Ideas for Ottomans

[VITITO]

Hello everybody. I am currently started an Otto campaign. I'll maybe try WC if everything goes fine. What ideas do you recommend? I thought , to start with influence, admin and humanist (i want to remain sunni and use The dimmi). What else? What about innovative? Exploration? Diplo? Aristocratic? Espionage?

Thanks!

 

[Blust]

Not sure you need influence if you have admin + Otto ideas for coring. Why not take the spying branch if you want to reduce AE, or even exploration ?

 

[dynalon]

Influence isn't as strong as a first pick after losing its AE reduction, so I'd recommend Diplo/Admin/Humanist as your first three picks. Explo isn't all that essential for the Ottomans, since you can punch your way to India through Persia and Arabia, which also reduces the importance of the Zanzibar/Cape plug, since you can steer the trade money to Constantinople that way, too. As such, I'd say that the 4th pick is relatively open - Influence since there's some nice vassal options (Timmy and their vassals; Syria; maybe Naples with the Transfer Subject age bonus), Espionage for AE reduction, or even Offensive for easier/faster warfare and the complete removal of any rebel problems (the Humanist/Offensive policy).

 

[fyfaendeluxe]

The main reason you'd pick influence is -50% unjustified demands. Espionage for AE reduction is crucial in most circumstances, but your dip will hurt BADLY without influence. It might not matter too much in the end, you have good rulers, can afford +4 and +5 advisors and you'd just be developing with that dip anyways. Still doesn't feel good to pay more DIP mana in the peace deal than you pay admin to core. Regardless, i'd go with espionage -> admin -> humanist -> diplo+quantity in either order.
You can pick up explo or expansion temporarily at one point to jump to west africa or america and then abandon it once you have your bridgehead, but it's not at all necessary.

 

[Jesus was a communist]

Best thing to do is flip orthodox and take religious diplomatic offensive

 

[Piotrzeci]

There is no point in playing, if your first idea group isn't Aristocratic.

 

[BoomKidneyShot]

The main reason you'd pick influence is -50% unjustified demands. Espionage for AE reduction is crucial in most circumstances, but your dip will hurt BADLY without influence. It might not matter too much in the end, you have good rulers, can afford +4 and +5 advisors and you'd just be developing with that dip anyways. Still doesn't feel good to pay more DIP mana in the peace deal than you pay admin to core. Regardless, i'd go with espionage -> admin -> humanist -> diplo+quantity in either order.
You can pick up explo or expansion temporarily at one point to jump to west africa or america and then abandon it once you have your bridgehead, but it's not at all necessary.

Is -50% unjustified demands really going to save you 2800 diplo points?

 

[Razzor]

depends on how fast you expand before imperialism. When you are limited to conquest CB with the ocasional reconquest if you find a good subject with lots of cores. Influence definetly helps a lot. I recently did Ryukyu vassals swarm and had a big bird mana deficit until i got the -50%

 

[mechanical_Critter]

Even if you save 2800 dip with influence, it just refunds your group. You didn't actually gain something out of it, like you would if you picked another idea group that would have snowballed (dip, adm, even religious, huma, etc.). So yeah, influence without heavy vassal play => crap group. It's made that way.

Espionnage is very meh as well, you get claims on everyone and their mother with your MT anyway, so you're just using this as a -20% AE. And in that department, Dip offers similar benefits (BROT) with the added WS% (absolutely amazing when you want to WC) and tech up for binging up dip tech after having dev pushed for institutions. There may be situations where you'd want it, but this is not one of them.

Flipping ortho religious diplo and admin (in whichever order, not offensive lol) is a viable strategy, but you fight rebels forever, you need to eat some corruption, you spend a lot of ducats converting, you lose ottomans government, so arguably it's amongst the worst way to use the Ottomans towards a WC. At least this patch.

Exploration is just a waste of points
Aristocratic (or any mil idea group…) shouldn't be considered even in your first 3 idea groups. These are the ones that helps you snowball, you should be able to win over AI anyhow if you want to go for a WC.

Inno is an interesting one imo. There are some really nice parts to it, but it has some heavy drawbacks: first, it delays your rebel combatting idea group (huma if you stay sunni, religious if you choose to do a discount byz run) so you will fight the zombies for longer, which is tedious, and you will gain more AE out of not having yet the correct idea groups. Then, it delays your first mil group (possibly 4, becomes 5 or even 6), which means you need to micro more, pay more attention and it's tedious as well. So, the perks are nice, you get good institutions, good policies, you shouldn't run out of adm later on if you picked this group but you really pay the price in the early to mid game. Would not recommend.

 

[Jesus was a communist]

Orthodox ottomans is great for wc. You basically get the imperialism cb before 1500 against everybody but muscovy. Plus the diplomatic points you save is more than worth it. Especially since otherwise you would probably have to drop diplomatic for influence to avoid paying 500 diplo every time you 100% somebody

I don't know why your laughing at offensive thought. It has a good policy with religious and an ok one with diplomatic. You could replace it with quality thought. I just like the siege ability and you don't really need army tradition modifiers right away as ottomans. You'll be fighting enough that it should always be around 80 after 1500.

Also admin has been pointless since the implementation of absolutism, it's not needed for wc even if you don't have coring cost reduction modifiers. If you want to do 2 admin in the first 3 just go religious diplomatic humanist.

 

[donagel]

Call it laziness, but I always go Diplo first for the extra diplomats that I can then put on Robo-missions to all the countries that I going to piss off with my expansion. You can do the same with manual control, but I always forget and nothing breaks your stride like having to fight a coalition war.

 

[Josar]

Administrative, then influence, then Humanist, then offensive, maybe diplomatic after that. There is a high chance you will get a event which gives you a CB to turn crimeia into your March. Also there is a admin/influence policy that reduces diplo annex by 20 percent.

 

[BoomKidneyShot]

Orthodox ottomans is great for wc. You basically get the imperialism cb before 1500 against everybody but muscovy. Plus the diplomatic points you save is more than worth it. Especially since otherwise you would probably have to drop diplomatic for influence to avoid paying 500 diplo every time you 100% somebody

I don't know why your laughing at offensive thought. It has a good policy with religious and an ok one with diplomatic. You could replace it with quality thought. I just like the siege ability and you don't really need army tradition modifiers right away as ottomans. You'll be fighting enough that it should always be around 80 after 1500.

Also admin has been pointless since the implementation of absolutism, it's not needed for wc even if you don't have coring cost reduction modifiers. If you want to do 2 admin in the first 3 just go religious diplomatic humanist.

Shaving 9 months off coring time is still very useful. That (in some ways) is as important as the coring cost reduction.