In my opinion the biggest issue with Otto currently is centred around abus guns. They have been nerfed to fire every 3.5 seconds instead of every 3 seconds, meaning they always take 2 shots from enemy units before returning fire. When this is compounded by Abus’s very low heal per population and meager 20 range resist, they get picked off so quickly by nearly anything ranged, and of course, are extremely fragile in melee as well. The second issue of Ottoman’s roster is that none of their units are good against ranged cavalry. This again falls onto Abus guns. They do 1.5x against ranged cavalry, but then this is penalized to 0.5x against all abstract cavalry, leading to a net damage output of 0.75x against ranged cavalry. Now, to make it all even worse, they take 2 population, have the penalized rate of fire, and do less than even base damage to a unit they SUPPOSEDLY counter.
Lets lay this out with a few basic numbers to why this is so problematic. Standard euro dragoons will take one shot from an abus gun moving into range, then get off 2 shots before the abus can return fire. How do you deal with that? the dragoon will shoot twice (once shortly after the abus gun and then about half a second before the abus can fire again), meaning they’re doing, what, 50 damage? to a unit that only returns around 30 damage back to it. And this is a fight between equal population of units. Oh, and goons have 200hp base, abus are the same as a 1 pop skirm, but with less range resistance. Doing siege damage isn’t useful when you are stuck with a 25% penalty anyway. What ottoman really needs is a revert to abus rate of fire, and then a better multiplier against ranged cavalry, probably at least base damage (eg. 0.5x vs cav, 2x vs ranged cav).
The other, less likely to be done or received well, would be to give ottoman some sort of archer infantry that is 1 pop and would fill the role of a yumi or longbowman, weaker vs HI but stronger vs ranged cavalry. As it stands, everyone knows you can just spam ranged cavalry against otto and you’ll never lose a fight and otto wont have the eco to replace their units nearly as quickly as you can
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