As the title says. Would this real life Serbian-Ottoman battle even be possible in EU4?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Maritsa
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Maritsa
Would this Serbian-Ottoman battle even be possible?
- Thread starter firecage
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Yes, if you replace the Ottomans with Prussians and the Serbs with a horde. All this happening in 1700.
No, because Serbia can't support so many troops in EUIV. So, it would be a stackwipe due godlike Ottoman generals!
If the ottomans had a god general with offensive/quality ideas and Prussian Traditions. Maybe.
To the OP: Weird outlier cases like this are not a good basis for strategy game design, to the point that I'm confused as to why you're asking the question.
Mmm, partly because I am interested, partly because I want to see peoples answers, partly because thousands of Serbian troops drowned.
Btw this battle was like the battles of Mongol conquests. Very powerful cavalary forces come out of nowhere and corner the enemy army. Heavy infantries can't even react fast enough.
I think the number of Ottoman troops shown there is pure BS. If you switch the article to other languages you'll see the number of Ottoman troops realistically larger, i.e. from 10k to 20k. I'm sorry but 70k people would be able to strangle 800 armed men with bare hands.
It's a Greek source, so I guess that explains a lot.
Serbian army wasn't bad at the time, it was one of the, if not the strongest Christian army in the Balkans. Even those 20k are buffed up
If it was really 70k vs 800, not even machine guns could help the Turks at the time, as you said, they would strangle them with bare hands
Also keep in mind that this is 1371... In EU4 Ottomans start with the best troops in 1444, but they had a much bigger advantage over European armies a century before that.
Yea the english article makes it seem like 800 Ottoman ninjas sneaked into the Serb camp, assassinated the leaders, and slipped out unharmed...maybe so.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Night_Attack
Something like this would also be impossible, since there are no "night attacks" in EUIV
Which leads me to wish there was a "go into hiding" button for armies, so that you and the enemy could be in the same province without engaging one another
It would really prolong and improve conflicts between large empires and smaller nations
Something like this would also be impossible, since there are no "night attacks" in EUIV
Which leads me to wish there was a "go into hiding" button for armies, so that you and the enemy could be in the same province without engaging one another
It would really prolong and improve conflicts between large empires and smaller nations
As the title says. Would this real life Serbian-Ottoman battle even be possible in EU4?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Maritsa
800 winning against 70k with 'low' losses? How was that even possible?
The Serbian "Empire" mentioned in the article was at that time just a collection of nobles who formed a temporary coalition to fight back against the Ottomans. Their army was probably much closer to the low figure of 20,000, John Fine's Late Medieval Balkans doesn't even mention a possibility of 70k, calling one monk's figure of 60k an extreme overestimate. The defeat was a result of a surprise attack, and although I don't have figures on the "Ottoman" army (also just a collection of Turkish raiders at that time rather than some centralized force), I can't imagine it being as low as 800 men.
The main issue with representing a battle like this isn't the ability of one force to beat the other, but the fact that neither force belonged to any kind of "State" or "Country" the way that everything is represented in EUIV.
The main issue with representing a battle like this isn't the ability of one force to beat the other, but the fact that neither force belonged to any kind of "State" or "Country" the way that everything is represented in EUIV.
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Yeah, guerilla warfare is close to impossible. I have awful memories from my first game as Byzantium when a huge Russia attacked me, and I was by no means a minor. Their ruthlessly chased me around and then carpet sieged all my 40-or-so provinces.
For small countries it's even worse. All you have are pitched battles as a minor. And there's no way to win those when outnumbered 3-4-5-10:1. Even with Wallachia's nice and shiny 5% discipline
