Ottomania

[The Tsar]

The game doesn't simulate the decline of the ottomans very well unfortunately. best way to beat them is to have lots of strong allies willing to fight them.

 

[Daelh]

Booho I suck at the game and cant beat Ottomans. Nerf them! They're broken! The game isnt fun with a strong ottomans.

Seriously. Ottomans is the major power with the worst NIs and mission tree. They're a pushover after 1600 if you are a somewhat decent player. Even before 1600 they're a pushover if you yourself is a major power. Yesterday I beat Ottomans in 1570 with Persia, I won every battle when the stacks were somewhat even. They had around 180-200k troops and I had 120k. Get ticking war score, beat their armies that are left isolated and sooner or later they will crumble. If you wait until 1670s you will stackwipe every Ottoman stack regardless of space marines or not. I dont see the problem. They're easy to beat at the start and they're easy to beat after 1600.

 

[AvengedK1ng]

You certainly can, although most mp groups don't usually outright ban them, but encourage getting skilled Mamluk, Austria, and Poland players to match them. At least having a skilled Mamluks can at worst heavily slow down the Ottos player, since even if Mams loses, Ottos will be almost bankrupt (unless the Mamluks player severely misplays). However, in order to compete on even a slightly even playing field, the Mamluks player has to often resort to gamey tactics like selling Darnah (in Libya) to Candar in order to vassalize them and use a reconquest CB on the Ottos player, while also rushing Defender of the faith (before Ottos can click it), rushing golden era by getting more vassals and upgrading trade centres, and selecting a second ruler of the culture of your morale advisor so the mams player can take a +4 morale advisor at 50% cost (-25% from same culture as ruler, -25% from amirs estate privlege). The mams player will also need to quickly build a galley fleet in order to block the bosphorus once Kocaeli is sieged down (if they even can).

The rushed reconquest CB from vassalizing Candar is often necessary to counter the Ottomans player using an equally-gamey tactic to sell Mentese to Byzantium, then building to force limit, and using the perma claims on western Anatolia to reconquest Byzantium instead of having to wait for a 20 point spy network for a claim on Constantinople. The Ottomans player will also build forts on Hamid and Sivas (highlands in the east and west respectively) and often try to either ally or vassalize Albania so that their army will attach to one of the main Otto armies and get Skanderbeg to lead battles.

So you've clearly never heard of building spy network on them and dukaldir at start, and pushing for war asap. Always used to work if ottos already at war in west

 

[AvengedK1ng]

All these people down voting me seem to have been oblivious to the fact that I said an Ottoman PLAYER is ridiculously OP. As in, in order for single players to have their "end game boss" multiplayers have to deal with a nigh-unstoppable demigod in the hands of even a semi-competent Ottos player (unless an extremely good Mamluks player reigns them in early).

Ming OP pls nerf
Sirhind to dehli OP pls nerf
Oirat OP pls nerf
France OP pls nerf
Eu4 is about diplomacy as much as its about war, players can all ally byz day w if they want to block otto missions

 

[Blackmoore]

I'm not sure why people don't think that the Ottomans don't have good ideas.

+5 Disc on Nov. 11, 1444 -- Amazing
+3 Tolerance of Heathens on Nov. 11, 1444 -- Amazing. Never worry about religion again, no reason to take Humanist or Religious Ideas.
-20% CCR +1 culture -- really good
+20% Manpower Recovery -- pretty good, considering that your manpower levels is seemingly critical for keeping the new psycho-killer AI from attacking you once you attack someone else
+15% Cav Combat -- Meh
-10% Cost of War Reduction -- Meh
+10% Tax -- Meh
+10% Trade Efficiency -- Pretty Good
-10% Ship cost -- Ok
+33% Land Force Limit Modified -- Amazing

While you can find much better Military Ideas in Poland or Prussia, this is a well-balanced set of ideas. It will help make you money enough to field all those units.

Then, there is all the stuff that buried under the surface in their mechanics, like the constantly amazing heirs, the excellent starting position with many weak neighbors, the superior Anatolian Units, very good missions with natural claim development, the crazy age bonus that melts forts with a glance. Sunni Religion, which is at least A-tier.

With improved AI economy, more generals (which the AI doesn't spend mana on) they can actually create general led doomstacks very early. Coupled with increased AI aggression and less frequent stackwipes, the Ottomans huge manpower battery makes it pretty terrifying.

I'm not crying here, I'm just being realistic. I defended the Ottoman relative power just one patch ago. All the AI nations are better, but the inherent advantages of Ottomans makes them multiplicatively better, not linearly better.

 

[grommile]

no reason to take Humanist

-10 years of separatism and -2% global unrest are pretty good.

Like, in a game where I was planning to blob, I would consider an idea group on the strength of those alone.

 

[Kalderus]

So you've clearly never heard of building spy network on them and dukaldir at start, and pushing for war asap. Always used to work if ottos already at war in west

With all due respect, this is a horrible idea, and shows a lack of mp experience fighting a competent Ottomans player. Building a spy network as a Mamluks player requires 20 spy network size, by which time the ottomans player will have sold mentese to byzantium, built to force limit, acquired a permanent claim on the province they just sold in Anatolia, and decced on Byz, then likely have peaced out for Constantinople, allowing them to become an empire, which will give them a greater loan capacity than the Mamluks player-> thus GG Mamluks.

Pushing for war on dulkadir also makes no sense when the Mamluks player can easily beat the Ottomans to a diplo vassalization, especially if they hire a diplo rep advisor.

Any competent Ottomans player will never be "already at war in the west" unless that west is annexing Constantinople in the first year due to the gamey exploit of selling Mentese to Byz to get a perma claim on them when they build to force limit.

 

[Susan1972]

I'm not sure why people don't think that the Ottomans don't have good ideas.

+5 Disc on Nov. 11, 1444 -- Amazing
+3 Tolerance of Heathens on Nov. 11, 1444 -- Amazing. Never worry about religion again, no reason to take Humanist or Religious Ideas.
-20% CCR +1 culture -- really good
+20% Manpower Recovery -- pretty good, considering that your manpower levels is seemingly critical for keeping the new psycho-killer AI from attacking you once you attack someone else
+15% Cav Combat -- Meh
-10% Cost of War Reduction -- Meh
+10% Tax -- Meh
+10% Trade Efficiency -- Pretty Good
-10% Ship cost -- Ok
+33% Land Force Limit Modified -- Amazing

While you can find much better Military Ideas in Poland or Prussia, this is a well-balanced set of ideas. It will help make you money enough to field all those units.

Then, there is all the stuff that buried under the surface in their mechanics, like the constantly amazing heirs, the excellent starting position with many weak neighbors, the superior Anatolian Units, very good missions with natural claim development, the crazy age bonus that melts forts with a glance. Sunni Religion, which is at least A-tier.

With improved AI economy, more generals (which the AI doesn't spend mana on) they can actually create general led doomstacks very early. Coupled with increased AI aggression and less frequent stackwipes, the Ottomans huge manpower battery makes it pretty terrifying.

I'm not crying here, I'm just being realistic. I defended the Ottoman relative power just one patch ago. All the AI nations are better, but the inherent advantages of Ottomans makes them multiplicatively better, not linearly better.

Bingo. And it gets pretty dull after 1000 hours if all you ever do as a European or Middle Eastern is tangle with them.

 

[Nostalgium]

+10% Trade Efficiency -- Pretty Good
-10% Ship cost -- Ok

I cannot stress enought how much I disagree with these two. 10% trade efficiency does nothing for the thing that actually grants you a solid base for trade income - steering from nodes. It is only a 10% modifier to your collected trade. By the time those 10% trade eff. is an amount with serious, meaningful impact, you're so late in the game I wouldn't consider a National Idea slot dedicated to it "pretty good". If it was trade power or steering, sure, but efficiency? That is, at best, a meh idea.

Ship cost is likewise. As the Ottomans, [Anything] Cost is never going to be a big concern. Especially not Navy. Venice can be beaten by invading the Terrafirma, and after they are gone, you have no serious competition for the eastern Med, and everything else can be reached by land. Like trade efficiency, it's meh at the absolute best of times and the list of ideas I'd rather have is long.

The Ottomans have a few really good ideas, which are shared by idea sets whose other ideas are vastly superior to the Ottomans. What makes them seem so good is that their best ideas - CCR and discipline - are frontloaded, which makes them powerful without serious investment in ideas. Compare this to something like France, whose 20% Morale is idea #2 and whose 5% Disc is in Ambitions, or Spain, which requires you to actually, you know, form Spain, and it's easy to see why a lot of people overestimate how good Ottoman ideas really are. I'm not saying that it's a bad idea set, because that would be equally ridiculous, but they don't rank up there with the amazing idea sets by their own merits.

 

[vv142]

I played a number of games around Ottos (Venice, Genoa, Byzantium, Serbia, all a few times) and in this patch they are the strongest that I’ve seen. Stupid friendly AI in 1.33 is not helping either, but it seems like there is a bit more than that.

As an example, play a game with Serbia now and I fight them with almost 2/1 troops, higher morale (advisor), same discipline (icon), same tech 6 (me at least) and not much worse battle pips generals (Ottos F/S 5/1, mine F/S 0/4, but its shock that matters more at this level AFAIK) and I lose without it being even close.

Bigger picture wise, I am allied with Austria, PLC, Savoy and Pope (who called for Crusade against them) with 2:1 troop count and we are losing, so something seems different compared to previous versions. Previous run (yesterday) ended when they crushed me, Austria and PLC like bugs. In past one could hold ground and win a bit against them with such odds.

 

[AvengedK1ng]

I'm not sure why people don't think that the Ottomans don't have good ideas.

+5 Disc on Nov. 11, 1444 -- Amazing

Anyone can get this with an advisor but agreed very good and saves quality however morale seems to matter with the combat rework

+3 Tolerance of Heathens on Nov. 11, 1444 -- Amazing. Never worry about religion again, no reason to take Humanist or Religious Ideas.

Muslims get dhimmi privliege, everyone else gets +2 tolerance as a burgher privliege

-20% CCR +1 culture -- really good

Very good but admin's 25 is early on and you already get so many good claims on mission trees earlier

+20% Manpower Recovery -- pretty good, considering that your manpower levels is seemingly critical for keeping the new psycho-killer AI from attacking you once you attack someone else
+15% Cav Combat -- Meh

Yeh good early game but you've got the economy for mercs and cannons post first 60 years

-10% Cost of War Reduction -- Meh

Terrible

+10% Tax -- Meh
+10% Trade Efficiency -- Pretty Good

Nah

-10% Ship cost -- Ok

More meh considering said economy

+33% Land Force Limit Modified -- Amazing

By the point you get this idea you'll already have a massive FL due to owning all Levantine provinces

While you can find much better Military Ideas in Poland or Prussia, this is a well-balanced set of ideas. It will help make you money enough to field all those units.

Not well balanced, some good but severely power crept by other tags

Then, there is all the stuff that buried under the surface in their mechanics, like the constantly amazing heirs,

Good but not amazing, can still get 1 in a stat, and players can always just reroll heirs cuz cba to lose 50 prestige

the excellent starting position with many weak neighbors

Many get this

, the superior Anatolian Units,

Agreed

very good missions with natural claim development,

No very awkward claims, why do i need karaman before i can get aq eg

the crazy age bonus that melts forts with a glance.

For the first 60 years of the game or so and you still need to balance ae

Sunni Religion, which is at least A-tier.

Agreed

With improved AI economy, more generals (which the AI doesn't spend mana on) they can actually create general led doomstacks very early. Coupled with increased AI aggression and less frequent stackwipes, the Ottomans huge manpower battery makes it pretty terrifying.

Scary but not terrifying as you can either smother in cradle or outblob them then fight

I'm not crying here, I'm just being realistic. I defended the Ottoman relative power just one patch ago. All the AI nations are better, but the inherent advantages of Ottomans makes them multiplicatively better, not linearly better.

Ai ottos should expand faster early game but also have reworked disasters, ming has had so many reworks to reliably collapse after they keep changing mechanics which accidentally make ming too stable

 

[AvengedK1ng]

I played a number of games around Ottos (Venice, Genoa, Byzantium, Serbia, all a few times) and in this patch they are the strongest that I’ve seen. Stupid friendly AI in 1.33 is not helping either, but it seems like there is a bit more than that.

As an example, play a game with Serbia now and I fight them with almost 2/1 troops, higher morale (advisor), same discipline (icon), same tech 6 (me at least) and not much worse battle pips generals (Ottos F/S 5/1, mine F/S 0/4, but its shock that matters more at this level AFAIK) and I lose without it being even close.

Bigger picture wise, I am allied with Austria, PLC, Savoy and Pope (who called for Crusade against them) with 2:1 troop count and we are losing, so something seems different compared to previous versions. Previous run (yesterday) ended when they crushed me, Austria and PLC like bugs. In past one could hold ground and win a bit against them with such odds.

How often did you armies collect together? Did armies go over combat width?

 

[vv142]

I generally group units together or avoid fighting. In this case I had my mercs an my stack (of 15k) together so 19k at the beginning. It is tech 6, so I assume engagement width is not an issue, but who knows.

A bit later in the same war Austrians lost a this match-up (with terrain bonuses added) on same tech level. Yes, western tech is weaker than Ottos early on, but I don't recall it was this bad. I think I'll probably wait for the next patch to play around them.

On a side note, in the end all my allies peaced out (with white peace) or lost a bit of territory (PLC) and I got crushed. I haven't seen AI do that often before.

 

[Krajzen]

I have managed to ultimately destroy Ottomans by late 16th as Wallachia, Nd i consider myself to be a mediocre player and I have used no exploits and cheesing of many kind.

Sure it took a lot of reloads due to nightmarish initial position Wallachia is in (surrounded on all sides by three gigantic power blocs) but I chose that challenge for myself, I knew it would be absolute hell in real life as well, and goddamn forming Romania and taking Constantinople was so worth all this struggle.

This is semi (somewhat, quasi) relealistic game, you have hundreds of countries to choose, if you pick a tiny weak nation next to like top 5 most powerful and agressive empires from the game's setting then don't expect low difficulty. Geopolitics is not about fair play and balance, this is no Starcraft.

(80% of my success as Wallachia was very intense diplomatic maneuvering to secure as many as powerful allies as possible and manipulate situation to make them at war with Ottos)

 

[vv142]

I have managed to ultimately destroy Ottomans by late 16th as Wallachia, Nd i consider myself to be a mediocre player and I have used no exploits and cheesing of many kind.

Sure it took a lot of reloads due to nightmarish initial position Wallachia is in (surrounded on all sides by three gigantic power blocs) but I chose that challenge for myself, I knew it would be absolute hell in real life as well, and goddamn forming Romania and taking Constantinople was so worth all this struggle.

This is semi (somewhat, quasi) relealistic game, you have hundreds of countries to choose, if you pick a tiny weak nation next to like top 5 most powerful and agressive empires from the game's setting then don't expect low difficulty. Geopolitics is not about fair play and balance, this is no Starcraft.

(80% of my success as Wallachia was very intense diplomatic maneuvering to secure as many as powerful allies as possible and manipulate situation to make them at war with Ottos)

My point might not have come across clearly, so I’ll try to clarify.

I’ve also defeated Ottos several times (with all of the the above mentioned tags) in previous versions and I agree that it’s hard but it is not rocket science. Its all about good diplomacy and gathering enough forces to fight them, taking a bit of land war after war (until one can go to 99%).

Based on it, I don’t think you can do much more diplomatically (In this case) before going to war with them. I was allied with Austria, Poland with Lithuania (and Moldova and Danzig as vassals), Papal State, Savoy (that took Provence and part of France) and I had Cilli as a vassal. I thought that Ottoman AI miscalculated badly declaring on me with ½ the forces that we had. However, they won almost all the battles (even with half the forces as above). That is new (and in my opinion wrong) in this patch.

In a nutshell, Ottos seem buffed to me in 1.33, making play around them almost impossible.


Regarding the comment on Ottos and real life, I agree that the game should simulate it. IRL Ottos were one of the strongest powers in the period (until their decline begun in 17th century), and it should be reflected in the game, but I believe that their biggest successes largely came on the back of big numerical superiority and weak neighbours. For example, look at the force ratios for the battle of Varna (where we begin), battle at Mohacs (which was probably the key), etc. Same applies to both sieges of Vienna (that they failed to win but would win in the game comfortably - it must be the loss of +33% siege ability that got to them), so one can probably say that it is in a way ahistorical that they have stronger units when they actually mainly had numerical superiority.

 

[Big Bad France]

Unironically yes. Everything else has been powercrept into oblivion with permanent modifiers from missions, tag switching, religion overhaul, HRE buffs, Ming buffs, monuments, etc. Ottomans are an end game tag with 1 good NI (CCR), crappy missions, and units which fall apart after the year 1600.

They still get the benefit of being a lucky nation surrounded by tiny nations they get free claims on, and this game's ai proves time and time again that it is much more capable in that scenario than it is of taking advantage of a set of national ideas.

 

[necro84]

@Kalderus you assume that Mamluk player won't do anything to stop Ottoman player. Mamluks start with a bit stronger fleet (one more galley), higher FL, more troops. Mamluks can easily vassalize Ramazan and Fezzan for 10 more galleys and Ottomans can forget about winning the sea.
You want to attack Byzantium as soon as possible but why Mamluk player can't guarantee or ally them? Even if he is too slow there is always option to enforce peace. If you start the war in January 1445 you won't have additional forts. Your only advantage is 5% discipline from traditions. You'll have mil tech 4 a little quicker but with your strategy you can have fewer troops at this point.

Don't get me wrong - Ottomans are strong but their victory over Mamluks isn't as certain as you think when both are controlled by players. In the defensive war against Mamluks you can call allies but when you are the attacker Mamluks have some advantages with higher numbers and vassals

 

[Blackmoore]

I cannot stress enought how much I disagree with these two. 10% trade efficiency does nothing for the thing that actually grants you a solid base for trade income - steering from nodes. It is only a 10% modifier to your collected trade. By the time those 10% trade eff. is an amount with serious, meaningful impact, you're so late in the game I wouldn't consider a National Idea slot dedicated to it "pretty good". If it was trade power or steering, sure, but efficiency? That is, at best, a meh idea.

Ship cost is likewise. As the Ottomans, [Anything] Cost is never going to be a big concern. Especially not Navy. Venice can be beaten by invading the Terrafirma, and after they are gone, you have no serious competition for the eastern Med, and everything else can be reached by land. Like trade efficiency, it's meh at the absolute best of times and the list of ideas I'd rather have is long.

The Ottomans have a few really good ideas, which are shared by idea sets whose other ideas are vastly superior to the Ottomans. What makes them seem so good is that their best ideas - CCR and discipline - are frontloaded, which makes them powerful without serious investment in ideas. Compare this to something like France, whose 20% Morale is idea #2 and whose 5% Disc is in Ambitions, or Spain, which requires you to actually, you know, form Spain, and it's easy to see why a lot of people overestimate how good Ottoman ideas really are. I'm not saying that it's a bad idea set, because that would be equally ridiculous, but they don't rank up there with the amazing idea sets by their own merits.

Fair point, but isn't that exactly what you want to do -- improve your draw from the pseudo-end node you are trying to create in Constantinople.

 

[AvengedK1ng]

With all due respect, this is a horrible idea, and shows a lack of mp experience fighting a competent Ottomans player. Building a spy network as a Mamluks player requires 20 spy network size, by which time the ottomans player will have sold mentese to byzantium, built to force limit, acquired a permanent claim on the province they just sold in Anatolia, and decced on Byz, then likely have peaced out for Constantinople, allowing them to become an empire, which will give them a greater loan capacity than the Mamluks player-> thus GG Mamluks.

So the host allowed someone to pick ottos with apparently no one else nearby sans the mamlukes player. Doesn't sound like a competent host. The mamlukes player also hasn't guaranteed byz for some reason reason, and a lv 3 fort has been taken just like that
The ottos player is extremely incompetent as he hasn't taken morea in the first war for some reason.
There's no venice, aragon, or Hungary in sight somehow

Pushing for war on dulkadir also makes no sense when the Mamluks player can easily beat the Ottomans to a diplo vassalization, especially if they hire a diplo rep advisor.

Because then you can fabricate on a province you can get to day 1, rather than teke which requires mil access when you want to choke ottos so they dont go through karaman

Any competent Ottomans player will never be "already at war in the west" unless that west is annexing Constantinople in the first year due to the gamey exploit of selling Mentese to Byz to get a perma claim on them when they build to force limit.

Byz is a war in the west, as well as an additional navy for straight blocking

 

[jamal bakr]

People say the AI doesn't use them so the point is moot, but janissaries seem kind of good to me? -35% dmg recieved when drilled, rapidly drilled, etc. The real toothless part is the janissary coup has too high of standards to start (need stability <0 and your ruler has to have at least one ability below 5... very unlikely for the ottomans!)


Also, are we sure the AI doesn't use them? After I massacre their first troops in the island forts, the second batch always seem way softer. Removing the pre-requiste the sultan has all abilities below 5 for it fire might make ottomans more likely to implode in the midgame.