I don't even know if you necessarily want shinobi anymore. I feel like Kura maybe offers up better here, especially if you feel like Tughlaq is going to be aggressive, which you're expecting.

Shinobi actually do great damage against the heal elephants.

The heal elephant strat was meant to be not as oppressive anymore, but it can still dominate. The common advice to just build horsemen until you can win didn't work; building horsemen non-stop still couldn't win. Because when you don't do bonus damage and there is healing alongside it, it feels terrible to play with horsemen in that situation.

It's also against Tughlaq specifically, right? Like the fishing boats attack you back. So unless you want to then make an outpost, it's very ineffective. That's a really big part of why people rate Tughlaq so highly on this map: while other civs are vulnerable when they do this play to a dark age rush, you aren't because your fishing boats will shoot any aggressors in the face.