Ottoman

[matlajs]

i hate to have Ethiopia in my game.They are always runaway civ, always pick at least some belief best fitting for me, always pick Defender of faith and mostly ever build Himeji castle, so they are also almost unpenetrable. I head to ban them in my next games. Pacall is also bothering, but in my current game, they are dwarwes to Ethiopia.

 

[Txurce]

i hate to have Ethiopia in my game.They are always runaway civ, always pick at least some belief best fitting for me, always pick Defender of faith and mostly ever build Himeji castle, so they are also almost unpenetrable. I head to ban them in my next games. Pacall is also bothering, but in my current game, they are dwarwes to Ethiopia.

Ethiopia strikes me as a rung down from their runaway peak, but usually a top contender, and definitely a pain in the ass.

 

[vuko]

In my 6 games it was always Songhai as the absolute top runaway. It doesn't matter if he manages to occupy a neighbor or two or none. He is just the best.

 

[ElliotS]

In my 6 games it was always Songhai as the absolute top runaway. It doesn't matter if he manages to occupy a neighbor or two or none. He is just the best.

That hasn't been my experience at all.

 

[tu_79]

In my 6 games it was always Songhai as the absolute top runaway. It doesn't matter if he manages to occupy a neighbor or two or none. He is just the best.

It is, but they also lose terrain in industrial age. China is more dangerous overall. Never stops.

 

[neo_arcadia]

Has anyone tried the new Ottoman? Does 150 of yields make them more interesting to play?

 

[LukaSlovenia29]

Yes, the changes to Ottomans and to trade routes in general (more science&culture) make it a lot more interesting, especially with having to take calculated risks whether to use internal trade routes, international to CS or international to AI.

 

[randomnub]

Thanks for taking the time to write this out. I I've been interested in Ottomans for a long time because the Janisseries are so potent, but I have never finished a game with the 100 that the UA was before. Now that its 150 international, I'm super curious of timings that can be pulled off. Did you time the trade routes for oracle or any other wonders? Are you centralizing the trade routes to come out of one city or originating in different cities? Are you just using this UA as a production steroid like Egypt or are you using the internal trade routes part? Is it just too random and hard to time and coordinate for?

Answering here so the Otto threads stops talking about OP AI and the sample game stops talking about Ottos... maybe

Most wonders were completed as usual in the production heavy tradition capital, for the others I just looked at the map, you can spot AI starting to build something for which there's a 3d model through fog of war. Then with spies in the biggest capitals it becomes easier but the hammer overflow from the trade route completition is not something I planned in advance... I just refresh my memory every few turns to check when I'm going to complete a TR, if it's close and there's an available wonder I can push for it.

For the first couple of 'rounds' of TR I just use them to grow the expansions. Also aim at the closest neighbour of which you have a clear map visual of to avoid barb camps. Avoid going through CSs who can spawn some barbarian invader as well. It's a good time for those scouts with nowhere to go, to clar the fog of war through the trade routes because losing a caravan is always a setback, but for Ottos is a little drama. When you want to send a trade route count the tiles it's going to move through: the caravan moves 2tiles/turn, has to move between the origin and target city at least twice and can't go below 24 turns afaik. So 4/6/8/12 tiles of trade route are to be preferred, because you want them to complete asap.

When the expos have forges and 10+ population then I just send them from the capital/holy city for better yelds or religion spread, as long as they don't take too long to complete.

It's a scaling 150 food/science/production international and 150 gold/culture internal btw.

 

[randomnub]

IMO it is still not big enough to aim for a Wonder Spike. The only way you can do this is if you plan 30 turns in advance to have the tech/policy req. unlock 1-4 turns before the route completes. It would help a lot if you could see the # of turns a route takes to complete when you send it.

Actually a question i have is does the production automatically go to what you are building when the route completes, or to what you put in queue the turn after the doute
completes. If its the latter, you can also use the 150 science to create a larger window to time the wonder tech. Goes from 1 to 4 turns before -> -5 to 4

The hammers overflow, same way of CS quest rewards I think.

The science overflow has the same issue of Progress science... if you aren't queue-ing techs then the overflow gets put into a random available tech instead of what happens with the normal beakers overflow (that you can invest into all available techs ). A change here would be a great QoL improvement.

Btw, Ottos are good with all starting trees imo, but Tradition is probably the worst one due to no synergy with GAs or GPs, so wonder whoreing with their trade routes is just a niche option. Tradition/Authority give you the early production that might be necessary to get the Statue of Zeus and the free forge that goes with it though and that's a big advantage.

 

[LukaSlovenia29]

the caravan moves 2tiles/turn, has to move between the origin and target city at least twice and can't go below 24 turns afaik. So 4/6/8/12 tiles of trade route are to be preferred, because you want them to complete asap.

Thanks for this. So trade route turn timer depends solely on the number of tiles between the two cities, and nothing else influences this (roads/railroads, terrain features, rivers, wonders, buildings, policies,...)?

 

[randomnub]

The caravan speed is fixed but when you select your destination it follows the less rough path, following roads when possible. So by building some road tiles through a forested hill the path may vary and you could gain a move turn here and there.

 

[LukaSlovenia29]

Ah, ok, thanks. Is there a modmod or some feature that enhances the UI so it'd show in the select trade route destination how long it would take for the route to be completed? Otherwise, I imagine the only way is to send a route, click on the trade display and then reload the game and send somewhere else, if it takes too long.

 

[randomnub]

If you have the caravan sitting in the right city you can move the mouse over each possible location and the route will be highlighted on the map. Count the hexes, then hover the mouse over the other available routes... repeat for a while and remember to curse the GUI.

 

[Blue Ghost]

The Ottomans are one of the few civs I haven’t tried, largely due to the difficulty in figuring out when a trade route ends.

 

[LukaSlovenia29]

and remember to curse the GUI

Haha, true

I've been playing with the Ottomans in the new patch and I think the change from 100 to 150 has catapulted them towards the top 5 of my list of favourite civs to play. In a way I think the increase has been too/very big and that it would suffice if it were changed to 125 or 130.

 

[Der_Zorn_gottes]

150 is fine. There is such a high risk to get nothing at all from your UA (of course there is observation bias, but I never lose so many trade routes as with Ottomans) that the reward needs to be very high to compensate.
I would like to see and from internal ones and ,, from external ones to match the yields you get from those regularly.

 

[matlajs]

I can say, back on the matter of top civs, that cultural one are really weak in these versions. I think in these versions, Ai can not pursue cultural victory, at least on king dif. because i play my games on communitas map, the world is very crowded, even with minimum watter lvl set and some civs just are in better shape to deal with that than the others. But from my point of view, civs, which does not get any relevant bonus to science( no matter source) are usually bottom. That's why Ethiopia, Maya, Assyria(they are about top3-4 civs in my games now), Ottoman and some others are usually a top AI civs. Some of them scyrocket higher with game progressing, some fall behind based on circumstances. But in my last game Maya, who picked Sainthood and was able to spread into 4 other civs, he was almost unstopable.

Maya seem to me best Ai controlled civ right now. Most bothering and very aggresively pursue whatever path it chooses. Settle aggresively, spread aggresively, not best at fighting but save because of military advancement, etc. This civ has some advantages and AI knows, how to use them. On the other hand, there are many civs, which have never reached their top and it seems to me, that they even does not know how.

For example japan. Very weak AI civ in my last 3 previous games. They always seem to pursue for some wonders and building advancement before they start expansion. With such crowded map, i think they could change their priority for their own good. Also bonus from dojo building, while very interresting for player and absolutely no initiative by me to change it, seem very weak for AI. I think AI could get yields from that trippled for that beign at least near efficient like for player. Before that change, where they did not have yields from military/defensive buildings, they have played just fine in a matter of early expansion. Now i saw them 3x in a row, first build a walls in a capital and probably barracks too. By that time other AIs have already settled 3-4 cities.

 

[ElliotS]

I can say, back on the matter of top civs, that cultural one are really weak in these versions. I think in these versions, Ai can not pursue cultural victory, at least on king dif. because i play my games on communitas map, the world is very crowded, even with minimum watter lvl set and some civs just are in better shape to deal with that than the others. But from my point of view, civs, which does not get any relevant bonus to science( no matter source) are usually bottom. That's why Ethiopia, Maya, Assyria(they are about top3-4 civs in my games now), Ottoman and some others are usually a top AI civs. Some of them scyrocket higher with game progressing, some fall behind based on circumstances. But in my last game Maya, who picked Sainthood and was able to spread into 4 other civs, he was almost unstopable.

Maya seem to me best Ai controlled civ right now. Most bothering and very aggresively pursue whatever path it chooses. Settle aggresively, spread aggresively, not best at fighting but save because of military advancement, etc. This civ has some advantages and AI knows, how to use them. On the other hand, there are many civs, which have never reached their top and it seems to me, that they even does not know how.

For example japan. Very weak AI civ in my last 3 previous games. They always seem to pursue for some wonders and building advancement before they start expansion. With such crowded map, i think they could change their priority for their own good. Also bonus from dojo building, while very interresting for player and absolutely no initiative by me to change it, seem very weak for AI. I think AI could get yields from that trippled for that beign at least near efficient like for player. Before that change, where they did not have yields from military/defensive buildings, they have played just fine in a matter of early expansion. Now i saw them 3x in a row, first build a walls in a capital and probably barracks too. By that time other AIs have already settled 3-4 cities.

This is a very difficulty based thing. On Deity Japan gets great yields from Dojo because it's units get multiple bonus levels and level up much faster. Meanwhile cultural powerhouse civs like Egypt and Brazil consistently lead games, while Babylon, Korea and Assyria typically struggle. Ethiopia and Maya are normally strong because of their religion and the way that snowballing works.

 

[LukaSlovenia29]

Played two games with the new Ottomans on Immortal. The last one was on Standard/Oval/no tech trading/saving policies enabled/no events/RAs enabled, against Greece (twice), Songhai (twice), Aztecs (twice) and Arabia. I think these two games were the only ones on Immortal in the last year or so where I didn't have a problem more or less staying within 3-6 techs behind the tech leaders even in the early eras

I didn't found a religion in either games (also, no AI managed to anchor its religion in my cities for a longer period of time). In choosing which AI to send my trade routes to, I exercised extreme caution and I also made sure to be as friendly with them as possible (ensuring that we're trade partners by offering free gold/luxuries, opening my borders ASAP), and also sending them to as near of cities as possible so they'd be complete in around 26-28 turns.

All in all, I think they're very strong now, especially when you luck into a peaceful neighbour or if you have a reliable CS-ally nearby to send TR to.

 

[LukaSlovenia29]

If I understand correctly, Siege Foundry only grants science for built units, but not for purchased ones, right?