Ottomons and capturing ships

[Staal]

I have always had the impression that people don't rate the Ottomons as a particularly strong civilization. Would it not help to extend their percentage chance to convert barbarian vessels to include vessels from other civilizations?

In addition now that there will be ranged and melee sea vessels they could get additional bonusses (such as gold, stealing population etc) raiding coastal cities?

[stethnorun]

I'm all for giving the Ottomans an actual useful UA. Their current one is basically useless.

[sectoid]

Would it not help to extend their percentage chance to convert barbarian vessels to include vessels from other civilizations?

It would help, but in the same time make Ottomans overpowered. Reason? Raging barbarians. With RB on, you would have a fleet of thousand ships if you could manage to support them.

[porky]

It would help, but in the same time make Ottomans overpowered. Reason? Raging barbarians. With RB on, you would have a fleet of thousand ships if you could manage to support them.

I for one would prefer that the civ's traits be more balanced for a "generic" set up game rather than one with special settings. Because of that I am all for them tweaking the Ottoman's trait if they feel the need to. Lord knows it's pretty awful as it is right now in a game with generic settings. Even with a map that's 75% water.

[SlickSlicer]

I don't consider raging barbarians a standard gameplay setting either. Nor do I consider no barbarians a standard.

The Ottoman UA, aside from reduced naval maintenance, is pretty lame.

Believe it or not, however, it is getting an unintentional buff in g&k. Although I heard they're not changing it, the new gameplay system favors naval approaches a lot more than the old one, and ships can capture cities now. That makes both them and England a smidge better.

[sectoid]

I don't consider raging barbarians a standard gameplay setting either. Nor do I consider no barbarians a standard.

I see, guess I'm so used to always turning raging barbarians on that it has become default option in my head :)

I'm going to make a poll about this.

[EDIT] Damn, forgot the max 10 options limit in polls. Guess it was a bad idea to begin with.. :(

[NTense]

The trick is to park a ship outside any coastal barbarian settlement you find. As units spawn you pick them off and earn experience towards great generals. When a barbarian ship spawns you sell it or go find more barbarians. It's tedious but you'll have a general without going to war and plenty of gold to boot, plus any ships you decide to keep

[VicRatlhead51]

The trick is to park a ship outside any coastal barbarian settlement you find. As units spawn you pick them off and earn experience towards great generals. When a barbarian ship spawns you sell it or go find more barbarians. It's tedious but you'll have a general without going to war and plenty of gold to boot, plus any ships you decide to keep

You can only get a limited amount of exp from barbs but I guess if you swap out ships on a regular basis it would work. Might be an interesting weird way to farm culture too if you take honor. Get 4 or five ships all farming like that and it'd be a pretty decent boost too. Might be a fun culture game to try sometime...

[SlickSlicer]

You can only get a limited amount of exp from barbs but I guess if you swap out ships on a regular basis it would work. Might be an interesting weird way to farm culture too if you take honor. Get 4 or five ships all farming like that and it'd be a pretty decent boost too. Might be a fun culture game to try sometime...

I always leave barb encampments intact when I take honor. I find that it is not all that effective at farming culture though, sadly. Probably unless raging barbarians are enabled or something.

[VicRatlhead51]

I always leave barb encampments intact when I take honor. I find that it is not all that effective at farming culture though, sadly. Probably unless raging barbarians are enabled or something.

ah yeah you're right, I'm kind of on the same boat as Sectoid and tend to put them on raging most of the time. I didn't think about that.

[ddesart]

The trick is to park a ship outside any coastal barbarian settlement you find. As units spawn you pick them off and earn experience towards great generals. When a barbarian ship spawns you sell it or go find more barbarians. It's tedious but you'll have a general without going to war and plenty of gold to boot, plus any ships you decide to keepThat is the way I got the Ruler of the Seas achievement quickly...Turned on raging barbarians, camped outside of their camps with my ships...

[sectoid]

I always leave barb encampments intact when I take honor. I find that it is not all that effective at farming culture though, sadly. Probably unless raging barbarians are enabled or something.

Well, I think 3-6 culture per defeated unit is huge bonus in early game. In the late game you can find barb camps spawning destroyers every other turn, you'll get up to 72 culture for those. That is huge advantage IMO considering the spawn rate on raging mode.

[Geppenguin]

Consider that with G&K you can now gain a fleet of ships that can capture cities. And they have reduced maintenance. Pair that up with a reasonable army and you're good to go on a conquering rampage of coastal cities.

[ShuShu62]

It is funny how raging barbarians have changed from a challenge in earlier versions to an exploit in V

I think it is an improvement.

I just played ottomans on emperor last night. I tried that parking strategy but there were two issues with it.
1) I needed my boat to eat German embarkations.
2) Another civ/city state ate the barbarian camp fairly quickly

Its funny, but the UA actually was unitentiionally beneficial.
1) The capture capability led to me build a couple galleys rather than none.
2) The galleys led to a wooden wall strategy
3) The wooden wall forced me to ally some city states to force the germans to come through them
4) The city states made my capital a Wonder monster
5) The wonder monster made me opt for a tall strategy
6) The tall strategy meant I fought germany to a stalemate around Venice for 4000 years
7) The stalemate meant I won a diplomatic victory 10 turns before winning a space victory and 15 ahead of a culture victory

All becuase I thought the Ottomans needed to be a major naval domination civ.

[VicRatlhead51]

It is funny how raging barbarians have changed from a challenge in earlier versions to an exploit in V

So so true. Ottomans, Germany, Songhai and Aztecs all can exploit the hell out of raging barbs. The Honor tree is what has turned them from a nuisance into an exploit. In fact raging barbs can almost make Germany and Songhai OP, Aztecs and Ottomans to a lesser extent though.

[SlickSlicer]

I feel like it's an exploit, yeah. I also don't consider it really a standard gameplay setting. Barbarians as a whole are not really threatening in civ v. Even when they're not raging, they still seem like an exploit to me since they give free exp and gold.

[sectoid]

I wouldn't go as far as calling barbs an exploit. Exploit is something that should be fixed and I really wish that barbarians, raging or tame, stay in the game. Also they do slow down both the players and AI's expansion and offer moderate threat to civilian units early in the game. Just as well we could say that barbarians give out "free" exp-points, that's an exploit.

Barbs should be more of a threat IMO and occasionally take cities too. At least then I could get the "He threw a car at me!"-achievement! :)

[alcibiades]

I feel like it's an exploit, yeah. I also don't consider it really a standard gameplay setting. Barbarians as a whole are not really threatening in civ v. Even when they're not raging, they still seem like an exploit to me since they give free exp and gold.
I do think Barbs can be a nuisance in the very early settlement face, where they will kill your scouts and annoy your workers and setlers if you are not careful. However, I do think they loose their importance fairly quickly, and I do think some of the features from Civ4 could help in this regard. I'm not sure if Barbs should be able to build actual cities (I guess competitive players abused these for quick expansion?), but adding fortifactions to their camps plus making their units advance technologically a bit faster would certainly give them some more edge.

[VicRatlhead51]

I think they did build cities in three. I remember they were a royal pain in three if you let them build upa little. The only thing that held them back there was that they never kept up in tech.

[ShuShu62]

Complaining about farming barbarians for experience dates back to Civ 3. That is why the experience levels were capped afainst barbarians.

I don't think regular barbarians are an exploit. They are a goal and a focus early game. It is actually very hard to farm them on smaller maps because the AI will come along and clean them up.

However, they are now more of a goody hut than a nuissance, so setting them to 'Raging' is just adding more goody huts to your game map. I enjoy the current incarnation.

But if you are going to write up an Ottoman strategy, just don't make raging barbarians part of it. :)

[sectoid]

I'd be more than happy if some future patch/expansion would turn raging barbarians really raging. Spawn rate is ok, but with raging option one would expect to see real threat too. Maybe stronger units, healing units and stronger camps are just what those ignorant savages need.. :)

[civdiss]

I thought that raging barbarians increased the number of barb units appearing from huts but not the number of huts. If this statement is true then the Shongai/Germany do not benefit because their UA depends on huts not barb units. Who knows about this?

[sectoid]

To my understanding, barbarians camps are spawned randomly and camps produce barbarian units. So the difference between raging and normal is more camps (higher spawn rate). Barbarian camps do NOT produce units more often with raging on, they are high in numbers because there is more camps around. That's the way it was on CIV too.

[civdiss]

To my understanding, barbarians camps are spawned randomly and camps produce barbarian units. So the difference between raging and normal is more camps (higher spawn rate). Barbarian camps do NOT produce units more often with raging on, they are high in numbers because there is more camps around. That's the way it was on CIV too.

Not sure about this, my understanding is that raging barb hut spawn rate means more units per hut not a greater number of huts.

[sectoid]

Fanatics page states that raging = higher spawn rate but it does not say wheter it's camps or units. Fanatics page for Civ4 says it's the number of camps, not units, but that's completely different game from 5 so who knows.

Could be that you are correct though, I did recall that one thing affecting number of camps is the difficulty level. I've been going back and forth Immortal and Emperor lately, so maybe I'm too confused to make reliable observations on this matter :p

[Staal]

My impression based purely on anecdotal in-game experience is that the camp spawn individual barbarians faster as well.

[VicRatlhead51]

Seems like more units to hut to me too rather than more huts When I play Germany I'm usually waiting for more camps not the other way around.

I'm playing that weird hut camping culture game with the Ottomans right now too. I'm on immortal and only using 3 cities so AI Rome is beating me to all the wonders since he's gone ICS and is leading the pack in science. I'm keeping up with Ghandi and Napoleon on policies for the most part. I'm not sure whether the ships are giving me an edge or not but no one has declared war on me yet. They might be making up for my lack of wonders. I think the large navy has enough intimidation factor to keep them off my back.