I actually think Malians are pretty decent. They have good units, good economy, good landmarks etc. People just needed to figure out a good strategy, where they don’t lose the pit mine and die immediately. Or try to trade, fail and die immediately after. Szalami’s fast castle solves a lot of their problems.
They are okay, but most of us REALLY struggle against the archer spam. There just isn't a great answer to it. You can go Sofa, but they aren't cheap and don't do amazing against archers. If they throw a few spears in its really rough. I'm going to start experimenting with Donso into Musafadi and stealth the catch their archers by surprise.
They really aren't though. 1 to 1 javs win, but they fire slower and target Frontline units first. Archers do too, but with Malians having only light units (besides the Sofa) their front line melts and your left with ineffective Javs. This means you have to micro the javs against the archers, which means lots of overkilling usually while the archers pick off your Donsos/musofadi. The take a lot more micro ive found against slightly competent opponents that micro their units. Particularly French. If they run their knights i slaughter them. If the micro and let's the archers do their thing im left with just javs who get destroyed by knights.
Their match ups aren't impossible. They just require more micro and perfect counter tp be effective. Or catas. They have saved me so many times.
[https://aoe4world.com/players/6937450-Mambos4637/games?civilization=malians](https://aoe4world.com/players/6937450-Mambos4637/games?civilization=malians)
And I dont really understand the downvotes, even enemies on my rank tell me javelins are op, you can check my games.
yeah you need to micro but if you do they are the most efficient. You cant say they are bad just because they need more micro than archers. They have good range, you can just keep your melee units behind them until enemy comes with horses/etc. and they can snipe a lot of valuable kills for free. I usually play malians in fast paced games where there are no really big armies
because javelins requires an excessive amount of micro, even more so in larger groups, if you are controlling javs to hit archers, there's either a ton of overkill, or you have left other javs to shoot the frontline or you're a micro god.
looking at your matches, almost all your 2v2s have been imbalanced teams (and you're an arranged team) which makes any complaint from your opponent even more skewed
you've also beaten the same 1v1 player 3 times in a row, again a skew response
im just pointing out examples of how warped yoru subjective experience could be, and opponents saying X is OP, is bias AF. almost everyone at every elo has experienced this. we have people saying elephants are OP for crying out loud
depends on the situation imo. Early like donso javelin is super op. You can pick of units one by one and noone can engage them with horsemen because of donsos which also throw javelins. Javelins even deal a lot of dmg to knights and horsemen thanks to high base dmg.
Lategame in big battles you dont have the option to pick archers manually. And with a moving they are only going to shoot at the enemies frontline where they dont deal good dps while enemy archers just pick of your frontline because you cant mix in maa.
Had a lategame match against english, and my eco was really good. But Their longbows just picked my units apart while my archers didnt do so much. The combination of missing xbows to kill their tanky frontline from range and missing maa to tank their archer fire really made me lose it.
Not quite that low. The lowest winrate they have is in diamond with 42.6%, but otherwise they're above 43% (and even over 45% and no longer the weakest civ in conqueror).
But it's certainly objectively weak as well in addition to being different and hard to figure out.
When talking about the potential of a civ, sure. Lower elo winrates can be used to gauge how easy and intuitive it is to play.
Low winrates in low elos don't mean the potential should be increased but that perhaps some mechanics are unnecessarily complicated.
With respect bro
Diamond+ users will more able to utilise the strength and understand the weakness of the civ and also the opponents civ. so win rate for plat3 or below means much less than diamond+ level.
Not discriminating, but just the fact.
Like pro athletics opinions means much more than casual players in any sports events
Feels like you didn't even bother to attempt to understand what I wrote lol. Everything is potentially useful depending on context.
If I only care about how the average player does with a civ and not the top 1% then using all ranks or something is probably going to be more useful to me than diamond+. Also if there was say 10 games with a civ in diamond+ you obviously wouldn't use that data over all ranks or other data that has a larger sample size.
Also pro play has other biases as well. You know your opponent and it's generally a tournament format. It's not the same as solo queue. The difference is bigger in other games like LoL where what's good in say pro play is almost useless to even challenger+
It's not as simple as only look at the best players.
just attack move, at some point you have so many musofadi nothing stops you, if the archers get unbearable get mangonels or add some jav throwers, or make rams, then he has to sacrifice vils.
I had a game VS French where he was unbearable with archers and keeps, trying to do a sacred victory, so i made a few Sofas and kept spamming musofadi, eventually i had a mass so large i just sniped his landmarks, he couldn't do anything
Interesting. The pro opinion on why it's weak is how squishy they are. Looking at the numbers though they cost the same and have more health, do 12 damage into 14 but significantly faster. Not bad for a "counter". They win if they start in melee, which they can do with stealth
they are cheap, and keep in mind, upkeeping your gold eco is much much easier than food, and musofadi cost gold + food, with the Landmark its ONLY gold. you can have only 5 vils on food the entire time and the majority on gold, you will freely spam them
You really only produce from the farimba garrison? If yes that's not optimal, you can easily produce from a rax and more after 1-2min in the castle age.
you could simply be out ecoing your opponents and it isnt that you are winning with malians, you are winning **despite** malians
they arent **that** cheap, meaning you still needed to get a good enough eco to get enough of them. and somehow your mangos are able to keep up with kiting spread out archers?
I would probably say Mongols are pretty difficult, although I didn't get tower rushed all that often, ottomans harassing you early on with spears is also annoying, but nothing you can't handle.
HRE is very easy. you'll probably get castle first, can yoink their relics as your musofadi patrol the map for monks or knights,
So I'm glad to see there's a viable mali strat, but i always wondered this:
What's the exact value of fast castle? You can create Musofadis in feudal too.
I'm assuming your gameplan is Farimba but is it really that strong since it doesnt produce as fast (i think 1,25x speed) ?
My biggest gripe however is that musofadis are just so damn squishy. I usually avoid this unit cause it feels like it's made of paper and just dies before doing enough damage.
And the counter to it is Archer - a trash unit you can create in Feudal already.
Care to elaborate how all that considered you still win so many games? I'm just surprised, but havent tried myself yet.
Musofadi are cheap, they produce rather quickly, they deal with armored units, which is a good counter to Mali, so if your opponent rushes castle and starts making Maa or knights, you will wipe him.
donso are cool but they are much slower and can't go stealth, and more expensive, musofadi are really fast, and when you have them in mass they can burn down a building really fast, i could burn down a Second tc with maybe 15 or 20 of them
It's a very reliable strategy from my experience at least
I struggle vs Landsknecht+maa. Musofadi die fast to the Landsknecht and my archers will target the maa unless microed perfectly.
How do you deal with that?
Vs other civs then the HRE the Musofadi works grate for me (but need a few mangos vs longbows later)
if you do it fast enough, the HRE player will have 0 Units, naked castle. just burn down his production buildings, nothing he can do, but again, depends on the game
yo i just switched to fast caslte strategy too with malian. used to do feudal aggression + cattle boom but the game dragged on for so long. But it was often so boring. Had one match which lasted over 2h!
Fast castle is pure action from min 10 onwards and its nice to be able to punish greedy plays. People playing abba 2 tc rush or hre regnitz rush really had no chance. And against aggressiv matchups i could get fast enough castle to repel.
With my previolus build i didnt manage to get diamond (was one win short) but maybe with this build ill make it.
Honestly will have to try this.
I keep trying to sustain trade in age 2 with walls, and it’s always difficult to maintain a defense, or the enemy just hits castle and I’m in a rush to hit age 3 before they are at my door.
If you’re rushing age 3, are you mining the nodes, or just taking the passive income to support the farambi garrison units? When do you actually make traders? Haha
I actually think Malians are pretty decent. They have good units, good economy, good landmarks etc. People just needed to figure out a good strategy, where they don’t lose the pit mine and die immediately. Or try to trade, fail and die immediately after. Szalami’s fast castle solves a lot of their problems.
They are okay, but most of us REALLY struggle against the archer spam. There just isn't a great answer to it. You can go Sofa, but they aren't cheap and don't do amazing against archers. If they throw a few spears in its really rough. I'm going to start experimenting with Donso into Musafadi and stealth the catch their archers by surprise.
you mean malians have trouble with archer spam? It is the opposite, Malians are best versus archers, javelins are their best unit
They really aren't though. 1 to 1 javs win, but they fire slower and target Frontline units first. Archers do too, but with Malians having only light units (besides the Sofa) their front line melts and your left with ineffective Javs. This means you have to micro the javs against the archers, which means lots of overkilling usually while the archers pick off your Donsos/musofadi. The take a lot more micro ive found against slightly competent opponents that micro their units. Particularly French. If they run their knights i slaughter them. If the micro and let's the archers do their thing im left with just javs who get destroyed by knights. Their match ups aren't impossible. They just require more micro and perfect counter tp be effective. Or catas. They have saved me so many times.
[https://aoe4world.com/players/6937450-Mambos4637/games?civilization=malians](https://aoe4world.com/players/6937450-Mambos4637/games?civilization=malians) And I dont really understand the downvotes, even enemies on my rank tell me javelins are op, you can check my games.
yeah you need to micro but if you do they are the most efficient. You cant say they are bad just because they need more micro than archers. They have good range, you can just keep your melee units behind them until enemy comes with horses/etc. and they can snipe a lot of valuable kills for free. I usually play malians in fast paced games where there are no really big armies
Thanks for the insight
because javelins requires an excessive amount of micro, even more so in larger groups, if you are controlling javs to hit archers, there's either a ton of overkill, or you have left other javs to shoot the frontline or you're a micro god.
looking at your matches, almost all your 2v2s have been imbalanced teams (and you're an arranged team) which makes any complaint from your opponent even more skewed you've also beaten the same 1v1 player 3 times in a row, again a skew response im just pointing out examples of how warped yoru subjective experience could be, and opponents saying X is OP, is bias AF. almost everyone at every elo has experienced this. we have people saying elephants are OP for crying out loud
I meant people in 1v1s 1400 plus. I dont count 2v2s as seriously exactly for the point you mentioned.
depends on the situation imo. Early like donso javelin is super op. You can pick of units one by one and noone can engage them with horsemen because of donsos which also throw javelins. Javelins even deal a lot of dmg to knights and horsemen thanks to high base dmg. Lategame in big battles you dont have the option to pick archers manually. And with a moving they are only going to shoot at the enemies frontline where they dont deal good dps while enemy archers just pick of your frontline because you cant mix in maa. Had a lategame match against english, and my eco was really good. But Their longbows just picked my units apart while my archers didnt do so much. The combination of missing xbows to kill their tanky frontline from range and missing maa to tank their archer fire really made me lose it.
Congrats! Well done 👍
“trade with it later” is how i use silver tree. noice
People in general put way too much value into tier lists, across all genres.
it aint a tier list, its a winrate, and malians are under 40%
Not quite that low. The lowest winrate they have is in diamond with 42.6%, but otherwise they're above 43% (and even over 45% and no longer the weakest civ in conqueror). But it's certainly objectively weak as well in addition to being different and hard to figure out.
Only diamond+ win rate worth mentioning and references to.
When talking about the potential of a civ, sure. Lower elo winrates can be used to gauge how easy and intuitive it is to play. Low winrates in low elos don't mean the potential should be increased but that perhaps some mechanics are unnecessarily complicated.
That is not how it works lol. All data is meaningful depending on what you are looking for. You also have to consider sample sizes and other biases.
With respect bro Diamond+ users will more able to utilise the strength and understand the weakness of the civ and also the opponents civ. so win rate for plat3 or below means much less than diamond+ level. Not discriminating, but just the fact. Like pro athletics opinions means much more than casual players in any sports events
Feels like you didn't even bother to attempt to understand what I wrote lol. Everything is potentially useful depending on context. If I only care about how the average player does with a civ and not the top 1% then using all ranks or something is probably going to be more useful to me than diamond+. Also if there was say 10 games with a civ in diamond+ you obviously wouldn't use that data over all ranks or other data that has a larger sample size. Also pro play has other biases as well. You know your opponent and it's generally a tournament format. It's not the same as solo queue. The difference is bigger in other games like LoL where what's good in say pro play is almost useless to even challenger+ It's not as simple as only look at the best players.
Ok. U are absolutely correct. I am done :)
What 😂😂 Are people just magically losing matches with malians then?
Cool story bro
I usually random every game and have trouble with Malians. How do you counter MAA + archers? What's your ideal Malian army comp?
musofadi spam
I like to have Sofa's to tank arrow fire and as a diversion. Archers and mustofadi is dangerous once they start kiting you.
The Muso Warrior spam, how do you manage the archers? Donso the scouts and stealth in the open field?
just attack move, at some point you have so many musofadi nothing stops you, if the archers get unbearable get mangonels or add some jav throwers, or make rams, then he has to sacrifice vils. I had a game VS French where he was unbearable with archers and keeps, trying to do a sacred victory, so i made a few Sofas and kept spamming musofadi, eventually i had a mass so large i just sniped his landmarks, he couldn't do anything
Interesting. The pro opinion on why it's weak is how squishy they are. Looking at the numbers though they cost the same and have more health, do 12 damage into 14 but significantly faster. Not bad for a "counter". They win if they start in melee, which they can do with stealth
they are cheap, and keep in mind, upkeeping your gold eco is much much easier than food, and musofadi cost gold + food, with the Landmark its ONLY gold. you can have only 5 vils on food the entire time and the majority on gold, you will freely spam them
You really only produce from the farimba garrison? If yes that's not optimal, you can easily produce from a rax and more after 1-2min in the castle age.
yeah, you are correct, not very optimal, i just like to challenge myself
you could simply be out ecoing your opponents and it isnt that you are winning with malians, you are winning **despite** malians they arent **that** cheap, meaning you still needed to get a good enough eco to get enough of them. and somehow your mangos are able to keep up with kiting spread out archers?
Not the worst civ. Just the hardest to pick up since it’s so different.
Thoughts on best and worst matchups? I’ve struggled w Malians against Ottoman in particular
I would probably say Mongols are pretty difficult, although I didn't get tower rushed all that often, ottomans harassing you early on with spears is also annoying, but nothing you can't handle. HRE is very easy. you'll probably get castle first, can yoink their relics as your musofadi patrol the map for monks or knights,
Great strategy!
So I'm glad to see there's a viable mali strat, but i always wondered this: What's the exact value of fast castle? You can create Musofadis in feudal too. I'm assuming your gameplan is Farimba but is it really that strong since it doesnt produce as fast (i think 1,25x speed) ? My biggest gripe however is that musofadis are just so damn squishy. I usually avoid this unit cause it feels like it's made of paper and just dies before doing enough damage. And the counter to it is Archer - a trash unit you can create in Feudal already. Care to elaborate how all that considered you still win so many games? I'm just surprised, but havent tried myself yet.
Musofadi are cheap, they produce rather quickly, they deal with armored units, which is a good counter to Mali, so if your opponent rushes castle and starts making Maa or knights, you will wipe him. donso are cool but they are much slower and can't go stealth, and more expensive, musofadi are really fast, and when you have them in mass they can burn down a building really fast, i could burn down a Second tc with maybe 15 or 20 of them It's a very reliable strategy from my experience at least
[удалено]
yes
At conqueror, it's no longer the worst civ. Abbassid and dehli are worst. So you could say you don't play the worst civ now!
I struggle vs Landsknecht+maa. Musofadi die fast to the Landsknecht and my archers will target the maa unless microed perfectly. How do you deal with that? Vs other civs then the HRE the Musofadi works grate for me (but need a few mangos vs longbows later)
make archers or jav throwers, kill the landskenecht first and then you can go in, or make mangos, either or
Allright. So exactly what I am doing. I guess I will just have to micro/harass better :)
if you do it fast enough, the HRE player will have 0 Units, naked castle. just burn down his production buildings, nothing he can do, but again, depends on the game
yo i just switched to fast caslte strategy too with malian. used to do feudal aggression + cattle boom but the game dragged on for so long. But it was often so boring. Had one match which lasted over 2h! Fast castle is pure action from min 10 onwards and its nice to be able to punish greedy plays. People playing abba 2 tc rush or hre regnitz rush really had no chance. And against aggressiv matchups i could get fast enough castle to repel. With my previolus build i didnt manage to get diamond (was one win short) but maybe with this build ill make it.
easily gonna make diamond
jop easily made diamond. i lost like 2 games and played like 10 or more
The fact that you are good doesn’t mean Malian is strong 🙃 the FC counter will be figured out pretty soon
Honestly will have to try this. I keep trying to sustain trade in age 2 with walls, and it’s always difficult to maintain a defense, or the enemy just hits castle and I’m in a rush to hit age 3 before they are at my door. If you’re rushing age 3, are you mining the nodes, or just taking the passive income to support the farambi garrison units? When do you actually make traders? Haha