Trying out new Otto openings and need suggestions

Age of Empires III: DE III - Discussion
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In celebration of having a unit with a wood cost to the Otto barracks, a fancy new grenadier, and the best 2 pop cav ever I’ve been trying to move away from the kinda dated age2 jan/abus all in.

After many attempts I’ve found that this is generally not a good idea with few exceptions;

Starting with humbaraci, they just cant compete with janissaries in age 2. Grens normally compete with musks by offering more hp and siege damage per pop. Humbaraci have less range resist, but make up for it with higher damage and base hp - if you send Cebeci it’s offset completely. Trouble is, jans have more hp and siege damage than the average musk - so much so that neither grens or humbaraci are actually an advantage there. In technical terms, the upgrade card lets humbaraci give the same durability per pop as jans, but you still lose the raw damage, the anti cav, and its more gold spent - meaning a later age up. Not really worth it out the gates in age 2, these guys are a late game unit. Unless you’re up against the dutch, I suppose.

Next Deli - I’ve been favoring the 1 stable opening into ff with sipahi and cav archers. Deli do cost more gold than huss, but not nearly enough to mess up the age up. They cant be sustained, but thats just regular Otto life. I train a couple, send 3 in age 2 for safety then go into age3 and send sipahi or manchu depending on my macro. Not much different here, just feels stronger than it used to be. Black riders are a bit less of an issue now that you can train Azaps.

Azaps are at the end cuz they’re a bit weird. Initailly I tried playing them with humbaraci or deli - try to cover the lack of siege damage or weakness to light inf and the results were pretty mediocre. Then I tried them with jans as a semi fast ff - Azaps beat pikes and cav just fine and jans beat other musks and also xbows too. Then you have up and send falcs. Barring early skirms it feels workable against most and worked the best for me against Sweden.

Thats all I got so far for supermacy 1v1. Thoughts?

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Some useful thoughts there thanks. I’ve found it hard to modify my play with the new Otto because I’m so used to the traditional strats and units. But I should really be a bit adventurous and at least try the new things.

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Azaps are, imo, the only practical choice to build a new opening around. I started experimenting with a familiar double barrack age 2 all in - one making azap and the other making jans - and I’d recommend that as a launch point

So far the potential build looks like so:

  • TP+ mosque + house opener. Send 3 vils then spice roads to amplify the next crates.

  • Gather the 300 wood in the transition, take quarter master, herd, etc.

  • Then in age 2, split 5 vils on gold, the rest on food. At 350 gold send all but 2 or 3 vils to food too.

  • Send crates of 700 wood and food in that order. Spice roads should amplify that to 900 so you should have enough res for 10 jans and 10 azap. Send 3 hus or 5 more jans and move out with the army.

  • Send 700 (900) gold. All but 3 vill ought to be on food so you should have age 3 soon.

  • In age 3, send falcs/ sipahi/whatever

  • Profit?

Theoretically a somewhat weaker jan rush with a smoother age 3 behind it.

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In my honest opinion, Azaps is not an option at age 2. Would you go pikemen + musketeers with other civs? unlikely. Azaps range attack is not useful at age 2 since they have a relatively small base attack and no LC to counter (if the opponent hasn’t done FF). I wouldn’t prefer to spend my resources on them.

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