Yet Another Rant About the Ottomans (and other game issues)

[No idea]

To the OP. The trick dealing with the ottomans is waiting until you get better or similar units to them (this is, around 1530. The latter the better). Of course, as Byzantium you dont have that luxury. And that is why restarting 3 or 4 times as them is something that happens everyday to most players. In your case, perhaps you were unlucky with the ai fighting decisions, or the ottomans got a very good general. Luck matters a lot playing as Byzantium.

 

[No idea]

What major powers? Major powers that made almost all their conquests through intrigue and PU's (im looking at you Habsburgs)?

Whatever, but it is truth they were stopped around Austria and Persia. In the other directions of expansion there were just minor states or nothing at all (Sahara or Arabian deserts). The mamluks were a collapsing state by the time the ottomans conquered them.

 

[LS22]

Whatever, but it is truth they were stopped around Austria and Persia. In the other directions of expansion there were just minor states or nothing at all (Sahara or Arabian deserts). The mamluks were a collapsing state by the time the ottomans conquered them.

That's why they were a super-power. Because they conquered deserts.

 

[Runite Drill]

Fun fact: In my last game it took Ottomans 250 years to reclaim all of their cores in Anatolia. Of course, this also meant they lost cores in the Balkans. For me as the Omani, it was a nightmare trying to fight off the ever expanding Mamluks on my own.... >.<
Point being: They're not always some nightmarish devil you can't seem to defeat.

 

[Roparex]

In my last game just yesterday the ottomans declared on albania in 1446. The catch was that albania was in my trade league,(me being venice) so ottos with the 25k they have at the beginning went to war against 60k. It was still a hard war, thanks to the ai coordinating so well(sarcasm) but they still lost, and gave up over half of greece to byz and a region to albania (so it won't be in the league anymore, but i have core on her, so i will laugh last). You can atrribute this to the op bonuses opm get (60k troops from like 300 dev max in 1446)

 

[Chamboozer]

Nope, but they conquered it all from minor and collapsing states. In every direction, when they reached a major power, their expansion stopped.

This is at best common sense and at worst a tautology. Of course the Ottomans were able to expand most easily at the expense of weaker states. However, I'm willing to bet that an integral part of your definition of 'major power' includes not being conquered by the Ottomans. If the Ottomans had conquered Austria, then you wouldn't be calling them a major power.

 

[Qantrix]

To be honest if I've been playing with the Byzantines today and I didn't find it exceedingly difficult to defeat the Ottomans in the first war. Sure it required some reloads. Yes you have to rely on the AI which makes some stupid decisions. However throughout history there have been plenty of crappy coordination between army coalitions. An utterly competent AI would in this case perhaps be less realistic.

 

[BBBD316]

Well yes the OE did just take minors and smaller nations, that is practical. I am not sure what else you wanted them to do.

 

[ZechsMerquise73]

Nerf the Ottomans? They're gone by 1550 in every game I've seen since Mare Nostrum. Admittedly, it was pretty boring when they ALWAYS did well, and were ALWAYS THERE, and ALWAYS took over the Mamelukes and Arabia and Hungary, but it's starting to get ridiculous when they get replaced by Karaman.

 

[Karlingid]

However, these threads that use absurd thinly-veiled Greek nationalism to try to justify Ottoman nerfs are literally the worst thing on these forums. Its trivial to recognize because the poster always plays Byzantium; name one 'nerf Ottos' that mentions Albania or Serbia or Wallacia or Dulkadir etc etc.

Check the first page, near the bottom. Or just finish the first paragraph at the very top of the post. It specifically mentions that this problem applies to more than just Byzantium, even though I was playing as Byzantium shortly before the post.

 

[Karlingid]

To the OP. The trick dealing with the ottomans is waiting until you get better or similar units to them (this is, around 1530. The latter the better). Of course, as Byzantium you dont have that luxury. And that is why restarting 3 or 4 times as them is something that happens everyday to most players. In your case, perhaps you were unlucky with the ai fighting decisions, or the ottomans got a very good general. Luck matters a lot playing as Byzantium.

I think I could potentially delay their attack that long. If I can really get PLC and Austria quickly enough, and work on making myself a bit stronger through other means, I could potentially make that happen.

Anyways, thanks for the advice. What might your thoughts be on the current Ottoman situation? Do they have too many buffs? Do they have enough buffs, but the buffs are too strong? Is it accurate? Inaccurate? Do they need MORE buffs?

 

[Martian Gamer]

One thing that I have thout of. The Ottoman's NI that gives cultural acceptance is now completely ahistorical, as they are now in the Levantine culture group, which is where they historically expanded.

 

[EMT0]

National stereotyping? The Ottomans conquered the Byzantines, defiled their capital, and actively persecuted Greeks. It's hardly stereotyping to say they did not get along very well. When I say "Defiled", I mean it. They destroyed the walls, looted the Hagia Sophia, and slaughtered or enslaved thousands of bystanders. The hearth of Byzantine culture and one of the holiest places in the Greek Orthodox tradition was pillaged ruthlessly, and so the Greeks, a people who identify with the Byzantines and who, in very large part, follow the Greek Orthodox faith, have every right to be a bit disgruntled that the Ottomans undertook every effort to destroy the city most symbolic of their nation as a whole.

Also, there's still the fact that the Ottomans were Turks trying to be Romans, but more Persian. None of these falls into the "Levantine" culture group (Which is a bad name for it, as Bedouin, Yemenis, Omanis, and Egyptians are not Levantine). I know I'm not the only one who thought that putting them in Oghuz or, really, anything but a new Turko-Semitic was a better option, and I know I'm not the only one who thinks the culture groups as they are tend to be a bit arbitrary.

You just made me break out into hysterical giggles.

Those same defilers that propped up the decrepit corpse that was the Greek Orthodox Church? The Ottomans are the only reason you still have a large number of Orthodox Greeks to begin with; they propped up the Patriarchate with dhimmi taxes and used it to ensure the continued existence of a dhimmi class as well as to be the head of the Roman(Greek) Millet.

Defiled Constantinople? It takes a lot of screw up to take the Eastern Roman Empire from its heyday to 1453, from a city of several hundred thousands to a city outclassed by almost anything resembling a major town. The Venetians already sacked Constantinople and the Byzantine's decline brought it lower still. If anything the Ottomans are the reason Constantinople and later Istanbul became a major city once again. Better what happened to Constantinople than what happened to Ctesiphon. Destroyed the walls? A limited looting of the city which was then promptly rebuilt up to greater heights than before? And things you didn't mention, because they don't fit your narrative: Rather than kill the family of the conquered, Mehmed II made the heirs of the Palailogos family into the Governor General of the Balkans. The other son was made into Grand Vizier not once but twice, the second highest position in the entire Empire. And the fact that the Ottomans pretty much integrated the old Greek bureaucracy of the Byzantines wholesale. Or the rebuilding and amnesty towards the conquered issued by Mehmet II:

On the third day after the fall of our city, the Sultan celebrated his victory with a great, joyful triumph. He issued a proclamation: the citizens of all ages who had managed to escape detection were to leave their hiding places throughout the city and come out into the open, as they to were to remain free and no question would be asked. He further declared the restoration of houses and property to those who had abandoned our city before the siege, if they returned home, they would be treated according to their rank and religion, as if nothing had changed.

Please. Lol. The Ottomans did many wrongs, but this is bottom of the barrel. I wish the game started in 1453 so we wouldn't have to hear this anymore...

 

[Emre Yigit]

Whatever, but it is truth they were stopped around Austria and Persia. In the other directions of expansion there were just minor states or nothing at all (Sahara or Arabian deserts). The mamluks were a collapsing state by the time the ottomans conquered them.

The Mamluks may have been in decline, but Hungary wasn't, which is partly why Mohacs was such a shocker. The Persians lost Iraq, and had their capital occupied a number of times. The issue was that at 1,500km for Vienna and 1,800km to Tabriz from Constantinople, even the Ottoman supply train (part of the reason why the Ottoman armies seem to be so large, even though not everyone in the Otto armies was a combatant) had its limits (though of course the Vienna campaign was also supplied by river) as did of course Ottoman organisational abilities. (By way of comparison Paris to Warsaw is 1,600km, Paris to Moscow 3,000km.)

BTW, if you think the supply train was modest in size, at least one Ottoman battle that wasn't going well for them was won when the Ottos unleashed their cooks.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Keresztes

 

[Chamboozer]

BTW, if you think the supply train was modest in size, at least one Ottoman battle that wasn't going well for them was won when the Ottos unleashed their cooks.

It helps that 'cook' was a rank which military officials often passed through. The Grand Vizier Köprülü Mehmed Pasha, for example, was a cook during his early career.

 

[Emre Yigit]

It helps that 'cook' was actually a rank which military officials often passed through. The Grand Vizier Köprülü Mehmed Pasha, for example, was a cook during his early career.

Indeed.

 

[Pellucid]

This is at best common sense and at worst a tautology. Of course the Ottomans were able to expand most easily at the expense of weaker states. However, I'm willing to bet that an integral part of your definition of 'major power' includes not being conquered by the Ottomans. If the Ottomans had conquered Austria, then you wouldn't be calling them a major power.

Major powers didn't stop Napoleon. Or Prussia. Or Sweden. And yet the Ottoman discipline and morale bonuses are close to par with these three powers.

I'm not saying that the Ottomans weren't powerful. I'm just saying that their depiction in game is wildly out of proportion with their real life ability. Their bonuses should be close to Russia's. They should drown people in manpower, not win by superior discipline and leadership. Ottoman generals were notoriously bad decision makers, managing to lose to the likes of Malta and Croatia when they had extreme numerical advantages, and their troops had notoriously BAD discipline, running away from massively inferior forces and getting massacred as a result.

 

[Incompetent]

Nope, but they conquered it all from minor and collapsing states. In every direction, when they reached a major power, their expansion stopped.

I wouldn't describe Hungary or the Mamluk Sultanate as minor. They may have had some internal problems, but they weren't 'collapsing' either before the Ottomans hit them.

 

[Chamboozer]

their troops had notoriously BAD discipline, running away from massively inferior forces and getting massacred as a result.

Not really.

Rhoads Murphey, Ottoman Warfare, 1500-1700 (1999), p. 25.

The Ottomans' Western contemporaries were so impressed with the discipline and valour in battle of the sultan's regular army that they were inclined to attribute Ottoman success to the superhuman efforts of Ottoman soldiers driven, or so they believed, by an irrepressible missionary zeal.

Colin Imber, The Ottoman Empire, 1300-1650: The Structure of Power 2nd ed. (2009), 286.

The Habsburg commander in Hungary 1564 and 1568, Lazarus Schwendi, testifies to the effectiveness of these [Ottoman] tactics, stressing that the Christian forces should not allow the Ottomans to lure them within reach of the mobile fortification in the center of the line. He comments, too, on the excellence of the Janissaries as marksmen: 'there are about 12000 arquebusiers with long arquebuses which they manage excellently.' Other Europeans, for example, at the Ottoman siege of Malta in 1565, also comment on the accurate fire of the Janissaries. Schwendi, it seems, regarded the Ottomans as invincible on the battlefield and during the summer, when they could mobilize a full army.

Edward Seymour Forster, trans. The Turkish Letters of Ogier Ghiselin de Busbecq (1927; 2005), p. 111-2.

I tremble when I think of what the future must bring when I compare the Turkish system with our own; one army must prevail and the other be destroyed, for certainly both cannot remain unscathed. On their side are the resources of a mighty empire, strength unimpaired, experience and practice in fighting, a veteran soldiery, habituation to victory, endurance of toil, unity, order, discipline, frugality, and watchfulness. On our side is public poverty, private luxury, impaired strength, broken spirit, lack of endurance or training; the soldiers are insubordinate, the officers avaricious; there is contempt for discipline; license, recklessness, drunkenness, and debauchery are rife; and, worst of all, the enemy is accustomed to victory, and we to defeat. Can we doubt what the result will be? Persia alone interposes in our favour; for the enemy, as he hastens to attack, must keep an eye on this menace to his rear. But Persia is only delaying our fate; it cannot save us. When the Turks have settled with Persia, they shall fly at our throats supported by the might of the whole East; how unprepared are we I dare not say.

Now I don't necessarily think the Ottomans should be supermen either, but numbers were not the only advantage they had on their side.

 

[EMT0]

Not really.

Rhoads Murphey, Ottoman Warfare, 1500-1700 (1999), p. 25.



Colin Imber, The Ottoman Empire, 1300-1650: The Structure of Power 2nd ed. (2009), 286.



Edward Seymour Forster, trans. The Turkish Letters of Ogier Ghiselin de Busbecq (1927; 2005), p. 111-2.



Now I don't necessarily think the Ottomans should be supermen either, but numbers were not the only advantage they had on their side.

I think the game actually represents this pretty well; the comparative advantage the Ottomans had in the early period was the Janissaries acting as a professional army whereas most other states of the era were using a combination of peasant levies and small armies of knights, and as the Janissaries fell into decadence, Ottoman military performance suffered. The game has plenty of Ottoman nerfs towards the late game which represent OTL decline. I wish there was a bit more dynamism to what causes the decline, but I think that it works well enough as-is.

This does bring up the whole angle of, 'If the Ottomans get buffs for having a professional army, why are the Hungarians not thrown a bone under Matthius Corvinus' outside of ideas? The Hungarians did just as much asswhooping as the Ottomans in my opinion for the early period of the game. Displace the Ottomans from existence and the man would have likely overran the entirety of the Balkans; he's probably the most underrated statesmen of the 15th century as represented within EU4