This is not about early mma rush as eco is relatively balanced early and I play knight civs most of the time. My problem is just generally man at arms feeling like they have no counter in the game.
Any other unit mass can be destroyed by mass mangonel, a good like of archers or crossbows and knights. mma run over everything. If they see valuable units in the backline they jjust run and picking them off 1 by 1 as you kite back is pointless if there are like 40 of them. Lets say you have 20 knights and 20 crossbows vs 45 mma. The mma will win. They trade well vs knights and the crossbows can get chased down. Even if they start losing they can just run back and defensively they are a far superior comp to anything that crossbows can do to them.
There has to be a better counter in the game. They are already a unit that has no counter in the early game, like knights get countered by spears for example. Can we not have something in the gme that simple counters mma hard? They are just footmen and they have the hp and armor of a bear, literally taking 0 damage from spears or archers anyway. This is just so dumb, and samurai also fall into this category.