Abun Outlaw new meta?

[fei123456]

After everything of the "epic" Ethiopia lame build was nerfed into ground: gascynia, dervish, big benny, age III mortar... It's nearly impossible to play that anymore. But if we focus on something different, we notice that Ethiopia actually has quite cost-effective outlaw and native units, just as Hausa does.

Ethiopia doesn't have a 15% HP/attack bonus, but it has a shipment in age I to reduce the cost of any outlaw/native/mercenary units by 15%, and shipments are included too. 8 cannon/10 archer/12 dervish costs 425 coin/influence after that, and 5 sennar costs 850 influence only. Another important shipment is also in age I, reducing the population cost by 1, and give outlaw 15% HP buff, villager 35% HP buff. After two upgrades, a sand trooper/archer costs 25 food and 64 coin (and 1 population!), and even a sand raider's cost becomes 42.5 food and 110.5 coin (2 pop), while it beats a Uhlan quite easily.

The reason why outlaws are rarely used before is
1. shotel/gascynia/dervish/cannon beats everything;
2. Ethiopia eco is quite bad.
They don't have Air Berber, university, to produce constant influence income. Abun are expensive villagers that can only work on monastery, and mines only have limited coin to gather. However, after the recent buff to Abun and monastery, Ethiopia eco is quite impressive here.

A monastery costs 150 wood, and can be built in age I. (You can actually build 2 in age I, and go for a 3rd in age II.) Abun and monastery gather coin with 0.86/s, which is as effective as 1.433 vills. That is, you send 2 villager 1 Abun, sell a cow, build a monastery, and you send a 4.9 villager shipment in age 1. You age up with 16.9 villagers' eco, as rich as French. In age II, you build a 3rd monastery and train 5 Abun, and you have 6.88/s coin income, which is faster than a factory/2 Dutch banks. You can even send 3 Abun shipment, which is as effective as a bank wagon. 8 Abun and 3 monastery=9.46 coin/s (nearly equal to 4 banks). Don't forget that both Abun and monastery benefits from market techs, and you can set 50% of the coins into influences (equal to 2-3 Hausa universities).

The basic build is to age up with 16p (14 villagers and 1 Abun), sell 2nd cow after 2v1a arrives for a monastery. Age up with Habesha for tower and 300 coin. Gather 300 coin during transition, then chop for a 2nd monastery (send a villager to build it somewhere faraway). Collect the crates, train 4 Abuns, build a tower and 3rd monastery with travois, and start training outlaws.

However, it's difficulty to decide what to do next. Both outlaw upgrades make them cheaper, so you have to send them earlier; but if your build is 2v1a, cost -15%, population -1, it's even hard to keep constant outlaw spam from 1 tower. It's nearly impossible to prevent you enemy from early boom/aging up. Instead, you can have more units with 700 wood, 700 coin etc, but it's just a very common musk hussar build with mediocre units, and is not competitive in current patch anyway. Don't forget 3 Abun: there's no reason to skip a bank wagon if you wanna an eco play.

My idea is to forget the possibility of early pressure, focusing on better eco and late colonial/semiFF. On standard maps, go 2v1a, 3 Abun, cost -15%, population -1. Train some outlaw and go age III, or to send cannon/dervish for a timing push. On TP maps, 2v1a 700w may be the better choice. In age III you have 15 dervish, 5 sennar, 6 hackapell etc, and outlaws even have auto-upgrade in age IV.

It's awkward that I lost most of the games with such build, but I still believe that it works: you don't have better choices with this civ anyway.

[helln00]

I have lost to this build before (though arguably because china age 2 plays have a very bad match up against this build) and the key to it is agreesive map control with towers and abuns since you can take pretty strong early fights and possibly not lose any units due to the abuns which just snowballs out of control really quick

[Thrar]

I don't think it has to be outlaws necessarily. After training 5 abuns you can also put all vils on food and use the coin for shotel, or coin/influence for shotel and your choice of native.

Maybe a shotel semi where you make 5 abun, 10-15 shotel, then age up? Get the infantry upgrade, make shotel/neftenya for example.

[dansil92]

3 abun is a really, really poor shipment in value. crates are better, can just train more of the coin dudes yourself.

i cant help but wonder if the ports is a better ageup option, for arsenal to get cuirass or breastplate or whatever.

i think abun based/centric semi-ffs are the future of Ethiopia