Ottomans can't beat Byzantium or even Albania

[True_Heir_of_Rome]

I have yet to see them fail in any capacity unless I specifically engineered it. Even then they usually prosper for a long period of time on which ever side of the Bosporus I'm not coming from.

 

[tip001]

Not surprising considering the sheer amount of variables it has to take into consideration. I'm honestly amazed that there is even an AI that can manage these, let alone being good at it. Too many people vastly underestimate all the moving parts that the UI hides that the AI needs to compute for a single nation. Then repeat that for every single country in the game.

My point is not the general one at this thread but the more narrow one which is that last two patches the AI is much worse than before.

 

[GundamMerc]

My point is not the general one at this thread but the more narrow one which is that last two patches the AI is much worse than before.

It will get fixed. Adding new mechanics and content usually breaks the AI in unexpected ways, which you can only react to for the most part. There's only so much one can predict with the complexity of the AI.

 

[atwix]

AI was really good in 1.23, and then 1.24 japan update messed it up, as usual. Maybe some ai programmer wasn't around to check stuff when introducing new patch on old client code...

if you want to take the word of a micro manager that observes AI a lot, last patch made AI wonky like it Always has.

it does good sometimes, it does really AWFUL also in last patch were it didn't in 1.23.

at least we had ONE patch were it was not too bad.

"it will get fixed" is what people will say.

"they will ask our money for flavour in India or wherever" is what I say.

*cynism humor mode off*

 

[TheAzureLiger]

9 times out of 10; any growth in Byzantium is due to Ottomans over-reaching against Albania.

- Ottomans thinks it is stronger than Albania and their allies; and indeed, is.
- However; Ottomans fails to realize it's navy loses so it cannot easily force out Venice and [usually] Aragon; and fails to account for two very important land modifiers which swing things in Albania's favour:

1: Skanderbeg.
2: They have to seige Albania to win the war; a mountains province

Put simply; in 1444; when combat width is ~20 and Army Tradition is low... it's next to impossible to beat an enemy with combat width; a 5/5/5 general on a defensive mountain fort. Ottos get worn down by Venice+Skanderbeg and then Aragon and Naples arrive and with Skanderbeg's help; it's just too much.

Also sometimes Albania and Byz ally. Or Byz declares on Ottos during this due to relative strength.

tl;dr: Venice has enough troops to reach combat width; and Mountains+Skanderbeg actually having troops to lead is something no-one can beat in 1444. Even the Ottomans.

Historically, Skanderberg did have the potential to be the pivot in which the Ottomans were overturned. Mehmed's dad tried sieging Albania with 100k but lost 20k to the 1.5k defenders and retreated.

When Mehmed himself invaded in 1456, he was soundly defeated and lost 30k men, nearly half of his 70k expedition. I feel that it's actually more historical now that Ottoman dominion is less assured (even though it usually still is). The Ottomans as powerful as they were, had yet to truly establish itself by 1444 as the true power of the Mediterranean and many events could have occurred to shatter their superiority. The intervention of Aragon is also something that happened historically as an alliance between Aragon and Skanderberg was in place in which Aragon would help drive the Ottomans out in exchange for Albania as a vassal.


To add to Skanderberg's legitimacy as a super general that should very well be able to defeat the Ottomans, in 1463 Mehmed tried to invade again, this time with 3 separate armies. All of them were defeated by Skanderberg, and Venice, galvanized by Skanderberg's victory also invaded the Ottomans (which shows how confident they were that the Ottomans of the time were weak despite the battle of Varna). When Skanderberg fell ill and died after destroying a third Ottoman invasion force, the Ottomans finally succeeded and also defeated Venice.


If any of either A) Alfonso I of Aragon had survived a few more years, B) Pope Pius survived a year more, or C) Skanderberg did not fall ill. The Ottomans could likely have been driven out of Greece entirely. Any one of these would have been enough and I'm always for measures to reflect the historical "paper-tigerness" of the Ottoman war machine at the time.

 

[GundamMerc]

AI was really good in 1.23, and then 1.24 japan update messed it up, as usual. Maybe some ai programmer wasn't around to check stuff when introducing new patch on old client code...

if you want to take the word of a micro manager that observes AI a lot, last patch made AI wonky like it Always has.

it does good sometimes, it does really AWFUL also in last patch were it didn't in 1.23.

at least we had ONE patch were it was not too bad.

"it will get fixed" is what people will say.

"they will ask our money for flavour in India or wherever" is what I say.

*cynism humor mode off*

Yes, they made the Ottoman AI worse by having them focus on getting Constantinople get first. I'm sure that's what happened. *voice dripping in sarcasm*

 

[TolHydra]

I think it's so nice to see Ottomans completely fail every now and then. Makes the game a lot more interesting.

 

[otaats]

I didn't experience Ottoman failure in my 1200+ hours of game. Lately France has been known to fail from time to time against Castille+Burgundy, or sometimes England.