When you are playing Malians, when your pit mines start getting shut down and you don't have those javelin numbers because you want to get as many cows as possible, your gold trickle is not enough to keep production going to outdo 35 archers. You cannot have enough javelins to handle that.

Malians often get to sit back and relax if you're not up against a civ that can do dark age aggression. Delhi can't do any dark age aggression.

When Delhi hits castle, they can send out many scholars to quickly pick up all the relics. So Malians need to have map presence to deny those relics, because the passive income adds up quickly.

If you want to raid with Sofas, be aware of where the Ghazi raiders are, because one Sofa caught out can get surrounded and killed. Losing Sofas piecemeal will leave you behind in military count.

As Malians, you have to survive until you have those cows necessary to really exceed the opponent's income by a significant margin.