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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 Heirs of Rum.png

Advance Akincular.png

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Advance Kanun.png

Policy Kanun.png

Advance Tulip Period.png

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Although the most important advances for the Ottomans are:
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Building Janissary Barracks.png

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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.
image (29).png

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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hmm i dont know if regular mechanics would make the ottomans prefer vassalisation over conquest outright(control wise it seems easy to control with the rivers), anyway the event to give them a cb is to nudge them more to historical accuracy, but its just a cb a player can conquer the romanian states regularly
As far as I understand the mechanic, rivers propagate a reduced Distance to Capitol cost downstream but the Ottoman capitol is on the coast, so the rivers won't factor in here until they are reworked.
 
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hmm i dont know if regular mechanics would make the ottomans prefer vassalisation over conquest outright(control wise it seems easy to control with the rivers), anyway the event to give them a cb is to nudge them more to historical accuracy, but its just a cb a player can conquer the romanian states regularly
That poses a question then: why did those ottomans vassalize their Romanian conquests instead of annexing them directly? As you point out they can sail across the Black Sea and up the Danube, so communication difficulties are a bad explanation. My guess would be they didn’t want to deal with ruling over Romanians, but I don’t know Ottoman or Romanian history that well.
 
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As far as I understand the mechanic, rivers propagate a reduced Distance to Capitol cost downstream but the Ottoman capitol is on the coast, so the rivers won't factor in here until they are reworked.
Upstream too but this is less efficient. It’s also very silly since control and trade proximity both go both ways, so this really ought to be confined to import/export routes (which are unidirectional), but that’s another matter entirely. Regardless the mouth of the Danube would reduce distance cost to capital if Black Sea maritime presence is high enough to make land routes suboptimal.
 
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Thanks for taking your time to proofread the texts and make these suggestions, I've just implemented most of them.

The typos I found were reported here already, all but this one:

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This comma does not function as intended and interrupts the text, it needs to go.
Also, is "Balkans Wars" correct rather than "Balkan Wars" ? I'm not sure.

Other than typos, I want to question what the deal is with this window, where we see "We can not remove ..." repeated three times.
If the first two references two different reasons then I can see why there's two - but why on Earth is there a third one here?

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Upstream too but this is less efficient. It’s also very silly since control and trade proximity both go both ways, so this really ought to be confined to import/export routes (which are unidirectional), but that’s another matter entirely. Regardless the mouth of the Danube would reduce distance cost to capital if Black Sea maritime presence is high enough to make land routes suboptimal.
As I said, the mechanic does not work upstream. I am of the opinion that the downstream effect should have half the value used for rivers upstream, though.
 
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!

[...]
Pavia, can you tell us how "recruit Regiments in Subject's Locations" work? Do you recruit using their Pops? If so, when they die, do Pops in your subject's Locations die?

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UI comments

I like this UI change, highlighting the goods used (I'm not 100% sure about the colour, but any background to them helps):

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Any chance that we can hover over the background art and get to see it in all it's glory in a tooltip/window? Without the sepia tone etc.

I think you could have the background art less "dim" or uncontrasted - not all the way to the full original art, though.

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hmm alongside this can you make that the building would affect minting income?
The Local Proximity Source is already busted, it will increase all adjacent Location's Control by 5% if you have 100% Control (I'm less sure as to what the value is if you have, say 50% Control in Konya). Thus, you'll earn more money from taxes.
 
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All AI is WIP, although the most common outcome is the Ottomans being the Top Beylik. We're also working currently towards making the Ottoman AI expand at a more or less historical pace when it succeeds, but it's not 100% granted yet; we're balancing the situation mostly around making a correct pace for a human player.
So what does that mean? Constantinople falling mid 1400s?
I was initially hoping, that one needs Canons to conquer this Location... like some mechanic that prevents the town from frequently falling in the 1300s . And perhaps something similar for the Al-Hambra. So both can exist as city states for some decades.
 
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Fraticide was introduced by Fatih Sultan Mehmet (the conqueror) and was removed by 1603. You will run into a problem of losing too many of your dynasty members almost wiping it out, which is why it got removed irl in the first place. Please dont arbitarly force fraticide on the players.
 
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I feel that just referring to the Janissaries as formed "through the Devshirme child levy" doesn't make it clear that this was a levy specifically raised from non-Muslim subjects, and that the children were forcibly converted to Islam - both weakening their non-Muslim subjects (how can you rebel if all your strongest sons are taken to be turned into the Sultan's personal forces) and being the whole reason that the Janissaries were directly loyal to the Sultan himself, since they did not come from and thus have any loyalties to any other faction in the Ottoman court.
The topic was mentioned so many times. What you are saying is simply false.

1. The devshirme was conducted on economically poor, rural areas. It did not affect the vast majority of people.

2. One child among 40 was taken.

3. The devshirme was strict regarding how many were taken. By the begining of the 1600s, the Ottoman dynasty is employing 10 000 people, including all people taken by the devshirme.

4. The devshirme included muslim bosnaks and recommendations by agas as well as bribery.

5. The devshirme practically stopped in the 1640th.

There is no evidence that would suggest that the devshirme had any meaningful affect on the conversion or weakening of orthodox christians on the Balkan.
 
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This seems like a really strong assimilation ability for an empire that historically remained very decentralized
They were centralized through and through. More so than other nations. Just not everywhere. The devshrime ensured loyal governors.
and tolerant of many different cultures out of necessity. The Aegean coast, for example, remained majority Greek all the way to the early 1900s
It didnt. There is no evidence for that. Ottoman population counts show a predomintantly muslim population (at anatolian aegan vilayets). Not a single vilayet is even close to being +50% greek. Other areas like western thrace and even large parts of Macedonia show a large muslim presence. Greeks are becoming most defienetly a minority.
 
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As I said, the mechanic does not work upstream
And you'd be wrong. Johan specifically said that the bonus does apply upstream, it's just reduced.
I am of the opinion that the downstream effect should have half the value used for rivers upstream, though.
Again, proximity for control and market access implies two way travel. Only trade routes, which are unidirectional, should care which way the river goes since you're going to have to go back the other way regardless.
 
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I hope Janissary dynamics are considered in the game. To give some bullet-points regarding them:

-The Janissary were initially forbidden to marry. This ensured their dedication to the Sultan. However over time this changed and sons of janissaries became janissaries as well, rendering their loyalty and effectiveness over time.

-The devhsirme included muslim bosnaks and aga recommendations. it wasnt solely based on christian pops.

-Janissary numbers were by far no where near being huge. At around 1600, the Ottoman dynasty empolys 10 000 people. This includes all people taken by the devshirme, including the janissaries that became governors rather than soldiers.

-The devshirme stopped in the 1640th and janissaries were "replaced" by anatolian muslims. From the 1640th onwards, the janissaries are compromized of predominantly anatolian muslim turks.

-Due to financial issues, the Ottomans sold Janissary ranks, entirely rending the rank of a Janissary useless.


I may also add:

The bulk of the Ottoman army consisted of anatolian muslims. Anatolia was the backbone of the Ottoman army. People in arab lands were excempt from military service until the 19th century. I can already smell the janissary and levi inflation, so one way to balance this out, is by implementing, what happened irl.
 
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Thank you for the information, I'm very glad to be proven wrong! :D

EDIT: Hold on, that's from the same post he posted this picture, which is the source of my disappointment:
View attachment 1314428
Yeah he said that there is still an upstream bonus, it's just smaller. Which is still silly for the reasons I've given, but that's that.
 
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