My Italy Ironman game: How defeat Ottomans?

[Zero Gravity]

Hello there

This is my first ironman game and I'm really excited about it since it has renewed my love for EU4. In my recent games at some point I just got bored and if something didnt work out the way I wanted it I just cheated or reloaded, however since I started playing ironman and being forced to actually think about stuff I have been having a blast.. I hope it's ok if I create my own thread for this topic.

Here is my game.

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Diplo-Map. My allies are Castille, Brandenburg and Hungary

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My army deployed. Is 24-2-14 a good formation? Ragusa has a level 4 fort and a march, Dalmatia also has level 4 fort. Both have a supply limit of 60.

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Income

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Tech

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Ideas

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Army Stats

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The Ottomans

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Income Ledger

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Army Ledger

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Navy Ledger

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I figured I should try and kill the Ottomans now before they grow even bigger. Besides, they own venice and treviso and I really want those provinces.
My plan was upgrading the third army to another 40k stack (24-2-14). In a couple of months I will hit army tech level 16. This will give me more combat modifiers and put me on the same level as the ottomans, also right now I have a slight unit tech advantage.
My navy consists of 61 galleys(most are new galleasses) and 1 big ship. The ottoman navy has 40 heavy ships and 39 galleys. I suspect a number of their ships are outdated design. My plan was to tank a bunch of loans and stock up to 100 galleys. If those were able to defeat the ottoman navy I could block the sea of marmara which would give me a decisive strategic advantage. The good news is I am italy and get a good a combat modifier for galleys. The bad news is the ottomans have fully developed naval ideas. (Does it make sense to include my light ships in combat fleet or will the loss of morale from having them get wrecked be a bigger impact?)

Do you have any advice for me? How can I improve upon this plan? Are these armies any good? Are 100 galleys enough to wipe the ottoman fleet? I am very worried my manpower pool is not enough to sustain through 200.000 angry ottomans + 40.000 crimeans (with shitty techl level 10) and all their reinforcements. If I could block the sea of marmary I can actually see myself actually winning that war but if not...
Also note that I am currently allied with castille, they would join me in war should I DOW the ottomans, as would brandenburg. Hungary would chicken out. I have been trying to make friends with russia but they will not accept an alliance at this moment.

Thank you for any help, I really hope it's ok if I create my own thread for this

 

[delpiero1234]

Your Italian kingdom is way too small to beat the Ottoman Empire. I am currently doing an Italian Ironman game too (its 1607 in my game and I started as Savoy) and my empire is much, much larger.

I also believe you chose bad ideas. Trading is overrated. Innovative is sweet but administrative as Italy is better for reduced coring cost and you will need mercenaries on the long run.
Your army is too small to beat the Ottoman army. (My army in my Italy game consists of over 200k soldiers)

Anyways, if I were in your shoes I would not fight the Ottomans now but instead I would expand into France or the HRE. Next time you play Italy start as Savoy and conquer Aragon and Portugal then take on France. Once France is a little HRE (= consists of many nations) then annex everything in France. Then attack the Ottomans. Also never declare Holy War on the Ottomans.

Your ally Hungary is useless because it is Eastern tech. Eastern tech is not good - especially when attacking the French (but also against the Ottomans). Hungary is in general a very bad ally.

Back in 1.4.1. I did a Tuscany--Italy--HRE game. If you want you can check some screenshots out here: http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?755127-What-s-a-good-score-to-finish-a-game

 

[Comradebot]

Let your military tech get up to the mid-20s.

If the Ottomans are still Ottoman tech, their massive numerical advantage won't matter. Ottoman tech units start to sharply drop off in the mid-20s.

 

[Zero Gravity]

Thanks for your answer. I admit I am not the best at this game and. The thing is though, I wanted to do this game in a special way and only conquer coastal provinces eventually owning all of the mediteranean sea and after achieving that, all of europe. As you can see I'm quite far away from achieving that though.
My problem is also that I always used to play EU3 and EU4 very conservatively, solely trying to rely on non-merc soldiers and almost never taking loans or directly annexing provinces (instead of vassal-->annex). From reading a bit through the forum I realized how much different this game can be played. So any tips on what I have been doing wrong are greatly appreciated

 

[delpiero1234]

So any tips on what I have been doing wrong are greatly appreciated

1. Start as Savoy
2. 1st war vs Provence --> annex Provence -->
3. Get a war with Switzerland & Milan. Vassalize both (both countries can be vassalized in a single war. Often they ally with one another then you only need to declare 1 war)
4. Culture convert Vaud Wallis from Burgundian to Lombard. This prevents Burgundy from getting missions to conquer you and decrease revolt risk there.
5. Conquer Avignon after taking Provence --> Occitian becomes an accepted culture.
6. Try to conquer Liguria and Corsica next (depends on their allies but usually they don't have good allies).

This should be a good opening for Savoy.

National Ideas: 1st Diplomatic 2nd Offensive 3rd/4th Exploration/Administrative. If you don't want to colonize take Expansion as 3rd/4th.

Get an alliance with Bavaria (and help them conquer provinces) and Castile and if you can with France but France will usually hate Savoy. Conquer Naples before the Iberian Wedding fires. This means declaring war on Aragon but this is good because you want to conquer Aragon anyways. Defend in the mountains (-3 terrain penalty for attacker). Try to conquer Franche-Comte, Charlois and Nerves before the last king of Burgundy dies. Attack Portugal and take some provinces from them (required in order to get colonization range if you plan to colonize and if you don't want to colonize attack Portugal anyways because it has some high base tax provinces and increases your naval force limit by a lot).

Hope this helps.. Feel free to ask more precise questions and I will try to help you
Italy is one of the most fun countries in EU IV

 

[Incompetent]

Your income seems a little low for a united Italy. The Ottomans are twice as strong as you or more on every measure. It's possible for a human to win in this position because the AI is not that smart, but it will be a very tough fight even with allies, and you'll want to wait until the Ottomans mess up elsewhere (e.g. if they are losing a war with Russia, that may be a good opportunity). I wouldn't try it unless you are forced to fight them.

Algiers might present a better opportunity for expansion, depending on what cores are still around, if they're not allied to the Ottomans. You could also try to take over Aragon if they are diplomatically isolated, although this is likely to upset Castile.

 

[Comradebot]

Bump, because I just fought the Ottomans in my ongoing Khiva game.

They had 240k troops, I had 78k. So, you know, 3:1...

And I crushed them.


Here's what I did:

I rushed my military tech to 23 as fast as possible (Ottomans get their unit upgrades at 19 and 24, so they were still using their tech 19 guys). When I declared the war, I had half my army in Azerbaijan since its almost 100% mountains with the other half in a province behind it. The Ottomans threw their full force at the group in Azerbaijan, I sent my other stack in to help, and we massacred tens of thousands of Ottomans on our doorstep. Only reason I had to eventually retreat is because I could never get my morale to recover due to the constant stream of enemies attacking me... and eventually 60k Prussians showed up. We killed most of them, but ran out of morale.

After that though, it became a game of splitting my time mopping up Ottomans and sieging. Once the Prussians were finished off (they had no manpower left when I started the war, part of the reason I chose then), it was pretty trivial.

End result:
I took all of Syria (and released it as a vassal), released the Mamluks from the Ottomans, revoked their treaty with Prussia, and left them with 20k guys alive and no manpower. The real amazing part is that I had to have killed ~800k Ottomans (their manpower has a pretty crazy rebuild rate...) in total and they never had any war exhaustion.

 

[BigHamster]

Only nation able to defeat ottomans early is Poland-Lithunia, mostly because of zerging them with tonns of troops. As italy, you may try spawning lots of mercs to drain their immense manpower, just engage combat and run when things go worth, direct confrontation will rather end badly for you.

 

[volseraph]

A side note on the naval war: heavy ships beat galleys. You need a huge numerical advantage to sink heavy ships with galleys, even in the Mediterranean. Given that the Turk has Naval ideas, I'm afraid you're sunk.

 

[Hummer]

You're in not as bad a position as some make it out to be. I was drug into and started wars with the Otto's as Italy. Only difference was, I had a little bit more of the Serbia, Bosnia area but those provinces aren't that important. Here's what you do.

Spoiler alert. If you follow my instructions, you will win win all future wars with the otto's.

1. Ally the Mamlucks. They suck and will lose all their battles but they will be a big distraction to the otto's both for navy and army. This is a huge benefit.
2. Spam Heavy ships. At least equivalent to theirs. Once you are ready to attack, take all your light ships off trading and make 1 huge navy stack. Find their navy, it'll probably be in 2 or 3 pieces trading. Position your navy to intercept one of their smaller fleets. DOW. This way you can completely demolish their navy in 2 to 3 pieces. Now you control the seas. This is how you win against otto's. The seas are the #1 most important factor.
3. Now that you control the seas. Blockade the strait in Constantinople. The majority of otto army's are always in Turkey/Asia because they are fighting the Mamlucks.
4. Now you can transport troops at will into Greece. Destroy all their army's in Europe, carpet siege at will. Make sure you hold the blockade of the Constantinople strait without fail.
5. If the cores haven't disappeared yet (they do around ~1650), siege every province including the islands (Cyprus, Rhodes and Crete) for Byzantium cores.
5. Annex all Byzantium provinces, release vassal. You now have a huge vassal, and the otto's have been severely weakened. Don't release nation in the peace deal. They might be too big to diplo vassal after and could be the wrong religion.
6. Congratulations, you can now take apart the otto's at will in future wars.

Shoot, I just noticed now that this was an old thread that was bumped up. Oh well.
Edit - I was looking at the day, not the month, I guess the thread's not that old.