Outlaw rush

A meme build for the wokou with no honour.

Game plan:

Surprise your enemy by forwarding with a monastery rickshaw. Once in age 2 harass with outlaws as much as possible until the Japanese shrine economy has the time to kick in.

Opening:

• Open with two shrines. All villagers go to berries.
• Monks focus on food treasure. Wood to build extra shrines are second priority.
• 1st shipment : holy refuge. Put the monastery as close as possible to your opponent but be stealthy.
• Age up with 13 villagers, using the Toshogu shrine. Build with 4/6 villagers. The later you age up the more villagers need to build. Keep 6vils on berries to maintain vil production.
• Put shrines on wood and use the free villagers to collect 100 woods. Leverage wood treasures. Once you have 100w and 50c research the Reiki tech at the monastery, then put shrines+free vils back on coin.
• In age 2 start producing the viable outlaw asap and harass the enemy economy. Your monks can heal ! So pull wounded units to heal up.

Branching paths:

• What you do in age 2 will depend on the outlaws available. Most of the time you want to ship 600c first followed by 5 shrine wagons. With low cost outlaws (90c per unit) you can reverse the order of these shipments.
• If you still have trouble finishing batches, ship silversmith.
• If you are close to pop cap again ship 5 shrines. If the problem persists, ship atonement for outlaw pop reduction.
• If you are floating more resources and need more units, ship 600w build market+consulate+shrines. Use Japanese isolation and research bushido principles. Your monastery can now produce batches of 10 outlaws.
  • Alternatively you can switch your shrines to wood and use it to get the consulate.
• If the enemy turtles up, ship a crate and macro for age-up (since your eco is so coin focused, the normally garbage 600f crate can be useful). The shogunate is the only wonder worth building for you. The cost reduction is a massive boon and coin mines will soon run out.
• In age 3 don't forget to research compuntion at the monastery. Its cost is halved because of your first shipment.
• In age 3 you can deal a finishing blow if you have mercs with high siege available.

Where to execute this build?

Any map with cossacks daredevils or wokou ronins as these are the best outlaws available. Crabats can be nice especially if your opponent does not have musketeers as crabats usually show up with hadjuks that counter their counters. Never use this build with African outlaws. Their hybrid cost is too much for the Japanese to handle early on.

Note:

The deck is setup to allow "normal" play. You can remove the atonement card to look less suspicious. Replace it with a shipment of natives that you can send when you are pop capped.

I hear you regarding the African bandits, yet I will stand by the reservations I expressed in the guide.

Yes African bandits do not drain your coins as fast, but they make your macro so much more complicated. And this is compounded by the fact that food is harder to get when you play japanese (the berry gather rate is significantly lower than the hunt gather rate). Even when practicing vs an AI, I missed batches when doing this strat on an african map.

Maybe a better player than me can make it work. I'll wait and see. /shrug