An Few Ideas for Ottomans (Military School, Mehter, and Sipahi)

I wanted to share a few things that came to my mind about the ottomans. I have no idea if these are underwhelming or overpowered. There are a lot of discussions on janissaries so I won’t touch on them.

Military School: The idea is to get the first military school up quickly for a few initial extra spearman without making the economy suffer. Two different scenarios here.

  1. Ottomans start with 100 stone.

  2. First military school is free (normal price for following ones). No starting stone for ottomans.

In both cases you still need to mine 100 stones for the second military school in feudal age, but get rid of the need to divert villagers for 50 stones in dark age.

Mehter: I know both their current in-game and historical purpose was to boost military performance. But what if we could make them help economy too? Ottomans lack eco bonuses and this appears to be hurting them big time. So here goes.

  • +15% movement speed affects villagers too.
  • +15% attack rate also increase gathering rate of villagers by +15%.

Sipahi: Their issue seems to be their skill. It works well against archers and villagers, if they stand still. And if the opposing side is a mixed group the skill is death sentence. While changing +50% attack rate to +X% damage would the best option I do want to propose something else.

Change the skill completely. Let’s make it a swap weapons skill between spear and bow.

  • Either the swapped weapons can be without timer with a very long cooldown (60+ seconds). Or ranged mode can be activated for 10-15 seconds following X sec cooldown.

  • Now the ranged mode can’t be too strong, so low base damage (like 3-5 dmg) with a minor bonus vs light melee infantry (+5 dmg?).

  • A range of 4 tiles, and a slow attack rate (1.88 or 2.12).

  • Sipahi cost adjusted to 150 food & 50 wood. (I hope the eco bonuses above will help with this new cost…)

I wanted to make sipahi stand out a bit more as a unique unit here. Also its a bit of my bias that I think ottomans having no horse archer is crime in itself. :sweat_smile:

9 Likes

I like the idea of the Ottoman getting free units instead of having economic bonuses.

Buffing the Military Schools could help. Make them train the units faster.
Don’t add the starting Stone though because that could make the faster Military Schools OP.

instead they can make sipahi like donsos they can fire with bow one time and then continue with melee attack and they must cost 20 more gold range attack must be equal to the melee damage they have easy solution

1 Like

Yeah I can see where you are coming from, but since the Mehter currently only provide a movement bonus to their formation, I feel it would be hard to implement this for villagers.

I have been thinking about the Keep Landmark, maybe have it provide the speed buff to villagers too.
Probably not the armor since it could make them stopping to repair keeps a bit too challenging.
But it would make it a bit more worthwhile placing keeps near ressources and trade routes.

1 Like

I like the idea of making the first military school free. It can be the right boost for Ottoman early stage need

They DON’T stand still. So Sipahi doesn’t work, it’s proven already. Easier for Tower Elephant to fly than Sipahi kill vils.

Horseman attack is so low, it needs +60% attack (not attack speed) Fortitude to make any difference. Even with +60%, a lot less effective than knight raid. Sixty-percent of a ridiculous number is still ridiculous.

Definitely agree. Sipahi is the only thing this civ has early on, the only unique element, Sipahi should start in the dark age, early version.

They may have made it apply only in formation specifically so it couldn’t be used to buff villagers.

1 Like

But more resources mean more strategic choices. Always the right way to go. I prefer going for 100 starting stone, still need to spend the 150 wood.

Speed up ridiculous base speed of Military School +50%, lower blacksmith bonus to 10%, 15%, 20%, currently it’s grossly useless in Dark, no one will build in real life competitive early Feudal (pros are playing “ten minutes treaty” since Ottomans too weak) because you get raided, you die.

2 Likes

Giving them more resources will result in exact opposite, everyone competent will ignore it and instead use it for something else second TC / tower rush…

It would probably work best for Military Academy to increase cost every-time you built one with first one being free or straight up having Ottomans to start with the first one built.

1 Like

############### post:9, topic:214222"]
giving them more resources will result in exact opposite, everyone competent will ignore it and instead use it for something else second TC / tower rush
[/quote]

If something is not desirable for anyone, it’s the most ultimate proof something is trash.

That’s why speed up the ridiculous base speed + 50% AND give dark age Early Sipahi (make Sipahi work properly of course, it is not now).

This only way to make early Ottomans game interesting. Sipahi should be everything early on.

############### post:9, topic:214222"]
or straight up having Ottomans to start with the first one built.
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NO! Let people decide where to build it for Christ’s sake. It is connected to future blacksmith, a lot of planning.

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Agree. Logically the weaker civ must be able to at least minor raid opponent. Fix Fortitude and early Sipahi (from military school in dark) is core to any solution. Making military school minimum viable is necessary of course but Ottos still helpless can’t fight back even raid.

They’d probably just use the starting stone to get a 2nd TC faster.

If they need a buff I’d say just lower their cost by 50 stone.

Well obviously you agree with yourself.

1 Like

They can completely control what auras effect what units.

Another good idea is to give the Ottomans, Horse Archer because it would make sense for the Ottomans to have the Horse Archer. Perhaps most certainly, the Horse Archer becomes a regional unit and a new unique unit for the Rus is introduced (perhaps it can be the Cossack).

Cossack no,Boyard is better fit to the AoE 4 TL…

Khan movement speed arrow dosn’t buff villagers with movement speed.

They could just add the same criteria. All military units gets movement speed bonus, no need to D around with formation mechanics which can be finnicky as AI dosn’t always know how to.

I thought maybe if you were moving villagers with the Mehter from one place to another you could use the speed buff, but they can’t actually be “in formation” with it even though they do go into a formation with themselves.

So the only other reason I can see why they did it this way (other than maybe theme) is so that it can be used to move armies from place to place quickly, but cannot really be used during the actual combat when formations break up.

Good idea. We can go for Boyar rather than the Cossack.

Yes, I said it because of the theme that the Boyard is from the ninth century, while the Cossack only appears in the fifteenth century onwards…

You are right in concept, to make Sipahi stand out, it’s literally the ONLY Ottoman unit most of game time. And horseman raid should - finally! - become viable in AoE. But don’t complicate things. Stick with +50% attack instead of +50% attack speed (useless in raids!). The toggle between melee and range is a separate issue, should be addressed too.