Occasionally, I see surprising overlap in the average player’s perspective with casters’ and pros’.
Most remarkable example:
when one or some devs decide to make the iconic Spartan-discipline-since-boyhood first modern soldier in the history of the entire world that changed warfare (Janissary) a complete and absolute wimp on purpose. I’ve seen reaction from bottom to top. Kind of expected huh.
What do we do when there isn’t overlap, though? That’s what I’m interested in (as a casual / average player, who often sees the value in pro player opinions).
at the first time the ottoman did have horse archer，the sipahi can upgrade into a horsearcher，you can see them in the trailer，but they removed it because of balance issue
When there’s less overlap, further investigation should be carried out, not only unidimensionally about static balance, but also civ soul / historical adequacy and representation.
In many cases the community is either virtually unanimous or largely in agreement across the pro-casual divide (nerf rams, make Janissary adequate so on).
When it comes to the spirit of civilization, we have often talked about how sloppy the Ottomans were transferred to the game in terms of landmarks selection and architecture. Twin minaret madresse, Sultanhanı Trade Network, Mehmet Armory, all of them were transferred to the game with very bad drawings. Ottomans have the most sloppy landmarks of the game. The developers do nothing about it. Istanbul Imperial Observatory aka Takiyuddin Observatory was chosen as the landmark of the Ottoman Empire, but in history this Observatory was only active for 2 years. Now how much does this landmark reflect the spirit of Ottoman civilization? Turks are known as a nation of horse archers, but there are no Ottoman horse archers in the game. When we look at Japan, it is so elaborate. The spirit of civilization is well transferred to the game. The spirit of all civilizations should be well transferred to the game, including the Ottomans.
We see that devs makes the Byzities with too much care as Japans. Yes devs. You made the Ottomans the worst civ. You can celebrate for it.
Hre has one unique unit. A bad one.
Hre buildings, land marks are awesome as other civs. Ottomans landmarks are… Ottomans jans and GB are trash.
Since the Ottomans came out, I’m still waiting for the developers to understand how bad the Janissaries are.
from what i see every person is agreed about that point but they dont change anything about jans.
I still dont understand this point
-if you dont give muketeers to otto just make jans a bit strong and expensive musketeers.
-If you make jans weak (i mean it is not a normal counter guys they are melting) just give regular musketeers to us.
I was playing and recommending every friend of mine aoe4 but now I don’t even play the game i am really starting to lose my excitement.
Yes. Ottoman Landmarks indeed do not do justice to their real world counterparts and are much poorer than English, HRE, Chinese in architecture and grandeur.
Janissary the world’s first elite modern soldier armed with muskets, was turned into an abysmal, trashy wimp.
Great Bombard the awesome medieval superweapon of humanity, was turned into the absolute useless joke.
Devs owe the Ottomans a revamp.
They can give janisarry bonus through vizier points like range or health bonus
I would mainly ask for horse archers (as akinci or as base unit).
As a second: further enlarge the space of the Landmark “Sea Gate Castle”, so that it looks larger and more imposing.
Finally, if it were possible more unique technologies, or card system bonuses, they are nice and funny, with more options it would be even more interesting and greater.
On balance, unfortunately I still haven’t been able to take the time to test the Ottomans in ranked, I’m still trying to balance my skills against the AI before trying to use them as one of my main civs.
Well, if were talking about a full scale rework then here’s my two cents;
Unique units:
(Age 2) Sipahi - 120/160/180 hp, 0,2 / 0,2 / 1,2 armor, 12/14/15 attack, 3.75 range, 1.5/s attack speed, 1.62 move speed, 20 sec train time, 120 food. Available in military schools without advanced academy
(Age 3) Janissary - 150/175 hp, 2,0 / 3,0 armor, 14/16 attack, 6 range, 1.5/s attack speed, 1.35 move speed, 35 sec train time, same cost as now. Uses melee siege attack.
(Age 4) Great bombard - 250 hp, 0,30 armor, 200 attack (+ 800 vs buildings, + 150 vs artillery and ships), 18 range, 20 sec reload, 0.5 move speed, same train time/cost. No splash damage. Replaces Bombard
(Age 3) Mehter - same stats as now. Only improves infantry and cavalry. Does not provide bonus as an aura - instead gives a specific bonus based on what formation the unit is in:
Line formation - + 2/3 attack per age
Wedge formation - 15% move speed
Staggered formation - +5 line of sight
Stand Ground - +2/3 melee and ranged armor
Remove janissary guns since it doesnt make sense anymore.
At the games point in history, the Ottomans included units from got knights (called rumeli sipahi - rumeliots) and janissaries and from the european side while they got the OG turkic horse archers (timarli sipahi) and azaps from the asain side. So as to not flood the roster, I took the more iconic ones from each side and generalized the timariot into the sipahi - there were more of these than kappikulu.
Ottoman timariots (sipahi) functioned like a medium cavalry after theyre arrows were spent. A cav archer that can switch to melee is too good in this game, so a decided to represent that with higher durability. The end result is something stronger than the Rus archer and more affordable than the camel archer. The pure food cost is an edge to its late game potential to give an cost vs pop argument vs the new janissary.
Janissaries were an all purpose unit that were used to fight in melee and at range, but again, balance. So we have an archer that has high hp, some melee armor, and high move speed as a nod to that they should be a pain to kill with melee units. The dont to any bonus damage to light units like typical archers, so I added that to the overall base damage to push the generalist angle more.
Last of the icons, the GB is now a gunpowder Hui Hui pao - I tried to make it worthless vs infantry and cav, but still strong enough in its niche to be an attractive unit. The extra low mobility is to hold it back from mowing through bases too fast due to reposition is taking forever and also lets the enemy artillery time to reposition out of range.
The mehter redesign feels like it should be closer to what is really was - an improvement to battle field organization. Its quite a bit weaker over all, but I feel that the current mehter is just too strong. The civs current unit roster means it kinda needs to be as powerful as it is, but having one unit carry a civ feels pretty wierd - so, since there’s better units proposed, a weaker mehter is also justified.
The removed techs/viz points are just to keep consistent with the changes to the units
Unique techs:
Jans, horse archers, and artillery cover the big icons of the Ottomans so I tried to fit in some of the significant but less known details here.
(Age 2) Deliler - horsemen gain +15% attack and move speed.
(Age 2) Thumb ring - archer units gain - 35% reload rate
(Age 4)Timurid warfare - sipahi gain +5 melee armor
(Age 4) Volley guns - ribauldequins gain +3 range and line of sight. Available from Mehmed Imperial Armory.
The Ottoman had a light cav were called Deli, and were kinda like a semi nomadic group operating near the frontiers. They were better known in the regions and generally overshadowed by sipahi/jans/cannons so a s
Thumb rings - specifically the ones for the asian style of archery where you pull the arrow to the cheek instead of the european style where you pull to the chest. Said style also was designed to be effective on foot or mount and was developed by the old trukic tribes in central asia. Honestly, belongs to Central Asia as a whole, including chinese and mongols. Since regional techs arent a thing the, giving it to the turks makes the most sense.
Timurid warfare is about the Tamerlane incident - it happened in the relevant era and was a huge enough deal to get some kind of nod to it. The main innovation of Tamerlane was that he made heavier armor popular among horse archers. This was a significant improvement to horse archers in melee combat since before, they had to leave that hands/arms totally exposed to use their bows. The Ottomans adapted that to their own later.
The innovation Ottos brought to gunpowder use wasnt giving firearms to infantry - they did that after they saw it work for the Hungarians/Austrians. What they did do, was develop and use more effective gunpowder field artillery - the volley gun was a big deal in their invasion of Egypt where they used it to counter the mameluke cavalry. Hence, a neat little upgrade to their ribauldequin.
Military Schools:
By age 4, they scale up to a pretty solid effective res bonus (900 - 1000 res/min) provided you take the two viz points for them. That said, this mech has to scale all the way to age 4 - you not only have the MS number gated by age but also the production speed bonus - so they start with too little to matter in age 2/3 where most of the games end.
My proposal is to make them an age 2 building with a max 4 build limit and rescale the train time bonus to 20/40% in ages 3/4. This way, they should give a reasonable boost to any age.
Landmarks/Viz points
I think Janissary should remain a very SLOW moving unit (1.12 tiles / s) with modest range for a musket (5 tiles) and low attack (18 / 24 pierce at 1.5 / s), but become an EXPENSIVE (100 food, 140 gold) TANKY (150 / 190 hp with 2-0 armor) unit that can fix siege faster than a villager, NOT much slower than a villager 
cost 100 food 140 gold (up from 60 food 100 gold), train time 35 s, attack 18 / 24 at rate 1.5 s with only +20% bonus vs cav (down from 50%), normal 150 hp / elite 190 hp with 2-0 armor, move speed 1.12 tiles / s, MUSKET range 5 tiles, NO EXTRA ALL-RANGE DAMAGE RECEIVED, can fix siege as fast as a villager, NOT much slower lol; “Janissary guns” +4 attack
Janissary as a elite unit should be :
Cost 60 food 180 gold
Hp:110/130 Attack:20/25 Attack speed:1,5 Range:5 no bonus damage given or taken training time: same
But i prefer existing janissary with only +20hp or +1,5 range bonus with vizier points because its cheap easier to mass
That’s a possibility, but feels like too much gold for little beef.
They will be trained faster also had 5 range and they will have no counter they will keep thier tag
All these people complaining about Janissaries clearly haven’t been watching the latest pro scene tournaments. Ottomans have been performing well, even into later in the game due to new strategies being formulated, and janissaries are a very common unit that is mixed in since they absolutely shred cavalry.
Poor logic… I’ve watched a THOUSAND pro matches and the only thing i’ve never (I mean literally NEVER EVER) seen is a pro go Jans + Great Bombard and win a competitive 1v1.
Ok, I admit Great bombards are pretty much a meme (granted bombards in general are pretty rare). I think I saw them once or twice in the last 2v2 tournament. In the call to arms 1v1 pro tournament going on now, it’s pretty standard for pros to be mixing in a handful of janissaries and the civ is performing quite well.