I think I understand now why the Ottomans fail so often

[StephenT]

People keep saying how it's the Holy war casus belli but when i played Ottomans the AI tend to declare war even if they don't have a Casus belli.

That's my experience too, but I do think it's a snowballing thing. It only takes one country to make the Ottomans the crusade target, and then their war capacity is under 50% and suddenly everyone in Europe wants to declare war on them too. Once they have war exhaustion over 15% they basically never recover, ever.

I would say all muslims should have that, atleast if they are Crusade target or at war with more than one christian nation. (or outnumbered)

Well, the Ottomans were self-conscious religious crusaders (ghazis) themselves, at least in the early days of conquest. Not every Muslim nation was, just like not every Christian nation was Castille or the Teutonic Order. You could probably make a case for Safavid Persia or Najd getting the crusade/jihad bonus too, maybe a few other nations, but not all of them.

Making the crusade bonus reciprocal for the target of a crusade might be a good idea, though.

 

[Tamerlan]

What do you think?

Yes, 1399 is not a particular good time to start as the Ottomans. They have ennemies all around. In particular in the East (remember Bayazid's fate...) Then they had effectively to cope with Western Crusades (3 years before at the battle of Nicopolis).

Making the crusade bonus reciprocal for the target of a crusade might be a good idea, though.

IIRC, fighting a defensive war reduces the revolt risk, doesn't it ?

 

[fridabina]

IIRC, fighting a defensive war reduces the revolt risk, doesn't it ?

Does not really help when the AI is stuck on max WE.

 

[Poppy Appletree]

I would say all muslims should have that, atleast if they are Crusade target or at war with more than one christian nation. (or outnumbered)

I agree with this - Muslims can't declare a pan-Muslim jihad on Christians, so they should at least receive a reciprocal benefit from Catholic crusades.

Edit: For the crusade target, I mean. Alternatively, a different bonus for being targeted - after all, is it not an honour to protect your religion?

 

[GAGA Extrem]

The major problem are the horde wars. The Ottomans the Timurids, probably the strongest horde during the early game and are close to the Golden Hore, another large foe.
Continual warfare increases their WE and hurts stability - and even if they should be at peace, catholic nations are already preparing their war.

The whole issue becomes obvious once the Ottomans lose their border to the hordes: Because then they truly rock their cradle.

 

[Helios Panoptes]

The Ottomans fail because the game starts at the worst time possible for them and then adds on ahistorical Crusade bonuses a hundred years after the last crusade failed utterly.

The Pope hasn't even called a crusade since 1213.

 

[warcry]

I blame Castile and their craving for Africa. Its how i created my latest byzantine empire.

 

[Johnny X]

People keep saying how it's the Holy war casus belli but when i played Ottomans the AI tend to declare war even if they don't have a Casus belli.

In my games, England are particularly keen on this, and the pointless stab hits they get as a result are probably a good reason why they get dismantled too easily (that, and AI Scotland).

 

[Johnny X]

(once the Golden Horde takes Moldavia, which doesn't take long).

This is surprisingly important, and means that essentially, if you're playing Ottomans, your number 1 priority, honestly, is to vassalise Moldavia and get them into an alliance to stop the Horde from eating them and creating a border you can't push back unless you focus on in 100%. The second is to do exactly the same to Georgia. That really helps.

As I mentioned above, the way the game is set up at the moment is daft.

There are all sorts of daft things, from the fact that not only are the Byzantines quite comically overpowered, but so are the Knights and the Ottomans are usually sent, pretty quickly, to kill themselves against France and Castille by attacking them. Venice shows up very early, meaning the Ottomans can't control their own Straits unless they take Press Gangs as first NI (because their economy is borked, because their provinces are poor, they're always at war and they're one of the largest countries without a CoT, so they can't afford a fleet). It's as if the game takes every single one of the Ottomans potential advantages and deliberately neutralises them. Man, I wish someone would do that to Castille.

 

[unmerged(371738)]

This is surprisingly important, and means that essentially, if you're playing Ottomans, your number 1 priority, honestly, is to vassalise Moldavia and get them into an alliance to stop the Horde from eating them and creating a border you can't push back unless you focus on in 100%. The second is to do exactly the same to Georgia. That really helps.

As I mentioned above, the way the game is set up at the moment is daft.

There are all sorts of daft things, from the fact that not only are the Byzantines quite comically overpowered, but so are the Knights and the Ottomans are usually sent, pretty quickly, to kill themselves against France and Castille by attacking them. Venice shows up very early, meaning the Ottomans can't control their own Straits unless they take Press Gangs as first NI (because their economy is borked, because their provinces are poor, they're always at war and they're one of the largest countries without a CoT, so they can't afford a fleet). It's as if the game takes every single one of the Ottomans potential advantages and deliberately neutralises them. Man, I wish someone would do that to Castille.

Except Castille actually was a super-power until they ruined their economy with military spending, mercantalism and inflation; all except the last being pretty much non-issues in the game. The problem with the game is that it really does not reflect economic growth or the failure to achieve it; if you've got a substantial monetary income only a catastrophic territorial loss will ever set you behind; there's no sense of being just plain backwards and crappy because of protectionism and militarism.

 

[fridabina]

meaning the Ottomans can't control their own Straits unless they take Press Gangs as first NI (because their economy is borked, because their provinces are poor, they're always at war and they're one of the largest countries without a CoT, so they can't afford a fleet).

This is not true, u should pick +1 naval morale and just get some carracks (4-8) to support your galleys. U will easily win every naval battle until u start fighting another nation with the national idea (or until they get better boats i guess)
Also the Ottoman economy is more than enough too support a big navy + a standing army in no time. (with war taxes running ur even going to be able to open a CoT in no time)
They may seem overwhelming at first, but as an experienced player i can easily take Ottomans, put it on very hard and just roll over Europe before they become a real threat to me.

Then again we are talking about the Ottoman AI failing. But changing their first national idea to +1 naval morale(not press gangs) might help them a bit.

 

[unmerged(371738)]

This is not true, u should pick +1 naval morale and just get some carracks (4-8) to support your galleys. U will easily win every naval battle until u start fighting another nation with the national idea (or until they get better boats i guess)
Also the Ottoman economy is more than enough too support a big navy + a standing army in no time. (with war taxes running ur even going to be able to open a CoT in no time)
They may seem overwhelming at first, but as an experienced player i can easily take Ottomans, put it on very hard and just roll over Europe before they become a real threat to me.

Then again we are talking about the Ottoman AI failing. But changing their first national idea to +1 naval morale(not press gangs) might help them a bit.

I don't understand why the AI builds so many damn galleys. I never build galleys. What a waste of force limits. I also never take Press Gangs, and tend to build my navy all at once out of the most advanced ships available.

The answer is probably that the AI can't manage it's money/inflation.

 

[Shuriken]

The OP complaint sounds historical.

 

[unmerged(371738)]

The OP complaint sounds historical.

What's not historical is how the Ottomans get their faces stomped in and how easy it is for the Teutonic Order to ship troops to Anatolia.

 

[Johnny X]

This is not true, u should pick +1 naval morale and just get some carracks (4-8) to support your galleys. U will easily win every naval battle until u start fighting another nation with the national idea (or until they get better boats i guess)
Also the Ottoman economy is more than enough too support a big navy + a standing army in no time. (with war taxes running ur even going to be able to open a CoT in no time)
They may seem overwhelming at first, but as an experienced player i can easily take Ottomans, put it on very hard and just roll over Europe before they become a real threat to me.

I'm an experienced player myself (I usually play Karaman. There's a challenge), and personally have little trouble with the Ottomans (I do recommend Press Gangs to build that fleet, tho, and then a switch to Superior Seamanship as soon as you can, as those 4-8 carracks are expensive and are as much use as a chocolate teapot when Castille come to the party). But the point is that the strategies I use (naval concentration, strategic flipping of NIs, vassalising specific target nations not covered by the mission system) are not used by the AI.

 

[The Blood Eagle]

i think crusade target should be limited to mamluks only until jerusalem is in christian hands and has converted to a christian religion.

The crusades tore through Anatolia to GET to Jerusalem, so I don't see why the OE themselves can't be the target.

 

[unmerged(371738)]

Another weakness is that the Ottomans are EXTREMELY vulnerable to European players, even more so than other countries. They are nearby enough to get your forces there quickly, and usually have some tempting provinces (Greece, parts of Syria, Thrace). They are the perfect religion to attack, and can fairly easily be converted to the Christianity of your choice. They are moderately powerful, but technically backward and will not have the money, manpower, land or naval force limits of any consolidated European country. Once you get Burgundy or Castille up and running you can totally crush the Ottomans with no effort and the kicker is that they will basically NEVER be able to fight back against you. Even if they had a navy large enough to get to you, which is doubtful (and their navy is usually 75% galleys anyway) they will never be able to land enough men to really hurt you, and all the other blobs in Europe hate them and would never let them keep anything even if they managed to take it.

The Ottomans are very easy and tempting to attack and are basically incapable of counter-attack. Even if you misjudged and the Ottomans sank your fleet and killed your army you're going to have a new army before they can ever get to you, not to mention that half of Europe would probably also be at war with them.

The Ottomans are basically Byzantium-lite: all of the headaches, none of the advantages.

It is quite realistic for the Ottomans to never get past the Balkan region - it just wasn't practical to hold onto, and probably not worth trying - but it should be equally difficult for the Europeans to go trapsing around Anatolia and Syria. It isn't.

The same is true of the Mamluks. I'ved DoWed the Mamluks within 3 years of start as Castille (for Jerusalem) and it was a piece of cake. I crushed their stupid galley navy and casually took all their provinces with alternating infantry mobs (military access in Achea + 15 transports = insta-healing armies). The Muslims only last past the 15th century because no one but Castille feels like conquering them. They are really, really crippled in EU.

The crusades tore through Anatolia to GET to Jerusalem, so I don't see why the OE themselves can't be the target.

Aside from the total lack of enthusiasm for Crusades, you mean? The Crusade feature is very anachronistic. The Habsburgs had trouble getting any enthusiasm out of the German princes for evicting the Ottos from Hungary and Bosnia, much less Anatolia itself. No one raised a finger to break the first siege of Vienna by the Osymuns, and nobody gave a farthing or a whistle to help the Habsburgs get out from under the tribute they were required to pay to the Ottomans. This is DESPITE the Habsburgs being the HRE and Spain through some of this period. And at no point did Castille occupy every Muslim power from Morocco to Iran, as they frequently seem to do in the game. Castille didn't like France. Castille wanted to control the straits, Italy and the Low-Countries. Castille did not care about Syria or Turkey or the Balkans or anywhere else that was not a convenient and plausible addition to their dominions.

For all the Holy War rhetoric employed it was mostly just rhetoric. The Ottomans were more or less politically accepted as another European state, one which could perhaps be attacked without upsetting the rest of Europe (except for France, who allied with and funded the Ottomans at several points) but which was not viewed as either an existential threat to Christianity or as being any worse than Spain (most of Europe was much more worried about the Habsburg blob than some distant Turkish Sultan).

In any case, Muslim powers are very weak in EU and perform very poorly; and their territory is very easy to hold on to and convert. This is a persistent problem in Paradox games, it is very easy to take the Holy Land and most of N. Africa within 40 years of the game start in Crusader Kings, and any European power can kick the tar out of the Ottomans in Victoria.


The Ottomans and the Mamluks can do incredibly well in player hands, but that just has to do with them not being in a totally crap tech group and having several provinces. Any country of Muslim tech or higher with 5+ provinces could be turned into a super-power by a player without much difficulty.

 

[Kyoumen]

Except Castille actually was a super-power until they ruined their economy with military spending, mercantalism and inflation;

Yes, but the Ottoman Empire was also a superpower. At least as much as Spain was, and they lasted about a century longer as one, too. It really is hard to overestimate how much the Turks could kick around European armies for about two hundred years - their logistics and organisation were essentially second to none, amongst other advantages. It really was only the sheer size of their empire, and it being insecure at every border, that stopped them.

The chances of Spain successfully invading Anatolia after the Ottomans finish off the Byzantines ought to be about as low as the chances of Tunisia recapturing the Carthaginian territories in Spain. The fact that it isn't (and that North Africa is so pitifully easy to take over) is one of the worst causes of ahistorical outcomes in the game right now, along with the various quirks of the central asian hordes.

 

[Dawkins]

The main reason for the Ottoman gang bangs is that one of the major factors the AI uses when deciding whether to go to war is what wars the target is currently in and how powerful are their enemies. Ottomans are usually at war with one or other out of Timurids, GH and the Black sheep, which have massive armies and so encourage the AI to DoW the Ottomans.

 

[unmerged(371738)]

Yes, but the Ottoman Empire was also a superpower. At least as much as Spain was, and they lasted about a century longer as one, too. It really is hard to overestimate how much the Turks could kick around European armies for about two hundred years - their logistics and organisation were essentially second to none, amongst other advantages. It really was only the sheer size of their empire, and it being insecure at every border, that stopped them.

The chances of Spain successfully invading Anatolia after the Ottomans finish off the Byzantines ought to be about as low as the chances of Tunisia recapturing the Carthaginian territories in Spain. The fact that it isn't (and that North Africa is so pitifully easy to take over) is one of the worst causes of ahistorical outcomes in the game right now, along with the various quirks of the central asian hordes.

Yes, and it's really unfortunate because, outside of Europe, the Muslims are the only remotely developed group. But France can easily conquer all of Arabia in 20 years, so it makes it a big waste.

As I posted above, EVERY Paradox game gimps the Muslim powers. It's like they wanted the Crusades to succeed or something.

There really is no a priori reason Europe should be richer or more powerful than the states of the Near East; that is just a historical accident more caused by the Muslim powers turning xenophobic and anti-modern than of any innate advantage the Europeans had (though the decentralization of Europe did help to prevent this from happening in Europe there is no reason it had to happen to the Muslims). And it's well known that until the early modern period they were on par, if not better, than Europeans at basically everything.