Malians/Strategy

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Strengths
The Malians are a versatile civilization that possess strong economic bonuses, a well-rounded technology tree, and cheaper buildings, allowing them to save wood to spend on important upgrades and units. Their infantry units (except Gbetos) have +1 pierce armor per age starting in the Feudal Age, making them resilient to archer fire, the typical counter to infantry units. They get free Gold Mining upgrades, which gives a small boost to gold-heavy strategies. Finally, the Malians' team bonus makes allied universities research technologies 80% faster, and they have access to almost full university and building upgrades. This allows the 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 unit that can be produced cheaply and possesses high attack power. The unique technology Tigui allows Town Centers to fire arrows without garrisoning units, thus making their Town Centers more defensible against raids. Farimba, their Imperial Age unique tech, boosts melee cavalry attack by +5 (though this equates to +3 since they miss out on Blast Furnace) and makes their Heavy Camel and Cavaliers powerful attackers.

Weaknesses
While the Malians are versatile, they are not without weaknesses. Bracer and Blast Furnace are missing from the Blacksmith, reducing their archers' and towers' power and range. Farimba partially makes up for the loss of Blast Furnace, however the attack bonus only applies to melee cavalry and leaves infantry slightly weaker offensively. The Malians have a full archery range up until the Imperial Age, where they lose out on both Bracer and Parthian Tactics. The Paladin and Hussar upgrades are also unavailable, making their cavalry line weaker when compared to the Spanish and the Huns in post-Imperial Age.

The Malian navy has a slightly more difficult time out-massing other civilizations in the mid-to-late Imperial Age, as they miss out on the Shipwright technology, Fast Fire Ships, and Elite Cannon Galleons.

Malians do not get Siege Engineers, and this sometimes affects Siege Onager battles where the extra range is critical.

Despite these weaknesses, the Malians can attack and defend equally well with not many significant offensive and defensive bonuses (much like the Chinese).

Strategy
The Malians share a similar playstyle to the Goths, booming up until Imperial Age and then unleashing a horde of archer-resilient infantry. Unlike the Goths, Malians infantry bonus against archers is decentralized, meaning archers are less effective against them since there is no Malian barracks unit that is susceptible to archer fire. By mixing in Pikemen, the Malian horde is also unassailable by standard cavalry. This makes it difficult for some players to answer the Malian horde, limiting counter units to Infantry, anti-infantry Hand Canoneers (which also are less effective against Malian infantry), bombard towers, and clever use of siege. These threats can be dealt with in turn by the Malians, who have access to both Gbeto and Hand Cannoneer for dealing with melee threats. Bombard Towers and opposing siege can both be dealt with by using Bombard Cannons, though unfortunately these units lack the Siege Engineers technology.

In early game their discount on buildings and their free gold mining upgrades enable the Malians to perform a Fast Castle as they will require less villagers collecting wood. For instance the malians only spent 254 wood instead of 300 if they create 4 houses a Lumber Camp and a Mill which means they will have at least an extra villager in food since Dark Age. Having Gold Mining for free in the Feudal age will help to gather the required 200 gold units to research Castle age faster while also saving the food and the wood required for that technology.

The Malian boom is a little clumsy to set up, but once it's running it's very powerful. The Tigui technology allows Town Centers to fire multiple arrows without a garrison. Turning each TC into a short range tower without interrupting the player's economy. This technology is cheap, but requires a castle, meaning that if the player is booming he or she won't be able to afford it for some time. If the player have a castle then this tech is definitely worth it, but there's a good argument for delaying a castle until Imperial age, by which point this technology is less valuable.

Alternatively, castle drops into Gbeto raiding can throw an opponent off balance, and then lend itself to a delayed boom with the Tigui technology. The Gbeto is ranged, very fast, and has a high damage value, but lacks durability and doesn't benefit from the malian pierce armor bonus. Such tactics can do a lot of damage very quickly, but have difficulty against archers and castles/towers/TC. Since most people are aware that going into archers against Malians is a bad idea, this is a very reliable means of taking ground control while applying pressure while the player boom behind it.

Farimba technology allows to malian cavalry to perform better raidings, but it must be considered to be mostly a trade off for Light and heavy cavalry as malians lack the Hussar and Paladin upgrade which means that the unit that gets the most benefit from this tech is the Heavy Camel making them extremely useful against enemy cavalry that may put in danger the malian infantry. Despite the fact they lack Paladin a Hussar upgrades, Cavaliers and Light cavalry with farimba researched may perform slightly better than a normal Paladin or Hussar when raiding.

On water maps, despite the fact that they lack Shipwright, Fast Fire Ship, and Elite Cannon Galleon, they do have an advantage as their wood discount bonus on buildings enables for them to save wood that can be spent on naval vessels.

In general, the Malians are a very versatile civilization with variety of options. The Malian player should be open to different variety of strategies and tactics depending on the map. The Malians have a reasonable archer tech tree despite the lack of Bracer and the option of building Arbalests and Hand Cannoneers should not be ignored when dealing with civlizations that rely on infantry. Cavaliers and Light Cavalry is always an option for raiding and dealing with enemy siege weapons thanks to Farimba technology that boosts their attack damage. Halberdiers and Heavy Camels are viable anti-cavalry options in the Malian army, and Gbetos make excellent units for hit-and-run tactics. The Malians also have reasonable siege options with Bombard Cannons and Siege Onagers despite lacking Siege Engineers. Their infantry line is also good at punishing civilizations that heavily depend on archers such as the Ethiopians, the Chinese, the Mayans, and the Britons.

Strategy Changes in Rise of the Rajas
The Malians' military was nerfed; they no longer have Halberdiers (though, like the Vikings, their Pikemen still take ranged attacks well), and the Gbeto's attack was slightly reduced. When the gold runs out the Malians will lose out in many trash wars, especially against civilizations with strong trash unit lines such as the Magyars, Vietnamese, Malay, and Spanish. The Malians lack important unit upgrades and techs for their trash units, and do not get the Hussar, Halberdier, Bracer, and Blast Furnace upgrades.

Their economy also received a small nerf, as Farms are no longer affected by the 15% wood discount.

Alliances
Being an infantry civilization with several rushing capabilites, Malians should play in the frontline position as they can defend the pocket players and attack the enemy team. Also as their buildings are cheaper and gold mining upgrades are free they make excellent springboards in Springboard tactics

Malians benefit from team bonuses that boost both infantry and cavalry. Goths and Italians will provide the Malians with faster workspeed for Barracks and the Condottiero unit respectively, Malian Condottieri will be arguably the best condottieri of all as they can approach to the opponent's gunpowder units and receive very little damage thanks to the Malian high pierce armor and the bonus armor this unit have against gunpowder. For the Cavalry and specially for their camels Malians benefit from Hunnic, Indian, Persian and Frank team bonuses, in the Indian - Malian alliance case a completely upgraded Malian heavy camel will deal a staggering 20 damage to buildings ( 1 more damage than their Indian Imperial camel counterpart).

Having a Slav ally for the malians is very useful as in this team the Malians will have cheaper military buildings that also provide population space saving even more wood than they normally will in other circumstances as they will require less houses. Having a Berber ally will improve their castle drop tactic as the Kasbah technology will improve the creation speed of the Gbeto.

As a team mate the malian team bonus gives to the university a better workrate. This bonus is very useful for all civilizations as they can outtech their opponents but specially for civilizations that have all or almost all the improvements of this building (more particularly, civilizations that have access to most tower and building upgrades).

On water maps, having a Viking as an ally will decrease even more the price of the Docks and this will allows them to save even more wood for their ships. Alternatively, a Malay ally allow the Malians to build up vigilant coastal defence, or even fast-response flotillas against naval raids.

A Burmese ally, among other Southeast-Asian civs, shares starting locations of the relics with their teammates, making competant Malian monks can then secure them sooner than their opponents' reactions, while a Khmer ally grants Malian scorpions range boost in exchange for researching Chemistry and quicker to build up gunpowder contigents rapidly.

Allying with the Vietnamese also a wise choice for Malian players: by the former's team bonus, both early frushes and counter-frushes become feasible with equally-resilient archers(from the former) and infantries(from the latter) as a combo; the latter's team bonus, in return, allowing the former to upgrade their fortifications quickly. About their army composition, the former delivers decent bankroll via Paper Money, Battle Elephants with Chatras upgrade, suppressing firepower support from Imperial Skirmishers, Rattan Archers and other Archery Range units also with extra hit-points; in return the latter brings in hand cannoneers, missile-resistant infantries, competant monks and strong cavalries with Farimba upgrade as supplements.