How good/bad is eco of the Ottomans - visualization

Age of Empires III: DE III - Discussion
1

Hi,

I was wondering lately how good exactly is main feature of Ottoman Empire which is spawning villagers for free (but very slowly - 48s). I decided to create an Excel sheet and visualize precisely how they perform depending on a few variables. So, here is the analysis:

1 TOWN CENTER, NO MARKET UPGRADES, NO MOSQUE UPGRADES

DESCRIPTION
First one is quite simple. Just to see how many free resources will Ottomans have compared to a “generic civ” which is any civ able to create a villager for 100 food in 25s and to French. For simplicity we are assuming that all villagers are constanly gathering food from hunted animals without being idle.
Starting resources, shipments and idle TC during age-up are not included into simulation.
Also, we are assuming no Market upgrades are researched for any of the civs.

Otto_1vs1
Otto_1vs11057×517 25.9 KB

SUMMARY
It can be clearly see that Ottomans have slight advantage to about 8 min mark. Because of that, they have strong rush and quick FF timing. After that time their oponent will have much bigger villager mass and his income will be bigger than Ottomans even if we subtract villager cost.

In my opinion this is also the reason why Ottomans will pretty much always lose a game when their FF attack is not succeed. They simply have weaker eco and can’t remass.
After that point of time, every minute will make their situation worse. So this brings us to second analysis. What will happen if Ottomans go for FF and boom with 4 Town Centers, all Mosque upgrades and Market upgrades?

4 TOWN CENTERS, HUNTING DOGS + STEEL TRAPS, ALL MOSQUE UPGRADES AFTER 9 MIN

DESCRIPTION
This one represents the most greedy boom Ottomans can perform in Age III. So, before 9 minute game runs normally (1 TC, no Mosque, no Market upgrades for any civ). Since 9 minute all civs will create 4 villagers constantly until they reach their settler limit. For Ottomans 1 villager is now created in 48-5-5-8=30s. For others, still 25s per villager. All civs have reaserched Hunting Dogs + Steel Traps which gives 30% boost to base food gather rate. Of course French and “generic civ” will still need to pay 100f for every villager.
Before 20min mark they all will reach villager limit. Here are the results:

Otto_Boom
Otto_Boom1049×535 28 KB

SUMMARY
Results are a little bit suprising. Ottomans even in their most greedy strategy with free villagers from 4 TC spawned every 30s will still not be able to match even “generic civ”. They are quite close to lets say 13-14min, but later on they will have significantly less free resources for upgrades and military. The only point when they really benefites from their free villagers is still before 8-9 minute.

There are also a few more things to consider here. Most of European civs have access to Bishop Politician who gives free TC wagon which makes their boom much easier to start (Ottomans does not have this possibility, which makes their 4 TC boom harder to start rollin).

Also, I didn’t include Mosque upgrades cost into this simulation. It is 475 wood total, so pretty much a value of another TC. Not including this into simulation will favor Ottomans but they are still lowest tier in the chart.

Moreover “generic civ” represents the worse civ with no additional unique features. Real civs have unique capabilities and that abilities will make their respective booms much stronger (Banks, Torps, Shrines, Wonders…). And free villagers is the main Ottoman advantage over other civs. And it is not even enough to outboom a civ who just constantly create vills…

This is also a reason why removing Town Center wagon for Ottomans is simply a bad decision in my opinion. Why to nerf a boom for a civ which is the worst civ in a game in terms of booming?
There are some good players here who claims that Otto 4 TC boom is too strong, Well, I believe that if you can’t win a game against Otto 4 TC boom, it means you choose a wrong strategy or your opponent was a better player.

As a last word I will paste here a tournament game between Otto and China (Rohbrot vs Minimoult) where Otto player destroyed half of China’s town (including TC) and killed about 15-20 villagers and finally still lost this game which is crazy (game starts at 2:29:30):

PS The important thing I missed in 4 TC scenario is the fact that Otto does not need map control to make a 4 TC boom because their villagers are free. Other civs need all the hunts to create vills constantly from 4 TC. We need to keep that in mind.

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2

Do you account for the fact tat other civs have to put vils on resources to get the 100 food to train their vils?

For otto each TC is a free vil production building while for all other civs each TC is also atleast another 4-5 vils on food in order to fuel the vil production while every otto vil can be used to fuel military production

So the otto eco if we just look at resources will be kinda bad cause they are more or less generic but the fact that they dont cost food means there isnt an 5 vils overhead on their eco needed for constant vil production either

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3

Sure, of course. As the Y axis says “Total food gathered - villager cost”. So in both charts, we accout the cost of the villagers. In case of “generic civ” it is minus 100 food/25s. In second chart it is minus 400 food/25s since 9 min.

So, it is quite terrifying that Ottomans will lose eco-wise to a civ which needs to pay 400 food every 25s to train villagers from 4 TC.

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4

It’s hard to do these analyses in a bubble because things like military strength and costs and potential upgrades also factor into a civs strength.

5

To clarify your methods, is the graph just subtracting the vil cost every 25 sec? cause maybe at the scale its too zoomed out for it to be visible.

In addition, for the generic civs, once the tc is built there is enough vils and food banked up to queue up the next vil?

cause lets say in a standard FF kind of game, most civs have about 20-25 vils by age 3 and to attempt a 4 tc boom with those civs would require 20 vils on hunts alone, so the fact that they have to spend 400 food is kinda of the small cost.

They may have more total resources collected but that is a vulnerable situation that would almost certainly means they are dead.

Otto doesnt need to care about that and all the resources their vils collect can be deployed on military units.

6

The advantage of ottos are the opportunities the free villigers create.

7

Every 25s I’m making this calculation:
totalFoodGatheredSoFar = totalFoodGatheredSoFar + (currentAmountOfVillagers * foodGatherRatePerSecond * 25s) - (villagerCost * numberOfTCs)
At the beginning of chart totalFoodGatheredSoFar = 0. So yes, villager cost is included into calculation every 25s. Without it, French and every other civ would be waaaay higher than Ottomans.
I can prepare that chart if you are interested.

I didn’t involve cost of age-up itself so it is possible (however very unlikely) that after FF until 9 min mark you still doesn’t have 400 food to start production your vills in 4 TC. And later on you income grows rapidly, so it will not be a problem too.

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