Well, you may not know this but: Currently the most common way to play Ottomans is build a Military School in the Dark Ages and make a “Dark Age Rush” with spearmans, or also a Tower Rush.
In Feudal, the strategy varies, but in their current metagame it is to “Take full advantage” of the military schools, either with cards, or by quickly building as many as possible to have “Free Units”. The maximum point is achieved after building the IV Age Observatory and increasing the production of the schools with the Blacksmith bonus at 100%.
You could say that the Ottomans have 2 economic bonuses: “Trade”, and “Free Units”. Most people prefer to take advantage of the free units bonus rather than Trade cards and Landmark, which is why the current nerf is very harsh:
1.- With the “Production Nerf” (4.5X-> 5X) the production speed of schools has been reduced by 10%.,
2.- With the “Vision Point Nerf” (60/ 80/ 120/ 200/ 320 → 60/ 100/ 150/ 240/ 320) they have drastically stopped the possibility of build a 5th military school or improve its production speed 25% as before. Ottoman players will have to wait for Castle Age for a 3rd card, and Imperial for a 4th card.
Of course, if this is an “Experimental nerf”, perhaps we will see how dependent the Ottomans are on Shipments and Vizir Points, and perhaps they will be reverted again as before.
- If the majority stops playing Ottomans because of this, I hope they consider reversing, and if not, at least give them “MORE UNIQUE UNITS” to balance and incidentally “Historical Representation” that many are already demanding (Akincis, Dervishes, Deli, Kap1k5L5, etc), especially Akincis as Horse Archers.