Yet another Ottoman rant

[DerGrößteRitter]

I would nerf the Anatolian unit types (for starters), then move from there.

 

[Sick Man of Europe]

You should lower the difficulty if you don't want a challenge, seems to me you just want to easy stomp anything whenever you want at a chill pace. Lower difficulty suits you and that's one way to play

"Historically this", "Historically that", France doesn't take Pale and conquer GB Ireland and no CB this and that, the pope will not kiss your feet for getting the blue blob achievement. Brandenburg doesn't get Prussia until "MUCH MUCH" later and starts to gobble up little states. Sweden doesn't yeet Denmark on 11th December and the Byzantines are not long for this world. And let's be real, Burgundian inheritance is such a cheat that even if you started as a smaller nation and got the inheritance, it ruins your game totally because you just become so strong that you can beat anyone in the game, there's no point continuing the run unless you want to do a WC. Most mission tree that makes the game playable is ahistorical with "historical justification", when you play Ethiopia, you will yeet the Mamluks. Manchu will finish off the Ming with Y E A R S of margin, uniting Japan and invading Korea and actually win, YEARS earlier.

Everything a player does have huge impact on the game in more ways than what most people think. When you ally Austria but you don't help the AI in battle when they expect to be reinforced because you're next to them and they deem we have sufficient numbers, or help them siege forts, you're crippling them, that's one relationship slot they could've had. When you play an Elector and decided to ally all electors and cripple Austria from getting mission to union Bohemia, you're crippling them.

There's the RNG, which is what makes this game so great. It allows the game to be replayable, each run is different with each power having different rivals/allies. Some games, Austria gets Hungary peacefully, others through force. When they get Hungary, sometimes Poland took 4-5 provinces from HG already, sometimes ottoblob took 4-5 provinces, sometimes both. Sometimes none at all. Sometimes Austria inherits Hungary entire, others they lose the union and have to war again.

A strong Austria is a good buffer against ottoblob, so is the PLC, but sometimes PLC doesn't form, sometimes Lithuania doesn't even fall under a union. People just never consider what they're doing to the game when they're having fun expanding. When you're killing the PLC as Muscovy, you're making a dent. When the Catholics don't have a crusader modifier against the ottoblob, they're more likely to fall. It is entirely possible for a smaller/medium sized eastern catholic AI state to beat back the Ottomans just by having the crusader modifier with their allies.

The big nations have their own expansion path otto is just built to blob, they're not as good at colonizing. If you're too weak to crush the otto, try to find alternate way to expand your power, colonize (charter trade company and start fabricating claims.), dominate nodes and collect trade/funnel it back if you can make use of it, the ottos can't do thatas well as an EU power. Eventually they will be no match for you, the trade power scales so incredibly well that you can pretty much field huge forces and mercs. You should not expect yourself to beat the blob when your first ideas are what? Exploration, Expansion? Economics/Trade. If you want to fight early, you will need quantity and manage your points well and not dump all points in ideas and neglecting tech.

When you build an alliance block against the blob, you have to watch out for their troop movement instead of blindly sieging. If you intercept their troops at a friendly fort, you get defensive bonuses and makes the fighting "manageable". They siege quick, and our AI friends are so incredibly stupid. Even in the patch that famously make the AI build forts, Poland seems to rarely fort their capital and ever so inclined to peace out and leave you to die if their capital falls.

I think this is an issue in of itself, they rarely ever wait for you to unsiege their capital even if they have the manpower, economy and fielded troops ready to continue the war unless they have the religious war modifier which makes them less willing to peaceout.

I think it's mentioned already, even Mamluks are being very silly, a few provinces occupied and they will be willing to peaceout and handing out several provinces to the blob for no reason.

I find the Ottoblob to be on the right level of strength, it's rather the way the other AI play that is the problem, and to some extent the expectation the AI have of player and vice versa in what battle is winnable and how troop movements should be in a particular war. Ottoblob needs to be strong.. because we all feel sorry for him don't we, they have no friends. Anyone they ally usually disappear after a while, or is so weak and irrelevant and they rarely have more than 1 or 2 allies.

If sometimes you get contained and you feel stuck, just end the run. RNG is there to make every run interesting and somewhat unique. Sometimes you just have to do other stuff and chill while waiting to see an expansion path if you get contained by guarantees, alliance, etc. GP intervention is not unique to ottoblob btw, any great power will regularly try to intervene; the most annoying being Ruskij, Baguettié and Ottoblobbü as they are a massive land power with land connection in Europe. But that's the game for you, you can also intervene as well. Any power that gets weakened in manpower/troop number will get attacked, even you.. any size. And it makes sense, that's what most players do against AI as well, right?

 

[CthulhuTactical]

Making an alt account just to post in ottoman thread hmm....

 

[Sick Man of Europe]

Making an alt account just to post in ottoman thread hmm....

It may disappoint you to hear that the join date is not identical to the date I made that comment.. but no more disappointing to me that you would not believe me genuine anyway

I used to play a game with regular updates that at times caved to spams and I felt like I needed to voice. Having said that, I believe this game is more reliant on the simulation element than human, so the dev probably have an easier time to do simulation checks. New to the forum please welcome me

 

[DerGrößteRitter]

It may disappoint you to hear that the join date is not identical to the date I made that comment.. but no more disappointing to me that you would not believe me genuine anyway

I used to play a game with regular updates that at times caved to spams and I felt like I needed to voice. Having said that, I believe this game is more reliant on the simulation element than human, so the dev probably have an easier time to do simulation checks. New to the forum please welcome me

well, this account was created 6 days ago

 

[Sick Man of Europe]

well, this account was created 6 days ago

it probably is.. you should help the community stalk me some more and look for the post I made that day. Although I can't go back in time and we will never know for sure. But had I seen this post that day, I might've commented back then and you guys will have an even more jolly time with this topic with me as the circus attraction

Thx for paying attention to my opinion anyway

 

[DerGrößteRitter]

it probably is.. you should help the community stalk me some more and look for the post I made that day. Although I can't go back in time and we will never know for sure. But had I seen this post that day, I might've commented back then and you guys will have an even more jolly time with this topic with me as the circus attraction

Thx for paying attention to my opinion anyway

Noone is stalking you mate, your join date is right there under your name to the left of your post.

 

[Sick Man of Europe]

Noone is stalking you mate, your join date is right there under your name to the left of your post.

yes, i was trying to be funny

 

[L'Afrique]

I agree Ottos could use some tweaks (and in general hope EU5 has more dynamic rises and falls than infinite snowballing.) But it's a bugaboo for me how their meme status gets people so much angrier than most.

England and Castile have ludicrous dev compared to their historical 1444 populations and wealth vs neighbours, and you can get richest in the world without ever expanding. A german can turn into a space marine by putting on a blue coat and disavowing the pope. Hordes are insane. New patch we're getting a combo where germans can become prussian crusader mongols. Irl the prussian army was absolute trash between Friedrich the Great and getting whipped over and over by a certain corsican. Russia's memed up to be "lol idiots just selflessly throw themselves in human waves." when that's more accurate to EU4 era France if anyone deserves that treatment. Poland is all when the winged hussars arriveeeeeeeeee! Japan has even more insane dev than England, while on the other hand Ming is utterly gimped. You can turn the entirety of langue d'oïl France into classical latin speakers in one click. It's memes all the way down folks. And it's not even necessarily bad. We've had EU builds where accurate-er Ming steamrolls the eurasian continent, and that's stupid too. They must needs be gimped.

But people seem to like deepthroating pickelhauben and romans and hussars but not like the ottomans or russians or italians or french, so the ottomans are the problem.

Generally in agreement that I hope EU5 leans more into dynamic systems than "ottomans get these buttons and prussians get these buttons but sikhs get this button and so on.

 

[DerGrößteRitter]

I agree Ottos could use some tweaks (and in general hope EU5 has more dynamic rises and falls than infinite snowballing.) But it's a bugaboo for me how their meme status gets people so much angrier than most.

England and Castile have ludicrous dev compared to their historical 1444 populations and wealth vs neighbours, and you can get richest in the world without ever expanding. A german can turn into a space marine by putting on a blue coat and disavowing the pope. Hordes are insane. New patch we're getting a combo where germans can become prussian crusader mongols. Irl the prussian army was absolute trash between Friedrich the Great and getting whipped over and over by a certain corsican. Russia's memed up to be "lol idiots just selflessly throw themselves in human waves." when that's more accurate to EU4 era France if anyone deserves that treatment. Poland is all when the winged hussars arriveeeeeeeeee! Japan has even more insane dev than England, while on the other hand Ming is utterly gimped. You can turn the entirety of langue d'oïl France into classical latin speakers in one click. It's memes all the way down folks. And it's not even necessarily bad. We've had EU builds where accurate-er Ming steamrolls the eurasian continent, and that's stupid too. They must needs be gimped.

But people seem to like deepthroating pickelhauben and romans and hussars but not like the ottomans or russians or italians or french, so the ottomans are the problem.

Generally in agreement that I hope EU5 leans more into dynamic systems than "ottomans get these buttons and prussians get these buttons but sikhs get this button and so on.

Yeah... no

 

[Marquoz]

But it's a bugaboo for me how their meme status gets people so much angrier than most.

Very much agreed. I'm in the "Ottomans are far too weak" camp, myself. Because of the nerfs they've suffered, the Ottomans pretty much never reach anything close to their historical borders in AI hands. They often stall out before even uniting Anatolia, they only occasionally destroy the Mamluks, and they rarely if ever make it to the Persian Gulf, conquer most of north Africa, or expand in Europe the way they should. I would like to see them get their cores on the beyliks back, and they should also have their original CCR percentage. I'd also give the Ottomans a full mission tree, one as interesting as Spain, Austria, France, and so on. It's sad that one of the most important powers of the era has many generic missions.

Eliminating the Ottomans as a player isn't challenging. As somone who started on Day 1 of the game's release 9 years ago and has 4700 hours of ironman playtime, I've done it dozens, maybe hundreds of times (including many in 1.33). I've wrecked them as great powers and OPMs, as nations that start as their neighbor or nations that don't border them for centuries, and I've done it early, middle, and late game. They have no secret advantages, no cheats that aren't documented in the wiki, no abilities that you won't have if you decide to play them yourself. If you understand combat mechanics and alliance building, they're not a threat. They're a paper tiger, and that paper gets torn to shreds too easily. The formula is always the same: put together a strong alliance and swarm them if you can't wipe them out on your own. It helps if they're busy with another war but, depending on the game situation, that's not necessary. The alliance is.

 

[Blizzrd33]

What is all this "scary Ottomans" talk about? I can't see any Ottoman problems in my current game (I started as Karaman):

 

[Prince Ire]

I think a lot of the problems with OP Ottomans is that EU4, like pretty much every Paradox game other than HoI4, is pretty poor at showing the dangers of fighting on multiple fronts. The combat/war system, while good at showing that just because something is occupied in the war doesn't mean you'll keep it in the peace, also means that it's not that big a deal to just ignore a front so you can deal with it later. Historically, a big factor in the end of Ottoman expansion was that bringing the the forces to bear that were necessary to successfully beat any of Austria, Poland, Russia, or Persia would have left them unacceptably vulnerable elsewhere.

 

[Sick Man of Europe]

I just enjoy playing against stonk ottoblob and not just only against other stonks, so I agree, argument that it was historically stonk in the period is not that important. tbh I have never even tried to play that nation ever. There's also the fact that the campaign start is named rise of the ottomans + they ironically decided to put 3 nations as beginner friendly, otto being one among them (porto is imho not beginner friendly, you follow mission, take granada and castile will break alliance and dec. newbie will likely lose).

As for containment, the AIs are just weird, sometimes containment is there, sometimes it isn't.. some games FR will not touch England's continental holdings and they just cripple themselves for the rest of the campaign; or they go to war for it and it takes forever before those guys peace out and drag their allies to a protracted war with no fighting, making you want to yell because you want to seize land 3 years ago. Some games FR is so frikkin smart, they will declare on Spain/Castile even with fewer troops and take 6 provinces like a boss or chip away at HRE's border and actually win because their stacks are bigger and forts more restrictive to prevent province warscore occupations comparatively to the otherside, snowballing equally hard as le magnificent sultan. Yet with careful planning and persistency, you can beat them back.

I think people are still butthurt about the siege of Vienna, I've heard it retold by oldies plenty of times (who can't spell, pronounce or ever heard of the word Osman or Ottomans, they just refer to these guys as "The Turks" (In fact I'm surprised PX won't let us use the term Kebab as a meme, far more numerous people use the term turks with more malice and hate than terms like baguette and wienerschnitzel. What's next, we can't say sauerkrautz next?)) about "the ultimate turning point in history of Christianity and Islam, if Vienna falls, we will all not be eating pork and drinking beer", bruh, the ottos had plenty christian vassals and christian mercenaries eating their kebab and pointing their pointies by Vienna at the time.

Just get over it, start an Austrian campaign, lower the diffculty, PU everything, annex otto and release your righteous hatred and anger lol, no one will judge you because no one will ever know unless you scrsh and share. It's utterly unconvincing that it's not a prejudice when there's a onesided rant on a particular nation tag on mechanics that exists for similar nations that is more popularly played by the people. It's also mentioned by me and many others already how well the western scales incredibly well into the later part of the game with income, particularly pointed out even without extreme expansion (and the WC needs no convincing, they WC with anything..).. To me ottoblob is just numbers with a few tweaks, but that's just me. What we need is better and improved AIs incorporated into the official builds of the game, which is sorely needed and very doable

 

[Sick Man of Europe]

In that sense, balancing the game around the player gets hard because skill level is so vastly different across the board, so I tend to look at it from a AI vs. AI view. Since with players balance gets generally thrown out of the window.

That's a good point, and even that is RNG lol. In my experience, if Austria can PU Hungary, reasonably integrate/maybe take some lands south/east of Hungrary, Ottomans will be contained in EU. But Austria don't pop every game... so when that happens someone will buy kebab and visit the forum to start a thread?

To be honest, I always find game balance over the question of "Can the player do this" a bit silly. The playerbase is so vastly varying in skill. On the higher-end you have people who will world conquer with some random OPM... should we nerf Ryukyu because they can do that? On the other hand, there is players who fail even with big powers because they don't get the basic mechanics... Never mind exploiting game mechanics... What AI for example would ever No CB an Irish Minor to go and exodus to America?

Well.. what the players can do and is willing to do does matter.. if I can't do it and others can, I know I can keep trying the game until it's doable. But if they don't want to keep trying and they say they want the game to be different where it's more chill, where the AI won't use a mechanic that you have access to? Isn't lowering the difficulty the way to go? Hate AI using GP intervene? Just make AI not intervene in lower difficulty.. and if you get bored, you just incrementally raise the difficulty. I've personally lowered difficulty for some runs to see how the geography works, how the trade works, diplomacy, etc in the region for particular start is when I was poorly informed; the feature is there to be used. If you want to have a chill game, lowering difficulty is also the way to go (or be otto :O)

If otto gets nerfed further, there will no longer be a beginner friendly nation. I've mentioned the Portuguese problem, and Castillian will be very interesting - if a beginner decides to colonize Eastern American Colonial Region as Cast/ES, they will get spam dec until they quit the game man, and even in the current state sometimes the ottos don't blob enough - why do people have a problem with otto blobbing in some games but a problem with russia because in some games it doesn't blob? it's a very unfair point of view in my view.

As for no CB an Irish minor, man. Would be fun to see AI do that tbh. But it also feels very exploitative for player to play like that since AI doesn't do it (yet? )

On the question of people failing as a big power.. the tutorial could use some work... the hint functionality is so bad - it's either missing info or too spammy. Some tooltip still needs to be added. I tried to understand trade via the trade window, that was confusing as heck. Took me time to realize a trade map mode existed and that there's a wiki.. that solved everything mostly off-game? And let's be real, it's not obvious what unit composition you're supposed to have if you just took the tutorial and tips.

Understandably, I know the influx of player is mostly ~0 now, so it's a predicament to even consider any improvements or adding any features regarding to actually learning the game...

 

[Nuclear Elvis]

While it wasn't specific to Ottomans, the problems at the core of the argument (Lucky Nation buffs that are now unnecessary) were best shown in examples of playing against Ottomans. An additional sidebar in this other thread from the "Suggestions" forum was that Artillery numbers were way off in contrast to historical presentation, that Ottomans and other large nations had 30-50 times as much artillery as was historically accurate for the period, which is yet another contributor to balancing problems in the game (Dev's didn't put a limiter-switch on making Arty units, other than having the cash available when the mining/ore and horses to pull around were also factors this game doesn't represent well). Ultimately you have to view the Artillery problem in light of the core argument about Lucky Nation buffs (and other unrealistic magic buffs such as the Humanism Idea track that a Muslim Ottomans would never take - but AI sees the value in suppressing population revolts). So, Ottomans in Normal/Ironman never gets realistic rebellion spawns and the compliant conquered population helps spike gold/ducats wealth to afford those over-built artillery regiments, if that helps show the basic synergy of the argument. There's a whole thread about this here:

Considering Leviathan and All DLCs - It is Time to End Lucky Nation buffs

Paradox Developers/players, Given the "Game we have" at this point, all DLCs to include the recently released Leviathan, all the numerous buffs from Monuments, Missions, National Focus, etc. -- It is now time that the game move itself "Off the...

forum.paradoxplaza.com

Ultimately, I don't see a fix until an EU5 build that gets a more sophisticated Game Design plus AI changes that include limiting switches to prevent the mass artillery build ups we currently have in EU4. It's the mass Artillery that is most in question - and Ottomans' ability to quick-regenerate those units as well. Same is true for any other mass formation in EU4 that over-builds artillery beyond a realistic number, because IRL you have so much logistics involved to move heavy cannons (mass numbers of horses) and their ammunition (massive horse-drawn trailers for the powder, iron balls/shot that are HEAVY - so yet more teams of horses that aren't realistic when 100 artillery regiments are rolling around). In real world, the logistics of moving cannons was such a problem for Ottomans, even in the smaller/realistic numbers, that Ottomans would actually cast cannons on-site for some sieges, instead of hauling them, but those were purpose-built temp cannons for a single siege, and would typically not be put to much use afterwards (maybe moved into the fort they conquered, if they intended to hold it).

 

[Heaven Canceler]

That's a good point, and even that is RNG lol. In my experience, if Austria can PU Hungary, reasonably integrate/maybe take some lands south/east of Hungrary, Ottomans will be contained in EU. But Austria don't pop every game... so when that happens someone will buy kebab and visit the forum to start a thread?

To be honest, I am struggling to think of how even a reasonably strong Austria can "contain" Ottomans. Sure they can slow down conquest towards the west, (And realistically if they wait for the right moment the Ottos can still crush Austria.) but unless they get Hungary very early and start eating land fast, the Ottomans will still have quite a bit of land in the west. And most of that isn't even really "crucial" for them as they will have control of their rather strong tradenote already...

And they have the advantage of being able to expand in a bunch of directions with very little risk after all. West towards Europe, east towards Asia, North towards the Hordes and Orthodox Principalities, South-east towards the Arabian peninsula, southwest towards North africa, or take a turn further south to get eastern africa instead... (Unless of course AI stupidy gets them somehow...)

If otto gets nerfed further, there will no longer be a beginner friendly nation. I've mentioned the Portuguese problem, and Castillian will be very interesting - if a beginner decides to colonize Eastern American Colonial Region as Cast/ES, they will get spam dec until they quit the game man, and even in the current state sometimes the ottos don't blob enough - why do people have a problem with otto blobbing in some games but a problem with russia because in some games it doesn't blob? it's a very unfair point of view in my view.

Personally I actually feel that Russia just up and never forming at times is part of the problem. That and Persia not forming... it leaves them with a lot of playground to mess with and no low dangers. So even if one expansion path is gone they can just go another direction unless they block themselves off early. Essentially what I am saying is that the Ottomans should blob and be a threat, but others should counter-balance them somewhat...

On the question of people failing as a big power.. the tutorial could use some work... the hint functionality is so bad - it's either missing info or too spammy. Some tooltip still needs to be added. I tried to understand trade via the trade window, that was confusing as heck. Took me time to realize a trade map mode existed and that there's a wiki.. that solved everything mostly off-game? And let's be real, it's not obvious what unit composition you're supposed to have if you just took the tutorial and tips.

I mean for real beginners it would be less trade and more something like not knowing how the sliders work and keeping maintentance down. Or not knowing how generals work and not using them. Or walking into a mountain fort over a crossing...

It has been a long time since I saw the tutorial in-game so I have no clue how much of that is talked about. Also could be funny if someone decides to play in the non-old world and never gets institutions because they don't know they can dev them.

 

[YellowPress]

While it wasn't specific to Ottomans, the problems at the core of the argument (Lucky Nation buffs that are now unnecessary) were best shown in examples of playing against Ottomans. An additional sidebar in this other thread from the "Suggestions" forum was that Artillery numbers were way off in contrast to historical presentation, that Ottomans and other large nations had 30-50 times as much artillery as was historically accurate for the period, which is yet another contributor to balancing problems in the game (Dev's didn't put a limiter-switch on making Arty units, other than having the cash available when the mining/ore and horses to pull around were also factors this game doesn't represent well). Ultimately you have to view the Artillery problem in light of the core argument about Lucky Nation buffs (and other unrealistic magic buffs such as the Humanism Idea track that a Muslim Ottomans would never take - but AI sees the value in suppressing population revolts). So, Ottomans in Normal/Ironman never gets realistic rebellion spawns and the compliant conquered population helps spike gold/ducats wealth to afford those over-built artillery regiments, if that helps show the basic synergy of the argument. There's a whole thread about this here:

Considering Leviathan and All DLCs - It is Time to End Lucky Nation buffs

Paradox Developers/players, Given the "Game we have" at this point, all DLCs to include the recently released Leviathan, all the numerous buffs from Monuments, Missions, National Focus, etc. -- It is now time that the game move itself "Off the...

forum.paradoxplaza.com

Ultimately, I don't see a fix until an EU5 build that gets a more sophisticated Game Design plus AI changes that include limiting switches to prevent the mass artillery build ups we currently have in EU4. It's the mass Artillery that is most in question - and Ottomans' ability to quick-regenerate those units as well. Same is true for any other mass formation in EU4 that over-builds artillery beyond a realistic number, because IRL you have so much logistics involved to move heavy cannons (mass numbers of horses) and their ammunition (massive horse-drawn trailers for the powder, iron balls/shot that are HEAVY - so yet more teams of horses that aren't realistic when 100 artillery regiments are rolling around). In real world, the logistics of moving cannons was such a problem for Ottomans, even in the smaller/realistic numbers, that Ottomans would actually cast cannons on-site for some sieges, instead of hauling them, but those were purpose-built temp cannons for a single siege, and would typically not be put to much use afterwards (maybe moved into the fort they conquered, if they intended to hold it).

More cannons than historical ignores how troops are more than just 1 thousand footmen, or 1 thousand horsemen, or 1 thousand cannons
Cannons being forged on site isn't that different from trebuchets being forged on site which is paradox's reasoning for no siege weapons in 1444

A logistics overhall in eu5 would be great, along with something to simulate how unceasing intereuropean warfare helped bring about the military revolution, meanwhile the gunpowder empires of the mughals, safavids and ottomans just blob and so don't innovate as much as western euros did, leading to ottoman cannons being large and unwieldy resulting in many of their defeats during the decline in comparison to the more mobile field guns developed

 

[L'Afrique]

I think logistics overhaul would really make the blob less fearsome. It's fine imo for them to be a scary military power, it's just silly that they can walk 180k troops from Tunis to Nantes back to Tunis then into Siberia to siege random forts. That plus the AI being able to consistently make strong Persia and strong Russia so they're not just squatting uncontested in Volgograd and Ryazan half your games.

For that matter AI Mamluks usually suck too, which is especially funny because they're a really strong tag under a player. The AI just doesn't click with mams.

 

[CthulhuTactical]

I will nag about ottomans blobbing through crimea every damn patch.