How good are Malay in imperial?

[Raoul9753]

I really cant make myself a clear picture of the malay...
They have very cheap elephants, but they are very weak since they only get the first armor upgrade, in trash battels they have 2 hands, but no cavalry, since again, no armor upgrades and no hussar, which means every bit of siege really f**ks them royaly...

They have a potential for an endless food supply, but only on water maps or with lucky ponds, but no water: no eco bonus

I am not quite shure what to think about them...

[theworld]

Viper thinks Malay > Britons on Arena, so there's your answer.

[ilam]

Ultimate fishtrap supply for Forced Levy to construct a good army to fight in trash units battle in late game.
But everything is based on a pool ofc.

[Wotar]

Originally posted by TheWorld:

Viper thinks Malay > Britons on Arena, so there's your answer.

This is because they up faster to imperial age, so they have the advantage of building first the trebs, but if you are not at a pro level and manage to resisit until you got your onw trebs, there is no way they can defeat britons

[Lord_Patito]

Depending. AOE is a game of momentum. Malay should up faster than everyone else, since their bonus for advancing faster through ages. Also, this allows you (hypothetically) to spam their cheaps battle elephants in early castle, maybe when your rival is still in feudal. Tjat being said, they're not a post imperial civ. They're quite good in trash wars (because forced levy), but when there're still gold sources, they are no particularly good

[Gorilianul]

Originally posted by Raoul9753:

I really cant make myself a clear picture of the malay...
They have very cheap elephants, but they are very weak since they only get the first armor upgrade, in trash battels they have 2 hands, but no cavalry, since again, no armor upgrades and no hussar, which means every bit of siege really f**ks them royaly...

They have a potential for an endless food supply, but only on water maps or with lucky ponds, but no water: no eco bonus

I am not quite shure what to think about them...

If they had strong cavalry/elephants probably they would have been among my favorites. I never train any cavalry with them, not worth it. Your chance in winning with malay is getting Forced Levy and turning two handers into trash units, then spam them by the hundreds, maybe some karambits too. But the problem is that karambits are too weak, especially when fighting against elephants, area damage units. They die like flies. They are good for killing enemy archers, raiding mines, lumber camps, that's about it. Getting Khmer, or about a dozen heavy scorpions kills karambits by the swarm.

[Doctor Teo]

See, I spectated a Malay v. Mayans game today where I had this exact same thought. It was Arabia, so no water, and they were both going archers. When I was trying to think of what advantage the Malay had, I couldn't see it; Mayan had cheaper archers, a relevant eco upgrade, an optional relevant tech, whereas the Malay looked like a big ball of nothing. I mean, I love the idea of trash 2-handers, but that's trash wars late Imperial, not what you usually see on Arabia.

Spoiler alert, the Malay player won.

When it came time to go up to Feudal, the Malay player started going up after the Mayan, but still reached Feudal faster, had the first Feudal units out, and was back to producing villagers quicker. Now, I'm going to stress: both players were playing extremely well, poking and prodding at each other, the Mayan harassing over a wood line with Skirms, the Malay finding tiny holes at the Mayan's otherwise well-defended front, and so on. I want to make this clear that the Malay did not win solely because of civ choice, they were plenty good themselves, but it always seemed like the Malay was one step ahead.

Malay had the first crossbows, and in a big mid-game brawl, used them to snowball a fight and dwindle the Mayan numbers down. The Mayan player backed off and recovered just fine, but Malay had an edge and Mayan couldn't attack.

Finally, it came to the final showdown in late Castle Age: Mayan managed to use Mangonels to stick an incredibly aggressive castle right in range of Malay's original TC, also raining arrows on nearby production buildings as they were spawning units. Malay recovered; they'd already had other TCs anyways, and when Mayan tried to put yet another aggro Castle nearby, Malay forced a cancel by putting up their own Castle, and so the two Castles were just barely out of range of each other. It was pretty clear you were going to need a Treb to end the game.

Welp, they both tried to get to Imperial within about ~10 seconds of each other. And Malay got there way faster.

Now, the annoying thing about high-ranked games is they often don't play it out. I wanted to see how this fight went down, but the Mayan ended up just GGing as the Malay's first Treb was in the queue.

The Malay's age advantage came into play three major times that game:
-From Dark to Feudal, the TC was less idle and could keep producing vills.
-From Feudal to Castle, Malay had Crossbows and Bodkin first, and won the archer battle.
-From Castle to Imp, Malay was going to be able to field the first Treb.

Now, I always thought the Malay bonus wasn't that big a deal: after all, even when you're going up in age, you're not gaining resources faster, so you don't necessarily afford the first Archery Range and Blacksmith just because you hit Feudal first, and that of course applies to Crossbow too. But this game was the biggest illustration to how it did matter, in terms of both eco and tech.

[Vemonia]

I think Malays are fine in imperial. Not too strong, not weak either;
- they got FU arbalesters, which is always nice to have
- 40% cheaper Elephants is great, even without armor. They should be very cost efficient against most melee units, with the downside of being slow (harder to raid and catch units). They are not much less tanky than paladins against range (320hp/4PA vs. 180hp/7PA, while arba do 10 damage ans CavA do 11), only worse due to speed
- BBC, BBT, and FU Onagers are always nice to have: helps against siege
- FU Skorpions, Skirms help a lot against Halberdiers, that are good against elephants
- Trashswordmen are very bad before gold run out, and great after
- FU halberdiers is good against cavalry
- On water maps, great late game navy with everything you need

The problem with Malays in late game is probably that they do not have a brain-dead unit "spam & win", like paladins, mangudais, longbows, etc... But same for many other civs. I think the closest thing Malays have is arbas/skirms+ele/halbs/2HS+bbc, depending on whats in front of you.

And btw, Malays fishtrap are "only" 3x food now, it is not infinite anymore. Still good, but not endless amymore.

[Jäveln]

with a strong food income you can become hell of a masser. just mass elephants swordsmen and those uniques and you can swarm incredibly well. always focus elephants to blockor smash up a spot even if many die they are so damn cheap you can mass up as soon as they die

[Creeping Death (VvvvV)]

Ive gotten rolled by Malay in a game where we were winning. I managed to hurt the other 2 people on his team pretty badly but when he hit Imp he mobbed with the castle unit (not sure the name) and they were really good as taking out trebs and any units I had - my stuff would mostly kill them too but he could replace them much faster

[Jäveln]

yeah those uniques are a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ hassle to deal with since they train in like 3 seconds take only half pop and costs 25 food and 15 gold they are amazing at tying up enemy forces even if they are fragile but mass them and jsut send them against a building and its amazing

[jonoliveira12]

Malay are very good in Imp. They have the only cost-effective Battle Elephant in the game, despite being the weakest, meaning it actually the best one.

Trashanded Swordsmen beat ALL other Trash without any trouble and break buildings with ease, so very lategame is Malay auto-win, with the only actual contestant possible being Persians with Trashbows.

[jonoliveira12]

Originally posted by Jäveln:

yeah those uniques are a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ hassle to deal with since they train in like 3 seconds take only half pop and costs 25 food and 15 gold they are amazing at tying up enemy forces even if they are fragile but mass them and jsut send them against a building and its amazing

They are VERY good at focusing down TCs and recruitment buildings.

[Doctor Teo]

Originally posted by jonoliveira12:

Malay are very good in Imp. They have the only cost-effective Battle Elephant in the game, despite being the weakest, meaning it actually the best one.

Trashanded Swordsmen beat ALL other Trash without any trouble and break buildings with ease, so very lategame is Malay auto-win, with the only actual contestant possible being Persians with Trashbows.

I love the idea of Trashanders. Cheap, disposable, replaceable infantry feels like it was made for the frontline role, serving as cannon fodder so the real gold units stay safe. Strong trash, too - they're easily kiteable, but they're stat sticks for how cheap they are; feels a lot like Mongol Hussar, but more attack, less speed, and an archer vulnerability instead of a pike one.

I just can't figure how to get there. Needs Imperial Age, needs a Castle, needs enough resources for Levy itself, needs all three Militia-line upgrades, needs all 6 Blacksmith upgrades, needs enough Barracks to get mass production going. Unless you've been making infantry all along (which, who does that? The game usually revolves around cav or archers), you're behind at least 2 barracks upgrades, and unless you were making Pikes anyways, you'd be behind the Blacksmith upgrades -- attack you'd have if you were making cav, but armor you'd be missing.

I feel like I get the general idea behind the Malay:
-Juicy fishing trap bonus makes wood efficiency far higher and earlier than what farms could do (remember when it was infinite?).
-Quick age ups means less villager downtime going to Feudal, and possibly the first archers/scouts.
-Thalassocracy means fishing ships have inherent protection just for fishing near a dock.
-Cheap Elephants give a powerhouse Castle Age unit that is more food and less gold hungry than the Knight.
-Once you've got 50+ traps, swap to Trashanders, saving massive amounts of gold which can be used to fuel their fully upgraded Archer tree, and siege such as Trebs, Onager, and Bombard Cannons.

It's just... this is an RTS game. Things rarely happen that smoothly. That quick age up is fantastic, but there's got to be more than that going for the civ before Imp, especially after watching that game. Maybe I'm overlooking Karambits - those guys are hilarious, and can actually chase vills.