How to play with the Ottoman Empire

[unmerged(501710)]

So I discovered this game 2 months ago. I was a huge history and total war fan untill i found out about Europa Universalis 3. Now I'm gonna write "huge history total war and Europa Universalis fan" in my credentials when I apply for a job. Anyways after learning the game with very easy Ottoman Empire and Castille saves, I decided to be a real man and start a very hard Ottoman Empire save. I learned pretty much everything about the game but i might be missing a little bit of not so crucial information. Anyways the start year was 1399 and it is now 1427. As you can see, i expanded a little but not enough for my taste.





To the east you can see the huge Timurids. From what I've read in these forums and my first very easy save, they should have collapsed, but they kept getting bigger. Maybe I haven't given enough time(Timur is dead btw). It looks like I don't have any borders with them but I will have in a couple of years cause Timur will beat The Mamluks. I created an Alliance with the Mamluks because you just can't survive alone in this game. They have been very helpful but very stupid at the same time. I'm not attacking Dulkadir, because they are allied with the Mamluks and I cant deal with everyone at the same time. I actually played a little after this screenshot but I was overwhelmed with many wars and I white peaced out of all of them and white peace is not the way to go when you start a war yourself. Timurids ate a couple of provinces from the Mamluks, so they bordered me again. So I reloaded(cheater). I could only get a peace from Timurids with tribute which wrecks my already bad economy. Anyways the Mamluks are at war with Castille, Golden Horde and the Timurids at the same time and they dont make any peace deals with them and the only reason they are not overwhelmed it because one of those countries attack me and white peace with the Mamluks. Anyways Golden Horde is not an immediate problem because Moldovia is their vassal and they are not bordered with me. And to the north east of Anatolia, they deal with the Mamluks but they will be on my borders soon. To the balkans I will eventually capture two Venice provinces there but it is really hard. I have five ships(I lost a couple before) and I cant build any cause they are too expensive. And having no fleet is one of the worst in this game, cause the AI can magically see if I am moving my armies through the bosphorus or to Rhodes or to Corfu and they send it immediately when they notice me trying to cross the sea. Venice is allied with Austria so that rules a land operation out, because, apperantly Austria can afford a 75k army and they have no near enemies, except maybe Bohemia. Hungary is in a personal union with Denmark, so if I attack Hungary, the war score is really hard to increase against Denmark. I now come to the worst of my enemies. the big yellow Blob of Castille. I mean they are at the other end of Europe but they manage to come to me and do every bit of trolling they can. They are really strong, I mean they have a bigger fleet at the start so they destroyed %66.66 of mine and now I have left with some rowboats that can throw rocks at the enemy. Anyways they land for example 12k army on Anatolia and I send a 15k army, then I lose. I wait for my armies to replenish, when they replenish fully the Castille army is also %90 replenished. I mean what the hell? Also, my stability is -2 because of the Empire decision and I regret every bit of it. I got a stab hit event in my rage quit save game. So it was -3 and all over my country there were rebels dancing around. I also don't get why I get %7 attrition in Bosnia and Serbia which are my vassals. Anyways I find it very hard to gain anything from anyone with war scores on very hard difficulty because you can get a %20 deal when you have at least %50. I mean again what the hell? I also saw a Hungarian 10k army spawn out of nowhere. They had one cog, the so called army spawned in Dalmatia, so I know they couldn't have come with a fleet. All the other regions were occupied by me. I tried to describe the situation as best as I can. I'm sure I forgot some parts but you get the situation I'm in. I am asking you all strategies that I can use. Thanks beforehand.

 

[unmerged(271387)]

You go and open game,go to main menu "Play" you click on the Ottomans and choose play in down-right corner

 

[unmerged(501710)]

You go and open game,go to main menu "Play" you click on the Ottomans and choose play in down-right corner

Thank you, you are so funny. so if there is anyone with real advice...

 

[Nihilvin]

Your main focus should be the hordes. Wait for them to eat the Mamluks' provinces bordering you. Play defensively- Scorched earth and take advantage of the mountainous terrain. Watch the Mamluks, if their army is badly trashed by the Timurids or GH, attack them and Dulkadir to take advantage of it.

Also, get your stability up. It'll help your income

 

[Derp]

On Castille:
Don't play on VH if you want a reasonable game. It gives the AI massive bonuses.
There's a .75 morale difference between VH AI and VH player (huge early on, not so much later).
VH AI also gets
- +50% taxes
- +50% manpower
- +100% defensiveness (makes sieging harder)
And a bunch of other bonuses

Also, there's a good chance Lucky Nations is on, and if so Castille will have even more bonuses.

On attrition:
Attrition kicks in once you are over the supply limit in a province. The base max is 5% and it can go higher based on climate, terrain, or other factors. Attrition happens everywhere, even in owned territory.

On warscore:
Warscore is only a rough estimate/upper maximum on what you can get. What deals the AI will actually accept are also based on how good of a chance it still thinks it has. You usually need to occupy a decent chunk of their land, or grossly outnumber/overpower them, to get the full value out of your warscore. Since VH gives so many bonuses the AI will generally be in (what it thinks is) a much stronger position.

 

[unmerged(337549)]

When you invest fully into stability, how long does it take to recover a point? If you still have a lot of provinces that are Christian they will make it take longer (although the decision for tolerance the Ottomans get should negate that). If you're getting attrition in your vassals' land, make sure you have military access. Attrition leads to war exhaustion which will make revolts more likely.

Why is your legitimacy so low? Marry everyone you can, and don't bother with those events that give you heirs with weak claims. You'll eventually get a strong heir naturally, or a noble if your sultan dies with no heir (although that can be risky since you might get stuck in a personal union).

I would take press gangs as your next idea (or switch your first if you don't mind the stability hit on top of your -2/-3 ). That'll allow you to build a sizable big ship navy without costing an arm and a leg. Sucks that you lost most of your old one, but that's what happens when you throw galleys at Castille's (or Portugal's, or England's, et cetera) carracks. But generally I would either avoid wars with them or keep my navy docked and instead split my forces. They shouldn't be able to send a force larger than you can handle, even with the tech disadvantage.

For future expansion the hordes would be the easiest way, but Europe would be the most rewarding. However like what happened in history you may not find success down that route. Also you should be able to diplo-annex your vassals by now if you wish.

 

[BeondTheGrave]

Firstly, your Stab is crap. Id try to avoid wars and push your stability bar up as far as you can feel comfortable doing. Thats gunna push your income up, cut down on revolts, and generally make things easier. Same thing with legitimacy, its low, RM to make it higher. If you keep those high (stab 0 or higher and legit as high as possible) then youll have a far easier time. Plus, keep your BB(infamy) low, it hurts your relations and makes everybody more likely to attack you.

As for strategy, Id focus on a specific region, Mamluks or Balkans or Italy or even wait to border GH and then try and steal Siberia from Russia
On your borders, it looks like it go either way, the Mamluks look set to take the Jalayirids. If they pull through (in my games they usually do) then youll have a strong enemy on you bottom flank. Easiest way to deal with that is to pick on them when they eventually get attacked by Europe. You can pilfer Syria and the Levant in a war or two, and after that youll have the manpower and experience to finish the job. If they fall then its easy, cap the horde provinces, send colonialists to capture their prov and then profit!

Italy and Europe is going to quickly outtech you, which is bad. If you want to push on the west, either do it fast or wait till your military is good and outclassed, and then take a province of Latin culture. Once you do that you can build western units, BUT THESE DO NOT UPGRADE when you(or the west) techs up. Eventually, when you border a western culture group nation you can westernize and begin to compete tech wise.

 

[brifbates]

Opening strategy for OE:

Before you unpause at start change your NI to military Drill, dow each of the turkish minors independently. Give your armies move orders into the minors' provinces and make sure you carpet siege so the pesky Byzantine doesn't get in ahead of you anywhere. Build up so you have as many 4 cav/ 6 inf stacks as you can afford (will start at 2) as at the beginning you have some provinces where anything bigger will get you massive attrition. Make sure to keep at least one on each side of the straits at all times after the initial rush to grab the minors so you can neglect the navy. When western nations dow you let them come and land then splatter them all over the beaches-your units are superior for quite a while and they won't have military drill anytime soon either. One thing is to know when it's a good idea to buy off an alliance with a few ducats or a concede defeat to keep the dogpile from getting out of hand.

At all costs avoid bordering whoever is the HRE or any other major catholic land power. As soon as you do they will dow and beat you to a bloody pulp because you can't afford the same size army. As long as you don't have a land border they can't reach you except by trickling in invasion forces you can smash. Since the big land powers have pathetic navies and the big naval powers have suck soldiers you will do fine beating them back for quite a while, allowing you to munch Greece, the lower Balkans, and then all the yummy infamy-free horde lands.

 

[Junuxx]

Opening strategy for OE:

Before you unpause at start change your NI to military Drill

They start with MD in 5.2

 

[unmerged(501710)]

Thank you all for your answers. First of all my sultan had just died, thats why the legitimacy was so low, i do royal marriages all the time. I know that aspect of the game. You all seem to give the same advice, which is to expand into the horde provinces cause they are infamy free. The thing is how do you beat them when they come with 5x15k armies and i can afford 25k men at max. You are right about the stab though, it affects everything. I will start over and delay that empire decision. I still don't know how to deal with those navies of Venice and Castille. Maybe I will get that navy idea. But I gotta say it is really hard playing with Ottoman Empire on very hard.

 

[Gpeterse]

The general consensus on beating the hordes, or any enemy that outnumbers you by a large amount, is to play defense. Scorch the provinces on your border 1-2 deep and fall back into the non-scorched provinces. Put a good general in charge of your main stack and let them siege your border provinces. Maneuver tends to be the most important skill as it lets you outrun their stacks. If you are two provinces away they tend to assault your fortresses (they won't if your stacks are adjacent to theirs). When they do that attack them and run their stacks into the ground. Rinse and repeat until they run low on troops. Move forward into their provinces and colonize a few (usually focus on one at a time if you are weaker than they are). While your colonies grow go around playing whack-a-mole on the new units recruiting in the hopes that it will prevent them from getting together a stack that can challenge yours. If you feel safe at this stage it is OK to split your stack into a few mid sized stacks but keep them near each other in case you need to recombine them to take on a stack that comes out of the far reaches of the horde. It is also useful to build some of the lower level manpower buildings for this type of warfare.

Castille tends to be a prick to the Ottomans. I like vassalizing a few minor naval powers in the Med if I get a chance. Sicily is a prime choice. They don't really stop Castille but they absorb their attacks well.

 

[brifbates]

You can't really afford to try and go toe to toe with Castille/England level of navies while also slugging it out in the field with your horde neighbors. Especially if you are trying to settle the horde lands. The easiest answer I've found is to make sure you leave one medium sized stack north of the Bosporus to defend against the incessant western invasions and just leave your ships in port to block pirate spawning. This obviously becomes much less of an issue once you've turned the Black Sea into an Ottoman lake. I generally disband most, if not all, of the galleys as anyone you actually need a navy to fight can usually crush them. Leave the adventuring in Italy and other parts of southern Europe until you have the money to throw real ships at the problem.

 

[Junuxx]

You can't really afford to try and go toe to toe with Castille/England level of navies while also slugging it out in the field with your horde neighbors. Especially if you are trying to settle the horde lands. The easiest answer I've found is to make sure you leave one medium sized stack north of the Bosporus to defend against the incessant western invasions and just leave your ships in port to block pirate spawning. This obviously becomes much less of an issue once you've turned the Black Sea into an Ottoman lake. I generally disband most, if not all, of the galleys as anyone you actually need a navy to fight can usually crush them. Leave the adventuring in Italy and other parts of southern Europe until you have the money to throw real ships at the problem.

Again I must disagree. As long as you stick to the Mediterranean, galleys are really cost-effective, at least in the first 100-150 years or so.

 

[brifbates]

Again I must disagree. As long as you stick to the Mediterranean, galleys are really cost-effective, at least in the first 100-150 years or so.

The problem is that every ducat you spend on galleys and/or naval tech puts you further behind in army size, land tech, or settling horde provinces. Something has to give somewhere and, since having armies and land tech has to happen for your lands to not turn red, dark green, or golden tan, the navy is the best choice to give way on. Overreaching will just get you dead (see ai Ottomans, repeatedly).

 

[Junuxx]

The problem is that every ducat you spend on galleys and/or naval tech puts you further behind in army size, land tech, or settling horde provinces. Something has to give somewhere and, since having armies and land tech has to happen for your lands to not turn red, dark green, or golden tan, the navy is the best choice to give way on. Overreaching will just get you dead (see ai Ottomans, repeatedly).

You start with about 20 galleys costing 0.1 ducats per month in upkeep. You suggest scrapping them, saving 120 ducats in upkeep in a 100 years, but wasting assets worth 200 ducats, and leaving you defenseless against powers you should be able to beat with ease. Just mint a little more.

In my current Ottomans game (latest beta), my galley navy has been able to *capture* 8 carracks and numerous galleys and transports. Free navy!

 

[Derp]

Also OP I noticed that you said you played a couple of very easy (I assume this means difficulty setting, not your experience) games and then moved on to very hard. You may just want to stick with normal until you get a better hang of the game. Playing on VH is largely about knowing how to exploit the AI and take advantage of game mechanics.

 

[PiriReis]

Its not worth playing the Ottomans in EU3. It just not fun, for me at least.

You get dowed by various European powers for no reason. If thats not enough, you have to deal also with not one horde (Timurids) but also with the Golden Horde (after conquest of Moldavia) and Qara Koyunlu aswell. So three hordes and just a mere 0.33 colonist, while all of the Catholic nations get free +1 colonist for no reason.

Play as France, Castille, England or Holland its way more fun. BTW even nations like Norway, Granada or the Byzantines are even more fun to play and a lot easier then as the Ottomans.

 

[IGGEL]

I've found the 1492 start with the Ottomans to be the most fun. I managed to blitz the southern Balkans and then annex Hungary while making a colonial empire. Just get Grand Army and steamroll Europe.

 

[Hootieleece]

Try to vassalize Moldavia. Do not Ally with them.Also dissolve the military alliances with Serbia and Bosnia, but leave as vassals. Create Wallachia as vassal. This will give you a vassal shield against the Austrians and Hungarians. They won't be able to march their Armies into your territory. This is important when Austria becomes HRE emperor. Also will keep the GH off your back. They declare on Moldavia your its overlord you have no border war over.Will repeat every 5 years until you annex.

After that try to get the mission to conquer greece.Getting rid of Venice. The less western nations you border the better.

After that plan on taking out Dulkadir then Mamelukes. When taking Mameluke territory leave them bordering the Timmies as long as possible and make sure it has a land connection.So Mamelukes can defend your border until your ready to colonize.

 

[AdAstra]

Its not worth playing the Ottomans in EU3. It just not fun, for me at least.

You get dowed by various European powers for no reason. If thats not enough, you have to deal also with not one horde (Timurids) but also with the Golden Horde (after conquest of Moldavia) and Qara Koyunlu aswell. So three hordes and just a mere 0.33 colonist, while all of the Catholic nations get free +1 colonist for no reason.

Play as France, Castille, England or Holland its way more fun. BTW even nations like Norway, Granada or the Byzantines are even more fun to play and a lot easier then as the Ottomans.

OE is one of the best nations available in EU3 controlled by human player as stated by Johan...how can one consider that not worth playing?