Ottomans

General Information

The Ottomans are a Turkish Empire led by the Osmanli dynasty. The Ottomans are located in Anatolia along with the other Turkish Beyliks. Eventually, the Ottomans went on to become the dominant Turkish Beylik. After several wars with the Byzantine Empire, the Ottomans under Mehmed the Conqueror, captured the Constantinople. The Ottomans are playable from January 1st, 1326 to November 1st, 1922. The Ottomans have three historical rivals: Byzantium, Timurids, and the The Mamluks.

Strategy

Grand Campaign

The Rise of the Green Tide

The Ottomans start really strong at this point. They are surrounded by weaker neighbors and have lots of cores on them. They have great missions. You will never be in any real danger of losing a war for the first 100’s years. Your biggest problem in the early game will be man power and war exhaustion because you will be at war constantly. Your biggest problem latter on is tech. You start with the Anatolian tech so you will have an advantage on your Muslim counterparts, but the more game goes on, the more the western countries will start to outpace you.

Good allies are the Great Horde, Tunisia, and Jalayirids once you free up diplomatic relationship slots by integrating vassals. I would recommend turning Bosnia into a march instead of integrating. This allows you to feed them land and they will act as a buffer from invading western nations.

Solidifying your Anatolian Base

You should start by eating up your Anatolian cores before they can ally with The Mamluks or the Timurids. You can vassalize the nations you don’t have cores on.

Balkans Bonanza

After you are done with Anatolia your intention should turn to the Balkans. You can take the mission to take Constantinople to take out the Byzantines. You can take the Venetian provinces in Greece just make sure you build up your navy first. In fact you can win your first war with Venice without a naval engagement.

After your many wars, you will probably be low on manpower and will need to spend some time resting up. I would recommend taking the quantity military idea as your first idea to avoid these manpower issues in the future.

Timurid Trouble

The Timurids are a Sunni nation ruling over Shia people. Their government is a horde and can have massive rebel stacks spawn during succession and if they have been at peace for too long. In addition to that, most of their land is the wrong culture. They are doomed to fail eventually. You have cores on some of their land and should take it when you see that their land is being occupied by rebels or a foreign country. They have a lot more troops than you, but from my experiences they tend to leave them in Afghanistan and don’t come at you in full force. In addition, when they did engage me they had significantly less moral than my troops. If they are busy putting out fires elsewhere in their nation you will be able to chip off a few provinces.

Arabian Ambitions

While waiting for the Timurids to implode in on themselves, The Mamluks are a juicy target. There are two mission for conquering the Levant and conquering Egypt. That will give you claims on a large amount of land. They start off on par with you but you should be able to overcome them. Your biggest problem to overcome is how narrow their land is. This allows their forts to block your movement completely. Even if you get military access from Jalayirids, their land is desert and will provide little supply limit for any troops stationed there. You challenge is to protect your troops while they siege down the forts. The Mamluks will constantly harass you and you will not be able to follow their retreating troops. Your goal of you first war should be to take the province with the fort. It’s not worth using your entire manpower to take as much as you can. It will take several wars, but with each one you will grow stronger and The Mamluks will grow weaker.

Hunting the Hungarians

I would advise expanding in this area with caution. Expanding into Europe leads to collations from powerful Westerners. The further into Europe you go, the tougher the enemies will be. Asia and Africa will provide weaker targets to expand into.

Colonial Conquest

Around the time you take the Levant from The Mamluks you should get access to your second idea. The Exploration idea should be taken. Once you push through Egypt you can start colonizing the Sahara Desert. You want to gobble up as much of Africa as you can before the dir ty Eur o pe ans can steal it from you. Since your colonies have a direct line to your capital, no colonial companies will be formed in Africa.

You’ll be too late and too far away to colonize America, but you can grab some islands on the Indian Ocean that will get you close enough to Indonesia far before any Westerner has access to the area. There are some natives that have the ability to colonize, but they can be extricated easily by compelling the expansion ideas, which should be the next group taken after exploration, and using the overseas expansion casus-belli against them.

Unifying Islam

At this point in the game you should be as powerful as 2nd and 3rd place combined. You have five areas to expand to Asia, Northern Africa (Including Iberia), Europe, Southern Africa, and the Indian Ocean. Focus on taking the land that you need to Unify Islam but in order to prevent mass coalitions alternate your areas of expansion. After you Unify Islam you should become significantly more powerful than any other nation and, if you haven't already, it would be easy to westernize.

Unifying The World

At this point you should be unstoppable and capable of defeating any alliance chain. Constantly hammer on the larger enemies and the smaller will be to scared to form coalitions eventually leading to mass expansion.

Decisions

Form Turkey

Requirements:

Primary culture is Turkish
Turkey does not exist
Is not Egypt
Owns Core Provinces: Kostantiniyye (151), Hüdavendigar (317), Izmir (318), Ankara (326), Adana (327), and Erzurum (331)
Administrative technology of at least 82
Is not a subject nation
At Peace

Upon Enactment:

Country changes to Turkey
Random province with Turkish culture
- Gain 1 Base Tax
Gain 25 Prestige
Gain country modifier Increased Centralization for 20 years:
- -0.05 Monthly Autonomy Change
- +1 National Unrest

Ottoman Ideas and Traditions

Traditions:

+5% Discipline
+3 Tolerance of Heathens

Ideas:

Ottoman Tolerance: -33% Core-Creation Cost & -15% Accepted Culture Threshold
Ghazi: +20% Manpower Recovery Speed
Timariot System: +15% Cavalry Combat Ability
Autonomous Pashas: -10% Cost of Reducing War Exhaustion
The Law Code of Suleiman: +10% National Tax Modifier
Tulip Period: +10% Trade Efficiency
Found the Imperial School of Naval Engineering: -10% Ship Cost

Ambitions:

+33% Land Force Limit Modifier