There is no reason for Malay to have infinite fish traps anymore

TLDR: You can auto-rebuild fish traps now. Please remove the possibility of 2-hour long tilting game.

So I think a lot of you have seen a game of Malay vs Japanese on Islands in fair civs cup final, in which the Japanese player get to lead the whole game, and in the end was starved to death since he failed to attack the infinite fish traps of Malay in the back protected by Harbours. That game really got me thinking if there should be a change on that.

Story behind the bonus

When Malay first came out in AoE:HD as one of the new civ in Rise of the Rajas expansion, it is quite obvious that the developers want to push this civ to build fish traps more than others. The problem of fish traps at the time though was not about its efficiency or costs, but rather how vulnerable they are on water and, perhaps most importantly, how difficult to micro-manage every fish traps, back when auto-rebuilding fish traps was not a feature. So the solution was Malay Harbour and the infinite fish traps, where you have the stone-less fortification to protect the fish traps that you would never look back again.

Auto-rebuilding fish traps becomes a thing

This "infinite fish traps" with the cheap cost of fish traps has never been changed, and it was a necessary bonus for Malay, since otherwise they would never build fish traps despite the cheaper cost. Even though infinite resources in 1v1 sounds really broken, but consider the very low chance of a game going into that long, we could take the risk of having a boring 2 hour tilting game and favour a unique bonus that enhance most of the gameplay experience.

In AoE:DE, various new features were introduced to enhance the gameplay, including auto-rebuilding fish traps. So now everybody can build fish traps and don't need so much time to manage them anymore. Suddenly, the strongest argument for an infinite fish trap become obsolete, and since they ALREADY have 33% cheaper fish traps (a bonus that was always overlooked), one would start wondering if we actually still need this bonus.

It is not just fish traps

Malay late game is not just fish traps though. On land they can spam TH-Swordsmen forever, and on water, they have the strongest naval fortification defence with Harbour that cost no stone. On maps like Islands they don't need map control at all once you get up the harbour, and all you need to do is just starve your opponents into death, which is not fun to play or watch at all. If there is a bonus that can leads to boring 2 hour game without a good reason, I don't think it should stay.

Actual game example: Malay vs Japanese on FCC final

And just to point out, Malay is already one of the best civ on Islands with their faster uptime, so if your opponent somehow manage to gain a lead early on, they deserve to win the game. Going back to the recent Malay vs Japanese game, we can see how the Malay player lose the early game not because of any civ disadvantage, but by his own decision to build more fishing ships after feudal age comes, compounded with the his luck on finding his opponent. Although he defends very well afterwards, it is stupid to see how the Japanese player lose the game after he landed on the opponents islands, had trebs laid down with towers and controlled a quarter of the island. With any other maps, that kind of push should be GG already.

Remember Portuguese vs Incas on Arena?

One of the reasons I mentioned the game to support my demand to change the fish traps, is how the game give me flashback to an Arena game played between TheViper and Daut a long time before when Portuguese was new civ (good ol' days). If you haven't watch it, basically that one game leads to the death of Arquebus. In my opinion, while it is true that BBC with that projectile speed is OP, at least we can say the Incas player did not make good use of his civ early advantage to avoid the gunpowder snowball.

Speaking of Portuguese, they have Feitoria which also generates infinite resource but at a great cost. The resource it can generate is fairly limited and only make sense when wood runs out, while the infinite fish traps is useful even when there are wood left behind since it still saves a lot of wood regardless, so they can start the investment way earlier, while Portuguese economy will suffer between the time feitoria is up and wood is still available.

My suggestion

As I mentioned, they already have stoneless Harbour and cheaper fish traps, the easiest solution would just remove infinite fish traps bonus. They will still have the cheapest fish traps, and I'm sure they are still worth to make in the game. Infinite fish trap is one of the unique feature of Malay, so I can understand why some people might get upset if it is removed. However, they still have a lot of unique things going on with them, namely "faster uptime" "cheap unit spams" and "stoneless fortification", so I think it is fair to say they will still be a fun civilization to play.