Malians suck in Imperial?

Hey there!

Just posting to get some views on the Malians in Imperial age. I feel like they’re very decent in Age II and III, if you micro enough but in Imperial age it’s soooo hard to keep up. Especially against knights and other heavy units.

This seems to be a pattern lately. How do you feel? Any idea on the matter?

I think they rely a bit on devoting extra pop space to military and having less villagers due to their passive food and gold production.

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I think their strength is on using their special abilities(stealth for example) to fight one or two lop-sided battle and snowball from there. If Malians don’t have an edge well into Imp, they are at an disadvantage. Imp powerhouses like Ottoman and Delhi will crash them by brute force while they’d have a very hard time attacking well-defensed English or Germans. They also can’t compete with the French in open field battle.

Thanks for your replies.
That’s what I try to do, when possible: to attack on multiple sides but once everything is walled, it’s very difficult.
And yes, open battles again English, French, etc… is veeery difficult in the long run.

ahm they have acces to culverins they can t beat bad in late game imp. Any civ that has culvs is very strong in imp.

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Not if you lose the cavalry fight on land or gunpowder shoot-out on water. Mali lacks in both.

Their advantage is when they fight with equal resources, but when the population limit is reached they lose that advantage, thanks to the bonus of gold and food from the cows they can have fewer villagers than the other civilizations (I think 13 less villagers). but it’s not enough, late game

https://forums.ageofempires.com/t/malians-rework-good-early-game-but-worst-late-game/216907/28?u=hasanichess

Malians need a complete rework. It’s completely broken how easy they are to play with. It’s not that their units are broken, but they are mechanically broken because you basically need to worry about securing one resource point. This is reflected in their overall winrate.

The stealth mechanic, under capable hands, could win you the whole game without much of a chance for your enemy to prepare against, because you can’t detect them. In the same way, it can prevent you from dying earlier on if your enemy feudal rushes you. You wanna ram Malian TC with an archer mass backing up to snipe meele units/villagers attacking the ram? Good luck with stealth units wiping them out in an instant after moving on top of the archer ball.

Their winrate is slightly high at the higher levels. Like 53%, so probably need some slight nerfs, but still totally reasonable.

The stealth mechanic, under capable hands, could win you the whole game without much of a chance for your enemy to prepare against, because you can’t detect them. In the same way, it can prevent you from dying earlier on if your enemy feudal rushes you. You wanna ram Malian TC with an archer mass backing up to snipe meele units/villagers attacking the ram? Good luck with stealth units wiping them out in an instant after moving on top of the archer ball.

Their stealth is completely negated by having one scout in that army…

Likewise towers also reveal their units.

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Malians have the best archer ships in the game, and late game water is won by archer ship mass. So u are simply incorrect on that front.
and then u say lose a kav fight on land?? U mean ur worse kav units dosn t win vs other ?? Not shit u lose vs heavy knights from other civs when ur kav is not ment to win vs it. On top Malians have the highest damage infantry in the game the handcannoner does over 40 damage a hit, no other civ has that. It has absolute broken trade and pretty much unlimited gold on top of having culvs that are literary the best anti siege unit in the game right now. And do u know what wins games in late game, it’s the siege that wins the games, nothing else. The siege that breaks the defensive backbone and opens up the enemy base to attacks. So don t give me that shit that Malians are week late game, they are super strong.

" and late game water is won by archer ship mass." For example? which match? I’ve seldom seen it. What I usually see in late-imp water map is a broadside shoot-out of naval cannons.

Yeah, but you can snipe scouts easy, hence why I said “capable hands.” You can snipe scouts with just a handful of javelins, at which point any reasonable person will need to fall back and the whole push is done for. And if you commit anyway without the scout, which was sniped, Malian units will be on top of you and there’s the gg.

These are conqueror data, from minute 20 his winrate goes down

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Yeah, but you can snipe scouts easy, hence why I said “capable hands.” You can snipe scouts with just a handful of javelins, at which point any reasonable person will need to fall back and the whole push is done for. And if you commit anyway without the scout, which was sniped, Malian units will be on top of you and there’s the gg.
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If we are assuming “capable hands” then lets do so for both players.

A scout’s vision radius is huge, much larger than the range of javelin throwers.

If u have 20+ archer ships, u will kill anything that is not 20+ archer ships because of the aoe damage the archer ships do. U will literarily kill 1/3 of the enemy army in 2 volleys and then the next 1/3 in 3 volleys, and u will have maybe lost like 7 ships by that time. Not only are they cheap af in late game making them very spamabel, on top of this Malian archer ship shoot an additional arrow basely increasing their dps by more than 10%. The big imperial cannon ships are slow af die superfast to explosive ships and are only strong vs buildings. and the Springald ship in imperial counters in theory the archer ship, but u need to micro way more than u should need to beat the mass archer ship. On top u can just add a few explosive ships and his entire army has to run or focus the explosive ships which means ur archer ships will aoe them down anyway since they will clump up even more if u target single ships with ur hole army. TLDR archer ships are an A move counter to anything if u mass them.

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