Age of Empires IV Malians - Dark Age Ram Rush Guide AOE4

Summary

Along with the 3 known Malian openings:

- Fast Castle Age 3 Farimba

- Trade Boom

- Dark Age Ram Rush

Rock/Paper/Scissors. You should be able to learn all 3 Malian openings to be reactive to any player on the ladder.

If you are against a greedy/boom civ you can win easily with the Dark Age Ram Rush.

If you are being raided early you can go Fast Castle Age 3 Farimba

If you are against a civ that counters you, attempt a Trade Boom variation

Video Example

Work in Progress

I keep getting error messages. My computer keeps crashing...

if anyone knows how to fix this error:

0x887A0007 - DXGI_ERROR_DEVICE_RESET The device failed due to a badly formed command. This is a run-time issue; The application should destroy and recreate the device.

Age 1

Standard Opening:

Start of game:

- 5 on wood

- 1 on sheep

First vil to gold + 6 houses, return to food.

Herd minimum 2 sheep from TC LOS

Finish 1 tree. Build 1 lumber camp, get the Cutting upgrade. Should have 0 wood left.

11-12+ on sheep, 1 on wood, 0 on gold

Defending:

Current meta encourages people to raid pit mine. You can open barracks if you suspect people will do this, by cutting all straggler trees.

Age up Transitioning:

6 on food.

Mansa Quarry with 4 villagers.

Rally all to wood. 6 food.

Build Mill, build cow as soon as you hit 90 gold

Age 1 Breakdown:

Age 1 Malians do not need sheep. Only 5 sheep total. Your Macro will be focused on using your scout early.

The Mansa Quarry opening allows you to ignore a raid on your gold camp. Essentially, the Mansa Quarry is a early-game Pit-mine. You can open with this build-order if you are versing a passive/greedy player/civ.

Age 2

Age 2:

You now have: All on wood, 6 on food, 0 on gold

Upon aging up...

of the 4 vills building the Mansa Quarry, 1 moves to pit mine, 1 moves to food (Total 7 on food), and 2 move to woodline.

Upgrade Wood Gathering immediately upon age up.

Upgrade Broadaxe after Wood

Research Siege Engineering after Broadaxe.

Build archery range against English/Dehli. (This will be a Jav rush.)

Military production non-stop

7 on food. 4 on Gold. All on Wood. 2-3 Cows dead at all times.

Take all Blacksmith upgrades with excess gold.

Construct Rams with infantry.

Important note: you must always be harvesting from cows. The moment you go idle from cows you will fall behind. Backup sheep if your apm is not high enough.

All in at 10 minutes, max pop army (80pop). Usually enemy would hit age 3 by this time. Which is when you hit with 5 rams and 30 units.

6 Rams is the perfect speedrun btw

Back out if the enemy defends well... Prepare for age 3.

Age 2 Breakdown:

Age 2 is a tricky APM test. You must be able to manage the cow steady food income, on top of managing the military macro + researching tech. Either raiding and taking map advantage. Or actively scouting enemy movement. A good approach would be to raid with 2 Musofadi Warriors per party, and have them spread across the map. Meanwhile, always check the TC to have 1 cow harvested at a time.

Age 3

To age to 3 is no problem. If you realise you couldn't ram rush before the enemy hit age 3, you can age up to 3, Farimba Garrison, relatively quickly.

Cows, mass 12 - 20 vils on cows, and train cows.

If it helps, the marketplace can easily convert resources over from cows to gold or gold to cows vice versa. If you went trade post you can decide to boom with traders.

You would very simply age up within 2 minutes while able to produce units.

Do not build the cow landmark.

It is useless and you are not going to eat its cows.

Once the farimba garrison is constructed, rally 20 onto gold. Begin the onslaught.

1 archery range before age3 so you can upgrade your poison arrows.

Adapt to unit composition, and upgrade accordingly.

Do not build farms, you must rely on cows. You can average a 1200 food per minute constantly, which is enough to spam units until the enemy.... Gives up.

Age 3 Breakdown:

Aggression, counter-play, and decisiveness. Weakness; constricted map movement.

In Age 3, a standard Malian position is one that controls almost 4/5 of the map. Outmaneuver the enemy, and you have the means to dictate the pace of the game. Producing much more faster, and an economy which is unfairly overtaking the opposition with very little effort, as long as the cows are producing. Trade can increase this gap even further; adding a sense of urgency for the opposition to create a bad-play.

Jump on any opportunity to increase your lead. And take the W.

Age 4

Keep the pressure up. If need be, age 4 with Bazaar.

It is OK to go keep if you find yourself needing to hold a certain location that you can utilise aggressively. And build trebs to dig them out.

At this stage, adapt to what you see.

The cow economy is now apparent, that it needs to be nerfed.

The enemy loses map control due to your farimba garrison constantly out producing units.

As long as you kept the pressure, and never stopped training units (I can't imagine your apm being that low) and you don't forget to create cows. This is the end.

Age 4 Breakdown:

Like AOE3, the Lakota have a firedance ceremony which is OP with the right timing. I suggest watching Fitzy's streams when it comes to good use of Bazaar Landmark. It's a very similar play-style to the Lakota/Dutch mixed together. In Age 4, if there is a stalemate, you should end the game with sacred sites. The enemy is usually starved of resources by this stage of the game, unless they are playing turtle civs.

Changelog

(Last updated 12/5/22: minor edits)

Source: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2895929496

Malians - Dark Age Ram Rush Guide AOE4