How to beatFrenchas Malians

In hit and run engagements against Sofa, as long as Chivalry has been researched, the knights are always going to be fairing better.

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.

Mixing in Javelin Throwers is effective because the usual French transition turns into a bunch of archers.

Javelin Throwers with Donso make for a really difficult army for French to break in the feudal age.

Donso do poorly against Arbalétriers. With Pavise activated, Arbalétriers have more armor and are very hard to take down.

French have the influence and Guild Hall which offsets the passive gold from Malians; Guild Hall prevents them from outlasting you in gold.

Playing a longer feudal is bad against French because the longer you play, the bigger their villager advantage gets.

Even just a couple of sofas hitting a gold mine on the French could be devastating, and using sofas to raid forces the French to pay attention to their own eco, counteracting their villager lead.

The Sofa aren't for a head-on fight; they're to raid, to make sure some of the knights have to go home and hit his berries and gold.

If you age into Imperial, you just essentially right-click those Donso and say, 'Okay, come fight me now.'

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.