Ottomans are almost a real civ now

civ has been mostly about all ins, noob bashing, and cheesy strategies for so long because other options were terrible. now it hopefully has the legs to stand on its own rather than rely on trade posts and ff/fi strategies to compete.

adding a light infantry unit to the barracks while moving jans and abus to age 3 would go a long way towards that. this would increase the skill and micro required to play ottoman age 2 over the current doomstack wannabe and makes fighting the civ head on feel fairer. at the very least 5 jans should be changed to azaps.

it would also help new players as jan rushing is still far too effective at that level. high hp makes them too forgiving to micro mistakes and not paying attention and their simple food cost makes them easy to mass and rush with. azaps on the other hand are far less forgiving to bad micro and won’t win against most enemy infantry in a shootout, requiring you to focus fire and utilize mixed armies more quickly.

making the mosque a starter wagon and highlighting the vill techs is also important for new players. I’ve consistently noticed that they don’t know how to increase their villagers because it is not obvious or spelled out that you need to build a mosque first and research certain techs. that or moving techs to the town center would help make the civ far more accessible.

replacing the quartermaster and exiled prince would also help move the civ in a healthy direction. quartermaster plays in with free vills to create a stockpile of resources to all in or age up too quickly, while exiled prince can be abused for degenerate gameplay strategies that were required for them to be competitive in the past.

maybe replace them with a market that has great exchange rates and unique techs, a mosque that can choose to spawn vills or imams, an embassy with a choice of allies or give forts a repeatable ability to spawn 2/3/4 spahi similar to minutemen. something to encourage longer age 2 and slower age 3 rather than all ins or turtle raids.

aoe3 will never be competitive, especially with all the hackers, bugs and cheese. but it can be less frustrating and more accessible. a slower ottoman with a higher skill age 2 and the tools to succeed plays into that.

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after playing several games with it the azap is just not fun to use. the delay makes it feel like you’re being punished for micro. it removes any joy from personally controlling the unit and makes it entirely about positioning. compared to the nearly instant .02 delay of the abus the 1 second on the azap feels terrible.

with their current delay I can’t see the unit ever being commonly used unless its busted or you’re fighting too many light cavalry. in a rts responsive units that reward good micro are what makes the battles fun to play.

they get instant response after the age 4 card

1 Like

I’ve learned to just throw the Azap on melee mode and that seems to work fine. The archery mode is only effectively in a few highly conditional situations, like if Goons are brought in to the battle.

3 Likes

I think they are very cheap units… so they should have some weakness at least.

This. Primarily they will be used as pikes of which they are basically identical when in melee mode. What makes them strong is if you get to fortress and your opponent starts going skirm goon or just massing goons because otto were weak to them then this unit can switch to ranged mode and deal with a dragoon mass very cost effectively.

Except they die easily to skirmishers in the common skirm/goon combination and have a delay before firing until you ship flight archery in the industrial age…

Also they can’t siege buildings like pikemen can.

But like pikemen they’re good at what they are supposed to do but really awful at everything else.

I see them as just pikes that can swap to a ranged attack to deal with goons, otherwise I leave them in melee and treat them as pikes. I like them but it is annoying they cost wood because every other unit is food and gold, no shipment of them either in age 2.

Isnt that fine? At the end of they day they’re pikemen that do pikeman things, even slightly better than most other pikeman(ex; better vs shock inf). The ranged attack lets them challenge ranged cav, which otherwise dunks on pikemen. A whole new category of unit is added on top of the regular pike counters. I dont know about the extra range actial pikes get, but it base stats are better than a qiang pike with old han reforms - it trades a bit of speed and siege damage for better performance vs cav/schock inf/ light cav and even other pikes in melee as a cherry on top.

If they cant be used to kite musks and other heavy inf or trade with crossbows (all of which are supposed to beat pikes) then then I’d say thats a good thing, they’re plenty strong for a pike alternative.

3 Likes

if the unit feels terrible to use, why use it. I would rather use Jans and their significantly smaller delay as they are more responsive and fun to use. with their current delay if I was forced to use Azaps instead of Jans in age 2 I would rather just try and ff and ignore age 2 entirely which is a bad gameplay design.

that’s ignoring how much wood costing units set you back as ottomans in the early game. macroing for gold and food is much easier and sets up a smooth age up transition without forcing you to choose between investing in your eco and your military as much.

This is so true tho. Its nice that azaps exist and humbaraci and deli are strong enough to think about, but with the abus gun rework I really dont see any new comp that can outdo the good ole jani/abus comp - especially now that it has another age 4 card to scale into late game with.