Tips for Getting the Wonders for Ottoman UHV 1

[dragof2]

First of all, I'm very sorry if this has already been addressed in another thread. I looked around, but I was unable to find any.

I am playing on regent/normal

So for the Ottoman UHV-1 the goal is to have four non-obsolete wonders in your capital by 1550 a.d. I built up my culture and nabbed the Spiral Minaret. Since there were no more Islamic wonders I could reach without 5 or 6 techs, I switched to Orthodoxy. Annoyingly it and Islam can't exist in the same city, but even after I got it back into Constantinople I couldn't build another wonder due to needing more culture. From the culture slider I think I could go back to around the game start and supercharge my culture rate to have enough before the deadline, but that would mean my science would go from poor to non-existent.

Is there something I am missing in terms of either getting culture for the wonders, or some other workaround that I'm not aware of?

 

[oioi23]

If you play on a 3000bc start Ankara nearly always has 2 wonders already in it. The wonders I build are Sankore (education, hardly ever gets built) and Alamut Fortress. Judiciary also gets you Topkapi palace if there is only 1 wonder in Ankara. Ankara is usually a far better place to do it than Kostantiniyye

 

[dragof2]

I am usually leery about 3000bc starts, both for load times and how much more of the start is up to random chance, but I did try doing 3000bc start Ankara. I think there might be some kind of event attached to the Alamut fortress, because it was almost always in one of my flipped cities on start. Even with that though, that was the only wonder that I ever got Ankara to spawn with. Which ones do you usually get?

 

[BaneFire]

Ottoman 2 and 3 can be done in any circumstance as they're fairly snowbally and synchronised. On the other hand, Ottoman 1 is a lot more annoying and the one I restarted for most. You have two options, either reload until you get lucky and Constantinople has something like Theodosian Walls, Mount Athos and the Hagia Sophia, or just stick with the typical 2 wonders in Constantinople run.
Basically you need to forget about techs for anything other than wonders. If you're lucky Spiral Minaret and University of Sankore are both available, but that's still a risky play to make as the Moors will quite happily grab either. Your nearest tech options are therefore Topkapi Palace, Gur-e-Amir, and the Blue Mosque in that order. You won't be getting Blue Mosque before 1550.

In Andrrew's guide he suggests running all wealth to support teching up to these, but on regent you don't need to. You can sell techs to Mali and other civs to keep your tech rate high, sack cities that aren't very good and even vassalise Poland or the HRE to get a good tech trading partner.
What you want to do is start by whipping out core buildings in Constantinople to get it off the ground. Your main objective is a forge, aqueduct, harbor and so on - the forge to guarantee a great engineer, the others to get it growing. Make sure you're getting good culture buildings, as you do need developing in Constantinople to get the wonders. Now your main objective is an Islamic Grand Mosque - the +50% culture will really get you a long way forward. You WILL have to run 100% culture for a few turns, but you were going to have to do that anyway to get UHV 3. Therefore your goal is to synchronise the techs you need for those wonders with Constantinople being the right culture at the right time. This may take a few tries, check the bottom left of Constantinople city screen to see how many turns to developing and adjust as needed, selling techs and resources to support higher culture spending.

In a good game you can just build Spiral Minaret/University of Sankore in Constantinople and then GE rush Topkapi before 1550. In a worse game you may find yourself in an awkard position having to save two GEs and rush Topkapi and Gur-e-Amir in quick succession. Make sure to grab an Orthodox Monastery in Athens to ensure that you can re-spread Orthodoxy to Constantinople.

Ultimately though be ready to reload, a lot. Your ideal start has these:
* Byzantines either already collapsed or have lost Constantinople. This means you can take it two turns before your flip and it starts as your capital.
* 3 wonders in Constantinople.
* Egypt exists. You can tech trade on or two techs with the Ayyubids.
* Independent/barbarian/Byzantine Budapest and Belgrade. This lets you go straight for Vienna.
* Russians haven't settled the historic territory in Crimea.
* Polish haven't settled the historic territory in Moldova.

 

[dragof2]

I have done a few run throughs (haven't yet completed one, restarted after I realized how much of North Africa I needed and I haven't come back yet). I hadn't even thought to just do everything possible to maximize tech to get additional wonders available. It seems like they are very start dependent, Byzantine strength, Constantinople's wonders, and wonders that haven't been built yet are all out of your control but all crucial. So I guess I'll just reiterate what you said, nothing wrong with restarting. This is just one of those UHV's.

 

[Harold the Saxon]

1.17 update on this one —

The phrasing on this 1st UHV may have changed a bit: it's now 4 Wonders in your capital in 1550. (It doesn't appear to matter if the Wonders are obsolete.)

From a 600 AD start, Theodosian Walls and Hagia Sophia are in Constantinople from the start date, so you should find them already present when you conquer the city. (This should be done on your first turn so that it becomes your capital — otherwise, a city that flips will become capital, and it won't be able to make enough Wonders in time. Great Bombards take care of the conquest no problem.)

Arabia and other civs may have left some Islamic or other Wonders that are accessible to you. However, the ones you will definitely be able to get (and are historical) are: Topkapi Palace (Judiciary); and Blue Mosque (Academia). Both of these Wonders have bonuses that are relevant to your special power/goals, so you will likely want to build them anyway.

However, a couple of things about this process surprised me, and made it less of a cake-walk than I expected.

Firstly, to ensure you get to Academia for Blue Mosque in good time, you will have to pay some attention to your science and economy, rather than just focusing on military and culture with a view to UHVs 2&3.

It may be best not to expand too much at first, to stop your tech costs from ballooning. I took Belgrade and Athens in addition to Constantinople, plus the two Anatolian cities that flip to you, but stopped there for a century or so. When you do expand further, head for more profitable areas like Syria, Mesopotamia, Egypt (which have more developed cities with Wonders) and leave the Black Sea and Vienna for later.

Grow Konya and Trabzon as much as possible given the terrain they're on (Windmills over Mines) as they're in your core. Other than necessities, all cities should focus on economic buildings for a while. Don't burn Population on your special Ottoman Draft power while it's only getting you Hvy Swordsmen (you start with a few Janissaries, but not the tech to build more), and you can also wait until you build the Wonder that limits the Unhappiness effect from it (Blue Mosque).

Doing all this will help keep beaker production up and tech costs down, but in order to reach your targets in time you may also need to pop a Great Person or two (see point 3 below), as few people will want to trade techs with you.

Probably, you will see Mongolia take control of Mesopotamia and Syria (hopefully they won't attack you!), before collapsing during the 1400s. This is a good time to take over the region, before Iran appears and does the same: better to fight some Crossbow garrisons than their Qizilbashi!

Secondly, Constantinople will have to get to Refined culture level (over 1000) in order to be allowed to build a 4th Great Wonder. Building some basic culture buildings (especially Theatre, Weaver) and running an Artist or two should take care of this in good time without major problems, but it's important to be aware of when you are planning your build order.

Thirdly, there may not be time for you to hard-build the Blue Mosque after researching Academia. This means some planning of Great People is in order. When you take Constantinople it will have two Wonders that produce Great Engineer points. Along with that, run one Great Engineer and no other specialists to make sure your first Great Person is a GE. (Mount Athos may help accelerate things too if it's in a city you take over.) Keep the GE in reserve until you have the tech and culture level to build the Blue Mosque, then rush it. (Hard-build Topkapi Palace: there's plenty of time for it if you beeline Judiciary first.)

Once you have your GE, you can run more specialists in Constantinople. I recommend Artists and Scientists, as either a Great Artist or Scientist can be popped to get towards the tech goal. Science output also helps with this, while the Artists help towards the final UHV.

After the Blue Mosque is sorted, your tech focus can change to Firearms so you can produce more Janissaries. After that, there may not be any more essential techs. (Your Unique Units are so good that developing better ones is not that important.)


A side-note on Civics: the Ottomans start with Despotism and Slavery active. These are out-of-date and not that useful, so I recommend switching to Monarchy and Manorialism for free on the first turn after capturing Constantinople (and any Worker hiding there!).

Out-of-date civics hurt your stability. With my limited early expansion plan, I didn't find that there were many opportunities to capture Workers, so cheap production of them from Manorialism was more useful, as was the Farm bonus (great combo with the Vassalage Farm bonus as always during this period).

As for Despotism, most of your cities are Production-rich and relatively Food-poor (except Constantinople, but you definitely don't want to burn your Population there), so whipping for production is not that useful. (If you do want to burn Population, you can always Draft.) On the other hand, Monarchy may be vital to keeping Constantinople happy for quite a while, until you have more buildings and can secure more luxuries.


However, so far I have only got through UHV-1, so I can't say for sure how all this leads into the subsequent goals!

 

[Harold the Saxon]

Update: Blue Mosque (max. 1 Unhappiness from temporary effects) does not work as I would have expected. It seems that it's only a local effect, not Empire-wide. This means it's only good for drafting in Constantinople.

 

[Harold the Saxon]

Update: I ended up just short of the 1700 AD UHV-2 goal — Ochakiv/Odessa lost the culture battle with Kiev for a couple of Black Sea tiles; and Tripoli's culture fell just short of expanding to one Eastern Med tile ...

I think, despite the research problems it may cause, it is necessary to secure the Black Sea earlier, and it may also be wise to keep a Great Artist in reserve just in case.

There were no military problems — although the HRE got Cuirassiers, no one can really stand up to Janissaries and Great Bombards during this period (and you can pump out an awful lot of Janissaries!).


I've also been looking at the Ottoman core area, because the Expansion penalty became a major issue. The core is small, but I think it's possible to cram a couple more viable cities into it to boost Core Population:

1. Izmir, 1W of starting position, 1S of Sheep. The downside of this spot is that it costs Constantinople a workable tile, but it's only flat Plains. Izmir will be able to use Athens's Fish, Wine & islands, thus growing at the expense of a non-core city. It can also use the Horses to the east and other Plains Hills — Konya never manages to work all of them.

2. Van, 2S 1E of Trabzon, 1S of Lake, 1E of Sheep. Only just properly noticed this outlying core tile, separated from the rest of the core by lake+mountains. It can grow with the Wheat (normally used by Sam/Damascus) and some Mesopotamian Flood Plains. A lot of overlap with Trabzon, but again there are a lot of Plains Hills that the one city never fully uses anyway.


Of course, core cities are still extra cities, with maintenance costs and possible impacts on research costs, etc. I think it might be best to wait to build these until you have a Renaissance tech (Academia) so as to get more free buildings on foundation. But they should both be able to get up to reasonable sizes (8–12) and contribute to avoiding Expansion stability penalties.