Here’s how to make small non-game-breaking changes to a civ that needs it desperately:
Early game:
Increase XP from mosque to .85xp/second.
Reduce wood cost of mosque upgrades: 50w (same), 100w, 250w.
Move Improved Buildings back to Age I; if not, move to Age III. It’s almost obsolete as it is now in Age IV.
Changes to the Janissary rush or any early push attempt will be negligible.
Mid/Late Game:
Abus Gun - Reduce base attack to 36, reduce rate of fire to 3, increase multiplier to light cav to 1.75x.
Abus Gun - Reduce training time by 2 seconds.
Abus will still be expensive, retain their extra-vulnerability to cav, and be horrible against villagers and buildings
Acemi Oglan School (IV Card) - Also reduce Jan training Time by 10%, + 5% HP, + 5% Attack + 5% Speed
Irregulars (IV Card) Also add + 10% HP and + 10% attack to Cavalry Archers
Kudos for not going the common route of making the most busted OP civ possible. Never seen a post I agree so much with. Some food for thought;
So, Abus gun gets a very reasonable dps buff across all stages, and a substantial gain vs light infantry (dang Ruyters). With this, they’ll be a pop effective replacement for skirms. Instead of dps changes, consider the possibility of an age 4 HC card giving them +2-4 range pop space?
Acemi Olgan school - I like the idea of the stat buff, but how about +10% specifically to ranged attack as opposed to +5% to range and melee. Jans suffer alot for their relatively low ranged damage so lets boost that up some. It should let post imp jans fire for at most 49 damage per shot, which is closer to an average musketeer.
For Irregulars, how about +15% speed as opposed to 10% attack? Turk cav archers being that close to Tatar loyalists might be an issue - those things squish Jinetes. Can shift to something more thematic change - reduce pop space of light artillery units by 1 for 10% more cost
I do think that the Ottos are in a good place overall. Compared to euro civs, the Jan holds up well enough in musk wars, cav archers are a better pair with cannons than dragoons, and they are one of the 2 euro civs with an artillery damage buff.
Looking closely at them, I think proceeding changes should be more about updating them (and other old civs) with respect to power creep in the game. I’ve seen people ask for Sipahi out of stables, Nizam out of barracks, or standard skirmisher multipliers for ABUS GUNS - overtly OP nonsense is bad, from ANY direction.
Other things might include;
Extending the ‘Janissary combat’ card to include Grenadiers, like how Britiish infantry cards affect musk and grens simultaneously. Grens are so lame, 20% hp/attack means nothing, its just for completion.
Artillery hit points and artillery attack cards just become artillery combat. Light artillery hp can just go away.
15-20% cheaper hussars. Otto hussars are basically the worst heavy can among comparable units, so BOTH turkish royal guard units are underachievers. Cant give them something a card for hand cav stats or sipahi will go crazy, sol lets focus more on accessibility.
The age 3 politician ‘mercanary contractor’ give manhcu as opposed to barbary corsairs. Or stradiots. Having both merca be from Egypt feels a bit off as Turks were muslims, but NOT arabs. Mamluks make sense politically, geographically AND ethnically but the Ottomans were in middle east Asia and Europe both while descending from central Asain turks.
Mamelukes were overwhelmingly not Arab. Even though they were rulers of Egypt, most of them came from the Caucasus. Barbary Corsairs also often weren’t Arabs and were more from the Barbary States than Egypt. Lots of Corsairs were Europeans, Turks, and Berbers. And both Egypt and the Barbary States were under Ottoman control.
Ye, the mamluks have alot of parallels with the ottomans - non arab turkic origin, embraced Islam and carried the caliphate, and kicked the abbasids in the balls in thier existence(tho the ottomans were called seljuks then). That’s why I mentioned they make sense in the otto merc roster for so many reasons.
Now as for the corsairs, ‘Barbary’ is derived from Berber, that much I know. Thing is, everything in east of Libya to Iran was dubbed ‘Saracen’, everything west was 'Moor" and all together it was ‘North Africa’. While I get that these are very broad generalization, it’s the lens the AoE devs seem to work through.
Given that, Barbary Corsairs and Mamelukes fall under the same ‘North African’ region. It was a big part of the Ottoman empire, sure, but it was just one region in the empire and having both mercs come from there seems like tunnel vision. Other regions could be represented via mercs of Central European or Safavid Persian descent.
The idea is to build up the identity of the Ottomans beyond what feels like ‘cannon, horse archer, muslims’. That was only one part, dangit.