Partly to test Ally AI functionality (that seems "off" a bit after recent update), I also tested Ottomans in Very Easy mode with Lucky Nations "Off" and even with those advantages, while playing Byzantium:
- A 5-nation alliance could not defeat Ottomans, who were fighting a 2nd war before we declared on Ottomans!
Ottomans were fighting Circ and Horde, no reserves, as total fielded army were at 39K, 0 reserves, and only 8% progress for the other war, so - I then declared war on Ottomans who only had two allies, Crimea and a small kingdom with 5K soldiers (and Crimea only had around 6K due to ongoing war with battled against Horde).
Sure enough, the AI still made up the difference and magically grew the reserves 3 different times during the war. I checked the reserves, and suddenly - additional 6K. Few months later - another 6-7K and up to 13K reserves.
I had Hungary with Moldavia as March, Serbia, Georgia (oversized after taking several provinces bordering Black Sea), and our alliance had over 20K more soldiers than Ottomans at the start of our war, and nearly 100K reserves compared to near zero reserves for Ottomans.
- As a sidebar, there were many noticeable AI flaws, as my AI Allies were not sieging properly. The non-fort provinces would be sieged to about 75%, and then the ally army would step off and walk somewhere else at random it seemed. Crimea - only had one fort, but all the other non-ZOC provinces were never sieged by allies in that area, as they would siege for a short time, then step off, over and over - it was maddening (so there's more than an Ottoman's problem going on here). In Ottoman's provincial area, my allies would siege fort provinces, and walk away also. Sometimes halfway through, and then just up and leave, while I am 2 provinces over trying to take on a fort province myself. Again - maddening to watch this, because the PACE MATTERS when you're up against Ottomans, and it's like the AI is helping itself make Ottomans more effective by purposely playing your AI Ally as if they're morons.
And we didn't win a net gain in the end. I could have cut the war off at 35%, the best we achieved, but even then Georgia had lost 4 provinces, and the 1st war against Circ and Horde zoomed from 8% to 70% in just a few months while Ottomans' reserves were getting those boosts (AI doing crazy stuff in the background, apparently).
At the end of the war, Ottomans had over 45K troops and nearly 15K reserves (how does that happen?).
Along the way, we had armies double in size to Ottomans, such as 28-30K against 15-16K Ottomans armies, and the 15K Ottomans armies would lose 3K, and our army would lose 7-10K, with 50% wins for those battles, but then successive battles would result in FULL WIPE even though we were on par numbers wise with Ottomans going into the battle (which doesn't seem right - a 10k vs 10k battle that wipes one side out completely, as there would only be attrition and not a complete wipe in the real world.
One of the design problems in this game - Ottomans were not that high of quality of troops. There's the Janissaries who were "professional soldiers" but battle hardened soldiers who had many battles under their belt, were just as good 1-for-1. The problem Europeans had - they were overconfident with their premium troops and numbers, whereas Ottomans showed up to fights with 2x's the manpower. Final crusade was that way - many nations contributed troops, the army was over 50K, and the Europeans were cocky with that number of troops, but then they ran into a 100K Ottomans army, and it was an easy win for Ottomans. Paradox seems to think that Ottomans were always the higher quality troop, more morale and higher discipline (Ottomans at each phase of a play through remain at/above most all other nations for their morale and discipline numbers), but that itself is not a historic reality. It was their MASS that gave them advantages, not their quality of troops. In either case, the real world Ottomans did not have cloning devices nor teleporters, to suddenly gain 6k soldiers in reserves (however THAT happens...).
Over all, this Ottomans debacle won't be fixed until EU5, if there is an EU5.
