How to beatMaliansas French

Raiding Malian cattle is crucial because at this stage it's very expensive to invest gold into remaking them.

When the Malian front line mixes Sofas with Donzos, there are fewer Donzos, so you can finally afford to trade out with mass knights.

You can't just try and make more scouts and outscout your opponent; those warrior scouts will definitely beat out yours.

There's a fairly narrow window where Sofa with imported armor do well against French feudal knights; once French knights become castle age, the edge goes back to them.

The Red Palace makes it very difficult for Malians to push into your base with their squishy units; their zerging strategy gets countered by the Red Palace and its arbalest emplacements, making it hard for them to get value from diving.

Arbalétriers are not the best choice against most of Malians' army because their bonus damage only applies to Sofa, which are the only armored units Malians have.

The Malian base lacks something like the Red Palace; there are no defensive keep emplacements to fend off an army pushing in.

Losing one, two, maybe three villagers isn't so bad in this matchup initially as Malians. You have cows, pitmines, and a solid defensive composition.

Warrior Scouts are faster than Knights and can surround and kill a lone Knight. French should look for cycle charge setups or harass the economy, and avoid fighting the Warrior Scouts directly.

French going heavy archers is worrisome when Malians are working toward Javelins, because Javelins counter ranged. That's not a setup French wants to maintain for a long time.

The Donso-Javelin composition is very difficult for French to break. Javelins counter ranged, so only cavalry can be sent, but Donso counter cavalry.

Once you get to mid-Castle age or so for the Malians, this matchup is incredibly difficult for the French. French just have no answer to Malians — you just don't have anything that is able to deal with a spam of Donso and Javelin Throwers. So if you're the French player, you've got to leverage run-around, pick off villagers, and dictate the tempo of the game by hitting the eco, and you need to do that to perfection; otherwise you don't have a good matchup.

French against Malians is a matchup that is tilted a little bit towards the Malian side, and that's because French are all about raiding, putting pressure, but Malians are the civ that's very hard and difficult to raid. They also have those Donso that get a spear throw which starts to add up especially in mass. You get ten Donso, all of a sudden the knights get a little too close, one knight falls or gets put down to half health very quickly.

That first initial Knight can delay and make sure that the second pit mine doesn't get invested into as early as it could be.

When you get to Castle Age as French, you will get royal bloodlines, giving massive combat upgrades. Royal bloodlines takes a minute and a half, so you need to queue it up quickly and wait for that timing. But you won't have a window where it's veteran Knights versus unupgraded Donso because Malians upgrades come really quick and aren't too far delayed on their Castle timing.

If you see the Malians dropping an Imperial Age landmark, that's your trigger point. It's now or never: you cannot let Imperial Age come through, because then mass Donso will absolutely obliterate your Castle Age Knights.

Malians are actually a lot more wood-intensive than people realize early on. They need wood for cattle ranches, production, pit mines, and houses. So it takes a timing for them to set up, and French Royal Knights can pressure that timing.

Remember, Donso can throw their spears, so they don't need to close the gap to enemy cavalry, but they still get the actual bonus damage attack against cavalry.