Now that the dev team has shown the direction they are taking with thet old vanilla civs, I think the one that craves the most for a rework is the Ottomans, since they are pretty straight forward in their gameplay. Their units get outpowered, their eco outpassed, and any of the dlc civs can do anything otto can do but better/faster/stronger.
I’ve listed some issues to adress, and some ideas to rework them.
Weak points:
Unit diversity: It’s no big news that otto army consists of jans+abus/hussars. Primarily jannisaries, which get easily countered by any skirmisher with CIR, Abus guns are hard to mass, slow, and weak to any cav attacks. Considering the lack of pikemen/halbs, the abus are really entitled to walk arround with some jans, which again, would be cleaned by skirms of any type. And since the ottomans lack eco power, once you lose your army, you’re pretty much done. Same goes to hussars, expensive, strong, once lost you can’t remass them as quick as other euro civs. One way to balance this is giving the Ottos a consulate, since they’re are part of asian culture as well as european, granting them the export resource and allies to fulfill their composition would be cool to see, adding elephants and sowars to their roster, as well as other infantry units to support jans.
TC cheesiness: Now that the 4TC boom turtling was nerfed, there must be another way to play otto with an eco focus that doesn’t rely heavily on the tp route, a good boost for them would be adding 8vills card on age3, since your whole eco is entitled to less than 25 vills in a fast ranked game. One raid and it’s gg. Also this would help otto problem with rebuilding their army after a big fight, something that dutch/jap/brits can do easily.
Eco lategame: Is non-existant, transioning to mills and plantations is really much slower since you have less vills than your opponent, following the 1st statement, otto could have the asian building rice fields or something similar, where you can switch between food and gold.
Adding this sort of options would take into account the current otto strategies, making the civ more round, and not so attack or die trying type, that’s what spain is for. Most of these ideas came from playing the Napoleonic Era mods for years.
My proposal is that the Ottoman rework should be done together with the Persian Civ because I believe they share some similarities in their armies that can be used. I think this is obvious for many… if someone don’t believe me, just look at the images this guy posted some time ago…
I think it’s a good idea to add a consulate to the Ottomans and they can ally with India and Arabs pirates and some more.
There are mechanics in the game that are from the beginning and should be reworked. The villager system that the Ottomans have is unique and original but if it’s buffed it’s broken and if it’s nerfed it’s useless. The same goes for Spain’s unique shipping ability or unction.
By the way, Spain is not here to attack or die trying. That’s boring and no civilization should be like that.
If so I would also replace the artillery foundry with a castle, and remove the fort cards, factory cards, and maybe redesign & rename the european units (hussars,falconets, mortars, grenadiers, horse artillery) to really transform ottomans into an " asian civ". Too much trouble to design and balance (especially the cinsulate)
Why so ? They get 99 villagers, 2 factories and all important eco cards.
What about adding one or two age4 cards giving all factory/mill/estate upgrades (auto upgrades) ? That would fill the economy whole, as ottomans create villagers while others civ research upgrades.
I would rather keep the “no settler card” feature like portuguese and give them medecine in age3.
We could add an age3 or age4 cards boosting the abus guns. Not sure how though, maybe multiplicator vs light cav (oe cav) ?
otto has 3v and 5v lol that has never been an ottoman feature, you might be thinking russia
my one (main) thought on otto is to have each tc automatically add 10 to the vill limit (still maxing at 99 of course!). Then if you’re at the 25 limit and drop a tc you can go up to 35, etc.
The other thing otto needs imo is a shift in abus scaling and multis (i think i posted it somewhere else). I’d also like to see irregulars buff cavalry archer damage slightly along with its current effects.
Finally, I wouldn’t mind seeing something along the lines of an infinite native card: carib (perhaps as a nod to the campaign) or sufi (shared with india, for obvious reasons) as a general expansion of their lategame potential.
Also Great Bombards are a little sad in their current state, wouldn’t mind a tiny buff to hp on those. They currently have worse dps and same hp as a heavy cannon. Maybe adjusting their armour to 80rr or 85rr could be a unique flair instead without affecting culv/melee breakpoints
my bad, I did mix up with Russia.
So a 8 villagers card would be a nice addition to ottomans. We could also think about skipping the age3 card and create a new age4 12 settlers card, if thus does not make FI
too strong.
I don’t think it is a good idea to give new units to Ottomans. There are quite unique having only one unit in barracks but it is part of their identity.
I’d like to rework Grenadiers instead. They are Ottoman’s guard units and they are still completely underused. I can’t think about any good army composition with Grenadiers as a base unit.
It’s more accurate for ottomans to have a consulate than japan with their isolation thing going on. Plus, their pressence on the mid east was highly important, directly impacting on their army composition. Yea we could keep the one unit barracks, but idk if adding export and a consulate would be that much trouble, USA is overpacked with units, and so does mexico, doesn’t otto have the right to ally with indians? or sufi’s mosques?
They literally have to build for passively 15 min straight to have a decent eco, that doesn’t compare to dutch/jap/brits/ports, I’m always talking in ranked 1v1, no treaty or team.
The barracks could do with another unit. I’ve often thought the Ottomans should have been the civ with an archer unit not the British. A Turkish archer would fit into their army very well.
Allowing Spahis and Nizam Fussiliers from forts would also be welcome.
I agree that they have the worst mid-game eco if they do not 4 TC boom. I disagree that they have a bad late game eco. If supremacy 1v1 do not reach late game, that is another problem.
Dutch/Ports/brits/japs may have the best mid game eco if left untouched. 3 of them cannot afford a strong rush like ottomans.
Better compare with Russians/Indians/Haudaunosause/… Russian as rushing civ are the opposite of ottomans has they get faster producing vils but no vil card. Indians get 1 vil/shipments, which is way stronger but have no factory (only a wonder). Hauds are standard and are helped by the age up building travois, but get the awkward community plaza to speed up production (plaza only feels good with aztecs and incas to me), and they get most eco ugrades through farm/estate.
If your problem is the supremacy 1v1, I do not know if rice paddies will really solve it. Better give an age3 8vils like british, or an age3 1TC+10vils (1000g) like haudenosaunee (maybe instead of 1TC+1build limit). Ottomans should not be far behind its opponent in number of villagers at that point of the game, and a villager card helps keeping up while you use the saved resources from free settlers to produce military units.
Replacing 1TC+limit by 1TC+10vills-1000g may he nice since some people complain about the 4TC boom. It will also be an opportunity to bring back the building hp card back to age1.