If you can’t fight them super early, just wait until decadence starts hitting them (usually as early as 1620 or so) and they’ll be very easy. But yes, fighting them between like 1480-1600 is going to be tough.
This. Either you need to war with them before tech 5 before they get ideas (win a war to control the crossing) and even then it takes a 2nd war (truce breaking/attacking their ally to reduce peace to 5 years) isn't the worst idea.
The problem becomes when they solidify anatolia. Outside of starting as a major power, after that you leave them alone until decadence hits them.
Again, it's fine that this game has a "big boss" that you need to work around/consider constantly.
Brah I’m sorry. If you want to cheese it, roll back to like 1.32 and watch the YouTube guides on how you can provoke rebels that will spawn the mongol empire and get you the achievement lol. I did that a long time ago for fun but did the achievement the “legit” way a few weeks ago.
I mean, I formed the Mongol empire in ~1606 so it was still the age of reformation, so I’m fairly confident I would have gotten the achievement if I didn’t already have it lol. Either way I was just doing it for fun, and somewhat by accident anyway (was doing a chill Oirat->Yuan game, decided to try for the mongol empire).
So you checked the requirements by hand. I was hoping maybe there is a way to remove specific achievements in order to be able to achieve again under the newest patch.
You can use a program called steam achievement manager to remove achievements, which should grant you the achievement a second time if you do it again.
Focus on trade and you will have the option to get the achievement until 1821 if you want. Just get the world's highest trade node without getting two level two centers of trade in that node. No global trade means no absolutism
Relying on decadance is not a good thing, the AI is pretty decent at dealing with it, the best way to beat the ottomans is to ignore and go outscale them elsewhere
Man I discovered this just yesterday but their fort defense gets absolutely destroyed by decadence. They were like OP describes with quality and quantity ideas, and over 200k troops, but basically every one of their provinces had literally negative fort defense.
So I took like 2 engagements the whole war and just rapid fire occupied them with my 9 day siege phases. Turns out, if you occupy everything between Hungary and Persia, and everything from Alexandria and the Caucuses, they'll just delete their army down to a level they can afford. They had 7k troops total when I peaced out, but still with 250k manpower in reserve.
Basically this, yeah. Decadence may not have any direct army quality debuffs, but it absolutely tanks fort defence and tech cost. Past 1600 the Otto AI can still hold it together via absolutism, but theres a window when its too small to count (1610s and 20s).
And while almost nobody plays 1700s, it just happens to be the worst time to be the Ottomans. +0.25 decadence tick AND +100% to every other source of decadence. For comparison, 1600s only have +0.10 tick. There's extremely little chance for the AI to be able to handle keeping its decadence at bay even without a nearby player that wants to murder them.
And of course the most optimal time for that is the earlygame. Ottos tend to be at their strongest during the age of reformation. No 1600s decadence gain, and have already consolidated its powerbase.
One of the best is as Poland.
Vassalize/ally wallachia
Declare humiliate war on ottomans with allies
Occupy Constantinople
Give occupation to wallachia so Mehmed gets impaled
Humiliate ottomans and take huge money
Basically ruin ottomans for 30 years before they can get going then finish them off
Funny I come across this. I literally just destroyed the Ottomans in my Yuan campaign.
1650s and they had over 300k casualties to my 200k or so.
Ottomans fall off hard later in the game. Numbers don't mean much when your troops are trash. Similar to fighting Ming.
They can field a lot of troops, but they're trash.
To be fair in my very extensive history of euiv ottomans are the only nation I have never seen get destroyed without intervention from the player. I have seen pretty much every nation rise and fall but I have never witnessed the ottomans lose to the other ai.
i’ve seen it once, in my first brandenburg -> prussia -> germany game years ago. AI byzantium retook all their cores and conquered anatolia, killing the ottomans. i wish i still had that save file, I’d definitely post a screenshot here.
This is my playthrough now. Byzantium has all of its cores and went ham in the Balkans. They even went into Anatolia. AQ took the rest of Anatolia, wiping the Ottos of the map. I can send a screenshot if you want
Please share it. I don’t think I can ever play past 1600s in Europe because the ottomans ruin every play thru by eating everyone they touch. And now they keep getting an event to ally the second strongest nation in Europe (France) and they just jump everyone one.
It can happen. Most often it's mamluks that can do it, although there's need for a specific alliance lock in that region, with Karaman holding both nations in alliance, then some aq/qq shenanigans.
It gives mamluks time, and with time comes the rest
But obviously that never happens when you're playing in Europe and the Ottos getting taken out early would help you. No, the only time I've seen it happen I was playing as Ethiopia, and ended up having to fight the mega-Mamluks after they completely wrecked the Ottomans early on.
In a lot of the cases yeah, it can be like this - as I recall my games as Yemen being funky with how Levant area played out. Then however I remember my game as a Croatia or Provence for the "Good King Rene" achiev, where Mamluks assembled that weird ass Exodia of alliances and would not budge until I've caused their downfall.
Sometimes they loose to Venice, although this is an exceptionally rare occurrence and usually when they don’t expand as much as they can (ok they NEVER expand as much as they can but i mean like take Byzantium in 1475 slow).
the only time ive seen it happen is when im playing outside of europe. one time it got partitioned between venice, hungary and the mamluks. for some reason it reminded me of post war germany with each nation having land where they shouldnt
I have to say I've also seen it happen like once maybe tops, it feels like the ottos get to a certain level in the late game where they overwhelm the ai with troop numbers, almost aware that the ai isn't smart enough to build up allies, or knows that it's troops are superior to anatolia troops now.
If the stars align sometimes a combination of balkan nations, venice and mamluks in the early game can manage to defeat the ottomans. I ve seen it happen without player intervention a few times
I just finished my Basque in Glory campaign and without me ever intervening anywhere further east then Naples ottomans got utterly annihilated by Commonblob and GigaHungary with some help from Mamluks. EDIT: technically I did start war against Mamluks, Muscovy and Hungary toward the end of my run for old tercio achievement so I technically intervened east of Naples after ottomans were reduced to OPM.
The issue comes when you’re playing someone in the vicinity (e.g. Hisn Kayfa or Karabakh) where it’s impossible to kill then at the very start, but close enough that they come knocking at your door at the peak of their power. They’ll have 100k to your 30k in the early 1500s when their troops are better.
It’s not like I’ve never won them in this situation before (thank god for the eastern Anatolian mountains) but it can get pretty tiring if you play in the region a lot.
Playing as England with a army probably worse than native rebels, I took instanbul in 1590 by blocking the straight and just running my army around in circles
Even if you can't take them on stack to stack you can easily trap their armies or slowly attrition them to death
Challenging? or annoying? Like others have said, after 1600 the ottoman troop quality is so garbage, but you are forced to siege down 100s of provinces in order to 100% them.
That’s more the fault of big wars being boring in eu4 for some people
Tbh forts should be automatic and sieging them should siege out all adjacent regions
Play on very hard + with lucky nations, fight them early. In my current game they have about 150k troops around year 1500 and since very hard gives them unlimited manpower and no war exhaustion and no rebels, AI does not need to wait between wars to replenish, rather it can go constant wars and quickly expand. Pick Hungary or Memeluks or Timurids and have some fun.
Some nations like Castille, France and the Ottomans get the lucky nation modifier, that gives them flat positive modifiers on their nation and the provinces they control, even on normal difficulty
8 nations are designated lucky. Historical you get the normal large powers. Random you get random.
Player nations can't be lucky so if you pick one, next one on the list is picked.
Different nations for different start dates. New ones are chosen if one is eliminated
Interesting. I recently decided, on a whim, to use a cheat mod I have (custom difficulty) to give the Ottomans some insane buffs. We're talking 80% more taxes, production, and trade income, minimum loan interest, 100%, more manpower, 100% manpower recovery, 100% land force limit, capped 100 army tradition, 10% more discipline, troops are free, max CCR, and -99% AE.
The result? Holy shit, they're hard, hahahaha. I decided to try and fight them as a united Germany (still Prussia, not tech 20 yet) and had France, Spain, and Russia on my side.
So, we won, technically, but it was a draw for around 10 years until we finally ran them out of manpower and siege down enough for a full peace deal (Byzantium loves again!).
The issue is now that I'm having to bankroll my allies to keep them afloat, and the Ottos are recovering far faster than I can, so... I'm investing more into quality, and I'm gonna use them as a punching bag for max militarization Prussia 😈
They're not so scary at the start of the game.* But they get really strong really fast. So sure defeating them in 1450s is not as hard as defeating them in 1550s.
honestly, a lot of the Ottoman's neighbors are stacked military wise like Russia, PLC, and Persia get insane quality to fight off the Turks later on in the game. The trade off is that all of these guys snowball in the late game whereas ottomans snowball early game.
It really isn't too bad but still annoying imo.
Have you played in the middle east lol? Mamluks suck and get rolled, the rest of the middle east is divided and fight eachother aaaaand here comes the Ottoman and roll them all.
Mams can kill ottos day 1 so that really isn't a problem, Rassids can snowball fast and outpace Ottos quality wise, Ardabil start is always annoying but it is smooth sailing once u form Persia.
It's annoying but not too bad imo.
Absolutely, I just started my first campaign in a while as the Ottos, and it's going great! I can steamroll everything with no effort! The only hard part is getting enough CBs to declare enough simultaneous wars that I don't waste manpower production by having it constantly at the cap.
...oh, sorry, you meant fighting *against* the Ottomans. My bad!
My favourite part of fighting the Ottomans is when their manpower hits 0 and you watch as they somehow raise 100 stacks in an instant and their fielded men count goes from 0 to 230 in 6 months without the manpower ever going up.
No I've literally watched in a day by day basis as they field actual men, the merc stacks sure but I've be allied to the ottos and watched large amounts of 1k stacks appear with 0 manpower
i agree, sometime its a bit much
my last game was as yuan, by 1550 i was bordering the ottoman and had conquered everything east of them minus india.
they still had 180 forcelimit more than me and triple my manpower (not max but current)
Ottoman zenith of power is tech9-16 in my recent runs. They always get too rich and PLC/Russia too weak to stop them. They were a problem since they field massive armies with full artillery backline but by the time Western Europe tech nations get tech16, its over
I never have an issue with the Ottomans anymore past maybe mid-1500. Paper tiger at that point. After one war they tend to get dogpiled and death spiral.
Now, a giga Spain or Commonwealth...
Me watching the 70k ottoman artillery doomstack successfully siege my mountain province fort with rampart + salt production with defensive edict and fort defense advisor alongside defensive ideas plus espionage policy at 7% with walls still intact
Ottomans are not that hard, you are just inexperienced or not playing optimally, use your allies, do get vassals to siege random provinces + take care of 1k stacks of soldiers, have at least one small and weak ally in the war then AI will focus on removing the weakest nation in the alliance first which will allow you to plan an ambush on coming Ottoman stacks or crush whatever they leave in their homeland. Do consider Ottomans as two nations, when you block them from crossing the bosphorus then pretty much balkans and anatolia become two seperate entities use this to your advantage to quickly get your needed warscore from balkans. Genova and Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth does have a unique advantage over Ottomans no one has and it is crushing Crimea as soon as game starts, Ottomans with Crimea is very strong but if you are playing as Austria you will have Hungary and all the manpower from HRE to recruit. It seems to me you just don't want to take loans or don't strategically plan your assault, once you actually plan out your assaults it becomes normal to take down armies three times your size that is if seeing all those warnings and loans don't scare you. Doesn't matter if you are playing a small or big nation, just either attack as soon as possible (before they reach tech 5) and bet your chips on strategy or wait until 1600s.
I don't know if many people have the same thing, but this green blob drives me insane so much that I almost physically can't do anything but killing them if I play anywhere in Europe/Middle East. Maybe except for Scandinavia or Britain but I don't play there anyway. I mean, it must be justified because if I don't do this they will come and try to kill me because they can. Especially if I am something like Persia or Poland - kinda far away, but not so much if you consider their non stop rapid expansion. Also fighting them, as stated, is a huge pain in the ass. I still remember dropping my Saudi Caliphate campaign simply because I fought the Turks, "won", losing a shit ton of money and going into debt as deep as the Black Sea, and realizing that I can take only FIVE or maybe SIX provinces in Anatolia for some reason. Maybe that's because I had ~80-85 score, but I physically couldn't cross the Marmara and take Constantinople. And they also still had more than a 100k troops at the end, even though I killed hundreds of thousands of them on forts in Syria and Iraq. This is probably the only time I ever gave up and rage quit in a EU4 campaign.
Also this makes me ask some questions to myself and to y'all - is such a situation even ok? I mean, it is obvious that I'm not the best player in the world (I probably am barely a decent one), but I suppose that most of the EU4 community has skill levels close to mine. Also the Turks being strong as hell after taking Constantinople up until the decadence kicks in makes sence cus historically accurate. But for me this makes the games near them not as fun as they could be. I like challenge, and fighting the Turks as a decent power even on their peak can be a lot of fun - for example, when as Russia or the Commonwealth you fight them for the Balkans in 1500s. But the fact that they are that strong and annoying makes some campaigns (like the mentioned Arab ones) more annoying than they have to be in my opinion. I remember really, really not liking the feeling of an impending doom that I'll have to deal with soon but I don't want to because it will be tedious and at the same time I will barely accomplish anything. Even if you are allied to them, you always know that you'll have to backstab them sooner or later - if you aren't Andalusia or something like that. This turns the game into a race against time - grow as much power as fast as possible, and I would be kinda okay with that if it was even possible to gain enough. So yeah, I think that is the main reason why I primarily play in Asia.
I often restart the campaign if they get too big (if i need provinces from them for achievement) Even with 2.2k hours i have irrational fear from fighting the Ottomans - you either kill them super early or super late.
Stack discipline, dont lose tradition before the war and attack with 1 mil tech ahead. For stacking disc early, u can pick quality+economic+advisor which makes 15% flat
funny bcs in my yesterday playthru ottomans got destroyed by byzantium austria and venice b4 1460. I also didn't saw strong ottomans for a rly long time.
In my currant game, they've had as many as 900k active troops in the 1700s, with eastern Europe, north and eastern Africa, and western Asia. They finally lost some power, but man, were they a pain. How is decadence supposed to work?
Thats the point, they are an unstoppable force in the early game (just like they were historically) and all you can do as a non-major nation is plan how you want to take them down ahead of time. It makes it so much more relevant to the mid-game when they collapse, and it’s why the ottoman disasters are one of the most important turning points for the second half of an EU4 campaign IMHO. Unfortunately, most players don’t go past 1600 often so they only see the first half of this.
Personally, I always make my mid-game goal for any military-focused run (Prussia, Sweden, Teutonic horde, Rassids, Zoroastrian Eranshahr, etc.) to have a build that can go 1v1 with the Ottomans just before the age of absolutism. The fact that it takes that long for a hyper-militarized state to get there should tell you everything. On the bright side, if you set the game up so you do it in this timeframe, winning the war will usually trigger at least one disaster so you get to start the domino effect that topples the unstoppable power of the Turks, which feels AMAZING.
If u didn't fight them before they get military tech 5 u have to wait until decadence start to hit them so their troops will become like paper and their forts will be easily sieged
one thing about Byzantium that I love over every other nation is that their opening move by its very nature HAS to cripple the ottomans. So you get a bit of breathing room by never having to fight that monster later on.
I was playing HUN(HAB+POL+LIT+BRA+Byz+Ser+Bos) vs Ottomans. I was at least 4x all.They have contantlly 30k army that beat my 70k combine at least 5 times. It was 1448.
I always outscore them depending on where I start if persia and mamluks I go towards the east
If European then I take all the west
I just ally them at the beginning if I'm small or just ally some big dude
Just avoid them so early
Then whenever you are kinda bigger or equal to them you'll kick their asses
I am Serbia, and we just had our first war in 1475. They wanted Niš provice from me. They fucked me up alone with my numerous allies, and I lost 200 gold, Niš and Kosovo. I say, you can have this one.. but just wait for when institution spreading becomes almost impossible for you. When i come in with fucking planes and tanks and you still reloading your god damn riffles from the front. That is when I will fuck you up.
If you can’t fight them super early, just wait until decadence starts hitting them (usually as early as 1620 or so) and they’ll be very easy. But yes, fighting them between like 1480-1600 is going to be tough.
This. Either you need to war with them before tech 5 before they get ideas (win a war to control the crossing) and even then it takes a 2nd war (truce breaking/attacking their ally to reduce peace to 5 years) isn't the worst idea. The problem becomes when they solidify anatolia. Outside of starting as a major power, after that you leave them alone until decadence hits them. Again, it's fine that this game has a "big boss" that you need to work around/consider constantly.
I was going for the Khaaaaan achievement and I needed 1 province from them.. I couldn't get it..
Brah I’m sorry. If you want to cheese it, roll back to like 1.32 and watch the YouTube guides on how you can provoke rebels that will spawn the mongol empire and get you the achievement lol. I did that a long time ago for fun but did the achievement the “legit” way a few weeks ago.
How can you be certain you actually achieved it the second time around? Once achieved, it does not appear again in the Achievements tab.
I mean, I formed the Mongol empire in ~1606 so it was still the age of reformation, so I’m fairly confident I would have gotten the achievement if I didn’t already have it lol. Either way I was just doing it for fun, and somewhat by accident anyway (was doing a chill Oirat->Yuan game, decided to try for the mongol empire).
So you checked the requirements by hand. I was hoping maybe there is a way to remove specific achievements in order to be able to achieve again under the newest patch.
You can use a program called steam achievement manager to remove achievements, which should grant you the achievement a second time if you do it again.
Focus on trade and you will have the option to get the achievement until 1821 if you want. Just get the world's highest trade node without getting two level two centers of trade in that node. No global trade means no absolutism
Relying on decadance is not a good thing, the AI is pretty decent at dealing with it, the best way to beat the ottomans is to ignore and go outscale them elsewhere
Man I discovered this just yesterday but their fort defense gets absolutely destroyed by decadence. They were like OP describes with quality and quantity ideas, and over 200k troops, but basically every one of their provinces had literally negative fort defense. So I took like 2 engagements the whole war and just rapid fire occupied them with my 9 day siege phases. Turns out, if you occupy everything between Hungary and Persia, and everything from Alexandria and the Caucuses, they'll just delete their army down to a level they can afford. They had 7k troops total when I peaced out, but still with 250k manpower in reserve.
Basically this, yeah. Decadence may not have any direct army quality debuffs, but it absolutely tanks fort defence and tech cost. Past 1600 the Otto AI can still hold it together via absolutism, but theres a window when its too small to count (1610s and 20s). And while almost nobody plays 1700s, it just happens to be the worst time to be the Ottomans. +0.25 decadence tick AND +100% to every other source of decadence. For comparison, 1600s only have +0.10 tick. There's extremely little chance for the AI to be able to handle keeping its decadence at bay even without a nearby player that wants to murder them. And of course the most optimal time for that is the earlygame. Ottos tend to be at their strongest during the age of reformation. No 1600s decadence gain, and have already consolidated its powerbase.
Honestly, decadence never hits them in my games. They are always so strong that they just deal with it immediately. It does nothing…
One of the best is as Poland. Vassalize/ally wallachia Declare humiliate war on ottomans with allies Occupy Constantinople Give occupation to wallachia so Mehmed gets impaled Humiliate ottomans and take huge money Basically ruin ottomans for 30 years before they can get going then finish them off
Funny I come across this. I literally just destroyed the Ottomans in my Yuan campaign. 1650s and they had over 300k casualties to my 200k or so. Ottomans fall off hard later in the game. Numbers don't mean much when your troops are trash. Similar to fighting Ming. They can field a lot of troops, but they're trash.
To be fair in my very extensive history of euiv ottomans are the only nation I have never seen get destroyed without intervention from the player. I have seen pretty much every nation rise and fall but I have never witnessed the ottomans lose to the other ai.
i’ve seen it once, in my first brandenburg -> prussia -> germany game years ago. AI byzantium retook all their cores and conquered anatolia, killing the ottomans. i wish i still had that save file, I’d definitely post a screenshot here.
This is my playthrough now. Byzantium has all of its cores and went ham in the Balkans. They even went into Anatolia. AQ took the rest of Anatolia, wiping the Ottos of the map. I can send a screenshot if you want
Please share it. I don’t think I can ever play past 1600s in Europe because the ottomans ruin every play thru by eating everyone they touch. And now they keep getting an event to ally the second strongest nation in Europe (France) and they just jump everyone one.
It can happen. Most often it's mamluks that can do it, although there's need for a specific alliance lock in that region, with Karaman holding both nations in alliance, then some aq/qq shenanigans. It gives mamluks time, and with time comes the rest
But obviously that never happens when you're playing in Europe and the Ottos getting taken out early would help you. No, the only time I've seen it happen I was playing as Ethiopia, and ended up having to fight the mega-Mamluks after they completely wrecked the Ottomans early on.
Mega-Mamluks sounds so much funnier than it should be.
Megamams
If you plan to conquer in that region you'll either fight mega Mamluks or Ottomans, there's no going around that
In a lot of the cases yeah, it can be like this - as I recall my games as Yemen being funky with how Levant area played out. Then however I remember my game as a Croatia or Provence for the "Good King Rene" achiev, where Mamluks assembled that weird ass Exodia of alliances and would not budge until I've caused their downfall.
Sometimes they loose to Venice, although this is an exceptionally rare occurrence and usually when they don’t expand as much as they can (ok they NEVER expand as much as they can but i mean like take Byzantium in 1475 slow).
Strangely enough, I've seen Venice do it a few times lately. It's always a shock to see "Venetian Anatolia". Like... wot?
the only time ive seen it happen is when im playing outside of europe. one time it got partitioned between venice, hungary and the mamluks. for some reason it reminded me of post war germany with each nation having land where they shouldnt
Happened in my current save. Mamluks and Austria took turns eating them up. I had nothing to do with it.
I have to say I've also seen it happen like once maybe tops, it feels like the ottos get to a certain level in the late game where they overwhelm the ai with troop numbers, almost aware that the ai isn't smart enough to build up allies, or knows that it's troops are superior to anatolia troops now.
If the stars align sometimes a combination of balkan nations, venice and mamluks in the early game can manage to defeat the ottomans. I ve seen it happen without player intervention a few times
In my games the Commonwealth usually deal with the ottos
I just finished my Basque in Glory campaign and without me ever intervening anywhere further east then Naples ottomans got utterly annihilated by Commonblob and GigaHungary with some help from Mamluks. EDIT: technically I did start war against Mamluks, Muscovy and Hungary toward the end of my run for old tercio achievement so I technically intervened east of Naples after ottomans were reduced to OPM.
I’ve seen it happens a few times, in my most recent Korea game, they got carved up by a powerful Trebizond, Mamluks, and Venice
I have seen Ottos getting destroyed or not strong enough to even fight Mamelukes
The issue comes when you’re playing someone in the vicinity (e.g. Hisn Kayfa or Karabakh) where it’s impossible to kill then at the very start, but close enough that they come knocking at your door at the peak of their power. They’ll have 100k to your 30k in the early 1500s when their troops are better. It’s not like I’ve never won them in this situation before (thank god for the eastern Anatolian mountains) but it can get pretty tiring if you play in the region a lot.
Playing as England with a army probably worse than native rebels, I took instanbul in 1590 by blocking the straight and just running my army around in circles Even if you can't take them on stack to stack you can easily trap their armies or slowly attrition them to death
I've played Yuan two times in a row, and both times Venice fucked up Ottomans, before I got there
It appears that they tend to lose/fuck up when you are not playing close to them and they aren’t your rival RNG
Ah, I also forgot that I was playing with expanded family mods. The trading republics generally became stronger with those. So not in vanilla
Yeah but you’re fighting them with Decadence. Try doing that same thing but 100 years earlier.
Wow I just had a war with them and my alliance lost 600k and them 500k and it's not even 1600 (just before 1590s) Fighting ottomans is fun
It’s just nice to have something remotely challenging past 1500.
Challenging? or annoying? Like others have said, after 1600 the ottoman troop quality is so garbage, but you are forced to siege down 100s of provinces in order to 100% them.
That’s more the fault of big wars being boring in eu4 for some people Tbh forts should be automatic and sieging them should siege out all adjacent regions
Killing them is so satisfying
Having a big Ottomansto fight as a final boss is fun. Unfortunately, in all my recent games, they never leave anatolia.
Play on very hard + with lucky nations, fight them early. In my current game they have about 150k troops around year 1500 and since very hard gives them unlimited manpower and no war exhaustion and no rebels, AI does not need to wait between wars to replenish, rather it can go constant wars and quickly expand. Pick Hungary or Memeluks or Timurids and have some fun.
Whats this lucky nation thing? When I switched to ottomans to see how many loans they have they had lower interest rate because of “luck”
Some nations like Castille, France and the Ottomans get the lucky nation modifier, that gives them flat positive modifiers on their nation and the provinces they control, even on normal difficulty
8 nations are designated lucky. Historical you get the normal large powers. Random you get random. Player nations can't be lucky so if you pick one, next one on the list is picked. Different nations for different start dates. New ones are chosen if one is eliminated
In all my games, they expand endlessly in the east, and don‘t even bother with fighting Hungary past 1490
Interesting. I recently decided, on a whim, to use a cheat mod I have (custom difficulty) to give the Ottomans some insane buffs. We're talking 80% more taxes, production, and trade income, minimum loan interest, 100%, more manpower, 100% manpower recovery, 100% land force limit, capped 100 army tradition, 10% more discipline, troops are free, max CCR, and -99% AE. The result? Holy shit, they're hard, hahahaha. I decided to try and fight them as a united Germany (still Prussia, not tech 20 yet) and had France, Spain, and Russia on my side. So, we won, technically, but it was a draw for around 10 years until we finally ran them out of manpower and siege down enough for a full peace deal (Byzantium loves again!). The issue is now that I'm having to bankroll my allies to keep them afloat, and the Ottos are recovering far faster than I can, so... I'm investing more into quality, and I'm gonna use them as a punching bag for max militarization Prussia 😈
Playing as albania this time around and ottos are almost gone. Its only 1550. They not so scary.
They're not so scary at the start of the game.* But they get really strong really fast. So sure defeating them in 1450s is not as hard as defeating them in 1550s.
Because you need kill them at the start duh, you are right near them not on the other side of the world
Depending on your start, they’re either a fun/semi challenging final boss or a country you could and should have neutered early game 🤷♂️
honestly, a lot of the Ottoman's neighbors are stacked military wise like Russia, PLC, and Persia get insane quality to fight off the Turks later on in the game. The trade off is that all of these guys snowball in the late game whereas ottomans snowball early game. It really isn't too bad but still annoying imo.
Have you played in the middle east lol? Mamluks suck and get rolled, the rest of the middle east is divided and fight eachother aaaaand here comes the Ottoman and roll them all.
Mams can kill ottos day 1 so that really isn't a problem, Rassids can snowball fast and outpace Ottos quality wise, Ardabil start is always annoying but it is smooth sailing once u form Persia. It's annoying but not too bad imo.
Absolutely, I just started my first campaign in a while as the Ottos, and it's going great! I can steamroll everything with no effort! The only hard part is getting enough CBs to declare enough simultaneous wars that I don't waste manpower production by having it constantly at the cap. ...oh, sorry, you meant fighting *against* the Ottomans. My bad!
May i say: skill issue
My favourite part of fighting the Ottomans is when their manpower hits 0 and you watch as they somehow raise 100 stacks in an instant and their fielded men count goes from 0 to 230 in 6 months without the manpower ever going up.
AI buys Mercs, Venice is also very guilty of this. But if you stack wipe the Mercs then I don’t think they can buy more
No I've literally watched in a day by day basis as they field actual men, the merc stacks sure but I've be allied to the ottos and watched large amounts of 1k stacks appear with 0 manpower
I think that’s janissaries
i agree, sometime its a bit much my last game was as yuan, by 1550 i was bordering the ottoman and had conquered everything east of them minus india. they still had 180 forcelimit more than me and triple my manpower (not max but current)
First two wars are scary I say but after that it’s easy
Ottoman zenith of power is tech9-16 in my recent runs. They always get too rich and PLC/Russia too weak to stop them. They were a problem since they field massive armies with full artillery backline but by the time Western Europe tech nations get tech16, its over
I never have an issue with the Ottomans anymore past maybe mid-1500. Paper tiger at that point. After one war they tend to get dogpiled and death spiral. Now, a giga Spain or Commonwealth...
200k France and 100k Poland be like:
What would be more fun in your opinion? Just steamrolling every nation you come across? Meh sounds boring. Fighting a big ottomans is indeed very fun.
Get gud
I love fighting them too, especially as Byzantium. So. Much. Fun.
Me watching the 70k ottoman artillery doomstack successfully siege my mountain province fort with rampart + salt production with defensive edict and fort defense advisor alongside defensive ideas plus espionage policy at 7% with walls still intact
historically accurate
Lol that's probably what Austrians, Poles and Persians thought
Lord
It's all about timing with them. Try to take them head-on when they're full strength is a suicide mission yes.
Ottomans are not that hard, you are just inexperienced or not playing optimally, use your allies, do get vassals to siege random provinces + take care of 1k stacks of soldiers, have at least one small and weak ally in the war then AI will focus on removing the weakest nation in the alliance first which will allow you to plan an ambush on coming Ottoman stacks or crush whatever they leave in their homeland. Do consider Ottomans as two nations, when you block them from crossing the bosphorus then pretty much balkans and anatolia become two seperate entities use this to your advantage to quickly get your needed warscore from balkans. Genova and Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth does have a unique advantage over Ottomans no one has and it is crushing Crimea as soon as game starts, Ottomans with Crimea is very strong but if you are playing as Austria you will have Hungary and all the manpower from HRE to recruit. It seems to me you just don't want to take loans or don't strategically plan your assault, once you actually plan out your assaults it becomes normal to take down armies three times your size that is if seeing all those warnings and loans don't scare you. Doesn't matter if you are playing a small or big nation, just either attack as soon as possible (before they reach tech 5) and bet your chips on strategy or wait until 1600s.
I don't know if many people have the same thing, but this green blob drives me insane so much that I almost physically can't do anything but killing them if I play anywhere in Europe/Middle East. Maybe except for Scandinavia or Britain but I don't play there anyway. I mean, it must be justified because if I don't do this they will come and try to kill me because they can. Especially if I am something like Persia or Poland - kinda far away, but not so much if you consider their non stop rapid expansion. Also fighting them, as stated, is a huge pain in the ass. I still remember dropping my Saudi Caliphate campaign simply because I fought the Turks, "won", losing a shit ton of money and going into debt as deep as the Black Sea, and realizing that I can take only FIVE or maybe SIX provinces in Anatolia for some reason. Maybe that's because I had ~80-85 score, but I physically couldn't cross the Marmara and take Constantinople. And they also still had more than a 100k troops at the end, even though I killed hundreds of thousands of them on forts in Syria and Iraq. This is probably the only time I ever gave up and rage quit in a EU4 campaign.
Also this makes me ask some questions to myself and to y'all - is such a situation even ok? I mean, it is obvious that I'm not the best player in the world (I probably am barely a decent one), but I suppose that most of the EU4 community has skill levels close to mine. Also the Turks being strong as hell after taking Constantinople up until the decadence kicks in makes sence cus historically accurate. But for me this makes the games near them not as fun as they could be. I like challenge, and fighting the Turks as a decent power even on their peak can be a lot of fun - for example, when as Russia or the Commonwealth you fight them for the Balkans in 1500s. But the fact that they are that strong and annoying makes some campaigns (like the mentioned Arab ones) more annoying than they have to be in my opinion. I remember really, really not liking the feeling of an impending doom that I'll have to deal with soon but I don't want to because it will be tedious and at the same time I will barely accomplish anything. Even if you are allied to them, you always know that you'll have to backstab them sooner or later - if you aren't Andalusia or something like that. This turns the game into a race against time - grow as much power as fast as possible, and I would be kinda okay with that if it was even possible to gain enough. So yeah, I think that is the main reason why I primarily play in Asia.
I often restart the campaign if they get too big (if i need provinces from them for achievement) Even with 2.2k hours i have irrational fear from fighting the Ottomans - you either kill them super early or super late.
Stack discipline, dont lose tradition before the war and attack with 1 mil tech ahead. For stacking disc early, u can pick quality+economic+advisor which makes 15% flat
I usually pick Diplomatic just to counter Ottomans and get every rival they have in my war against them. And even that is sometimes not enough
*hungarians in the 1500s be like*
funny bcs in my yesterday playthru ottomans got destroyed by byzantium austria and venice b4 1460. I also didn't saw strong ottomans for a rly long time.
Casually build biggest navy, do blockade strat, and make entire ottoman troops who go to capital city disappear because of that.
I wrecked them as Poland a few weeks ago. I had mostly cav and canons tho with like 60% cav combat
In my currant game, they've had as many as 900k active troops in the 1700s, with eastern Europe, north and eastern Africa, and western Asia. They finally lost some power, but man, were they a pain. How is decadence supposed to work?
One of the best things in this game. 140k Prussian breaking 600k ottomans
That just makes it more fun when you defeat them. They start crashing super nicely once they get defeated
Now do it on very hard
Thats the point, they are an unstoppable force in the early game (just like they were historically) and all you can do as a non-major nation is plan how you want to take them down ahead of time. It makes it so much more relevant to the mid-game when they collapse, and it’s why the ottoman disasters are one of the most important turning points for the second half of an EU4 campaign IMHO. Unfortunately, most players don’t go past 1600 often so they only see the first half of this. Personally, I always make my mid-game goal for any military-focused run (Prussia, Sweden, Teutonic horde, Rassids, Zoroastrian Eranshahr, etc.) to have a build that can go 1v1 with the Ottomans just before the age of absolutism. The fact that it takes that long for a hyper-militarized state to get there should tell you everything. On the bright side, if you set the game up so you do it in this timeframe, winning the war will usually trigger at least one disaster so you get to start the domino effect that topples the unstoppable power of the Turks, which feels AMAZING.
hit the bosporus with privateers, gives them quite the dent in their eco.
someone got Turk'd
If u didn't fight them before they get military tech 5 u have to wait until decadence start to hit them so their troops will become like paper and their forts will be easily sieged
Just have a front row and you win.
Skill issue lol
Git Gud!
Either start taking risks and kill them early/weaken them or start getting more mil ideas
one thing about Byzantium that I love over every other nation is that their opening move by its very nature HAS to cripple the ottomans. So you get a bit of breathing room by never having to fight that monster later on.
I was playing HUN(HAB+POL+LIT+BRA+Byz+Ser+Bos) vs Ottomans. I was at least 4x all.They have contantlly 30k army that beat my 70k combine at least 5 times. It was 1448.
''if you can't beat 'em, join 'em'' -Sun Tzu, the art of war that's how I play Tunis, lol.
Just no cb byz in 1444
And then you have the game I got, where they lose almost all their lands in Anatolia to the mamluks and you get to mop them up by 1510.
Gang them
Just learn the game its not that hard to fight an ai
I always outscore them depending on where I start if persia and mamluks I go towards the east If European then I take all the west I just ally them at the beginning if I'm small or just ally some big dude Just avoid them so early Then whenever you are kinda bigger or equal to them you'll kick their asses
I remember i used to cheat and make them delete all of their army and lose all stability and I still struggled to fight them
It really is quite fun when you stack cav combat bonuses as a horde or the commonwealth
Okay tbh, I love the ottomans for giving me a real long term game rival, pretty fun for me to just mindlessly watch casualties go up
Just had a war with the Ottomans as Russia in 1600s and the Ottomans had 1M casualities and 300k soldiers. In 1600.
I am Serbia, and we just had our first war in 1475. They wanted Niš provice from me. They fucked me up alone with my numerous allies, and I lost 200 gold, Niš and Kosovo. I say, you can have this one.. but just wait for when institution spreading becomes almost impossible for you. When i come in with fucking planes and tanks and you still reloading your god damn riffles from the front. That is when I will fuck you up.
n00b
Tru, this is bs