Ottoman!

crdvis16

Emperor
Joined
May 2, 2013
Messages
1,241
The next civ I plan to play is the Ottoman empire. Here are my thoughts on how to approach them (having not actually played them yet, at least not since they were designed as a naval civ I think) and if anyone has their own thoughts please share for everyone's benefit.

Tanzimat
Completing a Trade Route grants +150 Science and Food to the origin City if international, or Culture and Gold if internal. Bonuses scale with Era.

Janissary, replaces Musketman.
+3 Combat Strength and +1 Ranged Combat Strength. +25% Combat Strength when attacking and starts with the March (unit will heal every turn, even if it performs an action, but receives a -15% Combat Strength penalty when defending) Promotion.

Siege Foundry, replaces Forge.
3 Production and 1 Science. +50% Production towards Siege units. All Siege units trained in the City receive the Volley Promotion for free. Nearby Iron and Copper provide +1 Production and +1 Gold. +2 Production from mines worked by this city. When you construct a Unit in this City, gain Science equal to 20% of the Unit's Production cost. 1 Maintenance.

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UA/UU/UB discussion:

First, the UA. The completion bonuses for the trade routes seem like they are in the ballpark of being about as valuable as the normal per turn trade route yields. In other words, you might see something like 5 gold, 2 science, 3 culture over 30 turns for a trade route in the ancient era and that is pretty equivalent to the completion bonus of 150 science/food or 150 culture/gold that the UA gives.

This makes it very important that the trade routes you send actually complete (not pillaged or interrupted by war) and you might also favor trade routes that are particularly low on the number of turns required to complete as long as those trade routes aren't significantly worse than the longer options. This might push me toward using internal trade routes rather than international ones as they should be much easier to protect, or maybe using international routes to nearby allied CSs or to nearby civs who I do not think are likely to DoW.

Also, since my trade routes are essentially twice as strong as a normal civs when taking into account the completion bonus, Petra and Colossus might be particularly good wonders to aim for.

The UU doesn't seem particularly tricky to use- a musketman with increased CS and RCS, march, and +25% to attacking is quite strong. Probably a good idea to pair at least some of them with medic I/II to increase the strength of march- maybe half go for the medic line and the other half work toward other strong promotions.

The UB, on the other hand, has some interesting incentives aside from the extra base production/science. +50% production toward siege units and siege units start with volley almost makes siege units an honorary UU of the Ottomans. In fact, it might make sense to spam siege units and not bother with the archer line at the beginning of the game and instead use siege units as an all-purpose unit/city attacker. If you look at the ranged unit and siege unit available throughout the game the siege unit either has greater or equal RCS while costing equal or less than the ranged unit when you apply the 50% production reduction. Aside from having worse mobility when in enemy lands (but only outside of rough terrain) compared to ranged units and admittedly worse promotions for straight unit attacking, the siege unit is probably a better value production-wise than the ranged unit. This might be especially true before the Janissary is available because once the Janissary is available any ranged unit you have that does not have a 4th tier promotion like march is sort of outdated and might not be worth upgrading. So I might plan on having an early army comprised solely of siege, melee, and some mounted units.

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General plan (victory condition, policies, etc):
I think Progress is probably the least incentivized opening policy. The more cities you settle the more you are diluting your on-completion trade route bonuses and the Ottoman kit doesn't have anything in particular that makes it easier or stronger to go wide than the average civ (maybe you could argue that the extra production/science on the foundry can help with wide some). If circumstances dictate that wide is better for some reason then I'm sure it's viable but all things being equal, it wouldn't be my plan.

I could see Tradition being used and leveraging the extra science/food or culture/gold from the trade routes to boost your capital quite a bit.

However, my view is that Authority is probably the way to go. Having a largely puppet empire means your completion bonus on trade routes is still a major contributor to yields. Also, if I am planning on having a LOT of siege units around I may as well use them for their primary purpose- taking cities! If I'm going to take a bunch of cities I may as well use the opening policy tree that will benefit that path the most.

With that in mind, my intended victory condition will likely be domination (or a win via culture/science/diplomacy by "default" after wrecking most of the competition).

I see less clear reasons for opting for a particular renaissance tree. Depending on how close I am to capturing a religion (I typically don't try to found one of my own if I plan on conquering my neighbors anyway) fealty may make sense, or if it looks like a domination aided culture or diplomacy victory is the best route then Artistry/Statecraft might be the obvious choice at that point.

Similar situation for the Industrial trees. Depending on how good or bad my conquering has been going, Imperialism might make sense or perhaps it will be time to pivot to Rationalism to get going on a science victory or Industry as a more all-purpose tree.

There are some interesting ideological policies for the Ottomans. In Freedom, the +2 trade route policy would be quite strong as well as Transnationalism ( Each turn, there is a chance that a Corporate Franchise will appear in a foreign city. Global franchise maximum increased by 20%.)- if I am unable to spread my corporation via trade routes for fear of them being pillaged and losing my completion bonus then having an alternative way for the franchises to be created could be nice.

In Order, Nationalization (Corporate Offices (up to your Global Franchise limit) function as Franchises. Foreign Franchises no longer benefit your Corporation.) could also solve the problem of having a tough time spreading franchises while Iron Curtain ( Free Courthouse upon city capture. +250% food or production from internal trade routes. City connections generate +5 Gold and Production.) could be nice if I am using a lot of internal trade routes.

Autocracy is overall just strong when domination is the goal but I don't see anything that synergizes with the Ottomans in particular.

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I'd be interested in hearing how others would play the Ottomans, or how they have played them in the past!
 
I started an Ottoman run recently, but I'm trying a different approach, I'm going for the peaceful way, aiming for Science Victory.

I don't think progress is bad for the Ottoman, since you can build cities closer to your trade partners. Closer cities means shorter and more easily defended TR. It also yields more production which is transformed into science with the UB.

I'm planning to go statecraft for medieval. It has the most bonuses to TR and the 20% prod cost to science works with Diplomats.

Colossus and Petra are both very good wonders for Otto's.
 
I've more or less won my game as Ottomans. Warfare has been a slug fest as Austria and an Inca with very hilly/mountainous terrain proved really tough to crack. However, they are both now my vassals and I am leading in almost every category, though not overwhelmingly so.

England on the other continent is likely my only competitor and she might be difficult to take on directly via warfare but she isn't particularly threatening to beat me to any win condition even if I go peaceful from here on out.

Internal trade routes were indeed very useful as the Ottomans. Ensuring that they would nearly always complete for the gold/culture bonuses was nice. The few times I attempted to send trade routes internationally usually resulted in a few routes being lost before they could complete even if I thought they should be relatively safe.

Jannisaries and the honorary siege line UU were both quite strong. Each starting with very strong high-tier promotions is huge. I mostly went with splash damage on my siege line to make them more versatile for unit killing while I went for medic promotions on the Jannissaries to play off of March.
 
With Janissaries I sometimes had them take direct melee hits, since they could heal fast afterwards. That made them level up faster - and let me field slightly fewer melee units.
 
With Janissaries I sometimes had them take direct melee hits, since they could heal fast afterwards. That made them level up faster - and let me field slightly fewer melee units.

Agreed- while Janissaries were available my army composition had very few riflemen-line units as they were just not as needed as meat-shields when Janissaries could take hits so well. March+medic II means that an injured Janissary can be moved off the front line but return at full health really quickly. I don't think I would have succeeded invading the Inca in their mountainous/hilly terrain if I hadn't invaded while Janissary were available.
 
Agreed- while Janissaries were available my army composition had very few riflemen-line units as they were just not as needed as meat-shields when Janissaries could take hits so well. March+medic II means that an injured Janissary can be moved off the front line but return at full health really quickly. I don't think I would have succeeded invading the Inca in their mountainous/hilly terrain if I hadn't invaded while Janissary were available.

I don’t understand why it’s bad to make archers early. When they upgrade to janissay they keep all their promotions and gain March. Having archers ready to upgrade the moment you unlock janissaries also gives you a longer window to abuse them. Purchasing janinisarries feels bad because you aren’t getting the bonus science from siege foundry (although purchasing siege units is even worse). And you can’t afford to wait 5 to 10 turns for your army to arrive. That’s 1 less city you get to conquer during your insane power spike.

I wonder if it is really ok for jannisarry and cannon to be on the same tech (along with tercio) btw. In my game I had Way of Trancedence so I got the necessary gold to upgrade my entire army without saving up at all. My troops were waiting on the border and took the enemy capital 5 turns later. I am just getting used to immortal and I have never snowballed as hard as I did with the ottomans. I had fountain of youth so that’s obviously busted but still. The amount of yields from TR is insane!

Oh I almost forgot my question! How many is the right amount of medics? 1 for every 3 units? 4? 5?
 
I don’t understand why it’s bad to make archers early. When they upgrade to janissay they keep all their promotions and gain March. Having archers ready to upgrade the moment you unlock janissaries also gives you a longer window to abuse them. Purchasing janinisarries feels bad because you aren’t getting the bonus science from siege foundry (although purchasing siege units is even worse). And you can’t afford to wait 5 to 10 turns for your army to arrive. That’s 1 less city you get to conquer during your insane power spike.

I wonder if it is really ok for jannisarry and cannon to be on the same tech (along with tercio) btw. In my game I had Way of Trancedence so I got the necessary gold to upgrade my entire army without saving up at all. My troops were waiting on the border and took the enemy capital 5 turns later. I am just getting used to immortal and I have never snowballed as hard as I did with the ottomans. I had fountain of youth so that’s obviously busted but still. The amount of yields from TR is insane!

Oh I almost forgot my question! How many is the right amount of medics? 1 for every 3 units? 4? 5?

Regarding building archers early- my argument is that siege units that cost half production and start with volley are superior to archers until Janissaries unlock. You only have so much space for ranged firepower in your army before you need unit cap for melee meatshields or mounted flankers so it may as well be filled up by siege in the early game. Once Janissaries arrive then the math changes, of course.

Though there is an argument that the strategy above might make you miss out on a stronger power spike when you unlock Janissary because if you did make some archer line units early on they might have +range or indirect fire or something else strong that newly created Janissary miss out on. That has to be weighed against the advantages of the strategy I advocated for.

For your medic question- I was lazy and gave the majority of my Janissary medic II and there were times when Janissary were probably close to half my army I imagine. I would think that 1 out of 4 could be pretty safe, so in my case I should have given just half of my Janissary medic.
 
Generally you will want to have at least a couple archers before siege units are unlocked anyway.
 
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