Yeah… these buffs… I’m not even going to waste time talking about them lol
Malay age-up bonus is mostly awakward to use for the advance to feudal age on open maps, otherwise it’s always super good. I mean why do y’all think Malay are an S tier Arena civ?
Malay are probably the most underrated civ in the entire game, and the loss of infinite fish traps is nothing compared to what is now 40% cheaper elephants. It’s maddening.
The win loss ration in general games doesn’t tell the whole story, in a competitive environment the Malay faster age bonuses means they have a lot of legs up on a wide variety of maps that’s difficult to combat, such as having that first fire ship out almost a minute earlier on water maps, having the first monk out almost two minute earlier on Arena, and a list of others.
And I promise you it doesn’t matter that the Malay eles are missing so much armor. With that armor loss in mind they have the same pierce as a Champion, cost about twice as much as a Champion, is teched into easier, and as a result, has about four times the HP. Combined with the Arbalest (FU from Malay) this push is mental. It was good at 30%. Now it got better.
On paper, it’s a nerf, in reality it’s really really small nerf and occasional nerf, that it’s more than compensate by their new buffs.
For reference, the Malay Elite Battle Elephants cost almost the same as Elite Steppe Lancers now.
This is pretty significant because Malay always lacked a power unit.
The Karambit Warrior is my least favourite UU, I’m just throwing it out there.
The Karambit was a nightmare unit on release and it got nerfed pretty heavily as a result. The only difference between that unit that needed nerfing and the unit that’s in Beta is it has one more melee armor and one less pierce armor.
That’s a significant downgrade for most situations in my eyes (pierce is always a bigger factor in my estimation), but it means it’ll survive one extra hit against Elite Eagles and Champions, generic with full upgrades, which can be a big deal when there’s 142 of them and all those instances of surviving an extra hit adds up. Once you count in the Karambit’s bonus against Eagles, this is a seriously problematic anti-eagle raiding unit.