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Tinto Flavour #25 - 6th of June 2025

Hello, and welcome one more Friday to Tinto Flavour, the happy days in which we take a look at the flavour content of Europa Universalis V!

Today, we will take a look at the flavour content for the Ottomans, one of our Tier 1 countries, the Turkish Beliks in general, and the Rise of the Turks situation, in which all of them are involved!

The Ottomans were founded by Osmanoglu Osman Bey, a chieftain of the Kayı tribe of the Oghuz Turks, around 1299. Residing around the Northwestern coast of Anatolia, they were initially one of the many Beyliks to occupy the border territory of Rûm, a once-powerful Sultanate. Under the leadership of Osmanoglu Gazi Orhan Bey, they have consolidated and greatly expanded their domain, securing vital land along the coast of the Bosphorus. Bountiful raids, victories, and diplomacy have secured them as one of the region's most powerful rising Beyliks...

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As usual, please consider all UI, 2D and 3D art as WIP.

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A lovely day in 1337 on the coast of the Bosphorus…

The Ottomans, like the other Anatolian Beyliks, start with some Reforms and Privileges, of which some are unique:
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Privilege Ghazi Lords.png

They also start with a unique and troublesome succession law:
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And this policy:
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These are some of the advances available, which you may notice are quite relevant:
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Advance Uc Bey.png

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Advance Akincular.png

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Advance Kanun.png

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Advance Tulip Period.png

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Although the most important advances for the Ottomans are:
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There’s a different Janissary unit available in each age; for example, this is the one available for Age of Reformation:
Janissary Musketeers.png

This is very relevant, as the key flavour content for the Ottomans, and the rest of the Anatolian Beyliks, is a situation that triggers a couple of months into the game; I'll let one of our Content Designers, @PDXBigBoss :
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The situation focuses on the rise of the Ottomans, in most cases. However, this does not mean that another Beylik cannot take their place, with their own unique flavor, reforms, and outcomes!

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This unique reform is granted to the strongest Beylik, if they are the Ottomans.

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This reform is only available for the Strongest Beylik, if they are NOT the Ottomans!

This is the panel of the situation. Many countries, beyond the "Strongest Beylik" can play a part in it, the ever-shifting environment of politics, diplomacy, and eventual war. While the Strongest will gain access to a few unique actions, most actions are available to any Beylik.
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The Ottomans are by far not domineering across the region, let alone beyond it, in 1337. Foreshadowing or…?

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  • Press Claims - The ability of the Strongest to fabricate a claim against an enemy in Anatolia.
  • Raise a Bey Fortress - It's a unique building that increases the Fort Level of a location and produces an ample, steady supply of manpower, much earlier than many other countries can. It can only be built in cities across Anatolia. Upon its construction, you will be greeted by a positive event, whose historical information is tailored specifically to the location you build it. This means that it will be different if you build it in Bursa, Izmit, Konya, Smyrna, etc... While this is good and all, these fortresses are a symbol of authority, for better or worse. This means that if a location with a Bey Fortress gets sieged down, you will suffer a blow to the stability and legitimacy of your rule, and your people will lose faith in your ability to win the war. The maluses will be far worse should the enemy even annex that location, so be careful…
image (44).png

Location Importance is a composite metric, tailored specifically to the Situation. It depends on many factors such as development, market access, road connectivity, and more. This is used to determine the volume of certain bonuses and utilizes a nice little “game concept” tooltip to explain its application and usage.

  • Seek Relations with the Byzantines - as long as the Romans hold Constantinople, and they are "relevant" any Beylik that is strong enough will be able to leverage diplomacy to extract gifts from the Empire. These gifts may be the hand of a daughter in marriage, ample coin, the recognition of a Beylik as legitimate sovereign of Anatolia, or the demand of capable characters to prop up your administration in exchange for relations and good faith. They can - and often do - decline, but are they really in a position to barter ?
  • Offer Diplomatic Protection - through marriage, the exchange of territory and diplomacy, as any Beylik we can offer an alliance and guarantees of sovereignty to another lesser Beylik. Of course, history has shown such friendships are short-lived…
  • Create Uc Bey - A unique subject type for the duration of the situation. A powerful weapon when used appropriately, the Uc Bey guards the frontier of the Beylik against foreign threats. They will be an army-based country with a powerful Government Reform, making them the perfect guardians. However, you will need to integrate them and centralize later on, should you survive and come out on top after the situation ends…
A couple of locations in the Situation map mode previously shown, are marked in red and yellow. This is for two reasons:
  • Anatolia in 1337 is traversed by a Great Trunk Road, controlling important points across it (Konya, Sivas, etc) unlocks a scaling Estate Privilege for your Merchant Estate, let's take a look:
    image (45).png
The privilege will grant 1% Trade Efficiency for each of these locations that we control directly…

  • Konya and Sivas are also home to Seljuk Mints, which were used by the former Sultanate to produce coinage and project an aura of legitimacy and authority. Owning and developing these locations will be vital when it comes to spreading our Control across the region through a unique building…
image (46).png

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As the Strongest Beylik consolidates holdings with a majority of Greek Culture, this event will appear, heralding the beginning of a great Turkic Migration. It enables a unique action for our country to call upon Turkic migration from the East, to populate the coasts of the Aegean Sea and Anatolia. Historically, this was very vital and it carries the same importance in-game, as having a majority of our culture in locations will allow us to fully core them, thus increasing our control!

The number of migrants that will travel is dynamically balanced. The pops will always come from a province with an ample population, and the amount of pops will always be "relevant" to the target province we are trying to populate:
image (31).png

And a nice little short-term modifier to ensure a swifter cultural integration​

Once the strongest Beylik consolidates themselves, and crosses the Dardanelles, the Press Claims action will evolve, allowing the Beylik to declare war through a good Casus Belli across the Balkans, as well, posing a direct threat to the Kingdoms that populate that region:
image (30).png

Once the player conquers 300 locations, including at least 30 urban locations, and we own Konstantiniyye, we will be greeted by this event, which heralds in the Classical Era of your (now) Empire. In most cases, this will be the Ottomans.:
new classical era screenshot.png

This event will also grant us the rank of Empire, which comes with significant bonuses and some double edges in the form of a unique disaster for Empires…

image (28).png


But what happens if the Karamanids or another rises, instead? They are greeted by a different outcome, a choice. They will be able to adopt the Ottoman tag, inheriting the Ottoman content, events, reforms, everything they have to offer, whilst still holding on to their flag, name, color on the map, dynasty, history, etc. However, should you choose not to do this, you will be able to reform the Sultanate of Rum....

Moreover, other Beyliks across Anatolia have dedicated flavor content to themselves. The Germiyanids, Aydinids, Eretnids will have a few events associated with their history in the middle of the 14th century, onwards.
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Germiyanids Ruler perishes, who is 79 at game start. A nasty event, reminiscent of Shah Rukh

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The Eretnids are displeased with Jalayrid rule, trouble steers!

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On top of that, the Ottomans have around 200 DHEs, making it a proper Tier 1 country in terms of flavor…

… And much more, but that’s all for today, as it’s already very long! As today is Friday, this will be the schedule for next week, which will be completely on @Roger Corominas , as I’ll be off:
  • Monday -> Tinto Maps Feedback about Japan & Korea
  • Tuesday -> Tinto Flavour about Korea & Manchuria
  • Wednesday -> Tinto Talks about the Shinto religion & Shogunate IO
  • Thursday -> ‘Behind the Music of Europa Universalis V - Composing the Grandest Score’ video!
  • Friday -> Tinto Flavour about Japan & the Nanboku-chō Jidai & Sengoku Jidai situations

And also remember, you can wishlist Europa Universalis V now! Cheers!
 

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As the Strongest Beylik consolidates holdings with a majority of Greek Culture, this event will appear, heralding the beginning of a great Turkic Migration. It enables a unique action for our country to call upon Turkic migration from the East, to populate the coasts of the Aegean Sea and Anatolia. Historically, this was very vital and it carries the same importance in-game, as having a majority of our culture in locations will allow us to fully core them, thus increasing our control!

This seems like a really strong assimilation ability for an empire that historically remained very decentralized and tolerant of many different cultures out of necessity. The Aegean coast, for example, remained majority Greek all the way to the early 1900s when they were expelled in the aftermath of Greek independence. Other cultures throughout the empire certainly were never accepted, but they were also never forcibly assimilated like other empires in this era endeavored.
 
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Have you been able to look at this ottoman issue from last week's video?

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From today's video, around minute 3: there's 61% Orthodox and 48% Turkish culture.

At a total population of 1.5 million, that means there's at least 200k orthodox Turks in this nation, WAY more than I was expecting...

Is that sourced, or part of the "work in progress"?
 
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Ottomans had not institutionalized fratricide in 1337. Their succession, while still unigeniture (compared to all the other beyliks), did not involve the murder of every possible heir besides one. That wouldn't be made policy until Mehmed II. They would do better with an intermediate succession policy for something emphasizing "unigeniture" (one heir, with no power-sharing between that heir and any other sibling) that then can, through an advance, be flipped to fratricide which would be... technically more stable insomuch that you don't have a bunch of possible claimants floating around after succession (thus guaranteeing unigeniture succession) at the cost of stability.

So, "unigeniture" succession in 1337 (all goes to one son, selected, with a malus towards legitimacy), flipped to fratricide after a relevant chance in policy borne out of an advance (all goes to one son, all other potential heirs killed, malus to stability).

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So, not the norm in 1337, but by the turn of the century.

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This is SO nit-picky and others might disagree but I think the book icon that indicates historical event options might look better if it didn't touch the borders of the option button, i.e. if it was moved to the right by just a scooch? @SaintDaveUK
 
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Also, you’ve moved the characters into a portrait in events, probably to make them not blend into the background, but uh, why did you then also make the event pictures sepia colored? Could you change the coloring of event pictures back so we can properly admire the artwork?
I actually don't like this change at all. You can barely see the character art now, which, contrary to popular belief among the Glorified Spreadsheet fandom, actually looks pretty good.
 
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Will the Ottomans start at peace with Byzantium? Historically speaking they should still be at war and about to take and annex the rest of Bithynia, ejecting Byzantium from Asia, not counting the enclave of Philadelphia.
 
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I think Ottoman ceramic should be more influential in the game:


You can find more information about defence industry of Ottomans here:

* foundation of the Imperial Arsenal (Tophane-i Amire)
 
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Me: tries to find Albania


Map: Ottoman everywhere


Me: Skanderbeg?? League of Lezhë???


Skanderbeg: ‘brb, fighting 100k Ottomans with 12 dudes and a goat
 
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so how exactly are you supposed to stop the Ottomans? They get free claims, tons of military bonuses, tons of manpower, tons of control etc.
Castles made of pork
 
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It will probably keep track where it was trained, and thus it will have access to whether his origin building employs slave or not
Could be that too, but I think it's more likely it keeps track of their origins instead. There's no reason to think that the 'killing mechanism' doesn't work exactly the same as with normal troops, and if that's the case, then keeping track of the location where the slave using regiments are trained could lead to issues. Imagine you have barracks all over your empire, but train all your Janissaries in a single location, and then that army gets stackwiped. If it works like you said, then the game would have to kill slave pops in that single location, and when it inevitably won't find enough, it'd have to proceed to kill your peasants in the location, like it would in the case of a normal army when it can't find enough soldier pops to kill. If it's keeping track of the pop type origin instead of the location origin, then the game can kill your spread out slave pops like it would do with the soldier pops, and only if you still didn't have enough would it proceed to start killing your peasants.
 
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Hey everyone,

As we discuss the upcoming Europa Universalis V, especially concerning major powers like the Ottomans, I wanted to bring up an important historical point.
It's worth remembering that the Ottomans actually lost their first major war against the Mamluks, which took place from 1481-1491. Ten years of warring, and the Ottomans LOST. This was a significant historical event where the Mamluks successfully defended their territories against Ottoman incursions.

With this in mind, I hope the game design aims to truly reflect historical nuances. It would be good history if the Ottomans, while powerful, aren't made to feel historically "overpowered." allowing for dynamic and historically grounded gameplay challenges for both them and their neighbors. All the while, keeping in mind, that in 1337 the Mamluks were significantly more powerful than the young Ottomans.
 
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