No longer expanding much, weak sultans being puppets and being deposed, occilating between tolerance and fundamentalist islam, increasingly losing control of north Africa, autonomy of the ayan against beys and beylerbeys
Yet another Ottoman rant
- Thread starter joos
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I my last game, the Ottomans lost over 2 million men in five years of war; they had another 700k in the field by wars' end, and another 150k manpower available.
I was lucky in that their target was cyprus and they didn't land for some reason; I sat on the defensive and cheesed attrition & defensiveness to get through. This would have been unwinnable with another target / if I was on the offensive.
Manpower needs to be sorted out for them ! (I know, I keep banging that drum).
I was lucky in that their target was cyprus and they didn't land for some reason; I sat on the defensive and cheesed attrition & defensiveness to get through. This would have been unwinnable with another target / if I was on the offensive.
Manpower needs to be sorted out for them ! (I know, I keep banging that drum).
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Manpower generally needs to be sorted out, reducing base number of units would help immensely with immersion, like meiou has, so the millions of dead like in the 1.30 dev clash doesn't happen in 1445
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I don't know how many hours you have in the game but this can be achieved by most nations, minor ones too.
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I feel like your major complaints are about Game Mechanics like Millitary Access and Intervening rather than the Ottomans itself.
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That would certainly fix a lot of problems. They would still be very strong but without access and maybe some real attrition issues thus would be only problematic for nation surrounding them.
But the AI can't really handle naval invasions, supply and attrition so at least in Eu4 we will be stuck with it.
Also I cant wait for the threads from people complaining that they are loosing 90% of their troops in any jungle province (seriously anyone advocating for a realistic attrition system look up the British expedition to Haiti in their war of independence).
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I'm aware of it, and I want it in game too, encouraging careful troop management
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I am all for it myself.I'm aware of it, and I want it in game too, encouraging careful troop management
You could have different attrition rates if you raise troops for example in African provinces as European country. Maybe these could be more expensive or limited by your province manpower.
Lot of stuff that could be done there to make it more exciting.
Have you ever heard about the Ottoman-Portugese war? Ottomans had interest in Gujarat IRL and fought a naval campaign against the Portuguese in the Indian Ocean, they also landed troops in India in early 1500s to try keep the Portuguese out. So it's not to far fetched that they have interest in India in game.
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They also sent missionaries and troops to Indonesia so you can go even further than India.
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Actually, has anyone with the know-how to do so tested that recently? I remember a year or two ago someone did a mod where they basically heavily limited military access options. So the AI couldn't just walk across all of Europe and Africa to get to their target and they actually AI started naval invading at least semi-competently.
Sadly cannot find the thread anymore, but it may have been on reddit instead...
I've been playing with a mod that prevents the AI from asking for military access for a while now, and I haven't seen any significant amount of naval invasions. Admittedly, I haven't really been looking for them, or fought any wars where you'd expect them to occur; however, in my most recent game I did notice Great Britain repeatedly failing to conquer Mann, despite Mann having neither a military nor allies.
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Except it doesn't, at all
Also its reddit for a starterpack meme to be more than 4.
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Personally, I feel a first step would be to take another look at conditional access. Rivals' armies should never be allowed to march through my lands. I feel that should be a red line at least.
How does lack of mil access affect land wars though? Wars in HRE would be a pain without access, wouldn't they?
In my French game (the one where I got decimated by Ottomans in 1492), Castile declared on Naples. I watched all incoming access requests like a hawk and never gave access to any of the belligerents. The result: Castile couldn't march their armies to Naples and Naples destroyed Castilian navy and the war dragged to a stalemate and a white peace. As fun as that was, I imagine AI would be hamstrung without mil access - conditional or otherwise.
How does lack of mil access affect land wars though? Wars in HRE would be a pain without access, wouldn't they?
In my French game (the one where I got decimated by Ottomans in 1492), Castile declared on Naples. I watched all incoming access requests like a hawk and never gave access to any of the belligerents. The result: Castile couldn't march their armies to Naples and Naples destroyed Castilian navy and the war dragged to a stalemate and a white peace. As fun as that was, I imagine AI would be hamstrung without mil access - conditional or otherwise.
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Hey guys, heres my solution to the Otto problem:
Nerf Guns of Orban, 33% Siege Ability is just ridiculous
Nerf Ottoman Government, the monarch stats railroad it into a dominant position in every game
Nerf Anatolian Unit Type. This is a sleeper issue, but for most of the relevant timeframe (techs 1-10 encompass the majority of player's playthroughs), the ottomans have a far dominant unit type to their regional rivals that makes their units superior without any work on their behalf.
With these changes, you can even open the door for a greater level of historicity, and introduce an event line or mission path that allows taking the mamluks or giving them a unique vassal type with some special relationship or strings attached to the decision (per example, less direct rule that cannot be revoked without dropping stab+creating rebels), without making them obscenely overpowered as many users fear.
Nerf Guns of Orban, 33% Siege Ability is just ridiculous
Nerf Ottoman Government, the monarch stats railroad it into a dominant position in every game
Nerf Anatolian Unit Type. This is a sleeper issue, but for most of the relevant timeframe (techs 1-10 encompass the majority of player's playthroughs), the ottomans have a far dominant unit type to their regional rivals that makes their units superior without any work on their behalf.
With these changes, you can even open the door for a greater level of historicity, and introduce an event line or mission path that allows taking the mamluks or giving them a unique vassal type with some special relationship or strings attached to the decision (per example, less direct rule that cannot be revoked without dropping stab+creating rebels), without making them obscenely overpowered as many users fear.
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Hmm. I would go completely the opposite direction. IMO the Ottomans are fine early game. Yes they're very tough, this is historical and fun to play against. The thing that's not as historical or fun to play against is that they get just absurd ~1600 or after in many games and just snowball from there, leading to endless massive wars in the mid-late game.
What I would do is probably make Turkish its own culture group. IDK if this is historical (seems like it culture groups are a pretty gamey concept anyway), but it would be a good way to nerf the Ottoman ability to generate absurd manpower once they've approached their historical size. It could also lead to more revolts, slightly lower income, etc.
On top of that, it seems like they could have a special "sick man of Europe" disaster in the age of revolutions or maybe late age of absolutism that would not cripple them but would add some unrest and more importantly block them from embracing late game institutions unless resolved (and would be hard for the AI to resolve). This would simulate their historical decline (which was quite gradual, and as others have said more an issue of slower adaptation late in the EU4 period than a hard decline). It would also introduce a weakness for the player to exploit, making wars against them a bit easier and more interesting.
This isn't a perfect solution, more a workaround for the fact that EU4 doesn't have any real mechanics to simulate the weaknesses of large empires.
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Expanding on this, an idea for implementing the Mamluk/Otto war in mission/event format would be a mission that triggers an event "Border with mamluks", that requires a land connection with mamluks and certain army size, and declares war with special CB for vassalization/total annexation (with caveats) "War for Egypt". After fully routing the mamluk army or reaching point of unconditional surrender, the Ottomans would get an event resolving+ending the war with 3 possible choices:
Rendering the state a subject (perhaps it could be specially difficult to annex, as a special muslim-personal-union or vassal with long time before annexation is available)
Taking the land but with caveat of special privileges granting autonomy and lower force limit in former Mamluk territory
Direct annexation of small portion of land (that adds up to ~100% warscore, such as levantine territories) as is done currently by Ottos
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The game can take quite strange turns with their rulers. I'd say 90% of the time they have crazy good rulers with max - or close to - monarch points. If Mehmed lives a long time they generally get a sweet run and are dripping in monarch points from the start of the game due to their government type. If Mehmed dies early they can go the other way and get average or even bad rulers.
Generally playing in their region or sphere of influence tends to make them stronger. Playing as a minor in the Caucasus I've never seen the Ottomans fail, but playing as a minor in Ireland I have seen them fail several times. I've also notice the Mamluks are so bad now there's no point allying them. I did a run a couple of weeks ago, was allied to the Mamluks, who joined a defensive war when Ottos attacked their other ally. This was about 1475. Mamluks had same tech level and more troops but didn't even fight one battle. As their ally I could see their troop movements and they basically sent their armies down to Yemen and let the Ottomans roll through their lands, eventually submitting and losing the lands of the levant. Suffice to say I ended the alliance.
Another experience. I was playing a Caucasus minor. Year was before 1500, Ottomans attacked Albania, which must have joined the HRE as Austria called to war with their junior partner Hungary. Their ally Castile joined with their junior partners Aragon and Naples as well as Venice and Genoa who were allied to Albania. I was like sweet, no way the Ottos will win this war. Albania alliance troop numbers were 3:1 and still they lost. This example is probably more an AI issue but still , how did the Ottos not lose that war...
Making the Ottomans weak isn't the answer, but as many have said in the numerous threads regarding the Ottomans there needs to be some balance changes because playing against them is not a fun experience when they have 100,000 troops by year 1500 and second most powerful nation has half that number. It's also not realistic their stability should constantly sit at +3.
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