Musofadi warriors underperforming?

Age of Empires IV IV - Discussion
1

Since people can have constant discussion about Janissaries.

What about Malian units?

Personally I’m starting to find Malians quite underwhelming.

Their econ is S tier, but they perform exceptionally bad mid game and in team games.

While in 1v1 they do rather OK as their super strong early dark age and feudal aggresion is extremely strong.
It completely flips 180 and becomes a joke once the opponent has a econ that can support MAA.

Now this is fine, and this is where the Musofadi as supposed to step in?
But they don’t work as well.
Their Stealth is kinda useless as ANY unit can spot their stealth. Want to know something funny?
If you have the imperial landmark, Huntress Fortress, Musofadi gunners and warriors gain bonus first strike damage abiltiy when coming out of stealth.

This works for gunners, but not for Warriors. Why? Well warriors stealth gets automatically broken by the unit spotting them.

The stealth is still nice though for manuvering.

However another issue I find is, they are far to weak against most things.
Anything a Musofadi warrior can do, a Donzo can do better.
Donzo have better armor, has a minor range attack, bonus against cav and heavy cav.
And has much bigger HP pool than Musofadi warriors and thus can act as a good meatshield.

Now this is fine by mixing warriors and donzo, but 1 Mangonel shot is all it takes and you have lost majority of your warriors. Donzo are badly hurt but still alive.

I don’t know. Musofadi warriors are just way to squishy, they do not trade well against MAA and knights, and are far to easy to loose.

Personally I think the Musofadi warriors need a major buff.
Not in armor, but in HP.
they also to do something about their stealth mechanic, especially to benefit from the landmark perk.
I would like to see that only scouts and outposts can uncover Musofadi warriors stealth.

And then we have playing against HRE as malians.
Unless your 1v1 or 2v2 where maps are tiny and you can apply instant pressiure with Donzo’s.

In team games, Malians are just utter garbage, once a HRE gets their castle/imp age, stable econ and starts pumping out… Landsknecht. Oh do they flatten Malians in record speed.

There is literally nothing that “hardcounters” MAA/Landsknecht composition as Malians.
Sofa arent strong enough to handle HRE MAA with bonus dmg against heavy.
Warriors scouts can only kite, be massed and used as landmark snipe.
Donzo are donzo, better than a spearman and their range attack ideal for sniping for artifacts.
Archers, well they are archers and like any other archer. Their poison attack upgrade is not much to say about…"

Javelin throwers, while great against archers and gunners.

They absolutely do nothing against armored targets.
Musofadi warriors just gets flatten by HRE megasword.
Sofas can’t beat HRE MAA with +6 against heavy upgrade.
Only thing that can effectivly deal with MAA is Musofadi gunners.

2

It does still work for warriors. It persists for about 5 seconds after leaving stealth. So they have to attack within that time frame to get the first strike bonus.

I agree though that the stealth overall is quite weak.

Musofadi warriors are difficult to use because they die to basically everything since they have low health and low armor. They win out against the units they are supposed to counter in terms of cost effectiveness, but it is not really decisive.

1 Like
3

Malians have an odd situation where they have all the answers to the generic questions, but have a few Achilles heels. Some unique units like the landsknechts, arbalests, and most weirdly the camel rider, can kinda stump them.

I would steer clear of buffing musofadi warriors tho - those things cost 50 food and 30 gold, which is pretty much all disposable for Malians. This is purely a counter unit to prevent the basic civs from simply maa/mango spamming the hall outta mali age 3.

All that said, there are 3 main reasons a buff might be hasty;

  1. Poison arrows are pretty good vs land/maa balls - even land/horsemen inst really safe.

  2. Lands are pretty soft in their own right and can die to mangos - siege/musofadi is a pretty even fight with HRE maa/land/siege

  3. In age 4 the balance is totally reversed. The sofa’s speed aura kicks in, and then you have gunners running around at 1.44 tiles per sec and there’s really not alot HRE can do now. Cav can chase, but thats cav into gunners and sofa’s on its own, its not a real option.

I will say that mailians are kinda weak in team games, where everyone is rolling that heavy cav/HC comp and sofa’s cant stand up to actual knights - the offset is that Malians are the most likely to have this comp in 1v1s and even in team games they have a pretty big mobility/ cost advantage.

4

Gets even better when you consider the LM

But there’s a lot of people on this forum that consistently choose to ignore the difference that cost efficiency brings.

Musos are weak, but ffs they’re cheap, if anything people are comparing them to the other over tuned malian infantry.

And there should be competition between Landsneks and musos, one has stealth so can choose its fights better and is dirt cheap, the other is a civ’s singular military UU. It’s like wanting generic archers to perform as well as Longbows.

It seems pretty common people are bagging all TGs together, there’s a clear difference between 2v2 and 4v4.

Let’s say malians are actually bad in 4v4. So long as they’re still doing well in 1v1 and 2v2, that’s more than enough matches where they’re performing well.

When you have 10 civs it’s going to be impossible to have everyone performing equally well in every matchup without degrading identity

1 Like
5

Musofadi Warrior should train a bit faster, they’re great in raids. Generally stealth should be made more effective, the idea of Malians is the furtive sneaky civ, mobility, not tanky units. Devs should highlight stealth more.