Playing The Ottomans - Without getting VIPped

[E. Jünger]

I apologise for the pun. I will be playing Victoria VIP as the Ottomans. I will write in, the mostly gameplay but with a little storyline for the feeling of it, tradition.

I love the VIP package, but sometimes it feels like being strapped to a train rather than driving. I.e. you do not chose what to do, the game choses for you. If you do not know your history and chose wrong the british empire are going to smack you into oblivion. Which, of course, is probably what would have happend if you had tried those overly ambitious moves in real life.

So, the game changes into a new game, i.e. the game of 'know your history' and 'know your eventfile triggers', and of course the game of 'keep looking for the opportunities and windows'.

My goal for the game is to become a major power as the ottomans, colonize as much of africa as I can get away with, modernize to keep up with my rivals and while doing it at least try to be semi-reasonable. I thought about setting more concrete goals like 'be the worlds greatest exporter of most things', etc, but I doubt that I can do it as the ottomans without going into serious bizarro reality territory. And of course I plan to have fun doing it.

I will start playing on saturday, but reserve the space today so that if five ottoman AARs start tomorrow I can claim that I inspired them.

[Davisx3m]

I will be reading!

[Colonel Bran]

Ottomans always a pleasure to have one of those aar around.
Although becoming the worlds leading exporter and controling middle east and norht eastern africa would be a very nice goal. This should IMHO be your maximum expantion.

[robou]

Always glad to see the Ottomans making an appearance... they don't feature enough if you ask me! Looking forward to the start!

[E. Jünger]

Always glad to see the Ottomans making an appearance... they don't feature enough if you ask me! Looking forward to the start!

Yes, I was quite surprised to see the lack of ottoman AARs I honestly thought there would be loads, but in recent times, not so.

Ottomans always a pleasure to have one of those aar around.
Although becoming the worlds leading exporter and controling middle east and norht eastern africa would be a very nice goal. This should IMHO be your maximum expantion.

It is a nice goal, and if I continue into the thirties it is not entirely impossible, but I believe that if the ottomans made a recovery and were a power on par with france in 1885 they should have a decent chance of giving the brits a run for their money in africa. But having said that, the brits probably wouldn't have accepted ottoman dominance from cairo to congo and thus Victoria rule #1 kicks in : The british are going to kick your ass... I will try to post some kind of initial update if I can get home from work early enough today.

I am always impressed with the charitable atmosphere here, people posting just to say 'Cool, I'll be reading' rather than the standard internet 'you suxx' postings.

[Ahura Mazda]

Kongo is probably far-fetched as an Turkish colony, but Chad and Sudan is probably looking forward to be civilized by you!

[SabreAuClair]

But having said that, the brits probably wouldn't have accepted ottoman dominance from cairo to congo and thus Victoria rule #1 kicks in : The british are going to kick your ass...

Anyway, to avoid this, you pay your navy to the minimum and produce a LOT of dreadnoughts and UK will leave you alone ... That's how I prevented UK to attack me playing as Haiti and conquering south America.

[Enewald]

Yep, VIP is a nice mod.

[E. Jünger]

Ottoman Empire -1836

Gameplay
I'll post some pictures tomorrow...

Here's what I learned during the first few game days. Two fabric factories, one in Istanbul and the other one in Bursa are unprofitable, and closed. Tarrifs are set to maximum. Taxes are set to a third for the rich and the middle but the poor don't get off that easy 66% taxes for them. At the first of january I'm allied with all my balkan satellites, friends, friends. At january the second however, my alliances are dissolved, and I am free to declare war on whoever I like. But the AI in VIP (and maybe vanilla too) is clever. Russia didn't guarantee Serbia on the first on january, but on the second, it's a guarantee. Montenegro however isn't guaranteed as of yet. If the Ottoman Empire is to survive and prosper, we must move forward, fair fight or not.

Now It is time however to remember how this game works. If you are caught up in a regular war, you can't declare colonial wars. If you however are caught up in a colonial war, you can still declare regular wars.

With full tarrifs, low navy spending and the two fabric factories closed, the Ottoman Empire is making money. The reasons fabric factories are losing money are simple: Inefficient technology, inefficient staffing, and primarily they consume resources I do not command. A priority would be securing dye and wool. Dye is hard at the moment, but wool is possible. Western persia has some wool provinces, and, it gets better, wool provinces containing Ottoman nationals. Second another possibility Egypts province of Al-Iskandariyah. Lots of population... It should be noted though that in VIP north egypts population are not Ottoman nationals...

Having looked at all the variables I decide to first declare colonial war on persia, and then regular war on montenegro. Since this is VIP I'm already caught up in a small colonial war in Libya against Fezzan. This is perhaps a bit overly ambitions, but this is VIP during the coming four years wars will be few and far apart.

This is a first installment just to get me started, we'll see what form I choose to continue. But first a try at the narrative style.

Narrative
Sultan Mahmud II woke up with a start. It was the new years day of 1936. Acording to the christian calendar anyway. The Sultan of course did not see it as new years day, to him at was just waking up from a bad dream. He had seen things, and he did not like them. He had seen revolts in the middle east, unrest in the balkans. The mighty Ottoman empire impotent. What doesn't move forward must backslide. Something has to be done, up until now he had believed that the empire could wait, that the Ottomans would eventually catch up to the west. But there is never a better time than now. He stormed out of his room and woke up his advisors, "We must punish the Persians and chastice the Montenegrins! First them and then the Serbs!" The advisors calmed him down, talked him out of invading Serbia, but they knew that the sultan was changed, that wheels had been put in motion. They just hoped that whoever had laid down the tracks the sultan was steaming along on, knew what they were doing.

[Enewald]

It is pluralism. Religious conversion is a bit hard in ricky.

[E. Jünger]

It is pluralism. Religious conversion is a bit hard in ricky.

huh? I must have missed some nuance in my own narrative.

[robou]

A solid start it would seem, if perhaps somewhat stretching for you BB. The Russians will come knocking whenever they get the chance. Still, profit is the no.1 priority at the moment.

[Bingo Brett]

Looks interesting. Since you closed the fabric factories, what did the workers switch to? Lumber? Steel? Or did they just go back to farming...

[E. Jünger]

A solid start it would seem, if perhaps somewhat stretching for you BB. The Russians will come knocking whenever they get the chance. Still, profit is the no.1 priority at the moment.

nah, Persia is still uncivilized so BB-wise it's not a problem, better to take them now than in a few months when they ally Russia... Since I will be caught up in the egyptian wars etc over the coming years my BB will be down to zero when the oriental crisis is resolved. I hope.

Looks interesting. Since you closed the fabric factories, what did the workers switch to? Lumber? Steel? Or did they just go back to farming...

Ehm, they went to unemployment. But they seem to be scraping by, no craftsman POP have less than 100% life goods. I will try to give a more detailed description of my industry tomorrow.

[E. Jünger]

Ottoman Empire 1836

Gameplay



Montenegro was a pushover, I could have milked them for prestige, but decided to go for full annexation, I believe having them out of the game now could save me trouble later on.



The problem with declaring on Perisa first is obvious. Neither of us have any serious troops on the border, so I send down my army, walking across the anatolian mainland and the better/worse part of the balkans.



Then comes the payback for my balkan adventurism, the officer corps of Montenegro are revolting. I have to send back the closest division, one currently crossing the bosphorus... Guess it's easier to send him to tirana by boat and... DAMN, I should have used my navy to transport my army to persia, well, hindsigt is 20/20. Lesson of the day: Don't forget your navys transport capability.



Finally my war with Fezzan is over and I can start shipping som much needed troops to Persia.



With the new troops made available from Fezzan I can, after some intital setbacks, finally begin to crack Persia.



And finally Their army is broken and I can begin to occupy the Persian territories I wish. I occupy Teheran and all the provinces which contain my national population. But after the long fight I feel entitled to one more province, the silk producing Maraghehe. First I try to add 'humilite' to the demands so it will be cheaper to declare war in the future, but they refuse a few times, so I settle for provinces.


Economy

I started researching steam turbines in the hope that they would help to improve my economy. It came into frution late 1837 or early 1838, I do not know the exact date since my screenshots don't seem to work on 'Dialog screens'. In the future I will conduct them otherwise. I continued with 'Mechanical production' since it is the most likely to kickstart my production. With the Fabric factories closed, we have three factories online one glass, one wine and one for lumber. At he end of december 1936 our Good-Produce-Use-Balance (inspired by Power by production 2.0, http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/...d.php?t=305484) were:

Livestock - 4.30 - 0.0 - 4.30
Fruit - 3.10 - 0.60 - 2.50
Fish - 1.80 - 0.0 - 1.80
Iron - 1.0 - 0.0 - 1.0
Grain - 1.0 -0.0 - 1.0
Coal - 0.8 - 0.3 - 0.5
Timber - 0.7 - 0.40 - 0.30
Tobacco - 0.20 - 0.0 - 0.20
Opum - 0.20 - 0.0 - 0.20
Cotton - 0.10 - 0.0 - 0.10
Tea - 0.10 - 0.0 - 0.10

Glass - 0.11 -0.06 - 0.05
Wine - 0.05 - 0.0 - 0.05
Lumber - 0.08 - 0.0 - 0.08

I will get back with the data to see how much have changed when my research starts kicking in. If I restart my fabric factories we would see red numbers for Dye, Chemicals and Cotton...

[E. Jünger]

Having defeated Montenegro, Fezzan and Perisa I now sit and wait for egypt to start acting up. My plan there is to take the egyptian capital and make peace on the egyptians without letting the 'second oriental crisis' arc to kick in. Since that risks civilizing Egypt, which would be... Bad for further conquest. At the moment my Bad Boy score is at about 1.5 Which I would judge as a good score. I will try to keep a low BB score at almost all costs since it hampers your chances of getting alliances and increases the odds of major power aggression, which, at this point, is simply not desireable.

[Enewald]

Russia hates you I assume. Pwning Persia soon again?
Conquering Arabia?

[E. Jünger]

Russia hates you I assume. Pwning Persia soon again?
Conquering Arabia?

Russia hates me, and both them and Great Britain are guaranteeing Perisa, so, no pwning. Since my prestige is fairly low I plan on waiting with conquering arabia until they start their classic bankruptingrace. perhaps I will ame an exception for Oman though. I do not like the way they give up aden to british india, so maybe a quick snatch and grab. but probably I'll just sit on my hands and see what the world looks like in five years when the independence guarantees expire.

[robou]

take out the .th in those screenshots to make them larger. Anyways, like a said before, this seems a solid start, and I forgot about the no BB for uncivs if you don't annex them rule. I guess taking out egypt, and actually taking it rather than satilliting it, will be hugely to your advantage. Just keep a watchful eye on your north. Just as a tip, when the time comes that Russia invades, I suggest selling constanta (a pretty worthless province) too one of your Romanian 'friends' so you only have to concentrate on one front. That is of course if you wish to fight a defensive campaign against the Russians, where a single front along the caucaus mountains will be much easier to defend than that and the flatlands of Bulgaria and Thrace...

[E. Jünger]

take out the .th in those screenshots to make them larger. Anyways, like a said before, this seems a solid start, and I forgot about the no BB for uncivs if you don't annex them rule. I guess taking out egypt, and actually taking it rather than satilliting it, will be hugely to your advantage. Just keep a watchful eye on your north. Just as a tip, when the time comes that Russia invades, I suggest selling constanta (a pretty worthless province) too one of your Romanian 'friends' so you only have to concentrate on one front. That is of course if you wish to fight a defensive campaign against the Russians, where a single front along the caucaus mountains will be much easier to defend than that and the flatlands of Bulgaria and Thrace...

Thanks for the screenshot tip, I'll fix. I'm in two minds about the selling of constanta, it feels a bit too gamey, on the other hand I'm actually contemplating 'losing' the crimean war to get the great modernization event, which feels gamey too, so...

Taking parts of persia complicates the crimean war since it creates more gaps the russians can flow in through. I'm just aiming at having a decent military when the war comes. To ensure that I, unfortunately, have to put some military advances on hold so I can bolster my economy first. It kind of sucks only getting 0.5 research points a month.