Any Advice/Take apart the Ottomans

[Fire and Ash]

Hi guys, I'm in need of some advice. Playing Songhai I have carved out a nice empire out of West Africa and have already kicked out the Portuguese and Spanish that dared settle there. First though, time for back story.

As Songhai I went to war with my neighbours fairly early. Took both kingdoms next to me as vassals and then led the charge of Mali. The first war was tough and I really had to utilise mercs to fill out my army. That first was was the braking poin though and within 30 years I had taken the whole of the Mali empire, but not before the Europeans came a knocking. Portugual and Spain both took chunks of Mali, and while I was tempted to attack them for the provinces I also really wanted to westernise. So at the beginning of the 1500's I began the process of westernising. I made one mistake though. I had only 1 stability point in the + at the time and within 5 years I was down to -3. I finished westernising in 1519, but not before in the last month, the country descended into civil war. A Peasants War! I may have westernised early, but it would take the almost 40 years for me to recover and another 40 to match my European counterparts. Strange things were noticed the moment I westernised.

1.Ireland was formed. (I have never seen the AI pull that off. 0_0)

2. The Teutonic Order was not only around but the largest German Power. (It has not lost or gained territory since 1521.)

3. FRANCE! What a beast. It has expanded into the HRE, but not by much.

4. Sweden. Another beasty and really close to forming Scandinavia.

The rest of the game was me slowly expanding my empire. I annexed the remaining African States and colonised as much territory as I could. I was really tempted to go for South America, but Portugal went to the wall on that one. By the time I had taken all my coastal provinces most of the Eastern Coast of South America was theirs. Portugal and Spain just kept growing. For a while it looked like they were going to end up dividing the world between them, and for the most part they did, but things took a turn for the worse in my first war with them. Portugal and Spain had been very strong allies, but following a very brutal war with GB, ending with GB giving up Wales and Scotland, they were exhausted. They still had the biggest Navies and Largest Armies in the World, but on my side I had the rising Super Power, The Ottoman Empire. In the time I took to recover after Westernising, the Ottomans had expanded across the Med and Middle East. It was amazing and scary. I made friends with them at the cost of Algeria and we went to war with them. The Ottomans are the strongest power in the world. They have over 200 ships and 200,000 soldiers. Spain and Portugal both rivalled that alone, but the Ottomans didn't have a world spanning empire and they doom stacked. The war was first taste of Naval Warfare for my nation and we flopped. We still won battles, but we had nothing in that could hold up to the sort of numbers that were patrolling the seas. The war ended in victory and they lost their North Africa holdings. Not before France took advantage of Spanish Empires Land losses and attacked Spain. Two more wars would follow involving the Ottomans and me vs Spain and Portugal.

Interesting things that happened:

1. Ireland has one of the largest navies in the world and the 5th biggest trade income.

2. The Pequot westernised and are the single largest Native American Nation in the Americas. (The grey/blue nation in the North.)

3. The Aztecs and Japan both successfully Westernised.

4. Russia was formed by Novogrod, not Muscowy.

5. India was almost united, but fell apart due to Russian involvement.

6. Until 30 years ago, the Trimuds were the single largest Central Asian power.

Now the advice part.

How do I take the Ottomans apart? The Ottomans were very useful, but I feel like they need to go, so I can be the dominant power in Africa. How do you think I should handle this?

 

[unmerged(484167)]

My only advice would be to try and get a powerful ally to help - maybe even by converting to a catholic/orthodox nation, if no-one will ally you otherwise.

Sounds like its an awesome game, though!

 

[Mr.Snow]

When you go to war with them don't take provinces make them release nations. Make sure you rival them to get enemy of enemy bonus and try to find their enemies (usually France or Austria). Also if your western tech don't worry about their doom stacks too much your troops are a lot better and can take them on.

 

[Jorlaan]

I would definitely make them release nations like Morocco, Algeria, Tunis, Tripoli basically whatever still exists as cores. If find that you're able to win the war relatively easily enough take a province from them with a Moroccan core, release it as a vassal and then feed it in the next war. Rinse and repeat as needed. You might just be able to vassal feed your way across north Africa in to Mamluk lands. I HATE that cores expire so fast, I even modded all cores times to never expire and they still do.

Forcing them to release Serbia, Bosnia, Croatia, Wallachia, Bulgaria also will help. They'll all be small enough to be able to force release 2-3 of them in one war as well as taking/feeding vassal lands.

 

[heliostellar]

Jorlaan's strategy is pretty good. Remember though, you might want to force them to release nations that are a little further away to break up their territory, like Algeria but not Morocco and then Tripoli without Tunis. The AI does not do well with managing non-contiguous territories and you might get nationalist rebels popping up here and there. Support the rebels and when they win they'll be friendly with you.

 

[Nunn45]

Also if you release the right nations you could possibly cut off large chunks of their land from home and cause it to have the overseas penalty, i think anyways...

 

[heliostellar]

Also if you release the right nations you could possibly cut off large chunks of their land from home and cause it to have the overseas penalty, i think anyways...

Yes, that's a good point actually. I believe you are right because Ottos are considered Europe. They only get around the overseas penalty by having a land connection back to the capital.

 

[Incompetent]

Also if you release the right nations you could possibly cut off large chunks of their land from home and cause it to have the overseas penalty, i think anyways...

This is part of the strategy for taking apart any intercontinental country: as soon as you get the opportunity, take land on the edge of their home continent (or inside the home continent) to cut their capital off from the other continents. In the case of the Ottomans, just draw a line across Anatolia somewhere, and make sure they can't reach around the Black Sea.

After that, it's much easier to take them apart, because you'll cripple their manpower, and 'overseas' land costs almost no warscore to take. If all you care about is Africa and you're happy to leave the Ottos alone in Asia, you could instead cut them off at Sinai.

 

[josh127]

I loved my Songhai game, but my map looked nothing like that. The Ottomans have a 300K force limit and 300K manpower. You realize what that means don't you? It means win or lose you have a lot of fun in front of you.

First off, the best way to hurt them is after winning the first war (because if you lose it won't hurt) split them up somewhere in the middle east, usually around Syria/Iraq is where it happens. The reason is you'll make all the land past it distant overseas and it will severely cut down on his numbers. It's probably not going to be easy to get up there to siege, and it's probably to expensive to make him release Iraq and Syria both in one war, so I'm not sure how possible that is going to be, but find a way.

As to fighting the actual war
Best option: Ally France. I guess if that was a real option you probably wouldn't be asking us though.

Next best option: Ally anyone that will fight them. Even if it's just a distraction.

Worst option: Declare war, charge up and meet them in the deserts of North Africa. Even if you're at the point that your western units are getting better than his, North Africa is a giant funnel and all his stacks will be marching down it at some point.

All that said, the idea of this war is leaving a sour taste in my mouth. If I can't get allies to fight with me, it's going to be really tough to win the first war. Buy lots of mercs and take loans to do it. Keep enough loans back so that you can pay the mercs without going bankrupt. Remember you'll be paying interest, and that will have to figure into monthly expenses.

Drop a merc in Tuat and the province south of Rio de Oro. Chances are he'll be coming through Tuat. Declare war and charge.... down south toward the coast... You don't want to meet him in North Africa, there's deserts there and he'll probably have a line of doomstacks channeling through that one province wide corridor. So wait. When his first doomstack is one day away from Tuat, scorch earth on it and delete the unit. He'll land on it and think for a minute while taking a healthy dose of attrition then he'll move on. The best thing that can happen is for him to continue south, so you might want to have 2 guys in that next tile (delete them one day before he lands).

If that just happened the trap is set. He dropped a single doomstack that you should outnumber. He's not going to walk more units across the scorched earth unless you put more than one unit there, and that means you can close ranks on this doom stack. To go for a total wipe, hit him with about half your units (hopefully that's a good match for him) and have a second batch that you start moving in as his morale is getting low. Just before your units arrive or his morale runs out, retreat the initial army and "lose" the battle. Assuming a month doesn't tick over, your second army should arrive and wipe his morale before 8 days is up meaning you'll 100% wipe the stack. a 50K stack gone would be a huge improvement.

You might be able to repeat this for other stacks, but chances are it won't work forever. So after the battle fall back and wait again. If he has another stack that's small enough to fight nearby, you might move 2 units up to your scorched province to draw him in (again deleting them the day before he lands) and having 2 units on the next province to try to sucker him in deeper. Eventually it's not going to work though, and when that happens you want to fall back and hope that he spreads out to carpet a bit (if he stacks everyone on one tile he'll eat a lot of attrition anyway). As he spreads you can hit him in small groups hopefully wearing him down.

Another good thing that could happen is he might send troops by sea. If so it should be a reasonable enough size stack to deal with.

Not sure how well it will work, but it's a defensive strategy, and the only thing I see as defensive is that gap you can funnel them down (I think there's "some" mountains up by Tunisia somewhere but not much). The worst thing that can happen is to engage with all your units and have him close all his in. If it looks like that's happening and you'll be overwhelmed in an unwinnable situation, retreat and conserve manpower. He can take the manpower hit a lot easier than you can. If you can't split him at Syria, maybe you can make him spit out tripoli to make the Algiers/Morocco area distant overseas. I think in the first war you simply want to aim to weaken. If you can take something it's bonus, but if you can beat down his armies and do some decent damage at 40% war score, it might be worth it. (and keep looking for friends).