I guess you just need to stay on top of your scouting to see what units the enemy are making and what production they have in order to stay 1 step ahead.
That’s everyone but mali has it worse? Bc mali units are only the “answer” in sufficient mass, aka need several production facilities. Civs that can slap down their set production facilities and easily tech switch can do what you said, “scout and stay ahead”. Meanwhile mali has to hope there is enough time to sufficiently switch?.
Mind you, slapping down 6+ production buildings to tech switch not only cuts into your cow boom peak but it also takes away the opportunity to keep investing into your eco? 6 x 150? There goes your 2nd TC or farm switch, or relic sacred site captures.
Mali: stay alive to do the only viable cow boom build. Get to castle intact, mega mass a set composition, given how many production buildings you need in order to be effective. Hope all that worked? If not… hope you get enough time to tech switch before you fizzle out or get overran… Aaand 43% win rate on the ladder, gg.
I don’t think malians are at such a disadvantage in terms of production buildings, you don’t need a much bigger mass if you have the correct units. Some units are better, for example vs a small mass of maa, poison archers can deal with them adequately while normal archers could not.
Cow boom is also no longer the only viable build, now 2 tc and trade are perfectly viable, even more so than they are for many other civs.
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If you notice something, the original Asian and African civilizations have weaker units than the Western units.
This is widely accepted by the developers and they dont notice it at all (or it is intentional). It is pure racism right there. I dont think they will change it much and that is why many Asian players dont play this game much. Because the game only makes white guys super strong, and Asians or Africans are only good in numbers because they are weak and so on to their understanding.
Japanese units are some of the strongest in the game.
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Because after WW2 USA made it Japan a puppet state.
But I think it is not good to talk about it here.
Some japanese units like the yumi and onna are very weak units too.
On the other hand, you dont see such weak units in Western civilizations.
That is some CRAZY conspiracy theory man. Devs are trying to keep all civs as balanced as they can.
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prove me wrong then…
You only type without any proof.
So prove to me that you are right…
Bro they are trying best to balance.Mali didnt had a heavy armor units in real life so they trying to be realistic.If all the civs are same it could be boring.
I have a feeling someone who thinks like this will find reasons to disqualify proof even when presented to them. With such conspiracy theories about Western civs being stronger on purpose, which is ridiculous to even think about, I imagine you are from a certain part of the world. Let me tell you we, in the free world, don’t care about keeping up appearances in such petty ways.
What do you think, are pros and streamers in on it? Are they lying for the Party in their tier lists and lose on purpose against Eastern civs? The paranoia that’s been inoculated into you is mind-boggling.
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back to the topic…
Malic sucks
trade isn’t something you can establish without first having map control
cow boom is slower than other boomers
and mali can’t even chase knights/horseman in feudal; then in castle when warrior scouts finally have the speed of a horseman; it cant engage a horseman/knight until its like 5 to 1 warrior scout >. This means you have to play defensive boom.
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Can you elaborate on this?
Why do you need to chase Knights/Horsemen in Feudal? All your economy is nicely tucked in near your TC.
Have you ever heard of Sofas? Who makes Warrior Scouts in Castle with Malians?
Corvinus does:
Malians are very flexible, and warrior scouts are good in large numbers.
Nothing else to say on the rest. Warrior scouts are just a very good unit!
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Please focus on the debate around Mali and avoid talking about controversial topics that have nothing to do with aoe4 and its historical context. thank you.
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Past 3 weeks of win rates over time for malians at conq.
Its not looking any different than seasons pass???
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Uhm, yeah, I think it got worse. For comparison, here’s the list for July 2024 (Season 8):
MALI JULY 2024 S8
Before, it was over 50% after passing 20 minutes, and in post-imperial it also went up well. BUt now, they didn´t even pass the 50% limit.
Now, it’s not like Mali was good in Season 8 either, here’s a comparison with JoanDArc Conquerors:
JOAN DE ARC COMPARISON
That’s a more homogeneous scale of victories.
Interestingly, Zhu Xi has an “Inversely Proportional” scaling to Mali:
ZHU XI COMPARISON
This shows us that ZhU xI is great for rushing, but in Imperial Age he starts to decline, although not drastically, because he doesn’t stray far from 50%.
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Lets try something 
. Let’s break down specific malian mechanics into cost, setup time, return, risks, and competitive advantages?
Let’s start with cow boom since it’s one of the core design mechanics of the civ.
Cost and build time
Mill: 50w 20s
Cattle ranch:100w 20s
Cow: 90g 20s
Now the setup time, if we’re only considering initiation, only takes 40s (if build the mill first, que a cow, then immediately build the ranch). And all this cost 240 resources. To fill one cattle ranch with 3 cows following this scheme would require a total time of 80s. Now the more optimal build is to make 2 mills such that you can crank out 2 cows per 20s. So initiation of said setup would take just 20s longer, if only using 1 villager to build all, or no additional time if you had at least 2 builders multi-tasking. Say we use 2 villagers, we’d have a cattle ranch full in 40s, with 1 extra cow to go into the next ranch! Overall the setup is very fast.
Return on investment needs to factor in the mill costs, at the very least th additional mill cost, if one wants to say mill one is standard production for most civs. The investment comes down to 150w (ranch plus the additional mill), 270g (3 cows) and 35s build time. If we set villager gathering rate at 0.66 RPS (Resources per sec), this investment cost 443.1 Apparent Resources. Each cow produce 25 food per min so 3 cows would take ~6min to give a return on investment?? Ouch…
One might say the additional mill and it’s build time should be factored over the full cow boom investment? Sure, but the 50w and 20s build negated in the example above would not do much to make the return on investments much faster??
Risk with cow boom is low except that if you go greedy with 2 mills and constant cow boom, you’ll not have as much military production which means you could get ran thru by a well time all in.
One competitive advantage is comparing cow boom to 2nd TC BOOM. if you consider standard civ TC, THEN full cow boom over takes 2nd Tc between 3min until almost 11min.
Assumptions made are:
- TC Cost 750 resources,
- standard build time,
- Using at least 7 vils to build,
- TC build starts 2min after initiation of cow boom.
- Villagers trained don’t die and stay productive.
- This cow boom only goes to 18 cows to keep the math simple.
Next if you throw in the age 3 cow landmark at the 11min game time (7min into the cow boom), it extends the advantage of the cow boom over 2nd TC for another 3 to 4 minutes longer. Hence why malians peak in and around that specific Castle timing. Lastly considering food buffs directly boost the cow boom means it can potentially further extend that window where cow boom out paces standard 2nd TC.
Overall cow booming is core to this civs design and it synergies with this civs passive gold generation, but it also means you’re forced into playing defensive every game, otherwise you forfeit your civs main advantages, and this means you’re exceptionally predictable in an RTS GAME??? Hence why the losing record, bc we all know what it is you have to do, so we’ll directly counter it, and you need to absolutely play better to win as malians.
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Ideas for future malian updates!!
Villager stealth. A global cool down ability like the byz Villagers attack buff. Localize around towers. Researchable tech starting in dark age. Maybe even give it free ??
Works like current stealth, 30 sec invisible, scout, main tc, and attacking unveils hidden unit.
Next is really just an update but musofadi need longer stealth times. The recast time is good, but even with a lookout scout prepping the raid point 30s isn’t long enough time to consistently get in and on top of the target. Need more like 60s stealth. I believe the stealth for musofadi warriors should be relevant at the start of feudal, but I’d settle for at least th mansa musofadi warriors got the extend stealth buff.
I have been playing with Mali for months and I have decided to stop playing. FastCasstle is 11 minutes at best. Before the fast casstle you can only do donzos because the javalin and sofa are very expensive and quite bad. Many times they force me to do the mali tower without being able to use the trade simply to avoid the early aggression. On the other hand, the only possible improvement is cow boom and castle. Farimba and griot bara are useless (farimba gives you access to two troops but if you do not have the economy to make them, they are of little use)
Griot Bara (in late game spending gold to temporarily produce more troops or more food seems crazy to me. Because you rarely lack food and you have plenty of gold, especially in Mali, where troops cost more in gold than food than other civilizations .
On the other hand, they talk about archers and their DPS. Let’s be serious, the effect of the poison is 6 seconds, most battles do not even last 0.30-1 minute. Apart from any healing, it automatically counters the poison. (50 archers shoot and 1 monk cures the poison of 50) I say monk as the French knight or any building that heals.
A lot has to change for Malian to be competitive and versatile.
Remember that the game has 9 civilizations and one attempted civilization, which is Malian.
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