- Joined
- Mar 17, 2007
- Messages
- 9,316
Indeed, this game has been relatively historically accurate for the Ottomans. A few minor details differ, but largely it lines up. There are a lot of other areas - the Timurids surviving in place, Granada eventually turning back the Reconquista, England being the first big colonizer - where it hasn't, but in that part of the world, it's been pretty close.
After the war that ended in 1675, my army was entirely depleted, so I invested my winnings in manpower. It increased from 97K to over 150K max in the span of 4 years, and by 1688, I was somewhat prepared again, when the Ottomans attacked Bosnia, who was backed by the Commonwealth and Great Britain. Sensing an opportunity, I declared war, brining Hungary in as well, and making it a war from the Adriatic to Astrakhan. It would take five years, but finally the Ottomans lost some ground! Bosnia took 3 provinces, I took 3, and a few were returned to Yemen. Even so, to the Ottomans this was but a minor setback.
And in 1697, they attacked again - this time the Pope, my new ally. Unfortunately, this time they exploited a hole in the military access system, traipsing through neutral Commonwealth ground to bypass my forts. I couldn't even cancel my military access to close the hole, as due to the size of the Commonwealth, the Ottomans always had troops in their territory! That is one chance I dislike from version 1.1 - back in the good old days, having military access to walk around an enemy's forts was a strategic advantage, now they get the same benefit and keeping access during peacetime is a strategic vulnerability. But soon enough, the Ottomans had taken Ryazan, and Moscow, and Novgorod, and were marching around northern Russia during the winter while I finished hitting their ally Gazikumukh (who by now was mostly in the Ural Mountains and Kazakhstan) like a wrecking ball. This eventually began to hurt my economy, but the attrition hit the Ottoman army fairly severely too - at one point the Ottoman attrition losses alone were approaching the overall losses of our entire alliance. Once my army arrived, I slowly pushed them back, and while Hungary was devastated, the Pope was inflicting defeats on the Ottomans as if he had divine favor.
After five years of conflict, the Pope eventually made peace, extracting a good 1500 gold (split fairly evenly), the cancellation of the Ottoman-Moroccan alliance (one that in retrospect I should have demanded the cancellation of long ago; hopefully they find non-Ottoman allies instead), and the return of a couple more provinces to Yemen. I suspect that with a couple more years of Russian winter, the Ottomans would have started to crack. As it was, they still had 200,000 men (to my 120,000 - 50% more than last war - and the Pope's 60,000), not counting allies, but were down to 30,000 manpower, versus my 50,000.
So now there's an 8-year truce, and the Ottomans have already attacked Yemen, who has once again been betrayed by their "allies" the Timurids. My hope is to get the whole crew together for the next big Ottoman war around 1710, as now I'm allies with all their European neighbors. Ryazan, the Commonwealth, Moldavia, Hungary, Bosnia, and the Papal State - and if the stars align, Great Britain is a possibility as well. The Coalition has already defeated them once in a fragmented war; with the addition of the Pope and all together, especially if Morocco sits out, I think a strong victory is a distinct possibility.
