How to beatAyyubidas Japanese

With the additional melee damage upgrades, for the most part, you can negate the Camel Unease debuff from Camel Lancers.

Against Ayyubids, going for Horsemen feels bad because of the Desert Raiders and Camels applying Camel Unease, but it might be necessary to deal with Manjaniqs.

Horsemen do negligible damage up against the Camel Lancer due to the debuff, so you need to ensure they hit the counter units, but body blocking makes that difficult.

With the Onna-Musha and Horsemen, you can exploit the slow army composition from Ayyubid when they rely on Manjaniqs, by raiding and avoiding the central fight.

Yumi Ashigaru can just get shattered with a couple of Manjaniq volleys.

Horseman, Yumi both counter desert raiders together.

Yumi do low damage to Ghulams, and horsemen do not trade well against them.

Mounted Samurai can be answered by Camel Lancers; Desert Raiders aren't terrible at trading into them either.

You can fight Mounted Samurai against Camel Lancers because the Bannerman offsets the camel debuff, and you have more health by default and deflective armor. So going cavalry into camels is not weird for Japan.

Camel Lancers have a 20% debuff but 20 less health, lower base damage, and the charge is weak unless charging. So camels can never really be outnumbered. If you're outnumbered, you get chased and exchange poorly. Combined with the deflective armor on the Mount Samurai, that's why Mounted Samurai can beat them.

Onna-Musha are on horseback, so they get uneased by camels. Going for Yumi Ashigaru instead gives you the ability to not get that unease, and maybe you're able to snipe Desert Raiders.

Desert Raiders have so much armor that Onna-Bugeisha aren't going to do anything to them. With Samurai, you can actually try to survive just a little bit longer.

Desert Raiders do bonus damage against Mounted Samurai. Going military wing in Castle Age gives three free Desert Raiders.