For sure cant be played like regular civs. Sofa aren’t knights, musofadi aren’t dark templar, and warrior scouts are do not have ranged armor. I find they’re more like idealized horsemen, karambits from aoe2, and They have a nice power spike early via javelin/archer/donso and then later with their faster hc’s and sofa with speed aura’s. Kinda hamstrung in 1v1 since a raid style cant work as well on smaller maps and its easier to interrupt trade. Speaking of, trade in 1v1 has always been an impractical proposition for many reasons. Small general tweaks can make big changes here so I’ll wait till spring to see what happens. For now, its pretty good but has an Achilles spot.
Ottomans
Yep, strong as expected. Sipahi is my favourite thing - balls to fortitude ! paid 10 extra res for 10 more hp, Im happy. Mehter carries games like atlas carries the earth. Im in the camp that the bombard is really good and a GB/ribbauldequin comp is really only needs safekeeping from anti siege. Military schools and vizer techs let you boom/rush at will - prolly the most flexible civ atm. See what happens when people stop forcing themselves to use janissaries as a main unit? Its pretty strong for how safe it can be.
Fortitude works incredibly well. Just don’t have a mehter with rof aura nearby
Yeah they’re amazing
They’re better than knights at raiding due to PA.
Why not? Open maps sofa still crush. Closed maps you trade.
On top of that people are figuring out you can simply mass units through a stronger eco. It’s balancing the rate that you set up the passive eco + cows.
They need buffs, but they’re also not as weak as most of us thought/think.
Muso warriors can be spammed (through massive gold income) and thereby be effective. A lot of people aren’t mining gold, and only relying on passive(which is detrimental)
Fortitude works incredibly well. Just don’t have a mehter with rof aura nearby
It takes a minor amount of micro to make use of fortitude. This doesnt bother me, but I’ve seen alot complain about it. I just wanted to dodge the whole back and forth by pointing out that sipahi are pretty nice to have even if you ignore the ability.
raid style
Like, it CAN work, but it cant keep working all they way through every game. In theory, malians can just raid for a while and then bring in some donso and siege to break buildings. In practice, there are some civs that can escalate pretty quickly into armored unit and just go straight for the malians’ throat.
I’m thinking that some buffs and nerfs would be good. An example of a buff is increasing certain stats of the Janissary and an example of a nerf is putting the maximum limit on how many Mehters can be created in order to balance out the use of the Mehters. Perhaps, we can make two buffs to the Janissary which is increasing their HP to 115/130 from 90/105 and as well as increase their range to 4 tiles from 3.5 tiles. Meanwhile, the other stats can stay the same because the other stuff like the attack don’t need a buff since the Janissary can already deal a lot of damage at Cavalry considering the additional bonus damage that they can deal towards Cavalry.