Your Top Ten Tips for Your Favorite Civ

Varn Gosam is the one to go for, no question. The malakim have powerful synergy with disciple units, so the spiritual trait, with potency and mobility for all disciples - as well as no anarchy - is a great bonus, and far outweighs Kane's organised trait.
Varn also has adaptive, which he doesn't really need if I'm honest, but it makes him a top tier leader. There's very little advantage to choosing Kane unless you insist on being neutral or you just really like the underpowered organised trait. I personally feel that Kane should get some bonuses for the malakim recon line, since they appear to be more closely related to the pre-Lugus malakim (which Kane was in charge of in the scenarios).

Both leaders have the charismatic trait which is all fun and games and works very well with the strategy I've written below.

Then you have Decius, which is a nice extra if you feel like playing malakim in a different way to the way I've outlined below. All units you own will get the same bonuses in desert as your homegrown malakim units so there's no downside to conquering everything and experimenting with some combinations. (how about scions? get a necropolis and all those floodplains won't ever cause you a problem)

-Climate change to desert - this is both a blessing and a curse. Basically you get better unit strength on desert and plenty of commerce and food from floodplains, but this comes at the cost of loss of hammers, unhealth from floodplains and a sharp reduction of useful tiles.
-Dunespeak promotion - all malakim units get this on desert. It's great, basically. Maybe too great Adds movement, sight range, desert strength, immunity to first strikes, heal while moving and visibility of hidden animals. You should always be the one to attack if you're fighting in a desert if possible, you get the +strength and they get a -defense penalty for being on desert and you have enough movement to get away!
-Bedouin sits - These unique improvements slowly upgrade from
sit-->camp-->gathering-->village, and they take a while to do this.
You can only place them on non-floodplain desert tiles, with at least 2 tiles distance from one another and they stack with scrub improvements. These improvements effectively reduce the problem of having less workable tiles, since a fully upgraded bedouin village will supply the same amount of food as a floodplain and gives a nice amount of commerce.
-Oasis boost - oases are awesome for the malakim, all your adepts get a Lugus' Gift spell that allows you to create an oasis as long as it isn't within 5 tiles of another one. Plan well and grab an oasis for every city if you can.
-Trade over desert without roads - this isn't in yet I believe, but Valk's already said it will be in the new version. Effectively you trade over desert like it was sea. A pretty cool addition considering that everything in your culture range will be desert, and the +30% food you get from the yield of each trade route.

There are far more other new mechanics, UUs and the mirror of heaven events being the main ones that come to mind but these are the main ones to think about economically. Look in the pedia for more info, the malakim+ section is well covered.
Always place a city near a river - floodplains are your only source of food without 60+ turns of bedouin sit improving (trade routes will help but don't rely on them till you've got a lot of cities). You'll be very starved on hammers initially - eventually you'll rely on great prophet specialists and workshops/mines to get those for you. This is compensated by great commerce and food yields and you are doing things wrong if you arn't ahead in tech most of the time.

First of all, some general economics things.
-Settle near a river! This is really important.
-Stick cottages, farms or workshops on floodplains, bedouin sits on as many other tiles as possible, but the former improvements are generally a higher priority to start with. Use mines on hills.
-Try and plan it so you've got an oasis for each city, and maybe a resource that provides a few bonus hammers. It means the city is useful straight away, and doesn't require as much nurturing.

So, how do I play malakim? Well first I get mysticism for godking and the pagan temple unique building. Then I assign priest specialists, and will then try to get bronze working to get some reasonably strong defenders, since there's little chance of being able to rush out a few extra warriors if a hill giant kills a few defenders.

After this, I rush to found Order, then go to fanaticism to gain access to crusaders. By this point of the game you should be running apprenticeship, and have a few levels of the Altar of the Luonttar. Combined with your UB that's a lot of experience for new disciple units (even more promos than usual due to charismatic as well), and combined with the free promotions from the spiritual trait, and the ability for the crusaders to use metal weapons, you get a highly mobile, better-than-champion force of units that destroys anything in the desert, and is very capable out if it. Once you start running the theocracy civic these guys become even more powerful.

Although this can be done with any religion, I think this is most effective for Order, because its side benefits also work well with your high food-low production civ. Social order increases your happy cap so you can utilize the abundance of food, the order temple increases military unit production and the confessor's bless spell is just very useful.

Ultimately it's down to a choice as to what religion you choose, since malakim are good with all of them. Some religions like FoL or AV can upgrade their 1st tier disciples into recon or arcane units in order to get high XP for these units. Either way, religion is a central theme for them and you should be looking to get a few levels of the Altar to complement this.

There's only one, so theres no choice. Hianthrogh is spiritual for your wyvern defenders and unique priests, so they can move with mobility. That means 3 speed defenders! Good times. He also has the defender trait which will become important for our strategy portion

Honestly I don't know if rife changed anything from Fall Further. I think the swamps may give more food with tech upgrades though, so you pretty much don't even need to build farms

The matazl make for excellent turtlers until you can summon coatlann the wyvern (your powerhouse!). Since your terrain autoupgrades, I recommend researching archery as your first tech to pump out blowpipes. Since your leader is defender they automatically start with city defense I, (I think this might require a palisade or city walls though) which means you can take city defense II and III while skipping the first one. Along with his +10% bonus to strength within his own borders and some fun matazl jungle bonuses you'll be able to keep enemies out of your territory for a long time. Now it's on to techs. I recommend researching some commerce techs, and probably beelining for drama for the great bard (though I don't know if that will be the case anymore once the guild changes come in.. but for now, you can auto change everything into a sheep, so good times).

Next up you'll want to research either currency or priesthood depending on if you are subject to a war or not. Currency will let you switch to lost lands. Which by the way.. if you position all your cities next to coastal squares.. and build the great lighthouse, you will easily have 7+ traderoutes all giving you 2 food and 2 production. Plus the harbor adds a nice +50% to that! Of course you need to build that many cities since lost lands only let's you trade with yourself.. so that comes to expansion! Build anywhere and everywhere. All those crappy desert tiles will eventually turn into wonderful jungle terrain. Which by the way.. never ever build an improvement on a forested tile, as it will destroy the forest, when you could have otherwised gained the extra production from having a jungle there.

Once you have a nicely teched empire going, start your research towards coatlann the wyvern, which will require Theology, Righteousness and arcane lore. Yeah that's a lot of techs, but well worth it. Plus you'll get paladins along the way since your leader is good (try not to change this by switching to undercouncil or something >.>). It's pretty much game once you get your hero. He has a spell exactly like Acheron. It does 50-100 damage to all surrounding enemy units and summons a meteor. So launch your catapult volley then cast and watch the defenders fall!

As a side note, you may want to research some of the magic techs a bit earlier than normal, since their priests and temples are tied to them.. plus you'll want creation adepts in all your cities.

1. Don't be stupid and pick an Archipelago map or something - you can do continents (it'll slow things down)...but because of what that does to the AI, Pangaea is the more obvious choice. Start as Sheelba. Jonas' disciple buffs are nice, but generally speaking I try to eliminate at least 2, hopefully 3 rival civs before I even consider adopting a religion. The free Command I promotions are a huge help for this strategy, as well. You'll also end up becoming a sprawling civilization a lot more quickly than any civ that isn’t Barbarian, so the civic upkeep decrease ends up making a big difference (gold is HUGE if you're using Bosses). However, Expansive does allow you to pump Settlers like there's no tomorrow, which helps a lot for early resource grabs, so Jonas isn't necessarily a poor hero - Sheelba just fits this strategy far better.

2. Hopefully you don't have Flavored Start turned on, because it'll highly prefer Jungle, which on the face of things is okay but we'd have to waste our extremely valuable starting time either relocating or clearing Jungle so our city can grow. You need a couple good food resources (or grassland/floodplains near rivers), but beyond that prioritize commerce over production - you'll only need one tile within the 8 immediately adjacent tiles to give you at least 1 production. In fact, if you get a good set of flood plains/grasslands with food and commerce resources around but no forest or hills in sight beyond that one production, awesome - we'll be mostly producing workers and settlers anyway and it helps a cottage/sage/merchant economy.

3. Found your city ASAP - I give myself a single extra turn to get my settler on a hill so I can get early vision and spot nearby villages. Immediately have it build a Boss, and shift-click a second Boss as well so you don't forget. Between Barbarian and the cultural border, you're completely safe if you're playing against the AI, so explore around with both your Boss and warrior. While it seems underhanded since you're allied with the Barbs, explore any open lairs with the warrior as long as you don't have to go out of your way - you can't risk losing the boss to Crazed or something, but you can nab several nice rewards if you get lucky, including gold. Obviously it's much better if the boss nabs Villages, but it's more important to get as many villages as possible while those rewards are easy to obtain. I would give serious consideration to using my World Spell immediately after the Barbarians spawn; not only does this help me find enemy civilizations faster, the units have no upkeep (you'll lose them soon enough though) and they can nab villages for me as well! It's even possibly for you to get enough Barbarian units near a single civilization to end them right then and there. You can also save it for later - specifically for a potential awkward point where you're up against a heavily-reinforced Doviello and you either don't have Wolf Riders or you just don't have enough gold to crack them.

You need at least 100, preferably closer to 200 gold from village rewards before the animals come out in serious force. If you don't get this, either scrap the game or try a different strategy, but maybe 1 out of every 4 games I play has me with less than 100 gold by the time barbarians spawn. Also, there are only a few other potential results - recon units almost never get hostile villagers, so if you're not getting gold you're probably nabbing some free technologies that might give you enough science ramp to go the more traditional production route.

4. My research path goes as follows: Agriculture > Animal Husbandry > Education > [Crafting & Mining] > Calendar > Exploration > Festivals > Horseback Riding > Trade > Cartography (adopt City States) > [Crafting & Mining] > Bronze Working > Smelting > Iron Working. You should get Crafting and Mining after Education if you'd get enough commerce out of it, but you really really really want to tech to Trade ASAP. If you have absolutely no Plantation-capable resources within reach, you're going to have to decide whether the +6 gold per city plus the Great Merchant(s) are more worthwhile than the early bombardment ability. Those are the only technologies you need, and I highly suggest tanking your research rate in favor of gold and mass-producing Bosses once you’re finished with Iron Working, although some Champions for defense is never a bad idea.

AH gets you Wolf Riders, which are 4+1 poison with 3 movement for 30 gold - this is more than enough to take out Axemen pre-copper, and with a couple promotions or enough bonuses from being in the Boss's army, they'll take down Archers just fine. After Education, you should kick down your research rate and prioritize gold enough that you can hire enough wolf riders to take down your next target; the pillage gold should be enough to Enlist the ones that survive. Trade will get you Hill Giants for 70 gold, which start at 5/7 with 50% collateral damage (2 units) and the ability to Bombard for 20%; although the tooltip and Civilopedia entry don't mention it, they'll take Iron Weapons upgrades to get to 7/9 (maybe Mithril too, but you're Clan; if you get that late in the game you've probably lost already). Once again, after Trade, you might want to kick down your research rate even more, as Smelting and Iron Working give small returns compared to a much larger number of Hill Giants attacking your opponents.

Gold is far, far, far more important than Science with this strategy. Essentially, after Iron Working, you're either going to end the game or have only a couple opponents left to deal with. At that point, if you've been focusing on commerce, your bosses will be able to mobilize a far larger force in a short period of time than you could possibly dream of producing otherwise, so even though you could field 8-strength Champions, you'll probably end up sticking with Hill Giants.

5. At this point, your second boss should have finished and begun exploring. If you're in a central area and have yet to find an enemy civilization, have them explore separate directions, otherwise rush the second boss up to the first and stack them. Depending on difficulty, you may have to stack your bosses regardless because of the increased number of warriors defending early on higher difficulties. Just remember - and this is extremely important - be super cautious if animals like Cave Bears hit the board. You cannot afford to lose a Boss at any point in the early game, but this is probably the worst time for it to happen. You should pretty quickly run into an enemy civilization (well before they could possibly research Archery), and your boss(es) should be sitting outside the borders. If that civilization is very strong early, such as Doviello, they'll be favorably disposed towards you anyway so I might suggest skipping them, but very few civs will be strong enough to stop you this early. Now it's time to have some fun.

6. Be very liberal with your summons. They are there to be sacrificed so your high-experience Enlisted troops can finish the enemies off. You can sit outside the enemy base (assuming no catapults, otherwise have a couple units ahead to soak up that damage) and spend 2-3 turns summoning to crack a really tough one. It works extremely well. Generally you should only Enlist when it makes sense, because 50 gold is almost 2 Wolf Riders; you want several high-experience Wolf Riders, but there’s no reason to enlist every troop that survives. Remember that you can summon 3 warriors for the price of a Wolf Rider, and if you're facing enough low-power enemy troops, it might make more sense to just summon warriors earlier and hit critical mass, and then just summon wolf riders when you reach the base to deal with Archers.

7. Easiest-case scenario is somewhat distasteful - you manage to finish Animal Husbandry before your boss(es) reach the first civilization. You should still find them well before they could have possibly researched Archery, so summon a couple wolf riders and a warrior, add them to the Boss and slaughter the defenders (if they have a lot of warriors use straight-up warriors, though). Enlist any high-experience Wolf Riders – they’re way too useful to just let them go Barbarian, and at 30 gold a pop, it ends up being more worthwhile to keep the better ones.

If you have only one boss at the target civilization and it’s before AH, then hire a warrior, have it join the boss's army, then declare war and move one tile towards the city. Repeat this twice more, and you'll be sitting outside the enemy city with 3 warriors attached to your Boss. Summon a 4th warrior and send the three you just summoned into battle, attaching the 4th and following up with him and then your Boss (use Waaagh!) if you need to. You should be able to destroy the civilization if it's early enough - if you need more than 6 warriors, you'll need a second Boss because the chances that one of your warriors goes barb is way too high at that point; even 5 warriors can be hard to gain and keep with a single boss.

If you have two bosses, step into the enemy's borders before you summon, which will give you up to 6 warriors attached to 2 bosses - if you need 8 warriors for whatever reason, you can start outside the borders, but there's a decent chance that one of them's gonna go rogue. 2 bosses should be enough to eliminate almost any civ in the game if you come at them early enough.

After you take over, if the city's too far or for commerce just raze it. Otherwise, leave all your warriors at the city, and have it produce a warrior first thing. It's not worth the 50 gold to have even a high-experience warrior just sitting in that city, and you should be able to get that new warrior up before or soon after the remaining warriors go rogue. If your bosses were the only ones left, you’ll want to at least wait until the resistance period is over, but you should be okay leaving the city undefended for a bit. After the warrior is produced and fortified, produce a boss, then a Monument and continue as you would any normal city. The bosses should prioritize the increase-minion strength promotions before anything else.

7. After you get AH, make sure you always run a gold surplus, and consider making it a decently hefty one (one set of wolf summons for 3 bosses is 90 gold, but you'll more than likely need gold for two sets plus another 50 gold for enlisting the ones that survive). After your third boss finishes, pump out a warrior for defense (finally), then a couple workers, another warrior (for escort) and a settler. Then focus on workers and settlers (and escorts!) as needed - you want to spread as much as possible to maximize happy and commerce resources to get your cottage economy working well which ends up producing even more commerce. Favor locations with enough food to let you run specialists and cottages. If you tech to Festivals, be sure to assign a Merchant in every city after you build the Market. You may be able to bulb Trade with the Great Merchant, but off the top of my head I don't recall whether another researchable technology will prevent that from happening. In any case, you can always settle him for 6 more gold a turn, which is huge combined with the +6 gold/city you're already getting.

8. During that expansionary period, your 3-4 bosses will hopefully have eliminated a couple more rival civilizations with the ridiculously-powerful Wolf Riders (for that point in the game anyway; a summon-able 5-attack, 3-move unit with no city attack penalties by turn 30 or so is just ridiculous). Don’t summon more units than you need to, and try to summon them as late as possible. Be sure to continue to Enlist high-experience Wolf Riders, because they quickly become your bread-and-butter unit. Add a boss for each Civ you defeat; you may not need them now, but they'll probably come in handy eventually. Continue to expand at a rapid pace – being at peace with the Barbarians gives you a ridiculous advantage compared to other civs, and you need to ruthlessly exploit it. Hill Giants are expensive, and you’ll probably favor Wolf Riders for a long time besides the odd couple Giants to soften up stacks, but you’ll need more and more gold as time goes on. It’s imperative that you focus solely on expansion for commerce and slaughtering every civ you encounter, because the later the game goes, the smaller your edge gets, although if you have enough Bosses and gold you can make up for almost any deficiency.

9. Eventually you’ll hit Trade and be able to summon and enlist Hill Giants. With your army of workers, you should have no problem making sure you have a decent road network to the front lines so you can get Bronze Weapons to them once you get a chance. Hill Giants are your sacrificial shock troops – you summon 3-5, bombard the city, then next turn send them in first to get the enemy stacks to the point where your experienced troops can mop up. You may not want to Enlist them right away, besides one for defense on eac h town you take, because they’ll slow your army down and 5 power is plenty at this point in the game with the collateral damage if you summon enough of them.

10. Have fun managing a conquer victory well before any civilization gets to Champions! It can get a little formulaic after awhile, and it becomes really obvious when you have too much momentum to lose, but the sheer power of having 6 bosses drop 18 Wolf Riders on some poor city is exhilarating.