My understanding of the African Civs

Age of Empires III: DE III - Discussion
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This is both of them in gereral.

On the economic/civilian side:
You’re encouraged to use livestock more than than farming for food
Coin is less important as many things that cost coin now cost influence.
Influence is an actual resource that’s important not like export or favor (from AoM)

On the Military side:

They always have fixed outlaws (Desert Bandits) just like american civs always have Wild West outlaws from watch tower (outpost). And they seem to not need theatres/dance hall to make them not pop prohibitive.

They have two types of militiaman: one that’s a pikeman and one that’s an archer and they cost influence…

They’re regular military lineup is unusual: They have Jav riders (dragoon equiv) and Light hand cavalry (weak hussar) and heavy hand cavalry in the 3rd age. But the war camp has a critical gap…Ethopians don’t have an archer/skirmisher until 3rd age and Hausa don’t have a pikeman or musketeer. They must fill the gap with auxiliaries that cost influence. For Hausa it’s a musketeer unit that costs quite a bit of influence at the palace for Ethiopians it’s the levied archer from the hut Or they can use desert bandits just like Europeans or USA use outlaws to fill in weak spots early on.

At fortress age they have shared veteran upgrades that are pretty cheap…and ethopians gain a regular military unit that fills the gap that that was missing in age 2. And influence is now more importantly spent on things like artillery and mercen…Allied units.

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Ethiopians and Hausa both look like fun civs to play and they have a,my creative mechanics that I like

The selling livestock at the market is a great feature

The farms remind me of aoe2 farms

Ethiopians have a unit Called desert warrior, it is like a nizam fusilier except one of its modes makes it have 50% resist, it seems decent for a 30 food 70 gold unit, this is going to get changed no doubt, but I like the idea of the unit.

The dessert archer design is very cool in my opinion, when it’s far from a target is has a wind up animation, when it’s within 12 range of the target it fires instantly.

The Ethiopian units are pretty good overall I mentioned two of the most interesting ones but they have a lot, the shovel warrior looks interesting, with the exception of the dessert warrior the Ethiopian infantry looks average, maybe above average.

The Ethiopian economy looks pretty good, the mountain monasteries are about 3 villagers each but you can’t have very many, for this reason Ethiopians in my opinion will not be an all out boom civ like Dutch or Japanese, I instead think they will be similar to Inca in that wether or not you boom or attack depends on the matchup, from what I’ve seen from players playing the Ethiopians, you can definitely make a few early units if needed

Hausa look like a great civ for aggressive age 2 play or maybe for a semi ff

From what I’ve seen Hausa can age with around 11 villagers, this sounds good but remember that you train all of those villagers, the age up times for Hausa are the same as Dutch 14 villager age up and British 16 villager age up.

The Hausa archer looks like a nice spamable unit almost reminiscent of a strelet, but for the Most part I think the Hausa version of the musk is the most useful of the units, Hausa cav is very tanky and that’s useful for sure, also you can gain access to falcs and culvs but you pay for them with influence

Hausa seem like a good civ and the card for a builder wagon and a second scout In age 1 is probably ther best substitute for the 3 villager shipment.

To summarize it my prediction for the meta build orders for these civs is this:

Hausa aggressive age 2 or semi ff

Ethiopian organ guns timing attack or monastery boom

I think once the dlc drops I’ll try playing Hausa, they seem like a fun civ, but so do Ethiopians.

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Desert warrior is an outlaw unit, common to both same with desert archer and w

It’s an outlaw unit common to both same goes for other units made from the watch tower, they can’t go beyond veteran level. (only USA has guard level outlaws)…europeans and asians may even have them on African maps.

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I think we still haven’t seen any real viable build orders, it’s like when USA came out and standard was capitalism and bank or aging up with Massachusetts.

The age 1 villager cards don’t seem to be getting much use, probably in part due to the large quantity of team games, but the Ethiopian 1 seems fine it’s 2 vills and 1 of those healers that can gather gold from monastery, so basically equivalent to 3v. The hausa version is 2 vills and a goat i think so maybe not quite as good but I believe they have a good card like eco theory age 1.

The desert warrior is an outlaw as someone else said that both civs have access too, it changes resists based on stance so it has 1 that has range resist and another that has melee, but strangely it has another stance that gives it like 50% range resist and some siege resist i believe which is obviously broken as speed remains high so that will be nerfed 100%, it should still be useful being able to change just between range and melee resist though.
It seems to be an excellent unit for the Hausa which lack a good musketeer style unit age 2.

They also have a 3rd type of militiamen available from the palace which is like a musketeer i think.

The ethiopians can quite easily get an archer equivalent until age 3 whether that be the desert archer, those cannoneer abus gun type units or there’s a skirm from the berber alliance called the somali darood i think, whilst it’s not amazing it is very long ranged and decent enough age 2.
The hausa don’t really miss the musk and they have the desert warrior as an option, what hausa seem to lack is a good skirm late game, as the archers are quite weak age 3 and don’t trade well vs a regular style skirm that’s kiting a lot, their cavalry is also quite tanky but low attack so it seems they often have no option but to make falconets to deal with skirms, not sure how well the raiders do vs skirms but they seem to be more just for buildings and vills.

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After looking at streams and playing on African maps in skirmish (can’t select them, must be random).

I’ve learned that the new desert bandits…are still outlaws, so still pop inefficient (despite being poper in pop cost) but if you’ve got housing to spare they’re decent enough but I’d rather have army units, native units, or mercenary units.

You can get a taste of the new mercenaries by random chance but also through upgrades on native settlements.

The big new features of the Africans civ that you really need to learn is mostly just about the new 4th resource they have access to: Influence.

It replaces all wood/food/coin at native trading posts and imported building
All Mercenaries cost influence instead of gold.
So do artillery they effectively cost the sum of their cost in influence

And there a few select things that are native to your civ that cost influence but not a lot.

And a lot of the new units are not army units but mercenaries and native units,…So depending on the map and your random chances for mercenaries you will still get some of those without choosing on age up with ethiopia/hausa

Since a lot of the alliances on age up actually give you a free native alliance but may be lacking an upgrade you get if you had a trading post. Others give you access to European buildings (You might still get the mercenaries they give you just like mercenary contractor). Some just give economic upgrades.
The only ones I find is strange is jesuits since you can have a native alliance and a church.

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