Not really - they are in place of other, plentiful, generally eco, bonuses that other civs get already baked in.
Minus the 1250 resources of wood/stone to build them. I forget at which point you can produce a unit per minute but I think it is not until you are in Imperial, have the Vizier point that buffs production rate, Istanbul landmark and ofc blacksmith. Basically the fastest possible production rate.
i dont see it as an issue, thereās still choice and different strategies that encourage the use of different points (better siege earlier) or force you into others (ant hills when no food) its more the fact the civ is new, so we all auto pick the easier ones to leverage ( military eco)
yeah could have a more lasting effect, but i see the reasoning behind it as a call back to aoe3.
how did you test it? manually timing it? others are reporting its bugged, and as you should know, it takes an occurrence to prove a bug, not the absence of such to disprove it, ie your test is inherently flawed
ah yes, that moment when someone compares a civ to the most dynamic ones like mongolsā¦
let me know how unique french and english are or even HRE. and then tell me ottomans are more boring than them, or how much choice those civs have in comparison. or even worse, delhi
mehters (with the horde of micro it entails) , crewed siege weapons, infantry that can repair, and a completely unique military eco aspect, im sure thats ānot reallyā
wtf is your point? its still a military eco bonus? its like you are just trying to oneupmanship for the sake of it. or did the guy have to mention every possible scenario in order to avoid being corrected?
enclosures isnt an eco bonus, because it requires an investment
I just did a test with mangonels and a garrisoned mangonel in the Mehter aura does attack very slightly faster than a garrisoned mangonel not in the aura. I am not going to go through the trouble of recording frame by frame to actually determine the rate difference, but there is definitely a difference.
In order of fastest to slowest attack speed:
So I am not sure if the bug that has been referred to was just that the attack rate is not fast enough since I cannot see the stats while garrisoned (please fix this Relic it is one of the most annoying things in the game). Or maybe it is not actually bugged.
The Sipahi Fortitude is definitely bugged with Mehter I have seen that one acknowledged by the devs.
i put them side to side one without siege crew,one with siege crew and one with siege crew and mehter buff,siege crew and mehter buff attacked faster than the others
Iām not sure what you are arguing about here but it looks like you missed my point. I was simply saying Vizier points are the Ottoman bonus system (aside from free units). They donāt have other bonuses so it doesnāt make sense to look at them balance wise as something special that āother civs donāt getā. I was not commenting at all on how versatile or dynamic the civ is. I donāt find them boring at all.
Their only other bonuses besides the unique techs/buildings/units are:
The blacksmith influence stops feeling like a bonus once military academy becomes available. It just becomes a replacement for military academy (on land) until you buff it with an imperial landmark.
Cheaper production though - very strong for most of the game.
Yes, true, I forgot their production buildings are all 50 wood cheaper. The faster trade and transport ships is only if you go Seagate Keep Landmark in Imperial I think - they get +40% move speed and +10 armour. Unless I missed a baseline bonus ms on trade from the start. It kind of feels bad to build keeps on backline trade but I guess if itās on a map where trade also passes behind your TC it also helps prevent raids there too.
No this is a baseline bonus.
It takes me forever to age with the Ottoman
taking notes
Thanks for the feedback, and please keep it coming 
Ottomans clearly has the attention of the community so it makes sense to tune this one up and appease a large portion of the vocal aoe4 pop.
Personally Iād like if the 2 #### ### ## pzivor point change into a Janissary minor buff option. Something like plus 2 attack and plus 1 range, which would given the Janissary a more generic role being able to out range most archer cavalry and better micro vs melee.
And that exact buff would make a Janissary age 3 kill a maa (with its +2 range armor upgrades) die 2.5 ish seconds slower than the time it would take a crossbow (with its corresponding +2 range attack upgrades). Or if you want to one shot a maa in this buff scenario youād need 10 crossbow but now only 13 jans to accomplish the same task!! The crossbow remains the more cost-effective approach however the jans multiple purpose abilities become somewhat a thing.
Ottomans are great addition to this game just as they are. From my viewpoint, I wouldnāt like to see any major changes. They are my new favorite civ.
Vin, youāre literally referencing yourself. The only reason it has likes is because nobody realizes what youāre really like.
Developers obviously wanted to make sipahis toggle-able to hose archery as we can see in announcement videos but after it was decided the dlc would be free, they told themselves āwell fuck it, it is not like we are going to be paid for it anyway why would we put effort into implementing that and balancing it ?ā so they scratched that and went with āfortitudeā which was less effort and balance requiring to implement.
Literally what the designer said:
āYeah just scratch horse archery. This is a free treat. Just make them deliver more damage for a small period of time and call itā¦ I dunnoā¦ fortitude. Yeah. Just dont bother with opening a history book and finding out why the unit was historically effective and making an interesting gameplay reference to that. We wont have to explain āfortitudeā in a historical context. We will say because they historically had fortitude, courageā¦ noone can reject such a thing after all.
Oh btw just make them vulnerable at the same time so it also kinda looks like an interesting feature.ā
I swear to god this is how it happened.
Even at this they were so incompetent that they forgot to leave out horse archery involving footage from the trailer. It is so obvious how last minute call this was after they understood it was going to be free dlc.
They were so incompetent they didnt even balance the fortitude, an already half assed generic feature they replaced horse archery with. It is so imbalanced that it has no place in the meta and noone uses it in the tournaments simply because it takes extreme micro management to make it semi-useful at very specific times !
Ah yes, finally, a rational explanation.
It couldnāt possibly have to do with balance issues of having a horsemen that counter archers equipped with bows, countering spears.
Having horse archers would add nothing to Ottomans, nothing. Sure it would have been accurate, but then again I prefer some things to be left out if it means an intact balance and civ direction.
Itās for similar reasons, not every civ is handed culverins.
Yeah, I am with you on that one. I donāt even know why they have an ability in the first place. They are already better horsemen.
Here: The moment they switch to horse archery, they drop their lances. Making them horse archers permanently.
This is one solution. Here is another one:
The option isnt there until castle age.
Here is yet another solution:
They are a lot more vulnerable to archers and this only goes away with a vizier point in imperial age.
One or a combination of these can easily solve the problem.
There is a way when there is a will. The problem is there was no will, no enthusiasm. They saw the easy way, they went with it.
There is neither of them though. Ottomans are completely responseless to culverins. They simply cannot proceed in imperial era sieges.
I mean, if they didnāt have fortitude to set them apart from standard horsemen itād just be 10 more hp for 10 more food and 2 seconds of training time which isnāt that great.
With fortitudeā¦ itās still basically that because fortitude generally isnāt useful unless Iām torching a building or the enemy just didnāt build any melee units.
Problem: You can literally force your opponent into spamming horsemen, because they will lose first encounters, since you can just counter either feudal unit, such as archer or spearmen.
Especially in earlier game phases trades become much more important. What if you flank the archers and kill the majority of them, once the spearmen catch up, you already reconfigured to horse archers, killing both spearmen and archers. Mobility with this kind of flexibility makes the concept alone far too strong.
Letās assume we would have combined this and the first one, you would have to make their horsemen a lot more costly for this to be fair still. Cavalry archers in general are pretty expensive, having those costs covered by the initial cost seems way too low for cav archers, and way too high for generic horsemen.
No, this shouldnāt ever go away, the fact that you can reconfigure a unit as to fit the situational need is insanely OP. You will always have both rock and paper in one unit in this kind of counter system. Does not work.
Sipahis with fortitude deal with siege quite fast. To be honest, I have seen Ottomans having really strong imperial play, so strong, that people would ask how to deal with them at that stage.
You can make switch-ability only available after hitting to castle age.
You can play with the numbers (cost, hp, ranged attack damage etc)
You can add damage penalties both ways.
You can nerf Otto economy
You can nerf Otto production
There are hundreds of ways to adjust the balance. This is an equality with multiple unknowns, not just one.
If we dont limit archery option to castle age and onwards(which we can):
The rival player will know how Ottoman sipahis work and play accordingly. He shall send spearmen and archers together. Of course Ottomans will have an edge. That is the point of a bonus. Bonus is sth the other side must compensate with by getting the upper hand on other sides.