[GS] Mali Discussion Thread

[Pietato]

They are bad for scientific victory as well, because the penalty from mines also applies to projects and wonders, unlike the 30% generic production penalty. You can't pray your way into space.

They only victory type I can see Mali excel at is domination, because they can field and maintain massive armies.

But production is actually not that useful for a science victory. You buy the spaceport, and then chop the parts while using worker charges.

 

[Kimiimaro]

But production is actually not that useful for a science victory. You buy the spaceport, and then chop the parts while using worker charges.

*Crawls out of his cave after hearing about chopping*

I almost never chop and I often don't use Magnus.

*Crawls back*

 

[Futumch]

With apologies to Don McLean...

Buy, buy, this here African guy,
Gets a Trader some day later, now he's just a small fry.
He makes his home in the desert so dry
Sayin' soon I'm gonna be a big guy,
Soon I'm gonna be a big guy.

(I shouldn't have watched Weird Al Yankovic's parody of American Pie by Don McLean because I had the song in my head when I watched the first look video).

 

[Siptah]

*Crawls out of his cave after hearing about chopping*

I almost never chop and I often don't use Magnus.

*Crawls back*

You can sacrifice builders for the space projects, no need to chop or harvest. You surely do that, aren‘t you?

 

[Red_warning]

I wonder what it will mean for trade between civilisations if Mali is in the match. Will the wealth rub off on other civs via resource trading and will we have hyper inflation akin to what happened during Musa's pilgrimage to Mecca?

 

[bbbt]

I really think they should extend "Free Inquiry" to be available as a golden age dedication in the Renaissance era. It ends a little early to take a lot of advantage of. It would be a nice boost to both Mali and England. And it frankly doesn't make much sense that it doesn't extend through the Renaissance (which seems to include the Enlightenment in this game).

I'd actually probably say drop both Monumentality and Exodus from the Renaissance and extend Free Inquiry and Pen, Brush, and Voice into the Renaissance instead.

 

[MarigoldRan]

*Crawls out of his cave after hearing about chopping*

I almost never chop and I often don't use Magnus.

*Crawls back*

Go back to the cave, where you belong.

 

[_hero_]

A few things:

First of all the 4 to 1 ratio is actually more like 3 to 1 when you factor in average rush buying discounts in the game for the Mali, possibly as high as 2 to 1 in ideal situations. Therefore turning 1 into 4 from mines is quite strong.

Second, the 30% penalty not applying to districts makes it far less than 30% fewer hammers over the course of the game. Focusing heavily on building districts with and buying nearly everything else will be prudent which brings me to...

Third, In GS you'll ultimately be able to buy everything except for wonders and boats with in certain circumstances. With Mali, you will absolutely want to focus on getting Monumentality. You will be swimming in if you build in deserts and will be able to convert that into settlers upon reaching the classical age if you managed to get a golden age right away, which shouldn't be too hard if you go for an early Suguba for the free +4 era score. The Suguba+Monumentality will make and purchases of Settlers, Builders and Traders 50% cheaper. Of course, if you miss out on an early golden age you are going to have a hard time I think.

Fourth, all that extra if you do settle in a desert has a few side effects. First, it lets you use high low hexes instantly. Those 2 plains forest hills nearby can be used at pop 1 and 2 if the other 4 hexes are desert because you'll have 4 extra in your city center, so you'll be yielding 8 6 4at 2 pop in this situation. That's quite amazing for not requiring any resource hexes.

Finally, that extra food early will let you grow to 4/7 pop quite fast sometimes, potentially letting you build 3 straight districts in some cities and avoid the 30% penalty entirely for quite some time.

To me, the Mali will be quite powerful in ideal circumstances (good deserts, a productive capital, enough space to wait until Classical era to go heavy into expansion) but will be quite weak if they don't get to exploit their bonuses.

 

[chazzycat]

I really think they should extend "Free Inquiry" to be available as a golden age dedication in the Renaissance era.

If they did this I would probably never build a campus again

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

Which brings us to the point that FXS still don’t fully realize, or don’t want to accept:

Bad tiles are still inherently bad tiles. Giving civs decent bonuses for those tiles isn’t a real advantage, you are merely evening out the playground. A civ still needs food and production, something these bad tiles cannot provide - which is why you end up with “tundra/desert on the edges” kind of strategies. Also, the border expansion logic avoids these tiles like a plague. Even if you have Petra, the game will consider desert tiles as low priority, because it doesn’t consider the added bonus of Petra when choosing the next tile for expansion.

For this same reason, I am still extremely skeptical about the Inca. No, just because you can work mountains doesn’t mean you will have better yields than other civs.

No, FXS's problem is they have never correctly modeled the amount of variation and enhancement that humans have done to the terrain around them. 'Bad tiles are inherently bad tiles' only in the game, not in the historical record:

The central California desert, with Industrial Era and later irrigation and bio-engineering, have become the most productive agricultural acreage on the planet. Operative Word Desert.
The Inca could create farmland by terracing mountains, plant an early example of genetic engineering (potatoes) and extract more calories per acre than anywhere in Europe could with traditional 'flatland' agriculture.
Native Americans managed forests in eastern north America for both agriculture and game, produced man-made fertile soil for rainforest garden agriculture in the rain forest, and planted about 1/3 of the Amazon rainforest to get plants that were useful to themselves.

As long as the game doesn't allow us to replicate historical human civilizations' abilities, 'Bad tiles are inherently bad tiles' and the game is sadly lacking in opportunities.

As to the debate over Mali's pluses and minuses:
Early Production now is dependent on a decent Start position, with productive tiles. IF Mali has a Start Bias for desert that is actually coded correctly, they will get Gold early regardless of whether their neighbors have Production. In my experience, I buy something early in the game every single game with Gold to supplement lagging early Production. Instead of 1 unit or 1 building in the first 20 turns, Mali will be buying 2 or 3. I think people will find that they are not much disadvantaged at all.

Deserts are second only to Tundra in spawning Barb Camps, in my experience (and I've played on Hot Arid maps with lots of desert, and the little red buggers swarm out of the sands like Locusts). Given any chance at all, Mali can go Barb Hunting and supplement his Gold even more: on a standard game, 2 Barb Camps and ordinary production will get you a Slinger or Scout, 3 will get you a Warrior 4 will pretty nearly buy you a Granary or Monument. And that's without the +4 Gold from a Mine Mali gets...

Let's see, add to that safe trade routes across those deserts with the Mandekalu, cheap CH, Massive amounts of Faith from desert cities that, with a Monumentality Golden Age allow you to Flood the Map with Faith Bought Settlers/Builders: I predict that the 'negatives' for this Civ will only apply to those who are Fixated on Production to the exclusion of all else...

Myself, I plan to name my first Malian pure desert city Tanais and wait for an Archeologist wearing a fedora and carrying a bullwhip to show up...

 

[bite]

While my first thought was that Mali should pick Desert Folklore, there's a pretty compelling case for grabbing Lady of Reeds and Marshes to get production from flood plains and Oases, since Mali will be hurting for Production early.

I wonder if Lady of the Reeds has been tweaked with Flood Plains meaning something different this time round

 

[KayAU]

It's another unique and different design, and I like it. All abilities seem to synergize nicely, but it remains to be seen how well it will work in practice. Some thoughts:

• The city center yield bonus for adjacent desert tiles is potentially very strong. Settling in desert will get you a straight +6 food +6 faith passively, which means you will grow to your housing limit rather quickly.
• At the same time, settling in the desert means low tile yields, especially with regards to food. The mine malus also means you will not be getting much production from tiles. This means your citizens will be allocated differently, to either work mines which mainly produce gold, natural wonders which typically yield culture, science faith or gold, or work as specialists in districts.
• If specialists get a boost in Gathering Storm (which I really think they should), it would be good for Mali, as their potential large passive food yield will free up population which could be used for this.
• Mali is focused on gold and faith purchasing, and should be able to do it really well. The really nice thing about purchasing is that it is instantaneous, meaning you will get things up very quickly. This should be even nicer on slow game speeds.
• The downside to gold/faith purchasing, is that it is somewhat limited when it comes to districts, and not directly possible with wonders.
• Getting Reyna and the promotion which lets her buy districts is going to be a high priority for Mali.
• Although you can't rush wonders directly with gold or faith, you can use gold or faith to purchase certain Great Engineers which can do the job for you.
• A nice thing about gold/faith purchasing units, is that it can be done when needed, which means you will not need to allocate production or pay upkeep in preparation for a threat which may or may not materialize at some point in the future.
• The additional trade routes for Golden Ages should work out really well, as Golden Ages are generally very easy to get. The additional gold from international trade routes is also significant.

Overall, I am very intrigued, to the point that this might be one of the first civilizations I try out.

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

I am interested to see the livestream for this one. I hope they start at turn 1 and show the trevails of Ancient Era Mali.

 

[bite]

Now that I have woken up and had some time to think, the more I am intrigued about getting that Mali synergy going at full tack

They may replace The Inca as my first civ to try out.

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

I've been doing some thought analysis on how to start as Mali. I think you're just going to have to forego Scouts, since it will take too long to hard-build all that in the beginning. Explore with your Warrior a bit, just enough to find a nearby city-state to trade with. It's probably wise to not seek out other civs right away. Let them find you.

First thing to build is a Builder so you can get mines up for Gold. That way you can start buying stuff. Working desert hills is fine, since your capital will generate its own food. After the Builder, start chugging away at your districts, since they will take longer than normal to build.

Tech foci should be mining, astronomy, currency, and the Wheel. Buy Chariots to explore with and for defense.

Civic foci should be Foreign Trade. Send that trader to your nearby city-state for more gold for buying things.

 

[StrideColossus]

... Building wonders could be a bit of a problem. Guess I'll need internal trade routes and a few forest cities with lumbermills for that.

I think this is right for a standard 'production focused' civ but definitely not for Mali from what I've seen thus far - they should have tonnes of gold so the better strategy would surely be to emphasise that and buy engineers and builders, not try to make up their production deficit?

 

[Furycrab]

Now that I have woken up and had some time to think, the more I am intrigued about getting that Mali synergy going at full tack

They may replace The Inca as my first civ to try out.

The way they warp how you play should be insane. Weird part to me is that you'll probably not want to hammer out much of anything except districts and the occasional wall. Going to have to revisit the conversion into yields on projects and basically taking a fairly different approach to trade routes and policy cards is also fun.

Wonder if that 50% settler buyout thing will still be a big thing. This is a Civ I feel will start slow and isolationist and can quickly explode in the mid game.

 

[AriochIV]

Trajan sees smaller states as things to add to his empire. I think that makes perfect sense.

Rome was the largest empire in its time. Trajan hated everyone?

Rome's greatest enemies were the bigger rival empires, not the smaller ones.

Regardless, in game context on higher levels, Rome is always going to be bigger than you, so Trajan is always going to hate you. The agenda might as well be "always hates the human player." That would be fine if it drove interesting or fun interactions, but it doesn't.

My personal favorite is when you're fighting Alexander and he sues for peace, and then complains that you're not at war with anyone, and then denounces you as a warmonger.

 

[Sostratus]

Whether they last to that point, and whether that actually does anything, we still don't know. The same bonus applies to builders/Settlers during a monumentality golden age.

My biggest concerns are that the penalty being on civilian units will just be brutal early game, and that will slow you down too much. Monuments and granaries will be important to claim desert tile for the ability and get housing if you founded in the desert, but they will take a good long while to finish (70% rate is 1/0.7=43% longer. Those are precious turns.) And that penalty will affect chopping! I don't think the mine thing is as big a deal because outside of desert, there will be healthy production from forests, hills themselves, resources, etc.
My second concern is that he is the first desert civ to not have a UI to put on the desert tiles though- unlike russian tundra, you can't do anything with them except spam districts and maybe later, solar farms. Yes, you get some food and faith for the trouble, but those citizens won't be able to do much other than work the odd mine. Its too bad specialist ecos aren't a thing.

Overall I think a lot of this reaction is built around how strong Hungary and Maori and Inca look. Mali doesn't have that in your face power like they do listed on the screen. I kind of wish the UD had more adjacency options or did something for desert tile yield, because of how comparatively valuable gold is vs other stuff, but oh well. At least you can always trigger the adjacency half of free market whenever you want.

 

[darkace77450]

I've been doing some thought analysis on how to start as Mali. I think you're just going to have to forego Scouts, since it will take too long to hard-build all that in the beginning. Explore with your Warrior a bit, just enough to find a nearby city-state to trade with. It's probably wise to not seek out other civs right away. Let them find you.

I hear what you're saying, but you'll be forgoing some era score via tribal village-clearing without a scout. Missing a classical era golden age means missing an extra early trade route and monumentality.