Most civs don’t have a good counter to mamelukes. Camels work but in large mass it is hard to engage fight. Onagers get 1 shot, arbalesters dont do that well either. They are soft counter only. There are some specific units like genoese crossbow, camel archer, chu ko nu, that can kill them. But it is limited to a few specific civs. Btw saracens get SO with some buffs too.
The removal of archer armour class seems make them very op in late game. I see quite often a low skilled players pick saracens and despite being behind most of the game, once he managed to survive until late game, the mass mameluke is unkillable.
Don’t tell me they are bad in 1v1, of course i know what I am talking about. In FFA, or amazon, or 2v2v2v2, some specific game mode that allow lower skilled player survive to late game, mameluke is almost auto win, despite good players have better eco or micro.
One example I played an FFA with a 1400 elo magyar player and a 800 elo saracen player yesterday. When only they left in the map, it becomes a 1v1, Magyar player has better score and more map control. However they both saved up a lot of gold and Magyars are unable to kill mass mameluke, eventually the score flipped and saracens player won.