New Civ Game Guide: Ottomans (Tides of Power)

[j51]

Look fun, but by including those two unique units in particular the Ottomans are the most glaring example of a civ that straddles the Exploration/Modern divide in a confusing way à la the Mughals, the Spanish, and the “Pirates.”

 

[j51]

Also isn’t the Middle Eastern arquebusier model in Exploration already a Jannisary?

 

[Sagax]

They are closer to those Artifacts than you are.
If they see an Artifact in your territory, they may decide to invade before digging it up.

Which goes completely against the pacing of Modern. Explorers become available on the first civic if you want to, are functionally immortal, and have pretty much free movement. You pump them out ASAP and go digging. At the same time, you are discouraged from warring early because of how Ideology legacy points are awarded.

I feel like they were designed with the philosophy that a player isn’t supposed to pursue every legacy path, which I’m not sure how well will play out. Flavorful Civ design, but for now I expect them getting a Nepal treatment in the future…

 

[queenpea]

I was happy to see that they are a "cultural" civilization, until I remembered that this just relates to the artifact mini game, which is (for me) a problem with Civ VII, not the Ottomans in particular. I guess I just wish there were multiple ways to interact with culture rather than the move and click explorer game.

Also, it's odd to me that the cami unique building, which is a mosque (right?), would have artifact slots.

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

Leader synergies:

Ashoka, World Conqueror: The Ottomans are particularly good at making siege units and conquering cities, which work harder under Ashoka's tyrannical thumb.

Catherine the Great: The synergy revolves around Great Works. Her artifacts get +6 Culture, and if you play the Ottomans right (settling Nat. Wonders), you can get quite a few of them nice and early. She will also have even more slots to display them, on top of the extra slots the Cami gets.

Edward Teach: The Ottoman Corsair will fit nicely in Blackbeard's naval domination strategy. Although he could simply just take them by force!

Friedrich, both but especially Baroque: A shared focus on land-based domination and collecting Artifacts (as Baroque).

Isabella: The Ottomans benefit more than most from having Natural Wonders in their borders, and so does Isabella.

Napoleon, Revolutionary: His faster land unit bonus will work nicely with all the Ottomans' bonuses to land units and their Janissaries.

Sayyida al Hurra: Planting Barbary Corsairs in your rivals' ports will stage them nicely for a pillage party when they inevitably declare war over your espionage tactics.

Simon Bolivar: A leader who benefits from taking cities and a civ that has various bonuses towards taking cities.

Jerxes, Jerk of Jerks: "Same, Simon. Same."

 

[Siptah]

Also, it's odd to me that the cami unique building, which is a mosque (right?), would have artifact slots.

Maybe because many Ottoman mosques (in modern Turkey and beyond) used spolia in quite significant places. But it could simply be a gameplay decision without much base in history.

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

Maybe because many Ottoman mosques (in modern Turkey and beyond) used spolia in quite significant places. But it could simply be a gameplay decision without much base in history.

Perhaps it's tangential to the Hagia Sofia being used as a mosque and a museum.

 

[tedhebert]

Interesting design…but the Janissary might (sight unseen) be the single most baffling unique unit just for being an infantry replacement (already the most underused/underpowered unit class) that actively causes unhappiness in your empire if it’s in any districts **at all**. It’s thematic yes, but I think if this is not tuned correctly that happiness bonus could kill the AI, and just would encourage players to not use the unit if it is too harsh.

That’s based on my reading of the unit. Perhaps it excels more than I would expect with all of the combat bonuses in the open fields and against land units though? I certainly hope so for that tradeoff because it will make city defense AND offense more difficult to plan based on how I read it. Time will tell, I want to be optimistic about it. Maybe that penalty shouldn’t apply to occupied/conquered cities though, but then it could be too easy to circumvent. Idk.

I wonder if they thought it would be fun to inflict happiness malus to another civ by parking your janissaries in THEIR districts (thus the OCCUPYING in the text) ?

 

[queenpea]

Maybe because many Ottoman mosques (in modern Turkey and beyond) used spolia in quite significant places. But it could simply be a gameplay decision without much base in history.

That's interesting, but I agree with you more on the latter.

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

I wonder if they thought it would be fun to inflict happiness malus to another civ by parking your janissaries in THEIR districts (thus the OCCUPYING in the text) ?

That's how I read it. You can inflict that malus on other civs, which isn't too much when they are at peace, but combined with war weariness could lead to some mildly helpful results.

 

[tedhebert]

That's how I read it. You can inflict that malus on other civs, which isn't too much when they are at peace, but combined with war weariness could lead to some mildly helpful results.

Yeah still I don't think I'd spend time and energy on this But to each his own

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

Yeah still I don't think I'd spend time and energy on this But to each his own

Yeah, if you can even manage to knock the city into negative happiness, you're just zapping its yields by a few percent. In some marginal cases, a city might already be deep into this state and pushing them farther will cause improvements and buildings to self-pillage, which is actually counter-productive if you wanted to keep those around as free heals for your attacking units.

 

[Alexander's Hetaroi]

Also, it's odd to me that the cami unique building, which is a mosque (right?), would have artifact slots.

Well, they would get wet if they were placed in the Hammam.

But what others have said maybe it's because the Hagia Sophia was a mosque then converted into a museum? Though I don't think it was converted into a museum until after the empire fell.

 

[gunnergoz]

Any idea when this will be downloadable? All I know is "next week" which is pretty vague.

 

[Menocchio]

It makes sense since the Ottomans were notorious collectors of religious relics of all sorts, although most were (and still are) kept in the Topkapi Palace and not a mosque. Here's one example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hırka-i_Şerif_Mosque

I agree though that the Modern Era artifact hoarding minigame is more tedious than anything. Maybe the Ottoman approach will be more interesting than Britain's, though—at least this civ doesn't waste a valuable unique unit slot on it! I also wonder if there are plans in the making for reworking the Modern legacy paths in some way.

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

Any idea when this will be downloadable? All I know is "next week" which is pretty vague.

This resembles the marketing schedule prior to the first half of Tides of Power, so it will probably release on Tuesday, December 9.

 

[gunnergoz]

Thanks friend, I suspected as much but had no confirmation. A best guess is as good as anything I've seen yet.

 

[pjotroos]

To be fair, it'll most likely be easier for them to Excavate it first as it's in their territory - also helped by their Civic that lets their Explorers ignore Vegetation and Rivers

I'm not sure how helped by that they are - that civic is listed last, and the explorer activity is on the mastery node. That is an enormous amount of culture you need to invest into getting that, instead of pathing your research towards Hegemony.

I'm curious about the Barbary Corsair ability: "It costs no Movement to Coastal Raid" - can you also do multiple Coastal Raids per turn? I guess not, because if you're in a Navigable River in a dense Settlement, you can really do some serious pillaging in a single turn!

Yep, you absolutely can do multiple coastal raids; it's something I've been utilising heavily in the recent games. The ability looks very Bulgaria-on-release, and I wouldn't be surprised if it quickly gets adjusted, but I'm sure on day 1 we'll be able to do some serious damage.

On the whole, they look like a very strong, coherent pick for a military victory - especially if you ended up with a lot of infantry and not a lot of cavalry in your game at the end of exploration.

Siege Train seems like a monster of a tradition, combined with their attack bonus. Unless I'm reading it wrong, there is no range restriction on it; no "within the settlement borders" even, so if you play it right, you can easily play several turns in a single turn across the whole map. And with stacking attack bonuses - civ ability, against districts, no health penalty - means you can do quite a lot of damage with them.

Culture set-up, on the other hand, looks a bit of a mess. The double value for excavation within your own territory can be a bit of a banana skin, cause if you don't do the digging in your own land, someone else will, and you don't actually have any bonuses towards getting the explorers; so even if you're aiming for other win conditions, you still need to invest your resources in getting the explorers defensively. The movement from Tanẓîmât is far too deep into their own tree to matter for the exploration era artifacts, and if you're trying to get it to claim the Hegemony artifacts, you're extremely late to Hegemony and likely miss out on the four free ones. It might feel different when played, but it feels like you're just getting bunch of low value stuff - extra production on museums AND extra artifact slots on the unique quarter, when you're never constrained by the slots available - and the one bonus you get towards extracting them is available to everyone else on the map, too.

 

[Evolena]

Game guide here.

Will the other guides that need it ever be updated (Napoleon, Egypt, ...)? And if possible with an update date as that possibility has been added some time ago?

 

[Josephias]

I still don't quite get the unique ability. If I see an Ottoman player, I will always rush for the artifacts in their territory because it will give me two artifacts instead of one? How is that helping them?

Indeed, I was looking this to have a counterbalance in some other point, maybe a tradition or a civic effect, that could bring you some benefit of other civs excavating artifacts in your territory (e.g., you receive gold or science for each artifact other civ extracts from your lands - as it actually happened some ottoman empire archeological sites were given in compensation of other nations helping infrastructure projects)

I think it's meant to be a double edged sword to represent that a sizable portion of the Modern Age had the Ottomans on the back foot, encouraging other Civilizations to be watching you for signs of weakness so they can swipe a portion of your empire's wealth and prowess for themselves. It also historically reflects how many of the artifacts uncovered during the Ottoman occupation of Egypt actually went to Britain... playing as the Ottomans, you will have to be constantly vigilant.

And while this is true and favourful, the key point is, do you have any way of preventing other civ explorers roaming your territory?