Early Ottoman campaign

[Hasefrexx]

Hi,

I'm still quite new to the game. After playing a few battles I went a bit more bold and thought I would try playing the Ottomans (1400ish army; earliest available). I picked a random ennemy and that was the Swiss. As I'm new I did let the AI pick my army composition; that ended up being one medium canon, one janissary, one melee mob unit, one heavy cav type ("of the porte"), and the rest a mix of sipahis (bowmen swordmen) and light cavalry bowmen swordmen (4 or 5 each).

So now I have an almost full cavalry army with just one infantry troop that can stand its ground (janissary), but has only 500 "HP" so to say compared to 2k ish for the average pikemen troop, so I would expect a loss without weakening the ennemy, flanking,...

I'm not exactly a beginer in that kind of game so I went ahead anyway, lucked out in my first battle as the ennemy reinforcements were delaied allowing me to rout the shooter troops pretty quickly with few loss. But then I was left with 4 or so pikemen troops, and my brave bowmen would barely deal 10 damage to the ennemy. Thanks to superior maneuverability I kept shooting at them for several turns while they would barely stay in place and turn, slowly weakening them. After many turns of turning around the ennemy I made a mistake and was forced into melee, although the few strong troops in melee and the attrition taken so far allowed me to win fairly easily. I also noticed that I would barely drop their morale; maybe is this because I had bowmen instead of fire arms in other historical missions.

One battle like that was fine, but apparently, all battles I am going to fight will end up like that; a cat and mouse play that loose its depth as soon as I rout anything that can shoot me.This leads me to the question I had in mind initially: am I missing something? Is there a faster way to rout the ennemy without incuring massive losses? Did I choose a really bad scenario (early Ottomans VS early Swiss and their famous pikes)? I also noticed that the preset army did barely feature half of the available roster, but this is mostly different flavours of cavalry and I'm not sure this is what I really need against pikes.

[Zarkarion]

The auto-chosen army is not preset, but chosen from the list with a random element, so it won't always be the same. That said, you are better off choosing your own force composition once you know what you want that to be. In the present campaign you gradually modify your army composition as you raise additional forces in future years.

All cavalry (with some heavy artillery) may in fact be your best bet against Swiss. You will eventually lose the artillery, but until then they increase the chance of your other shooting demoralising enemy units by adding an extra -1 on the cohesion test.

Your infantry will not do well against Swiss pikes except in woods or marshes. They might be OK in rough terrain, but the Swiss are so tough they might not. You definitely want some tufecki (light infantry arquebusiers) as they can shoot and scoot. Also perhaps more light horse, who are really at no risk of being caught by the Swiss pikes.

By the way, the 500 and 2000 are not "HP" but the actual number of men in the unit.

However, it is an odd and unhistorical matchup, with two armies that are so mismatched against each other that there really is only one way to play it.

If you like the Ottomans in this period, I suggest you try Paul59's "Suleiman's European Campaign 1526", which is available for in-game download. (Go to Historical and then hit the third button from the left at the top of the screen. The Suleiman campaign is near the bottom of the list of available downloads. It really is a magnificent piece of work with new army lists and textures for Tartars, Hungarians etc., and shakes up the variety of the battles in the campaign by each side being composed of multiple different allied/vassal forces)

[Kyso4ek]

Take as much arquebus as possible and a s much light cav as possible. take a few cannons and a few regular cav.

You put your regular cav in front of swiss pikes (1 hex diagonally or 2 hexes normally). The swiss pikes have a charge priority on your cavalry and have to charge it (they cant just walk by and aggro another unit). Cav takes a hit and falls back. During all this you are required to put enough shooting into the keil to make it roll for morale. rinse repeat. Light cav wont lock the keil in place because it can be "ignored" by the game rules. so you need regualar cavs for that.

To make a keil roll for morale you need to deal ~43+ shooting casualties casualties in a turn. Only if you manage to beat the ~43 mark you are actually doing something useful. And use artillery too, they make the unit more likely to fall morale.

There is a problem however beause the swiss pikes are elite heavy infantry. heavy gives a morale bonus and elite also gives morale benefits. This might take quite a few successful shooting turns to rout this unit. TLDR they are tough.

To protect artillery, put it on higher ground and remember that arti can shoot over all troops which are at a lower ground and arent directly in front. Arti can also shoot through light infantry which is 3+ hexes away.

[Hasefrexx]

Thanks.

Yes, I can see how this is not an expected selection for a campaign :) I might have a less rough experience against say Austria, and checking the manual there is still a lot to learn that the in game tutorial barely mentionned so I might have more luck after a bit of reading.

I do have indeed an interest in the Ottomans for the difference in tactics with other Europeans. I'll check out the mod.

Originally posted by Max Damage:

To make a keil roll for morale you need to deal ~43+ shooting casualties casualties in a turn. Only if you manage to beat the ~43 mark you are actually doing something useful. And use artillery too, they make the unit more likely to fall morale.

That must be it then, 43 is a lot as my bowmen barely inflict a handful casualties each; only artillery is good enough at it but I was given only one per battle. I guess I need firearms to ignore the heavy armor.

[Kyso4ek]

Yes thats it and even if you manage to deal 43+ losses there is still big chance the unit will just win morale.

PS you need a few turns to rout an Elite keil like this usually so you need a way to hold it in place. For that you need regular cavalry which puts itself into charge priority of a keil, preferably superior (makes it more durable) cavalry with lance.

[Imagination]

I only played 1 game of this before my HD crashed and I haven't really tried it since. But reading this thread makes me want to try it again!