Local knowledge should be buffed because the first hit from stealth doesn’t even count in regards to getting HP back IIRC.
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Your point is one i forgot to mention, another reason why the tech is useless!!!
Cleave aside, if they reduce all detection radius AND made the tech something that auto regens the unit, then you’d get a mini byz flask like ability which would allow the unit to be more viable at raiding, as it would allow a dive/poke under static defenses for a brief moment.
Still im in favor of a cleave perk bc the unit needs to better function in the standard malian composition.
A lil more griping on the cow boom by way of comparison. Your starting pitmine takes only ~90s effectively to give complete return on investment if:
- You will utilize the population space
- You will utilize the mining camp
Once its paid in full its almost worth 3 villagers on gold. Sonce you can only make 1 per age, it allows its power to be better managed, on top of the fact that most golds are exposed. If you’re NOT gonna utilize the population nor use the mining camp it still only takes ~4min to pay off! Still that’s fairly quick for a somewhat cheap investment worth almost 3 vils.
I’m saying cow boom should follow this scheme, limiting the boom maximum per age, but incentiving you to invest in the cow boom wothout it having to be a full cow boom or bust!! Using the setup times referenced earlier you’d have 10( or 9) cows ranched in 2mins!! And with the suggested 35 food per min per cow, you’d get a full return on investment about 4min40s!! Yet 10 cows at th new rate only equates to 8.75 villagers. Which is meaningful but not enough on food to completely forgo food on the map.
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It would be disingenuous of me if i didn’t mention the Puppypaw warrior pro scouts into FC FAMBRIA play. Whether or not its his BO or not, I’ve now seen him do it several, several times and it has had decent success vs players of his caliber!! He lost a game vs his brother Wam (Rus) but even that game went the distance!!
You can pull the VODs off aoe4world.com, or visit Puppy’s Twitch channel. Here I’ll highlight the generic steps and conepts behind the build.
Start standard pitmine and cut a full straggler tree to surround the pitmine with houses. Age up with 5 vils(mansa quarry) to hit a 4min feudal. In transition put 7 on wood and build lumbercamp and mill asap. DO NOT COMPLETE SURROUNDING the pitmine just yet . Once you age you want to que pro scouts asap, then build a stable and upgrade warrior scouts. This will allow you to harass with scouts and go pick up the enemy deer. This warrior pro scouts play is very very effective against FC’er and 2nd TC BOOMERS, bc they won’t be as active on the map.
Most all your vills will be on food and wood until you’re aging. Of course make production as the game dictates. Once up, pick the fambria unit that helps answer the enemy composition in front of you. Depending on how successful you were on the pro scouts thing, you’ll have a huge buffer of food setup under tc that will delay farm/cow boom transition. Also eating the cows can delay the transition even further which is viable bc fambria units are actually low on gold cost.
Alright new week new post!!
How does malian beat byz?
The current popular byz build is one tailored after jigglypuff. You go standard grand winery, but you make keshiks to apply pressure just to give you enough time to FC and mass cataphracts. This BO works wonders vs Malian standard cow boom bc its distruptive enough to slow the cow boom even more and hits castle first, and cata>>sofa, both in timing and upgrades and mass. Even where cataphracts can’t match in sofa amounts, the supplementary keshiks and ghulams will suffice. Mind you byz is a turtle civ, so as the game goes longer they really settle into their base.
So how exactly is mali supposed to answer this question 
? The answer is Warrior scouts!! You see feudal sofa canNOT beat keshiks, so dumping excesses amount of resources into sofa to handle “free” keshiks will really slow you down, plus if the keshik guy is smart…he’ll just run away, you wont catch him!! But if you go Warrior Scouts you can preemp his keshiks harassment with your own and scoop up all his deer while you’re at it, and he can’t catch you!! Using the malian pro scout build order mentioned above, once you setup your pitmines, you dont need any villagers on gold, so it will be hard for keshiks to poke under your TC and the few vils on woodline. Feel free to add a barracks for comfort, plus the barracks will absolutely be used in castle.
If you’re successful at getting his deer under your TC along with with own, you’ll essentially have food to make whatever you want for the next 7mins, and if you can safely collect gold you can extend that further with cows.
Go famriba, and either go donso mansa javelineers (better for sitting under enemy static defenses) or go mansa musofadi donsos. Both options are low on gold costs. You wont be able to chase the cataphracts but the idea is to keep the pressure on their side and to rally defensive units and or static defenses at home. Bc you stole all his deer or most of it, he’ll be forced to be exposed on map berries or to transition into costly food sources which will feed into your momentum. UNDERSTAND!!! YOU’RE STILL ON A TIMER?! Deer meat plus cows isn’t infinite and net cow meat is SLOWER than berries; definitely slower than orchards/farms. So you need to leverage your momentum into something crippling. I think its a HUGE mistake to take that window and go into a late cowboom or 2nd TC… BYZ ECO>>> MALIAN? Don’t underestimate 26% cistern buff and 20% oil production off each farm.
Recap:
Immediate Warrior scouts harassment, into pro scouts scooping his 
. Use same scouts to guard relics, go fambria and pick the option that makes sense. Pressure, pressure, pressure!!! Please understand, eco for eco malians beat very very few armies!!
Note: if byz goes defensive longbows instead of keshiks, supplement your Warrior scouts with a few sofa. He’ll be forced to tower and or make a barracks, aka slow his FC DOWN!!
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The scenario mentioned above vs byz also works against jeanne because jeanne NEEDS natural food sources to keep pressure, so if you’re successful in pulling all their deer, their knight production will stall, which plays into Malian’s strong anti anti heavy cav perks.
The warrior scouts, into pro scouts into FC works very well vs half the roster except, Eng, zhu Xi tc boom, abbasid…, ayyubids , Rus, HRE,OotD, French. However about half of the list mentioned are susceptible to standard malian cow boom FC/ semi FC?
Cows!!! Cows are safe to eat!!
But all things being accessible, cows net less return on investment than berries. Cows=500f per 90g vs 6 berry bushes @ 250f ea. Vs no cost. Cows are theoretically lower net efficiency than berries too. You take total cow food minus cow cost then divide that by total time to collect cow food, (500-90)/(500/.81)= 0.6642 net resources per sec gained. Vs berries updated 0.69 net resources per sec. The reality is walking time will diminishing both effective efficiencies and more so the berries the further the bushes get from the depot.
But it’s safe to assume eating cows nets you the same total resources as eating berries. However if gold cache amounts can be negated??!! Well now cows are even better than deer meat (when you consider all the food upgrades and negligible walk time between drops)!
Now consider cows vs farms. It takes a farm over 9 minutes active gathering to equate to the return on investment of a cow. And farms can’t be rushed to net a return on investment the way you can do with cows!! So it means you have to actually gather for 9min 15s + (not counting idle walking time) to MATCH a cows return on investment. But wait! It’s even worse for farms. Its 9min+ to net th same return on investment but it’s even longer if you want to net the same resources per sec efficiency. It would take 875s of active gathering on a farm to net the 0.6642 resources per sec. (656.25-75)/(875). Again that’s 875s of active gathering, which doesnt including walking idle time. The reality is somewhere north of 900s (15min).
Okay? what does this all mean?? It means if everything is readily accessible, natural resources are all better than eating cows or going farms. If natural resources not accessible but gold/wood are equally safe, cow food will net a better return on investment for 9min active gathering per cow, cow food is a faster transition than farms since up to 8 villagers can eat from one carcass, finally a farm would take 15min+ to net a better resources per sec net efficiency over eating cows.
Scenario:
All natural food is spent and you have 12 villagers you want on food. Thats 12×75w farms 900w?? Or… that more readily 2 cows 90g ea. To get the 12 villagers working now, then supplement more cows over time to a total of 12 cows (1080g which is more than 900w but it will take 10mins+ for your 12 villagers to eat thru 12cows)??? IMO, eat the cows and keep your momentum going!!! Mali needs eco and tempo, bc your units are shitty ?!!
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This is the way to deal with byz cata FC in general, horsemen can constantly idle them as they need both gold and berries, even if they tower you can still force repeated garrisons and neither catas nor keshiks can catch horsemen.
Malian lack a true horsemen and sofas are not horsemen they are more like a weaker knight so warrior scouts is definitely the way for malians. The deer through pro scouts is a nice bonus too.
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Abbasid rant #246…
I can’t think of a matchup that is this lobsided? French into malian is pretty bad for french, but French has a few tricks/timings.
Boot camp composite bow archers, with boot camp phalanx spearman with boot camp ghulams and camel archers backline; sprinkle in some crossbows if need be; while Abbasid eco is unscathed and neatly tucked in a corner?
Malian’s doesn’t have the aggression tempo to consistently hit Abbasid with feudal all in ram rush? Can’t out eco Abbasid in a significant enough way to overwhelm with nonstop units?
And malians can’t respond with a feasible unit composition to answer the abbasid god composition mentioned above??? Unless we can leverage springalds with clump dmg???
Let’s try something…
Let’s go standard malian boom of sorts into FC. But go famriba and pick freeborn… make a million barracks in order to spend every bit of your eco. Your endeavor is to force spear ghulams out of Abbasid. If instead he goes knights/horseman camel archers, then mix in donsos. You want to just sit on his eco similar to how you’d do with sofa vs other civs. Eventually the abby player should stablize and repel you. Again the hope is he goes ghulam spears camel archers, range infantry.
At that point if he does as you anticipated you want to transition into springlads and posion archers, as a small backline. You’re still gonna be mostly freeborn and other infantry (donso musofadi mix into your heavily freeborn army). Now is the hard part. With 6 springlads… you can 1 shot spears and 2 shot ghualms, but not only do you need to micro springs to shoot center clump but you need to constantly reposition your frontline to force Abbasid front to funnel to maximize your spring dmg. 2 springald shots takes ~6.3s, so you need to stay alive for only that long to HOPEFULLY kill a good portion of Abbasid front. IFFFF you can pull this off, then remaining freeborns will run down the range infantry.
Problems… you have to micro your springs and your front constantly to maximize dmg. Meanwhile his range units can easily A move and/or focus fire your springalds, while his Abbasid front try to get an angle onto the springalds. And if he adds cav… yes you can donso, but donsos wont last under composite bow, and the cav will have a much easier time flanking for an angle. I got it?!
Instead of donsos go warrior scouts. You’re not attempting to counter the cav, instead you just want bodyblocking meatshield. Warrior scouts are cheap and with regen almost last as long as standard horseman under ambient range dmg. So subtract the archers and go full barracks freeborn, then freeborn warrior scouts springalds. Mix in a few musofadi and donsos as needed.
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How do poison damage archers do vs bootcamp, composite bow archers? I believe they have higher DPS?
I’d probably go poison archers with sofas, micro the sofas well so they take damage up front but don’t get hit much by the spears and just let the archers out dps everything else. This would force them into crossbows, camel debuff doesn’t matter much as you just want some sofa to tank not to deal damage.
Theoretically posion offers more dps, but practically isnt always the case bc posion take 6s!!! To resolve. Also composite boot camp archers beat posion archers head to head even if you get the time for posion to resolve.
Abassids boot camp archers have 92 Hp in castle. Divide that by 10 dmg (7 vet archer dmg + 3 posion) = 10 strikes, which takes 16.25s for 1 archer to execute. Meanwhile composite still has the standard 7 vet archer base dmg but a reload of 1.25s and only 80 vet archer HP to chew thru; that’s 12 strikes but one composite bow archer executes that in 15s. Remember posion is 6s which means most the posion archer kills will be over kills, more so than the composite archer kills.
You just depicted standard malian composition that gets utterly butchered by the Abbasid god comp.
- phalanx spearman will hit sofa before sofa hits anything,
- boot camp ghulams are tanky at 224 hp and 4/4 armor,
- camel archers 20% debuff on cav render those sofa inept,
- lastly the crossbows will easily!!! Clean up whatever is left on plate.
Sofas wont tank for long?? And tank for what?? You have no range dps that can chew thru ghulams. Vet posion archers require 38 strikes to kill 1 ghulam??? Musofadi, in a vacuum, require 2 to 1 non bootcamp ghulams ratio in order to be favored. If we’re talking large mass fights, it’s improbable that you’ll maintain the surface area to keep that ratio honest, let alone deal with the reality of composite bows raining death on the musofadi efficiently.
Are we forgetting this is a 7, 3 MU in Abbasid favor across the ranks AND. In tournament??? THERE is zero ways that there is a simple solution yet pros and joes alike can’t solve it? And you can check the win rates going back at least 2yrs??
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Phalanx tech no longer gives them additional range when bracing iirc, so with good micro you stay out of range and just tank archer shots.
Was talking more from just vs spear/archer. If we add in every single unit to the possible abbasid composition then we just go in circles as to what unit counters the other. In general they’ll focus on 2 unit types. If they make ghulams you make crossbows, if the composition is mainly ranged you can use some freeborn, mostly ghulams use some musofadi.
I don’t really consider ladder win rates as there are so many factors, I originally got to conqueror using only rus which has often been 1 of the lowest win rates yet imo is 1 of the best and most versatile civs there is.
“No further questions your honor.” 
Rus has been 48% win rate or better at conq going back all the way to 2023? What’s lowest about that? Also i offered both tournament matchup win rates along the several, several hundreds of ladder games (that you claim are irrelevant bc of “too many factors”?)
For the next expansion, malian needs a powerful and expensive age 4 unit to pour their excess eco into. Before late game, malians military advantages revolves around efficient production and superior mass. As the game prolongs those advantages flicker away.
This is why an expensive and powerful age 4 unit, would be a great way for malians to regain some power in the late game.
I vote for a javelineers posion dmg tower 
elephant!!! This unit NEEDS to be anti heavy unit, which would make it Malian’s only anti heavy RANGE unit!!
I’m still in favor of musofadi cleave. It has more POP, more pizzazz!!
But an easier answer to malian early aggression map control opportunities is to give sofa a charge bonus like a real knight!!
Again I’m more in favor of getting longer stealth and cleave.
Heck let’s shake it up. Remove posion javelineers from fambria. Make posion upgrade apply to ALL non gunpowder, non siege range dmg!!
- Springald
- Archer
- Javlin
- Static defensive arrows AND Springalds attacks
- Archer ships (only inflict bio units)
It already too expensive of an upgrade to NOT even make the malian archer the most deadly of archers, cost for cost. So it might as well apply across the board.
… i dont know why any of these suggestions need to be either or?? We have no maa, no crossbow, freeborn are a close 2nd to a Maa but at a heft cost to our eco. So why can’t we get charge on sofa, cleave on musofadi coming out of stealth, with longer stealth AND posion across the board??
This will continue with the theme of rich strong eco civ with powerful cheap units that are all exceptionally squishy??
I agree with that.
In theory, considering the historical units that are missing to represent, they could be given for Imperial (IV):
- Farimba.- As a powerful heavy cavalry, General with some area bonus.
- Farari (Brave-man) as elite heavy infantry. The Farari would be good considering that they are a Civ with “Infantry” in one of their epithets.
The freemen (Horon), are already there thanks to the rework of the Farimba Garrison. As mentioned before, they could make it a “normal” unit, maybe for Castle Age, it would be a slightly inferior version to its “Mansa” version, and the Farimba Garrison upgrade would give it its current stats.
SONGHAY VARIANT
However, since the next DLC is coming, to give ideas, if they want to release a Mali variant, let it be the Songhay, and instead of infantry, they could have Cavalry as a keyword. Unique units would be:
- “Tuareg Camels”.- Anti-cavalry unit.
- “Songhay Horse-Archer”.- Horse archers with less HP or attack than other horse archer, but cheaper.
- “War Bull”.- Mali War Ganadery, only cost food, cheaper and powerfull but has 0 armor.
- “Golden Band Warrior”.- New infantry that replace musofadi.
I guess they would lose the Musofadi and replace them with a generic handcanonner.
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Even if there won’t be a significant change to Farimba, at the very least, poison damage and speed bonuses should be added to Mufosadi Warriors and Freeborn Warriors, just like it was done for the Javelin Throwers. This will make them more effective on the battlefield, granting them both tactical and strategic superiority over their enemies. Furthermore, when advancing through the ages with Farimba, the speed bonus that Sofa units have could be generalized to all infantry units without requiring any additional research. This would grant Farimba’s armies greater mobility and agility, making them more adept at hit-and-run tactics, allowing for swift maneuvers during combat.
Additionally, the possibility of giving Farimba units an enhanced stealth ability could be considered. With this, units could infiltrate enemy lines unexpectedly, launch ambushes, and create chaotic situations that could turn the tide of battle. Such an update would enable Farimba to reach its true potential within the game.
One of the most crucial aspects of the Mali civilization is its ability to catch enemies off guard through speed and unpredictability. Their strength lies in their ability to create chaos on the battlefield, disrupting their enemies’ plans and gaining the upper hand. It’s essential for developers to highlight this aspect of Mali’s playstyle. The revival of this nation will come through emphasizing this speed, chaos, and strategic diversity. Such a strategy would not only better reflect the spirit of the historical Mali Empire but also offer players a more creative and dynamic approach to gameplay.
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Posioned Arrow upgrade is expensive (175f 500g), takes 90s to research, only nets 3 true dmg and takes a long time to resolve in reference to a typical engagement (6s).
Posioned Arrows result in massive overkilling on light melee units with extremely niche and mildly advantages breakpoints; impractical vs heavy units ; and despite the extravagant cost is NOT the highest archer dps vs light, non melee units??
All this on the backdrop that mali has no efficient range dps vs heavy units, yes imperial xbows dish out more dps per cost than musofadi gunners with serpentine powder. And im using the xbow as the standard since it is the standard with every other civ.
My idea is to keep posion as an expensive upgrade (675 resources…which is the most expensive castle upgrade in th freaking game that i know of?) But allow the upgrade to make the mali archer approximate an xbow cost for cost. Something like a mali archer is worth half an xbow cost for cost vs heavy units.
Posion will now inflict 9-12 dmg over 6 seconds but can now be removed with a healing action. 1 healing action removes 1 posion affliction, and removes the afflictions starting with the first one registered and so on (this allows for max posion dmg even with healing.
Again it is rare that posion archers will take an engagement with current posion will jave sufficient time for each affliction to resolve. And even if such an occurrence were to happen it would rarely result in new kill breakpoints. This is why posion should inflict waaay more dmg incrementally and still take forever to resolve, so it can be impactful in the now and devastating over a very long skirmish vs huge HP units (elephants!!!).