Hey, I thought I’d take some time to share my thoughts on the Malians as all I see is they need buff, this is broken, Trade Trade Trade…
So first of let me explain this trade you all say is OP…
First of all lets just start this off by saying, Trade with all outposts is a very very big amount of resources to put into it to get a nice trade. you are looking at 5 towers with 100 wood each, 3 markets minimum which is another 3 00 wood, then any walls your looking to place which lets say is 200 for covering the map, Now you’ve just spent 1000 wood instead of that being put into units, you are now 800 units worth of res behind your opponent.
not only is it a big investment, it can be shut down stupidly easy, not sure if any of you guys have heard of these but they are called knights and horsemen, they really hurt them, crazy right, how about this also, you walk to their neutral market and spend 50 wood walling around it or spend 40 seconds mining stone and stone wall around it, there we go, you’ve now just stalled trade and let them waste a 800 resource investment.
and team games I understand Malians is really good with trade but you have now got either 1 2 or 3 other people to help you stop trade which has been done to me many times and I’ve also done to others with others and by myself.
the biggest thing is that they get initial gold and food straight away, I understand that, but what your not seeing is, If i go to a trade route them in going to ofcourse get my 10% tax on it all plus the landmark percentage, but after that has been dropped off im going to wait for an average of 3 minutes for them to go back and come again, in a 15 minute game, a trader would roughly trade about 3 times, if you want to look at broken trade then look toward the mongols, if you want to stop trade then simple, invest in nights and horsemen and keep up the raid, its a massive risk for reward scenario and if you dont take risk also they’ll be no reward.
now the units.
javellin thrower, I find them good but to underwhelming, they’re attack speed is dreadful, I understand they are to counter other ranged units so should be abit slower but we’re talking about 0.6 second slower, over half a second must seem like nothing to most but to people who have to kite units and micro then this is just terrible to deal with.
musofadi warrior, I like them, I like how they are, I understand the civ is a hit and run kind of civ but no battle is ever hit and run, if I’m going against armored targets then i need some melee resistance like the sofa, They are meant to take on heavy targets aand yet if a night hits me then theres 30 of my hp gone and i understand equal resource is better fights but damn i feel more scared of archers than knights because if they have any kind of archers around them then i may as well just delete the units myself to save watched them die to 3 shots from an archer.
The sofas are in a good spot, they have good armour, they have alot less health, a fair bit less damage than a knight but they do damage to all infantry so I’ll take that trade.
Donso’s are good, I like the spear throw and by all means they should be countered by archers so they are in a good place.
Musofadi gunners, they are some of the strongest ranged units in the game, but for the cost that they are then that it completely reasonable, people tend to complain about them but if your going to run units and knights into a ball of anything wether it be hand cannoneers or archers/crossbow then expect to get rolled, they’re called mangonels, use them.
Now for the landmarks, I find the toll outpost is fine, it has arrows and an okay range but late game its a glorified outpost, its like a small BBQ back in the early days its trash, but gives good gold and food so keept it as it is.
The mansa quarry, now this landmark is absolute trash that it almost pushes people to trade, let me put this as an example, it makes 75 gold a minute, my cheapest unit in gold costs 40, i can make 1 single unit every minute, this landmark is just ridiculous, I wouldn’t mind if it scaled, let say by imperial age it gives 350 gold a minute, that is somewhat reasonable, or maybe if you go for it then all pit mines will produce gold 30- 50% faster depending on the age you are in.
I understand the mansa quarry has unlimited stone but lets be real, if you get the trade up you can buy 5 minutes worth of what a mansa quarry would give you if you went trade with a single trader, this needs to be buffed, its easy to take out houses, and you know that if your opponent has this landmark then hes going to be going for the gold mines so your job is to constantly burn them down, then you are making that landmark useless, to me that seems reasonable.
the cow pasture landmark I’ll call it incase anyone doesn’t know it will generate food, you spend 2000 gold and you get 560 food a minute if i remember correctly, this landmark makes all cattle produce 20 extra food, now 1000 food a minute (because thats what it roughly adds upto) is pretty nice, problem is that you are trading out a barracks/archer range that can produce 5 infantry at a time for just gold for something that will give a reasonable amount of food but nothing crazy, at this point i get 20 villagers and stick them on 20 cows and I’ve now just got myself 10k food for 2000 gold and it will be brought in alot faster, I understand that having them sit there is free food with no population needed but the amount of food you can harvest in a minute with 20 villages compared to 20 cows sitting there is quite abit.
Fort of the huntress, its big, its just a keep and the stealth is currently bugged for some units so yeah, at this point its useless and I don’t know why anyone would choose this over the other landmark.
all in all i think some units need to be reworked just abit, stealth needs to be fixed, poison arrows needs to be fixed, trade needs to stay the same (risk vs reward) javelins need to have their attack speed lowered, mansa quarry really needs a good look at it, and maybe just maybe they will not be the lowest winrate civ on the ladder…