Malians/Strategy

Strengths
The Malians are a versatile civilization that can adopt to different situations and strategies with strong economic bonuses and a well-rounded technology tree. They have cheaper buildings that allows the Malians to save up wood and spent the saved wood for important upgrades and units. The Malians also get free gold mining upgrades, thus improving their gold mining efficiency. Their infantry units (except Gbetos) have increased pierce armor when they advance an age, thus making them more durable against archer fire. The Malians also have access to full archer and infantry upgrades (except for Parthian Tactics). Finally, the Malians have a team bonus that makes their university research technologies 80% faster and have access to a mostly full university and building upgrades, thus allowing Malians and their allies to gain important technologies such as Chemistry, Ballistics, and Murder Holes sooner than their opponents.

Their unique unit, the Gbeto, is a fast-moving ranged infantry that can be produced cheaply. The unique technology, the Tigui, allows Town Centers to fire arrows without the need to garrison units, thus making their Town Centers more defendible from raids. The Farimba boosts their melee cavalry attack by 3 (while the description says +5, it is actually +3 since the Malians do not have access to Blast Furnace), making their Heavy Camel and Cavaliers with very powerful attacks. Even a Malian Light Cavalry can barely go toe-to-toe against a fully upgraded Hussar and win the fight (although their Cavalier cannot beat a fully upgraded Paladin due to their higher tankiness the Paladin has).

Weaknesses
While the Malians are a versatile civilization, they do have some clear weaknesses. The Malians do not have access to Paladin and Hussar upgrades, making their cavalry line a bit weaker when compared to the Spanish, the Huns, and even the Mongols. They also do not have access to Bracer and Blast Furnace technologies, making their archer line and towers weak in terms of offensive and defensive capacity. While the Malians make up for this with Farimba, the attack bonus only applies to melee cavalry, thus making their infantry weak in terms of offensive capacity. Much like the Chinese, the Malians can attack and defend equally well.