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I'm not going to question your goals here - role playing is a real thing - but I will point out that taking equivalent dev in low-dev lands will drop their manpower/force limit roughly the same as taking high-dev lands (depending on buildings). Even taking Constantinople won't be particularly cripping, if you could have five other provinces of theirs. As others have pointed out, the best strategy is to load up on the gold and cause them to go bankrupt eventually. You can fill out the war score with land, sure, but the money will actually be more crippling. Truces are based on the war score you take in a peace deal, not how much land you take, so you will still get the same truce length.

To avoid getting called in by Russia, just carry a bunch of loans! Buy buildings and upgrade centers of trade instead of paying off loans from your last war. AI won't give you an offensive call to arms if you're loaded with debt.
Taking Constantinople is crippling, but not for hitting their manpower. I you can take both of the straight crossings you can drop max level forts and that just destroys the Ottomans in future wars. Even if you cannot beat them at sea, which really should not be that hard, they still often get caught with their troops on one side or the other and you can go run amok while they get to deal with max forts (or walk around the Black Sea). Before the next war you station your invasion forces in Constantinople and jump off in whichever direction is most useful (either go hunt and kill their armies in a much smaller region or avoid them until after you have sieged the wargoal and half their land). You can also have fun with popping any smaller armies that cross by landing, stack wiping, and then retreating onto your ships.

Worse, if you deny MA to them or anyone else they war, it dramatically increases the time it takes the AI to move troops from one front to the other and slows their expansion rate. This can allow other powers to either make enough gains to win or at the least to drag out their defeat.

I will, of course, second the load up on gold option ... but the absolute best option is to milk their manpower down with penny packet losses, wait for the WE to rise as you almost completely carpet siege them, and then let some rebels spawn. Ideally they will be separatists that you can encircle without taking anything they would want and then peacing out. Yeah the OE would get some revanchism but with the rebels already ticking down they may get more wars and if they cannot access rebels lands those might just declare independence. Unfortunately, I think the best cores for this are already likely dead, but rebel breaking with bankruptcy is still stronger.
 
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Taking Constantinople is crippling, but not for hitting their manpower. I you can take both of the straight crossings you can drop max level forts and that just destroys the Ottomans in future wars. Even if you cannot beat them at sea, which really should not be that hard, they still often get caught with their troops on one side or the other and you can go run amok while they get to deal with max forts (or walk around the Black Sea). Before the next war you station your invasion forces in Constantinople and jump off in whichever direction is most useful (either go hunt and kill their armies in a much smaller region or avoid them until after you have sieged the wargoal and half their land). You can also have fun with popping any smaller armies that cross by landing, stack wiping, and then retreating onto your ships.

Worse, if you deny MA to them or anyone else they war, it dramatically increases the time it takes the AI to move troops from one front to the other and slows their expansion rate. This can allow other powers to either make enough gains to win or at the least to drag out their defeat.

I will, of course, second the load up on gold option ... but the absolute best option is to milk their manpower down with penny packet losses, wait for the WE to rise as you almost completely carpet siege them, and then let some rebels spawn. Ideally they will be separatists that you can encircle without taking anything they would want and then peacing out. Yeah the OE would get some revanchism but with the rebels already ticking down they may get more wars and if they cannot access rebels lands those might just declare independence. Unfortunately, I think the best cores for this are already likely dead, but rebel breaking with bankruptcy is still stronger.

At sea. their naval force is truly exceptional and there's no way I can beat them there.

However, the gold option you guys mentioned was actually a very good idea. I've put them 21,000 in debt, somehow they're still sustaining a large army but I am sure this limits their ability to expand and eventually they will go bankrupt.

The other thing I missed is that I seemingly get very little AE from taking loads of provinces from them.

The negative is that my manpower takes a heavy hit every war cooling down expansion elsewhere.
 
Well, they might have many vessels, but often their ships are not upgraded. Especially if they're in debt, their ships will be outdated after some techs.

And yeah, once you have 100 absolutism and administrative efficiency you can take MANY provinces with low penalty. That's the reason why early game doesn't matter as much, as long as you can get ready for the endgame.
 
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At sea. their naval force is truly exceptional and there's no way I can beat them there.

However, the gold option you guys mentioned was actually a very good idea. I've put them 21,000 in debt, somehow they're still sustaining a large army but I am sure this limits their ability to expand and eventually they will go bankrupt.

The other thing I missed is that I seemingly get very little AE from taking loads of provinces from them.

The negative is that my manpower takes a heavy hit every war cooling down expansion elsewhere.
There's little AE with the ottomans because they're Muslim. Christians don't care if you take Muslim lands. Muslims will care, but due to the size of the ottomans they'll be too far away to care

As for your complaints, I think most of us think they're invalid because you're criticising the game for the wrong reasons. The ottomans are less powerful in game then they were historically. Historically it wasn't until the 19th century that the Turks started losing significant amounts of territory, and prior to this point Europeans only won by being in coalitions against them.

As you're learning, with the tools in game its perfectly possible to beat the ottomans.

The real reason to criticise EU4 is its overeliance on opaque numerical modifiers and its shallow and disconnected game mechanics. It is not as elegantly designed as, say, Civilisation. In terms of RNG, the real RNG problem is around monarch, monarch point generation, and I personally have always hated how random and tedious it is to get a PU in normal play.

Likewise the fact that you misunderstood the military system is a fair criticism. It's very opaque and subject to far too many random modifiers which make it both confusing but also quite easy to break if you stack the right modifiers. The ai don't stack modifiers, which is why they're easy to beat.
 
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There's little AE with the ottomans because they're Muslim. Christians don't care if you take Muslim lands. Muslims will care, but due to the size of the ottomans they'll be too far away to care

As for your complaints, I think most of us think they're invalid because you're criticising the game for the wrong reasons. The ottomans are less powerful in game then they were historically. Historically it wasn't until the 19th century that the Turks started losing significant amounts of territory, and prior to this point Europeans only won by being in coalitions against them.

As you're learning, with the tools in game its perfectly possible to beat the ottomans.

The real reason to criticise EU4 is its overeliance on opaque numerical modifiers and its shallow and disconnected game mechanics. It is not as elegantly designed as, say, Civilisation. In terms of RNG, the real RNG problem is around monarch, monarch point generation, and I personally have always hated how random and tedious it is to get a PU in normal play.

Likewise the fact that you misunderstood the military system is a fair criticism. It's very opaque and subject to far too many random modifiers which make it both confusing but also quite easy to break if you stack the right modifiers. The ai don't stack modifiers, which is why they're easy to beat.

First of all, everyone in this thread did definitely make me a far better EU player and I thank everyone for that.

This being said, I don't think I ever remember a game in which the Ottomans grew big and then suffered unless it was like my current save, when it was me who were punishing them. This has been my criticism from the start, when they snowball they get out of control. I saw what happened in the last save when I just tried to ignore them and they ended up on my doorstep in Savoy.

I've found the Ottomans surprisingly easy to beat as Byzantium or Venice in 1444. But come 16-17th Century they snowball, as they did in real life, fine, but then it doesn't end. They have so many men it's impossible for another AI country to beat them and that is not reasonable. They don't even seem impacted by rebellions or any governing capacity issues.

I really wish the AI had a better way of keeping AI snowballing in check.
 
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Taking Constantinople is crippling, but not for hitting their manpower. I you can take both of the straight crossings you can drop max level forts and that just destroys the Ottomans in future wars. Even if you cannot beat them at sea, which really should not be that hard, they still often get caught with their troops on one side or the other and you can go run amok while they get to deal with max forts (or walk around the Black Sea). Before the next war you station your invasion forces in Constantinople and jump off in whichever direction is most useful (either go hunt and kill their armies in a much smaller region or avoid them until after you have sieged the wargoal and half their land). You can also have fun with popping any smaller armies that cross by landing, stack wiping, and then retreating onto your ships.

Worse, if you deny MA to them or anyone else they war, it dramatically increases the time it takes the AI to move troops from one front to the other and slows their expansion rate. This can allow other powers to either make enough gains to win or at the least to drag out their defeat.

I will, of course, second the load up on gold option ... but the absolute best option is to milk their manpower down with penny packet losses, wait for the WE to rise as you almost completely carpet siege them, and then let some rebels spawn. Ideally they will be separatists that you can encircle without taking anything they would want and then peacing out. Yeah the OE would get some revanchism but with the rebels already ticking down they may get more wars and if they cannot access rebels lands those might just declare independence. Unfortunately, I think the best cores for this are already likely dead, but rebel breaking with bankruptcy is still stronger.

This is a very fair point. I stand corrected.


First of all, everyone in this thread did definitely make me a far better EU player and I thank everyone for that.

This being said, I don't think I ever remember a game in which the Ottomans grew big and then suffered unless it was like my current save, when it was me who were punishing them. This has been my criticism from the start, when they snowball they get out of control. I saw what happened in the last save when I just tried to ignore them and they ended up on my doorstep in Savoy.

I've found the Ottomans surprisingly easy to beat as Byzantium or Venice in 1444. But come 16-17th Century they snowball, as they did in real life, fine, but then it doesn't end. They have so many men it's impossible for another AI country to beat them and that is not reasonable. They don't even seem impacted by rebellions or any governing capacity issues.

I really wish the AI had a better way of keeping AI snowballing in check.

I think we've arrived at a good place in the debate. I, for one, am very glad that this process has wound up helping you, despite some of the rage that's been expressed in both directions. Maintaining good communities online is hard, but it has its rewards.

You've also made a good point here about how the AI struggles to stop other AI superpowers, and it really takes human intervention to break up large empires. I think this is an issue across the board - EUIV does many things well, but one thing it doesn't do well is model how large empires eventually break up for one reason or another. In the game, large empires tend to be the most secure and stable, but that's not really a reflection of historical dynamics.
 
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This is a very fair point. I stand corrected.

I think we've arrived at a good place in the debate. I, for one, am very glad that this process has wound up helping you, despite some of the rage that's been expressed in both directions. Maintaining good communities online is hard, but it has its rewards.

You've also made a good point here about how the AI struggles to stop other AI superpowers, and it really takes human intervention to break up large empires. I think this is an issue across the board - EUIV does many things well, but one thing it doesn't do well is model how large empires eventually break up for one reason or another. In the game, large empires tend to be the most secure and stable, but that's not really a reflection of historical dynamics.

Yes, and I do mean it.

You guys made me aware of defensive combat tactics I hadn't of thought of (baiting the Ottomans into favourable terrain), drilling my army more, building manufactories on stated land and a few more things. If I had started my save with this knowledge at hand, I'm sure I'd have been a lot more successful (currently in Mare Nostrum territory so not bad).

I mean it's true, in general I've never seen a superpower break another superpower in EU4 whereas historically we've got plenty of examples of Empires that were demolished or at the very least cut down to size eventually.

The issue I think stands that the Ottoman ideas + them taking Quantity allows them to field an insanely large army that the AI doesn't know how to deal with. So unless they get beaten in the first 20 years they can just snowball. I'm considering in the future if I can't no-CB Byzantium that I might heavily subsidise whoever their first major war is against.
 
Yes, and I do mean it.

You guys made me aware of defensive combat tactics I hadn't of thought of (baiting the Ottomans into favourable terrain), drilling my army more, building manufactories on stated land and a few more things. If I had started my save with this knowledge at hand, I'm sure I'd have been a lot more successful (currently in Mare Nostrum territory so not bad).

I mean it's true, in general I've never seen a superpower break another superpower in EU4 whereas historically we've got plenty of examples of Empires that were demolished or at the very least cut down to size eventually.

The issue I think stands that the Ottoman ideas + them taking Quantity allows them to field an insanely large army that the AI doesn't know how to deal with. So unless they get beaten in the first 20 years they can just snowball. I'm considering in the future if I can't no-CB Byzantium that I might heavily subsidise whoever their first major war is against.
The big thing is that most of the competitor states, like France or Austria, cannot grow at the same rate. Up until the Reformation all the Catholics bar Sweden, Hungary, and Poland/Lithuania can really only gain land by ticking off fellow Catholics. Worse the HRE has much more AE. So Austria, France, etc. spend a lot of time waiting out the AE that comes from much smaller land grabs. The OE, in contrast, can beat up Serbia (Orthodox), The Mamelukes (Sunni), QQ (Shi'ite), and Venice (Catholic). This makes them wildly more able to out expand France and the rest and is made worse by their age ability for sieging (at a time when very few states have siege bonuses of any sort).

Then the AI has trouble adequately valuing troop quality against numbers. Having a giant pack of manpower deters a lot of AIs from attacking or even forming a coalition. And lastly when the OE does expand towards the states that historically defeated it (Russia, Poland, Austria, Venice, and the Pope), far too often they are rivals or otherwise hate each other and gift the OE more room under the AE cap before the coalition forms.

Then should they finally face a war with another major AI or bloc thereof ... the OE terrain is terrible for AI invasions. Some AIs will march around the Black Sea. Some will go after the border forts in the Balkans, and some my head into the general vicinity of the main army. The Ottomans, in contrast can walk across the straits and do a lot of defeat in detail. And when the OE has pathing troubles, it just cannot get as badly lost (outside of Russia) on the way to Wien or wherever.

That said, the OE is fragile. If they don't get rolling quickly they can get punched out from 4 sides. Being on the crossroads of religion with lots of potential expansion means that the OE is a lot more land to grab below an AE cap for the folks who border it. If Venice's League crimps the early game, there are a lot of places that want a piece.

And then we run into the same problems. When I have a micro-OE I almost inevitably have somebody huge in the Balkans (e.g. Hungary) and somebody huge on the Eastern or Southern borders. And then we get back to a lot of the same dynamics - too few AIs cooperating too poorly to take down the big bad empire.
 
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The big thing is that most of the competitor states, like France or Austria, cannot grow at the same rate. Up until the Reformation all the Catholics bar Sweden, Hungary, and Poland/Lithuania can really only gain land by ticking off fellow Catholics. Worse the HRE has much more AE. So Austria, France, etc. spend a lot of time waiting out the AE that comes from much smaller land grabs. The OE, in contrast, can beat up Serbia (Orthodox), The Mamelukes (Sunni), QQ (Shi'ite), and Venice (Catholic). This makes them wildly more able to out expand France and the rest and is made worse by their age ability for sieging (at a time when very few states have siege bonuses of any sort).

Then the AI has trouble adequately valuing troop quality against numbers. Having a giant pack of manpower deters a lot of AIs from attacking or even forming a coalition. And lastly when the OE does expand towards the states that historically defeated it (Russia, Poland, Austria, Venice, and the Pope), far too often they are rivals or otherwise hate each other and gift the OE more room under the AE cap before the coalition forms.

Then should they finally face a war with another major AI or bloc thereof ... the OE terrain is terrible for AI invasions. Some AIs will march around the Black Sea. Some will go after the border forts in the Balkans, and some my head into the general vicinity of the main army. The Ottomans, in contrast can walk across the straits and do a lot of defeat in detail. And when the OE has pathing troubles, it just cannot get as badly lost (outside of Russia) on the way to Wien or wherever.

That said, the OE is fragile. If they don't get rolling quickly they can get punched out from 4 sides. Being on the crossroads of religion with lots of potential expansion means that the OE is a lot more land to grab below an AE cap for the folks who border it. If Venice's League crimps the early game, there are a lot of places that want a piece.

And then we run into the same problems. When I have a micro-OE I almost inevitably have somebody huge in the Balkans (e.g. Hungary) and somebody huge on the Eastern or Southern borders. And then we get back to a lot of the same dynamics - too few AIs cooperating too poorly to take down the big bad empire.

You know, I think a big part of the balance problem surrounding the Ottomans llies in Austria. Austria should (historically) get the PU over Bohemia and gain at least a part of Hungary, but in the game I barely see this happening. This has multiple negative consequences. Hungary get most often divided by Bohemia Poland and Otto, and the Otto's can than push through towards Prague or Vienna. Bohemia or Austria are often emperor and rivalling each other, thus the emperor will often not join against the otto's but stab the other in the back.

Austria at the moment is just too underpowered to offer a balance against Otto's or France for the matter. A small buff would be to increase the chance of Bohemia PU happening.

Of course two easier ways to fix that would be a counter to big powers or some better logistics in the game (Otto's shouldn't be able to reach Vienna or Persia without suffering), but one can only dream about mechanics like this :(
 
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The big thing is that most of the competitor states, like France or Austria, cannot grow at the same rate. Up until the Reformation all the Catholics bar Sweden, Hungary, and Poland/Lithuania can really only gain land by ticking off fellow Catholics. Worse the HRE has much more AE. So Austria, France, etc. spend a lot of time waiting out the AE that comes from much smaller land grabs. The OE, in contrast, can beat up Serbia (Orthodox), The Mamelukes (Sunni), QQ (Shi'ite), and Venice (Catholic). This makes them wildly more able to out expand France and the rest and is made worse by their age ability for sieging (at a time when very few states have siege bonuses of any sort).

Then the AI has trouble adequately valuing troop quality against numbers. Having a giant pack of manpower deters a lot of AIs from attacking or even forming a coalition. And lastly when the OE does expand towards the states that historically defeated it (Russia, Poland, Austria, Venice, and the Pope), far too often they are rivals or otherwise hate each other and gift the OE more room under the AE cap before the coalition forms.

Then should they finally face a war with another major AI or bloc thereof ... the OE terrain is terrible for AI invasions. Some AIs will march around the Black Sea. Some will go after the border forts in the Balkans, and some my head into the general vicinity of the main army. The Ottomans, in contrast can walk across the straits and do a lot of defeat in detail. And when the OE has pathing troubles, it just cannot get as badly lost (outside of Russia) on the way to Wien or wherever.

That said, the OE is fragile. If they don't get rolling quickly they can get punched out from 4 sides. Being on the crossroads of religion with lots of potential expansion means that the OE is a lot more land to grab below an AE cap for the folks who border it. If Venice's League crimps the early game, there are a lot of places that want a piece.

And then we run into the same problems. When I have a micro-OE I almost inevitably have somebody huge in the Balkans (e.g. Hungary) and somebody huge on the Eastern or Southern borders. And then we get back to a lot of the same dynamics - too few AIs cooperating too poorly to take down the big bad empire.

I agree with all of this, and it makes sense.

What I mentioned quite early on in this thread that for sure if the Ottomans had ended up in Northern Italy, on the borders of France, like they had done in my other save, I am certain there would have been some Catholic intervention against the Ottomans. Someone mentioned this before, but a kind of "We don't like each other, but we'll defend each other against X nation" mechanism would be useful here.

But yes it's true, I've never seen one power cut down to size by another power in EU4. Whoever starts growing in the early 1500s is usually who ends up the biggest by the end of the game unless the player does something.

And as I mentioned, all their forcelimit buffs + them taking quantity means they have an army so large that mathematically the AI seems to look at it and go "nah".

You know, I think a big part of the balance problem surrounding the Ottomans llies in Austria. Austria should (historically) get the PU over Bohemia and gain at least a part of Hungary, but in the game I barely see this happening. This has multiple negative consequences. Hungary get most often divided by Bohemia Poland and Otto, and the Otto's can than push through towards Prague or Vienna. Bohemia or Austria are often emperor and rivalling each other, thus the emperor will often not join against the otto's but stab the other in the back.

Austria at the moment is just too underpowered to offer a balance against Otto's or France for the matter. A small buff would be to increase the chance of Bohemia PU happening.

Of course two easier ways to fix that would be a counter to big powers or some better logistics in the game (Otto's shouldn't be able to reach Vienna or Persia without suffering), but one can only dream about mechanics like this :(

I've found that if they are going to lose early on, it's because they end up in a war with two out of the following countries at the same time: Venice (if they attack Albania), Mamluks, Austria/Hungary/ and Poland/Lithuania.

The snowballing occurs when they focus on easy targets, Byzantium, Turkish minors, and then pick off larger countries individually, Hungary after they've been weakened by revolts, Venice who they've already weakened after beating Albania, or the Mamluks. If they are in 2 major wars at the same time or in quick succession, they get overwhelmed. But in my experience this doesn't happen often, I'd say in 80-90% of my saves they snowball crazily.

Again, I've thought about allying their neighbours in a bid to stop their expansion but say as France, early game, especially with all the vassals, it gets costly in diplo points and I don't really want to wreck my manpower fighting the Ottomans at that stage.

The only real way to wreck them early is to no CB Byzantium, which works if you are a Mediterranean power (Castile, Aragon, Venice, even Austria) and either 1) Wait for the Ottomans to DoW Byzantium, vassalise Byzantium and then call in your allies or just wait for them to attack. All your allies will join definitely because it's now a defensive war and if they don't get Constantinople I think they don't get the "Empire" rank meaning they'll never be as strong as they would otherwise.
 
You know, I think a big part of the balance problem surrounding the Ottomans llies in Austria. Austria should (historically) get the PU over Bohemia and gain at least a part of Hungary, but in the game I barely see this happening. This has multiple negative consequences. Hungary get most often divided by Bohemia Poland and Otto, and the Otto's can than push through towards Prague or Vienna. Bohemia or Austria are often emperor and rivalling each other, thus the emperor will often not join against the otto's but stab the other in the back.

Austria at the moment is just too underpowered to offer a balance against Otto's or France for the matter. A small buff would be to increase the chance of Bohemia PU happening.

Of course two easier ways to fix that would be a counter to big powers or some better logistics in the game (Otto's shouldn't be able to reach Vienna or Persia without suffering), but one can only dream about mechanics like this :(

Ehh that still gets us back into the fine tuning trouble of what happens in games where the Ottomans do implode. Does Austria suddenly become the new superpower who mops up the Balkans, expands into Italy, Northern Germany, and partitions Poland with Russia?

The real trouble is that, until the Unholy Alliance, basically every Christian state should have a huge incentive to overlook their own rivalries and work together to defeat the Turk. Varna, for instance would be impossible to replicate in game. The odds that Bohemia, Poland, Austria, Venice, Genoa, and Hungary would all give a go at the OE at once is basically nil.

The AI is just bad at recognizing threats, coordinating in response to threats, and then the coalition system makes it very hard to do more than mildly prune back a threat (who, now below the AE threshold, can get back to blobbing against disorganized powers). Worse, having anti-blob mechanisms (like say lots of rebels or low yield per dev) make it harder for competing states to grow in response and the few that have clutch ideas for an AI (like tolerance or special mechanics for governing efficiently) handily outpace that are more directly hit by anti-blobbing.

The real solution is to make the AI do more balance of power calcs and to more efficiently join up to oppose rising hegemons (be they player or AI). Relying on the current coalition system, governing capacity, AE, or coring limits is just not going to produce a good equilibrium most of the time.
 
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Ehh that still gets us back into the fine tuning trouble of what happens in games where the Ottomans do implode. Does Austria suddenly become the new superpower who mops up the Balkans, expands into Italy, Northern Germany, and partitions Poland with Russia?

The real trouble is that, until the Unholy Alliance, basically every Christian state should have a huge incentive to overlook their own rivalries and work together to defeat the Turk. Varna, for instance would be impossible to replicate in game. The odds that Bohemia, Poland, Austria, Venice, Genoa, and Hungary would all give a go at the OE at once is basically nil.

The AI is just bad at recognizing threats, coordinating in response to threats, and then the coalition system makes it very hard to do more than mildly prune back a threat (who, now below the AE threshold, can get back to blobbing against disorganized powers). Worse, having anti-blob mechanisms (like say lots of rebels or low yield per dev) make it harder for competing states to grow in response and the few that have clutch ideas for an AI (like tolerance or special mechanics for governing efficiently) handily outpace that are more directly hit by anti-blobbing.

The real solution is to make the AI do more balance of power calcs and to more efficiently join up to oppose rising hegemons (be they player or AI). Relying on the current coalition system, governing capacity, AE, or coring limits is just not going to produce a good equilibrium most of the time.

I've seen some pretty massive Austria's in my saves, but none compare to the military power that the Ottomans get. Austria can be hard to beat because of their diplomatic power and strong alliances, but the Austrians also can get boxed in by several powers that turn hostile (France, Russia, PLC, Bohemia, even Burgundy) whereas the Ottomans quite clearly have no major threat to worry about if they've won the first Mamluk war.

Basically my expectation is exactly what you said. At that point in time, Catholic Europe should pretty much be watchful of how quick the Ottomans expand and always be prepared to keep them in check.

I think the one way I'd really like this implemented is the "Call for a Crusade" feature should greatly encourage Catholic countries to form a coalition against the Ottomans and give the Ottomans a higher AE cost for every Christian/Catholic province they conquer.
 
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I do agree that the AI aren't good at checking other AI usually resulting in out of control blobbing.

The problem is that the AI has no sense of "balance of power". Historically the major powers of Europe were continuously going into coalitions against the turk, but in game coalitions are almost a purely anti-player mechanism. Ideally the ottomans should expand like crazy, but all of the Christian Mediterranean should dip in and out of the anti ottoman coalition.

But to be honest there's no easy solution, and if the AI was like this to the player I'd imagine there'd be a lot of complaints.
 
I've seen some pretty massive Austria's in my saves, but none compare to the military power that the Ottomans get. Austria can be hard to beat because of their diplomatic power and strong alliances, but the Austrians also can get boxed in by several powers that turn hostile (France, Russia, PLC, Bohemia, even Burgundy) whereas the Ottomans quite clearly have no major threat to worry about if they've won the first Mamluk war.

Basically my expectation is exactly what you said. At that point in time, Catholic Europe should pretty much be watchful of how quick the Ottomans expand and always be prepared to keep them in check.

I think the one way I'd really like this implemented is the "Call for a Crusade" feature should greatly encourage Catholic countries to form a coalition against the Ottomans and give the Ottomans a higher AE cost for every Christian/Catholic province they conquer.

Sure, right now Austria is in a weaker position, but if we just keep playing Buff Wars, we always run the risk that somebody will be overbuffed or that the stuff they were given to stand up to [random aggressor] will instead be used against a bunch of weaker states. I certainly have had games where AI Austria manages to Revoke (e.g. the one coming to mind had the Reformation fire in SE England, Riga, and Navarra with Reformed spawning in Scotland and somewhere in Transylvania) and they become every bit as overpowered as the OE.

Nor is this limited to Europe. India, for instance, pretty much always devolves into just a couple of mega-states that roll everyone in their path and never face any sort of historical coalitions. Likewise SE Asia pretty much always becomes the domain of one or two blobs and the statelets just wait their turn to be rolled. Even in Africa we often see things like a single state overrunning Kongo, the Great Lakes region, and SE Africa.

Pretty much everywhere the AI is terrible at uniting for common defense against those who upset the balance of power. Should the Christian/Muslim conflict be stronger? Sure. But that is not hitting the core problem that for many, many regions you have blobs who grow and are only checked when they run into bigger blobs, and either get eaten by the bigger blobs or go static. If we introduce a bunch of specific anti-OE or even anti-Muslim stuff; it will just be a different set of blobs gobbling up huge swathes of dev and then sitting on giant piles of manpower. An OE in this patch that has decent start, sure, they are the current winner. But there have been plenty of patches where it has been Russia, France, or somebody else.
 
I agree with all of this, and it makes sense.

What I mentioned quite early on in this thread that for sure if the Ottomans had ended up in Northern Italy, on the borders of France, like they had done in my other save, I am certain there would have been some Catholic intervention against the Ottomans. Someone mentioned this before, but a kind of "We don't like each other, but we'll defend each other against X nation" mechanism would be useful here.

But yes it's true, I've never seen one power cut down to size by another power in EU4. Whoever starts growing in the early 1500s is usually who ends up the biggest by the end of the game unless the player does something.

And as I mentioned, all their forcelimit buffs + them taking quantity means they have an army so large that mathematically the AI seems to look at it and go "nah".



I've found that if they are going to lose early on, it's because they end up in a war with two out of the following countries at the same time: Venice (if they attack Albania), Mamluks, Austria/Hungary/ and Poland/Lithuania.

The snowballing occurs when they focus on easy targets, Byzantium, Turkish minors, and then pick off larger countries individually, Hungary after they've been weakened by revolts, Venice who they've already weakened after beating Albania, or the Mamluks. If they are in 2 major wars at the same time or in quick succession, they get overwhelmed. But in my experience this doesn't happen often, I'd say in 80-90% of my saves they snowball crazily.

Again, I've thought about allying their neighbours in a bid to stop their expansion but say as France, early game, especially with all the vassals, it gets costly in diplo points and I don't really want to wreck my manpower fighting the Ottomans at that stage.

The only real way to wreck them early is to no CB Byzantium, which works if you are a Mediterranean power (Castile, Aragon, Venice, even Austria) and either 1) Wait for the Ottomans to DoW Byzantium, vassalise Byzantium and then call in your allies or just wait for them to attack. All your allies will join definitely because it's now a defensive war and if they don't get Constantinople I think they don't get the "Empire" rank meaning they'll never be as strong as they would otherwise.

Aren't you dismantling the HRE? I think that if the HRE were actually dismantled in the 16th century, the Ottomans likely would have conquered Austria and made moves on Italy.
 
Aren't you dismantling the HRE? I think that if the HRE were actually dismantled in the 16th century, the Ottomans likely would have conquered Austria and made moves on Italy.

This save I did not dismantle the HRE because the HRE was led by a very friendly Bohemia who didn't care if I ate HRE members. They only wanted me to leave specific countries alone seemingly but I was still able to eat my way to Denmark without them caring.
 
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I wanted to follow up on this thread.

My experience now is that there are two key things that determine how big the Ottomans get. That is, do Austria get the union over Hungary? And do Poland get the union over Lithuania? If both events happen, the Ottomans can get contained especially if one of them allies say Albania.

On the other hand, if Austria do not get the union over Hungary and Poland don't get the union over Lithuania, the Ottomans just go insane and field armies beyond what anyone else can imagine.

I think Poland choosing a local over a Jagiellon is a bit stupid so maybe that could be more railroaded and it would balance the power dynamics a bit.
 
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If Ottos go Quantity first, you are screwed; forget about taking them on early game. Their god tier generals... and 100k troops in 1500? Good luck beating that.
 
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