My experience has been Mali is still Mali, but now with great works, and continues to be strong but difficult to play. Buying great writings off the AI seems easier than trying to go for them yourself. There’s a lot of district juggling going on since you want CH, TD, and HS in every city, on top of whatever else you would normally include. I’m not sure what the ideal build order is yet. I agree with some earlier sentiments that you don’t feel like you’re going to make it as a viable civ until about turn 100 when the gold taps finally turn on. But once you’re there it gets hard to run out of money. It’s fun bringing up the great person screen and seeing ~8,000 cost and thinking, “so 5 turns?”.
Also played with Ramses and he’s been fun. Egypt has always been good at wonders, but his culture rebate is a good reminder to keep doing that. It’s also very satisfying to get snowballing with early wonders that set you up for a strong mid and late game. Biggest weakness is finding time to build settlers between wonders. Maybe get Etemenanki for the production and Magnus’s population preserving promotions then start pumping out settlers?