the safety tower cost and build time. 15s build by 10vils = 150s×0.66= 99 apparent resources + 100w= 199 apparent resources for a grand total of 908.5… so it’s not too expensive for defender to defend onself…