We have the collaboration with the Louvre. Time to balance this unit.
The strongest counter to Mamelukes is Heavy Camels: the camels can catch the mamelukes and get bonus damage against them, while the Mamelukes get no bonus against the camels. But most civs don’t have them.
For basically everything else, the Mamelukes can either kill them or run away. A few units can be difficult to engage, like massed onagers or Elite Teutonic Knights, but these are slow units and so Saracens can use other units like BBC while the Mamelukes protect the BBC until the onagers are dead.
A strong counter to mamelukes that are inexplicably standing still is Halberdiers. But balancing a fast, mobile unit on the assumption that players won’t use that mobility to kite is wrong.
Mamelukes have had several major buffs since AoC. They no longer count as ships, so they no longer take massive damage from fortifications, and they now get 133 HP just from the Elite upgrade, without needing the Zealotry tech.
The general pattern for counters in AoE2: the counter should either be FASTER (hussars vs skirms); or it should be slower but with MORE RANGE (skirms vs CA); or it should have the same range and equal or lower speed, but be a STRONG COUNTER (halbs vs cavalry; swordsmen vs shock infantry).
Halbs vs Mamelukes fit none of these patterns, and this is why they are a poor counter despite a massive attack bonus. They are slower and lower range, and so mamelukes can just kite them. Players can kite spearmen with 1-range Steppe Lancers, so doing it with mamelukes is just too easy.
Conclusion: the generic counter to Mamelukes should be a ranged unit.
Suggestion: instead of its legacy functionality as “Cavalry armor class with 11 bonus armor, except that halberdiers do 5 less damage” (this last change in HD was so that halberdiers wouldn’t two-shot Elite Mamelukes that are missing Zealotry), make the Mameluke armor class one for bonus damage from ranged units against “ranged melee units”.
- Remove the bonus damage of anti-cavalry units against the Mameluke armor class. This makes them take less bonus damage than normal cavalry, just like Camel Archers. Mamelukes can be balanced in other ways.
- Give archer units bonus damage against this class, similar to their bonus against spearmen: +2 bonus damage for archer-line and skirmisher-line, +1 bonus for CA and most unique archer units (similar to how militia-line get a higher bonus against shock infantry than unique infantries get).
- Give Scorpions bonus damage against Mameluke class as well: many civs with weak archers have good Scorpions. Maybe +5 (+7 elite) bonus.
- Maybe add this Mameluke armor class to other ranged melee: Chakram Throwers can be a little too good against massed archers and could maybe benefit from this armor class and some rebalancing (a buff to compensate for this nerf).
- I think Mamelukes should probably have just 120 HP, down from 133, since they don’t need to pay for Zealotry anymore, and should maybe be slightly slower, like 1.3 instead of 1.4. Camels are faster than knights because they’re weak against almost everything else: Mamelukes are not weak, just expensive.