Mali's production penalty

[sethjohnson]

-30% production towards buildings and units.

My understanding is this didn't apply to districts, wonders and projects but I had a game recently as Mali where everything seemed so slow in all cities.

I had an industrial zone in my capital adjacent to two dams and a canal, plus the policy card which buffs industrial adjacency and it was still telling me the forbidden city would take about 45 turns! (standard speed)

Has it been tweaked with the all the recent updates?

 

[pokiehl]

Nope. You can verify this on your end. Check how much Production per turn the city makes, and then see how much the bucket for the district or wonder fills up each turn. You’ll see it’s not reduced by 30%.

 

[Alexander's Hetaroi]

According to the files wonders are technically considered buildings appearing in the buildings document. Even the civ wiki lists them as mega buildings that only one civ can build.

 

[Luxerne]

-30% production towards buildings and units.

My understanding is this didn't apply to districts, wonders and projects but I had a game recently as Mali where everything seemed so slow in all cities.

I had an industrial zone in my capital adjacent to two dams and a canal, plus the policy card which buffs industrial adjacency and it was still telling me the forbidden city would take about 45 turns! (standard speed)

Has it been tweaked with the all the recent updates?

Mali's mines also get -1 production too, which affect all things you want to build in your cities.

 

[pokiehl]

According to the files wonders are technically considered buildings appearing in the buildings document. Even the civ wiki lists them as mega buildings that only one civ can build.

Yes but they still aren’t affected by Mali’s ability. The effect for Mali has an “IsWonder” boolean set to false.

Buildings and Wonders are never conflated by the game for anything. It’s always specified if Wonders are included (see for instance the Industrial City-State type bonus descriptions).

 

[bbbt]

As noted Mali's mines lose production, which means it's often just the industrial district (or more often for me - desert folklore holy site w/ work ethic) doing all the heavy lifting.

 

[enKage]

As other stated, Malinese low production on districts and wonders directly comes from mine penalty. The solution is chopping wonders and working quarries / lumbermills, as well as focusing on domestic trade pre democracy (sending route to gov plaza + encampment + IZ + suguba + harbor is 6 hammers) and building encampnments for bonus hammers

 

[8housesofelixir]

Besides all the great advices made above, I would also add that grabbing the new Great Engineer Shah Jahān can help Mali's wonder game a lot. He one-turned Cristo Redentor for me last week.

 

[RealHuhn]

The trick is to settle cities at the edge of a desert. That's how you get the improved growth for more population (= more tiles = more production), good production from lumber mills because they don't get the -1 nerf and there's no need to waste production on stuff like libraries. Just buy them.
Always have enough housing available and Mali actually becomes quite good at wonder building in the Medieval era and this includes the Forbidden City.

 

[Equilin]

Besides all the great advices made above, I would also add that grabbing the new Great Engineer Shah Jahān can help Mali's wonder game a lot. He one-turned Cristo Redentor for me last week.

Last month he insta-finished my Antarctic Research Station!
And still got another charge left...

 

[konokoni]

As other stated, Malinese low production on districts and wonders directly comes from mine penalty. The solution is chopping wonders and working quarries / lumbermills, as well as focusing on domestic trade pre democracy (sending route to gov plaza + encampment + IZ + suguba + harbor is 6 hammers) and building encampnments for bonus hammers

Besides all the great advices made above, I would also add that grabbing the new Great Engineer Shah Jahān can help Mali's wonder game a lot. He one-turned Cristo Redentor for me last week.

A big piece of Malian strategy is to find ways to avoid building things entirely: the Monumentality Golden Age, fully promote Moksha or Renya so you can start buying districts with faith or gold respectively, get the Grand Master's Chapel so you can buy land military units with faith, the above-mentioned great people & chopping to quick-build wonders, etc. Also, finding discounts where you can get them (Suguba, Theocracy, Ngazargamu) to make your gold & faith go farther.

Obviously hard-building is sometimes necessary (especially earlier on, hence Mali's slow start), but when I play Mansa Musa I tend to invest more effort into maximizing my gold & faith instead of trying to "make up" for lost production.

Having said all of that, Desert Folklore + Work Ethic is probably still worth it, it's too much production to pass up entirely.

 

[Datian]

I agree, my usual bet with Mali is Desert Folklore + Work Ethic + Theology. That's 12 faith 12 production in the cities with a good desert, not including adjacency bonuses (like a Suguba/Holy site diamond, 14 faith 14 production).
That's enough to secure early key wonders like Oracle, Pyramids (ok you might want to chop a bit for those two), then Machu Pichu and Halicarnassus, in your core cities.
Because, indeed, faith and gold will make up for production... but not before at least 50 turns.

The massive faith you get will later buy all your units (monumentality, GM chapel), and with voidsingers it adds to science, culture and gold.
As for the gold, it will buy, well, everything else, including your districts with Reyna.

Really, the difficult part is in the first 50 turns. After that, you swim in faith, gold, and production if you have a good desert.