Yet another Ottoman rant

[bigredsnake]

I agree they are too powerful and honestly the way the non European countries are handled in this game is a little quixotic right now.

Ottoman domination is not because of their own doing as much as the Great Schism and the two headed Roman empire which had been jockeying for power since at least Constantine. In other words the game allows countries that were far more unified under say the HRE to play like the Diet of Worms has happened already off bat in 1444. On the other side there is the other realities that Arabia and other Muslim provinces just blindly came in and never revolted. We get every major event in the big western nations history yet we kinda skirt over the Middle East like they were all just aligned and happy the entire time. Most of their great "wars" of that time are minor land grabs for small pieces of land not Ottoman Empire claims all of Austria Hungary. More like Ottoman Empire takes an island or two or a small city here or there.

I honestly wonder how Vicky 3 will play at this point since the Ottoman decline has to occur in that game much less a lot of other non woke events or if they're just going to go full steam punk and pretend Sitting Bull was busy making Model Ts in 1880 to help in his invasion of NYC.

I think the new updates make the game feel a little too "out there" now. Native's being able to ally into one strong mega America and easily repel Europeans, even sub Saharan Africa I guess pulled their head out of their ass and now they can make their own guns and make colonization miserable. It's just a little much and I don't need the swedes to make updates so i can pretend Ghana had a chance against Portugal.

I think the AI should play mostly historic rather than video gamey and magically keeping up with you just cause. I think being over extended should trigger other nations to form coalitions to attack you period. Absorbing completely different races and religions should require a massive tech advantage or at the very least be extremely hard to control the populations. Nor should institutions spread so easily out of Europe because without massive tech advantages, wealth, etc the world doesn't care about the something like the printing press unless it leads to something useful to them. Example Ottomans didn't have the printing press until 1727! I think institutions maybe should be for culture groups and adapt them across the board like Ottomans focusing on conquering the old Byzantine Empire then spreading Islam to Indonesia or whatever. But a Jacobite level Revolution doesn't come out of the non western world for obvious reasons and it's stupid the game allows ideas that can't naturally form on their own in say India or the Middle East to pop up. Honestly I think unless the player has figured out some amazing path to pull it off the institutions should come from their historical homes anyways and move towards who naturally picked them up. So Spain, Portugal, England, France get colonization first, printing press comes out of germany, etc

Not I am Japan and I magically figured out how to colonize California super easily. If we are going that CK3 level of stupid then we need CK3 level mechanics like marrying my own daughter to ensure I have an heir to the throne.

 

[vaLor-]

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.

From my understanding Turkish is fairly homogenous in its heterogeneity; that is to say they are brought together by the great differences it has with its neighbors, so they probably fit as they do now as one culture, but the levantine group is in my view comically large given the great differences Turks have from Yemenis (which could be fairly easily solved between a split of Levantine-Arab with Turkish, Syrian, Egyptian, Mashriqi in Levantine and the arabs in the other).

As for your suggestion on empires this is not in any way specific to the Ottos, great empires in EU4 are all uncharacteristically stable but that is not something to be easily changed.

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.

Worth mentioning is the fact that I don't think Ottos would be as kneecapped by the decrease in its huge monarch point advantage as people seem to think; They are still a country with a huge power+trade base surrounded by weak neighbors with ample opportunity for conquest.

It is from my experience that Ottomans are powerful not from their ultra-wide-ness but by their unique superpowers that no one else has.
Per example, in my latest run fighting ottos as France defending an ally at mid-1500s, the Ottos had never even declared war against the Mamluks. Despite this, through their unit type, in combination with their powerbase and idea set, they were able to go even in casualties during battles with disadvantageous terrain and morale (see here) and all else ~equal*, over and over.
If the fat is trimmed, than the absurdity that surrounds the Ottos power is no longer there. Ottos were a menace in their time, don't get me wrong. But were they as comically overpowered as people portray them to be? Not particularly. Their success had to do with their geography and geopolitical situation more than anything else.

* - There were many minor differences in the battles, but nothing that defies expectations. To put it simply, in battles where they should be losing heavily in theory, they are losing very little/drawing even.

 

[agonistes]

I will say this, I find Byzantium nearly impossible to play in new updates. In the past, I could get Alliance with Hungary and use their help to win the war. Ottos military advantage is no longer negated by putting your state in Morea Mountains.

I literally don't see how I can survive as Byzantium in new updates without MP help or just cheating to get Alliances with Austria or some other great power. Any advice from someone who is better than me at the game?

Start as Poland, release and play as Byzantines.

 

[vaLor-]

The decline was relative, they just were not advancing as fast as European countries.

1600 and on, they enter a decline although the 1800s was their worse Century as they lost the most land and prestige and were labeled the "Sick Man of Europe". (Basically Victoria 2 Ottomans). The first real setback for Ottomans was in the Great Turkish War. That saw an Alliance of Austria, Poland-Lithuania, Venice, and Russia against the Ottos (this sounds kind of like EU4 with Ottos taking on multi-great powers).

However, the OP setup for the Ottos is a historical fit for Ottomans and that is my point.

There was a lot of issues with Ottos historically; To summarize the causes of their decline I'd state:
Outdated military institutions that did not keep pace with their European rivals
Rise of nationalism/revolutionary ideals
Lack of any friends
And perhaps most importantly, decline in relevance for trade as Europeans became able to maneuver around them via Africa+India (thereby suffocating them geographically).

Though I believe he's somewhat biased politically, Kraut's video on the Ottomans (warning: long) gives some decent perspective.

 

[Nuclear Elvis]

An EU5 build needs to explore the sustainment/logistics issue, to finally implement a significant change to marching armies around the map, cross-continent excursions, etc.
One way to do this - have a core supply amount that dwindles unless some logistics push is committed to (for time/money costs and could be interdicted by enemy if not protected with additional troops). And reduce the effectiveness of "Supply" in proportion to armies passing through. So, an army would not be capable of long term excursions and if their "core supply" which is sort of a timer that runs out -- if that runs out, the army begins to be less capable and portions starve/quit and run. That's how it was in real life, and more realism in an EU5 would be appreciated.

Ottomans weren't able to move their real 100k armies all across Europe, and for good reason, and that reason is the lack of supplies that are not effectively portrayed in this game series. Paradox has built the EU series as if military supply depots exist in every single Province, up to a point.

 

[JBolt]

It's not their reach. They are so stupidly overpowered in the new combat system and with the new AI that there is really no counterplay. They just march around stackwiping everything they touch and burning down forts like they're paper.

They need nerfs to their siege ability at the very least.

The Ottomans have to be super strong. They conquered the Byzantines, Qara Qoyunlu, all of the Mamluks, the Hejaz, all of the Balkans, most of Hungary, Crimea, and all of North Africa within 200 years of 1444. They have to be OP. Stop trying to balance everything like it’s multiplayer, and let some nations be strong and some be weak as was historical. It’s more of a problem that they can go colonize Australia or march into Sweden or something stupid like that, but not that they are a massive near-undefeatable juggernaut at least until the mid-1600’s when lack of institutions and thus tech should catch up with them.

 

[Galaxy games]

I think a great way to Nerf the ottomans is by capping the GC and have the ai want to state all territories in its home region(in this case the levant) and in territories outside of their region establish vassals, or allies. That would be more realistic to how the ottomans were after the seige of veinna in 1638 but tey already meet their territorial peak mostly by 1556 an a period of territorial stagnation only maintaining the border and internal politics

 

[Ferdinand_Bardamu]

The Ottomans have to be super strong. They conquered the Byzantines, Qara Qoyunlu, all of the Mamluks, the Hejaz, all of the Balkans, most of Hungary, Crimea, and all of North Africa within 200 years of 1444. They have to be OP. Stop trying to balance everything like it’s multiplayer, and let some nations be strong and some be weak as was historical. It’s more of a problem that they can go colonize Australia or march into Sweden or something stupid like that, but not that they are a massive near-undefeatable juggernaut at least until the mid-1600’s when lack of institutions and thus tech should catch up with them.

Again, can someone answer if this is a historical game or an alternative history game?

Because if it's a historically accurate game the Ottomans should get nerfs in the late game that means they do lose to the other emerging powers. Also, Russia should be given greater opportunities to form, the PLC shouldn't get wrecked by the Ottomans ahistorically being able to annex Crimea for free and a "Holy League' should form when the Ottomans get too big to take them down a notch.

If it's not a historically accurate game, and rather an alternate history game, then the Ottomans should lose to the Mamluks, Poland, Austria or whoever else once in a while.

 

[YellowPress]

There was a lot of issues with Ottos historically; To summarize the causes of their decline I'd state:
Outdated military institutions that did not keep pace with their European rivals
Rise of nationalism/revolutionary ideals
Lack of any friends
And perhaps most importantly, decline in relevance for trade as Europeans became able to maneuver around them via Africa+India (thereby suffocating them geographically).

The numerous civil wars
The sultanate of women period
Decentralisation, decreasing centralisation, use the term which fits your biases
Growth of janissary payroll due to easy tax exemption
Keeping raya as sole tax payers and not also of the military
Growth of ayan against beylerbeys and so against central authority
Increasing corruption
No primogeniture meaning palace coups easy, especially when fratricide ran low as well as mental incapacity of some of the sultans
Constant genocides and massacres when they perceived themselves as weak

Though I believe he's somewhat biased politically, Kraut's video on the Ottomans (warning: long) gives some decent perspective.

Kraut's video has several flaws which should cause you to bin it out of hand
His flattery of ataturk's dictatorship
Thinking persia and not Austria was the ottomans most persistent rival
Thinking nomads are immune to disease unlike settled people

 

[Nuclear Elvis]

Don't forget that the Janissary system fell apart over time, to complete collapse, mainly because of internal selfishness among the Citizens of the Ottoman Empire, who over time noticed the high value of having been a child-to-adult progression through the Janissary system and how power/money was gained from such. Why this matters and as reminder - original Janissary system was ONLY for non-citizens types, essentially forced conscription from the recently conquered areas, those who had opposing religious/political beliefs, so that their young sons were forcibly taken from them to be indoctrinated into the Janissary system. Over time, once people saw the money/power gained from a lifetime of service, the conquered would volunteer their sons and even encourage their sons to go and be part of it (long-term investment for a son to bring the money/power back to the hometown later). And actual Ottomans citizens of same/same political and religious beliefs as the Empire - were jealous of this, and wanted their sons to also be among the chosen ones. So the citizenry was given access to the system to volunteer their sons, and sure enough corruption ensued, sometimes even payoffs to get sons into the system, and the entire Janissary system broke down due to the resultant lack of quality and commitment that came from these changes. So, a game over the span of this entire era should also reflect a more accurate Janissary system that is initially beneficial, transitioning to negative benefit later in the game.

As with my prior recommendation - this can only be implemented effectively in a future EU5 game build, and it's too late for EU4.

 

[MatthewP]

Don't forget that the Janissary system fell apart over time, to complete collapse, mainly because of internal selfishness among the Citizens of the Ottoman Empire, who over time noticed the high value of having been a child-to-adult progression through the Janissary system and how power/money was gained from such. Why this matters and as reminder - original Janissary system was ONLY for non-citizens types, essentially forced conscription from the recently conquered areas, those who had opposing religious/political beliefs, so that their young sons were forcibly taken from them to be indoctrinated into the Janissary system. Over time, once people saw the money/power gained from a lifetime of service, the conquered would volunteer their sons and even encourage their sons to go and be part of it (long-term investment for a son to bring the money/power back to the hometown later). And actual Ottomans citizens of same/same political and religious beliefs as the Empire - were jealous of this, and wanted their sons to also be among the chosen ones. So the citizenry was given access to the system to volunteer their sons, and sure enough corruption ensued, sometimes even payoffs to get sons into the system, and the entire Janissary system broke down due to the resultant lack of quality and commitment that came from these changes. So, a game over the span of this entire era should also reflect a more accurate Janissary system that is initially beneficial, transitioning to negative benefit later in the game.

As with my prior recommendation - this can only be implemented effectively in a future EU5 game build, and it's too late for EU4.

Hopefully if/when stuff like this is implemented in EU5 it will be in a generic way first. Corruption, complacency, decay of foundational systems, struggles for autonomy by local leaders or governors - none of these are particular to the Ottomans. They are symptoms of empire.

That said, portraying this is a super hard problem to solve. Because generally decay happens in large part because of poor or at least uninspired leadership. Even collapsing empires tend to have temporary resurgences under able rulers. But EU4 suffers from two related issues in this regard:

1) The player is the leader, and their ability does not vary. Finding a way to let the player actually rule the nation in a satisfactory way while also simulating the effects of a bad in game ruler is really hard and attempts to make it a defining factor as it is/was IRL generally don't get good feedback.

2) So, we could just make collapse or decay under bad rulers a thing for the AI, and let the player avoid it with clever management. But then it's almost impossible to make the game a real challenge.

In the end you either make a bad ruler cause unavoidable decay, which feels bad for most players, or you make the decay avoidable but have the AI not do it with bad rulers, which creates a huge imbalance against players who know how to manage it.

I believe this problem can be solved, but only by a pretty big design shift from what we have now with the idea of managing collapse as a/the main focus of gameplay. I think it would be cool if Paradox gave this a go, but I suspect they won't.

 

[Volbound]

Don't forget that the Janissary system fell apart over time, to complete collapse, mainly because of internal selfishness among the Citizens of the Ottoman Empire, who over time noticed the high value of having been a child-to-adult progression through the Janissary system and how power/money was gained from such. Why this matters and as reminder - original Janissary system was ONLY for non-citizens types, essentially forced conscription from the recently conquered areas, those who had opposing religious/political beliefs, so that their young sons were forcibly taken from them to be indoctrinated into the Janissary system. Over time, once people saw the money/power gained from a lifetime of service, the conquered would volunteer their sons and even encourage their sons to go and be part of it (long-term investment for a son to bring the money/power back to the hometown later). And actual Ottomans citizens of same/same political and religious beliefs as the Empire - were jealous of this, and wanted their sons to also be among the chosen ones. So the citizenry was given access to the system to volunteer their sons, and sure enough corruption ensued, sometimes even payoffs to get sons into the system, and the entire Janissary system broke down due to the resultant lack of quality and commitment that came from these changes. So, a game over the span of this entire era should also reflect a more accurate Janissary system that is initially beneficial, transitioning to negative benefit later in the game.

As with my prior recommendation - this can only be implemented effectively in a future EU5 game build, and it's too late for EU4.

It also fell apart because the Ottomans ran out of Greek Christians to enslave and force to be Janissaries.

 

[Rawme]

Every game in this patch the commonwealth stomps on the Ottomans and Russia having a force limit of almost a million. Tbh they are much more of a problem than the Ottomans with far superior ideas and pips.

Almost 2000 hours and ive never seen that happen lol

 

[bokorthedust]

Almost 2000 hours and ive never seen that happen lol

Around 1400 hours and I've seen it multiple times The amount we play has no bearing on what can happen in our games, some speed 5 all the way, others play slower. The number of campaigns we 'complete' (or as I should say go on) would be a better indicator of how many times something occurs, but nobody can keep track of that. The game is heavily laden with RNG after all, and something that happens in one player's games might never happen in another's.

 

[Methuen of Melnibone]

I will say this, I find Byzantium nearly impossible to play in new updates. In the past, I could get Alliance with Hungary and use their help to win the war. Ottos military advantage is no longer negated by putting your state in Morea Mountains.

I literally don't see how I can survive as Byzantium in new updates without MP help or just cheating to get Alliances with Austria or some other great power. Any advice from someone who is better than me at the game?

Look up the 'Radio Res' start on youtube - it's very cheesy, but does still work. There's also a good one if you search 'no loans Byzantium' or something, it's a long Reddit post; this also works, but relies a little more on the RNG gods rolling in your favour.

-

More broadly in this thread - the historical state of the Ottoman Empire bears little to no relation to how un-fun they are in this game. Mehmed the Conqueror or whoever could've had ten arms and a million men all with M-16s in 1444 - it wouldn't make it fun to play against, and people would still want that changed. It's a game, not a history text book !

 

[Elu Thingol]

Well, i've said this in other threads, but I think one should look at this from two angles:

Ottoman:
In my opinion, the biggest problem is probably the massive amounts of manpower that they can muster withouth problem. So if that could be toned down, maybe by among other things, splitting their cultural group, would be sweet.

Also, the Crimea event makes them very probable to start expanding northwards, usualy stopping a strong PLC or Russia emerging later in game, to help stop them snowballing.

Also their diplomatic AI makes them block themself for pushing eastwards/southwards, and not giving a damm about North Africa.


The game in general:
Having a system that makes every war into a modern, full blown total war is wrong. Being able to transfer all of you'r troops to one side of you'r empire to fight the enemy is also wrong. Not realy having to care about logistics and weather/terrain is also wrong. Having acess throughouth the world for your troops, also wrong.

As long as the system is what it is, war itself will be wrong.

 

[CthulhuTactical]

If you don't care about ironman, all of this can be corrected with mods. Too stable ottos with so much cultures and religions, literally having no rebellions? Up the intolerance penalty. Too much troops? Decrease manpower from development and forcelimit, remove slacken manpower benefit. Want to simulate ottoman decline and overwhelming force tactics? Give them discipline and tech penalty. I've made my own ottomans, they can still destroy 1vs1 commonewealth, but for example hungary and commonwealth means they will have hard time, commonwealth, hungary and austria at the same time? Pretty much dead, as happened at vienna at the height of ottoman power.

 

[YellowPress]

If you don't care about ironman, all of this can be corrected with mods. Too stable ottos with so much cultures and religions, literally having no rebellions? Up the intolerance penalty. Too much troops? Decrease manpower from development and forcelimit, remove slacken manpower benefit. Want to simulate ottoman decline and overwhelming force tactics? Give them discipline and tech penalty. I've made my own ottomans, they can still destroy 1vs1 commonewealth, but for example hungary and commonwealth means they will have hard time, commonwealth, hungary and austria at the same time? Pretty much dead, as happened at vienna at the height of ottoman power.

Just mod isn't the solution, the game should build in their decline

 

[CthulhuTactical]

I think the AI should play mostly historic rather than video gamey and magically keeping up with you just cause. I think being over extended should trigger other nations to form coalitions to attack you period. Absorbing completely different races and religions should require a massive tech advantage or at the very least be extremely hard to control the populations. Nor should institutions spread so easily out of Europe because without massive tech advantages, wealth, etc the world doesn't care about the something like the printing press unless it leads to something useful to them. Example Ottomans didn't have the printing press until 1727! I think institutions maybe should be for culture groups and adapt them across the board like Ottomans focusing on conquering the old Byzantine Empire then spreading Islam to Indonesia or whatever. But a Jacobite level Revolution doesn't come out of the non western world for obvious reasons and it's stupid the game allows ideas that can't naturally form on their own in say India or the Middle East to pop up. Honestly I think unless the player has figured out some amazing path to pull it off the institutions should come from their historical homes anyways and move towards who naturally picked them up. So Spain, Portugal, England, France get colonization first, printing press comes out of germany, etc

Not I am Japan and I magically figured out how to colonize California super easily. If we are going that CK3 level of stupid then we need CK3 level mechanics like marrying my own daughter to ensure I have an heir to the throne.

I use Eurocentric Technology mod tweaked to my liking, with tech penalties reintroduced and some events removed, like getting colonialism through events. Also deving up doesn't spawn institution anymore. It's 1550 in my portugal campaign and i have tech 12 while hindu states have 6 mil tech and no instutions beside feudalism. Of course the game will never allow you to simulate something like conquest of Goa or Malacca, where 2k of portuguese won over 40k of locals, because you still have garrison and forts to take, even if you give them heavy discipline penalty[historical when you read about malacca/goa and how disorganized local armies were, despite being supplied with guns and cannons].

 

[Blackmoore]

The Ottomans are supposed to be the strongest in the world until 1600 or so and then start to fall apart. In EU4, I'm convinced that many of the incredible aspects of the Ottoman nation were intended to compensate for the Derp AI. Except ... the AI isn't as Derp as it used to be.

Now, the AI manages its money and monarch points more solidly than before. As I've said before -- this is generally a good thing. However, the Ottomans have an amazing overall package. This is not the ideas, which are not "the best" but they are very good. It's the combination of ideas, age abilities, government types, starting position, unit pips, etc. All of this adds up to crushing everyone in the "early game." In short, the Ottomans snow-ball like a player would and always seem to be the end boss of every game I play -- it's just boring after awhile.