In a matchup between a reasonably beefy Prussia and the Ottomans, who wins?
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Immovable Object vs. Irresistable Force
- Thread starter Susan1972
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Are they both AI? Or are one or both of them human?
(Humans will almost always beat the AI. Between two humans, relative skill is probably more important than national ideas.)
If they are both AI, I would put my money on Prussia. It can only be formed in the mid- or late-game, and I believe Western military tends to outperform the Ottomans in this period. And Prussia is unusually high-quality for a Western nation. On the other hand, the AI can always do something derpy and lose as a result - if only one of the AI does this then the other will win.
EDIT: After thinking about this a bit further, I think the only way to make this a meaningful question is to set up a specific scenario, and run it in observer mode about 100 times. Then repeat the process for small variations of that scenario, to check you didn't accidentally give one side an advantage.
(Humans will almost always beat the AI. Between two humans, relative skill is probably more important than national ideas.)
If they are both AI, I would put my money on Prussia. It can only be formed in the mid- or late-game, and I believe Western military tends to outperform the Ottomans in this period. And Prussia is unusually high-quality for a Western nation. On the other hand, the AI can always do something derpy and lose as a result - if only one of the AI does this then the other will win.
EDIT: After thinking about this a bit further, I think the only way to make this a meaningful question is to set up a specific scenario, and run it in observer mode about 100 times. Then repeat the process for small variations of that scenario, to check you didn't accidentally give one side an advantage.
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All other things considered, I lean towards Prussia taking it, because they will naturally have considerably higher morale and discipline. Maybe in tech 10-15 Ottos can win through good rolls however.
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Considering both being IA, I bet on Prussia. By the time Prussia forms and gets beefy, discipline already would become the main combat atribute, the Ottomans rely more on moral, cavalry combat ability and manpower, but Prussia with a full militarization can have just a little bit less manpower as an ottoman empire in midgame, and a considerably bigger discipline and infantry combat ability. Into single battles Prussia would almost always win, unless they're outnumbered 3-1(although with a good leader they might have a chance), but in a actual war the fight on the balkans would be won by Prussia, but crossing the Marmara would be hard, so the IA probably would simple said "fuck those straits" an try turn around the Black Sea, and I think the Ottoman IA wouldnt care about it and would pass half of their army to retake the balkans. When the Ottos finish siege the Balkans, Prussia would almost finish with Anatolia, and knowing the lack of defense sense of the IA, they would sacrifice Anatolia and Syria and head straight to Germany, so the war would turn into a race of who sieges the enemy contry first, and I think the prussians would do it faster and get more war score and less war exaution, I think that by this time the IA would peace out for something kinda dumb as they do always, like force Ottomans break aliance with some OPM in Arabia or Mesopotamia.
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Just a reminder that 10% more morale beats 5% more discipline in combat at equal tech for the entire timeline. Discipline is only the "main combat attribute" if we assume a war between humans, where it's feasible to tap out manpower, and the belligerents are otherwise close in size/power. Morale and siege ability are THE stats for SP wars, for the entire game.
Even at tech 32, a 5% discipline advantage is ~ 3% difference in casualties taken, but will tend to lose a full combat width engagement to 10% morale advantage. Not a good trade in most cases, if you're routing from fights.
Of course, Prussia does not lack for morale either. So it's really a matter of how many more troops the Ottomans get to compensate in this hypothetical, and how well they're micromanaged vs Prussia's troops and vice versa.
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The human is me, in this case. I'm in the 1600's with the best Prussia run I've had so far. In one scrape with the Ottos I noticed that may stacks did a phenomenal amount of damage to his. I've got full militarization and Reformed religion - and the "fine goosestep" cheeve - but I don't think I did as well as I could have in other areas.
I was interested to know if a properly planned and prepared Prussia could do the Ottos in.
Ottomans, more manpower and provinces across strait the ai will never reach so can forever give manpower and tax
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The Ottomans would win in an AI vs AI war simply because of the insane manpower + economy, this combined with the fact that the AI isn't aggressive enough and has a bad habit of refusing to fight battles when outnumbered (even when they could easily win) means that Prussia would just get swarmed, a decent player on Prussia would obviously win though, but AI Prussia is not going to be nearly as optimized as a player in term of bonuses, I doubt the AI would reach 100% militarization until the very late game, the AI choice of doctrines is also very questionable, which once again will play against Prussia because they are the underdog and don't have the ressources of the Otto.
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So, as a human player in a real game, it's important to be clear about what you mean by "beating" the Ottomans as Prussia.
- Take 50% warscore in the peace? Almost certainly. You can almost certainly take and hold the European side of the Ottomans (including Istanbul), and a careful choice of wargoal will get you 25% from ticking warscore (eventually).
- Take 100% warscore in the peace? Probably feasible, but almost certainly annoying and time-consuming. This probably requires crossing to Anatolia, which will probably be a pain because you probably don't have any significant allied navies in the Mediterranean.
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On a pound for pound basis, Prussia wins hands down - I say this with experience. At tech levels beyond the 1700s, a Prussian army with the front and backrow completely filled, high discipline, infantry combat ability, professionalism, 3-star generals, you will crush an Ottoman army of equal size.
But...if we're assuming that the Ottomans have much higher development because of the massive head start they receive, and if we're going to make it a long war of attrition/manpower, then it becomes trickier.
But...if Prussia forms Germany and takes their unique power during the Age of Revolutions, then Germany wins decisively.
But...if we're assuming that the Ottomans have much higher development because of the massive head start they receive, and if we're going to make it a long war of attrition/manpower, then it becomes trickier.
But...if Prussia forms Germany and takes their unique power during the Age of Revolutions, then Germany wins decisively.
When does the ai form Germany?
Beyond 1700s ai prussia mightve formed if brandenburg survived but doubt
Ottomans spam artillery but doubt ai prussia would have appropriate economy for that
I was assuming human players against human players.
But OP didn't specify. *shrug*
Between two players? If they have the same development, Prussia wins every time. Not hard to see why.
Quantity > Quality
We all like a good meme of stackwiping other forces with equal size armies. However, the Ottomans will always be bigger than Prussia. If we're talking about a multiplayer game of equal size nations, this comparison obviously doesn't go up, because quality tips the scale in evenly sized battles.
Still, quality means little once the manpower reserves run dry.
All in all, with no proper context it's hard to say who's best. Still, there is a reason why Russia is fantastic in MP.
We all like a good meme of stackwiping other forces with equal size armies. However, the Ottomans will always be bigger than Prussia. If we're talking about a multiplayer game of equal size nations, this comparison obviously doesn't go up, because quality tips the scale in evenly sized battles.
Still, quality means little once the manpower reserves run dry.
All in all, with no proper context it's hard to say who's best. Still, there is a reason why Russia is fantastic in MP.
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Tech 32? TIL that discipline's meaningfulness is somehow strictly bound to tech
Just to nitpick a bit more because talking disci is fun:
1. It's weird to count the 'advantage' in discipline. Disci isn't pips where advantage is the only thing counted in the formula.
2. 3% difference in casualties taken? where did you get that from? 5% disci purely on paper increases your damage dealt by 5% and decreases damage taken by ~~5%, the actual end results will extremely vary from battle to battle, depending on the setup and other modifiers between 2 countries, with morale being the most important, the difference in "casualties taken" that 5% disci provides you with can easily get to 20% or more.
3. If we're talking SP vs MP differences, funnily enough MP-wise the window of time where you can feasibly run out of manpower(and that having a decisive impact on the war) makes for a relatively minor portion of the game. In the first few decades or so the amount of manpower you have is miniscule and mercs are extremely cheap, so no matter what you do, assuming an all out war, mercs will end up making by far for the majority of your losses, which means that the deciding factors in the war come down to.. money and your loan cap
It changes later on, as you start deving and get to grow your MP cap, but you are going to get quickly to a point where you have more manpower than you can feasibly use -> economy becomes the deciding factor again.
4. 10% being better than 5% disc is likewise not as simple. It's probably true in the late game assuming a war between 2 well built countries, but even then you have to factor in things like discipline reducing the strain of war on your economy.. thus allowing you to fight for longer, which also depends on how easily siegeable both countries are etc etc
tl;dr: It's fun to talk about these things, but it's going to be hard to reach any meaningful conclusions this way
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I never said that though. Just that even at that high of a tech level the 10% morale still wins a particular fight at max width (controlling other factors best we can). It's true at all techs, while a *very* common player thing to parrot is that "morale falls off" and that "discipline is king". Both of those are false in a vacuum, and frequently still not true in practice.
True, you get a rough estimate at best. Morale is applied to less places but that too isn't counted in only one place.
In practice you get a bit less, I think it has to do with routing parts of losing side? Should also depend a lot on how the battle goes (much closer to 5% both ways in reinforcement-extended grind battle, less if morale is decisive relatively quickly). Excepting the case of on-the-spot stackwiping, where the casualty ratio swings wildly back.
I will defer to you on MP, as it's been years since I did PvP. So long ago that western tech had > 10 pip advantage by late game if you didn't westernize. I had some bad experiences with it, mostly from a stability standpoint (patch broke compatibility and I couldn't play anymore) but also from a time commitment standpoint.
With that I agree. I mostly just wanted to push back on "discipline is THE stat" nonsense that gets stated a lot still. It's especially not true in SP, where a good % of wars are won while the AI won't even willingly engage you in most wars by the time you've filled out a MIL group. It's more interested in trying to counter siege or running around doing nothing unless it thinks it can take a fight somewhat decisively. So morale winds up way better in SP because:
- It counts in siege assaults
- AI doesn't willingly attack into it
- If you catch AI stacks w/o general or outnumbered it lets you stackwipe faster/more reliably
Granted, some of these are only the case because the AI regressed in its wartime decision making. Originally, it was a lot more willing to take engagements (barring certain micro tricks) and thus getting worn down was at least somewhat more of a threat. At least in principle. Current AI practices greatly skew the value of different military benefits.
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Ottomans will not always be bigger, same reason Prussia does not always exist.
and Russia is excellent because it has top tier national ideas and a top tier government reform. Ottoman ideas are okay but they aren't that good, same for the government. Prussia has the best national ideas and government type in the game.
I'm still fairly confident Prussia will "win" assuming both nations are built well. Manpower is irrelevant in MP: you can literally have manpower quantities that overflow the in game counter by the 1500s.
I hear this often, but never understood how that works. Why is there so much more manpower in MP? You dev more, you take quantity ideas, you enact some edicts and government reforms and some policies. You are Orthodox. Is that enough to have literally overflowing manpower?
Honest question, really!
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Short answer: yes
A well-built MP country with 300 provinces is going to be stronger than your average SP country after a world conquest.
Assuming your goal is getting as strong as possible, Paradox has made it long time ago so, that your best option is to literally almost never go to war, and instead spend your time on pressing the dev buttons ^_^
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