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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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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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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:
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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…
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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:
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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…
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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:
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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:
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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.:
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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…

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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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What this means is that AI will "give" the location to the ottomans, but the player can choose to reinforce and not give it?
The event has effects on the location, but doesn't gift it to the Ottomans.
 
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I have a question. If you lose janissaries does this translate to slave pops dying or will you lose soldier pops like normal?
Slave pops, as it's the pop type employed in the building.
 
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Some corrections of typos/awkward writing I noticed:

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To make the text a bit more flavourful, and since "victories" and "diplomacy" by themselves sound too vague, change "Bountiful raids, victories and diplomacy" to "Bountiful raids, military victories, and cunning diplomacy"

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"Comprising of" should be changed to "Comprised of"

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"focused on a harem" should be changed to "centered around a harem"

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"these semi-autonomous leaders commanded" should be changed to "these semi-autonomous leaders command", to make it consistent with the present tense the rest of the text is written on

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"cavalry would often go raiding" should be changed to "cavalry would often go raid". Also replace "divisions", which is a much more modern military term (the divisional system would be first used systematically during the French Revolutionary Wars), with the term "regiments" or "units".

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"the laws of Ottomans" should be changed to "the laws of the Ottomans" or "the laws of the Ottoman state", since by the time of Suleiman it was already a proper, settled imperial polity and no longer a Ghazi tribal principality. Also, change "focusing" to "focused" and remove the words that I crossed in red. Edit: oh, and I just noticed, remove the "of" in "numerous of ethnicities".

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As with the previous text, change "the vision and ambition of Ottomans" to "the vision and ambition of the Ottomans". Same with the title of the event itself: "The Rise of Ottomans" should be changed to "The Rise of the Ottomans".

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Remove that comma and change "of an entire region" to "the entire region", since we already know the region in question is Anatolia.

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This is not so much a correction but rather a suggestion to put the nicknames of rulers and characters between quotation marks (so in this case it should be Alaeddin "the Beardless Prophet" Eretna Bey), so that they can be more easily distinguished from the name and dynastic surname of the character.
Thanks for taking your time to proofread the texts and make these suggestions, I've just implemented most of them.
 
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Is it because Nikomedeia/Izmit should start in Ottoman hands, and the fact that you did not want the ERE to start at war, the specific reason why the game starts on the 1st of April 1337? Or is there another reason why it doesn't start on the 1st of January?
The start date of the game was chosen before we started working on the map setup, so not related.
 
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I think Judaism's color has to be changed away from this purplish color since it is so close to Orthodoxy and Miaphysitism that you can't tell it apart, and Judaism appears pretty commonly in countries that have Orthodox and Miaphysite pops (Ethiopia comes to mind....)

I am in favor of either a kind of bright blue that's different enough from Lutheranism and Calvinism to stand out:
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Or a currently unused color in the western world, silver:
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Döger, Dulkadir and Ramazan must be Turkoman culture tags. Also, please don't have the beyliks constantly change dynasty as in the early build
 
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LLMs have a "temperature" variable that adjust how random their output is. I've been thinking for sometime that they can add somethink like that to tune the "historicality" of the events. So, the player could chose in a game rule how railroad or aleatory they'd prefer the game to be (relative to PDX balanced baseline)
This is nothing new, Paradox games have AI weights on event choices already. With the weights favoring historical outcomes.
 
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Manpower and soldier pops are two different things. When you lose men in battle you lose soldier pops requiring you to promote more peasants. If you are using slaves to produce manpower you should lose slaves and to replace them you would need to import more rather than promote your own peasants.
When you lose men in battle you lose _pops from your manpower building_. If it cannot find any (i.e. you destroyed the MP building) then it picks other pops.

If they managed to link units to specific MP buildings then it would come from those first.
 
Being of Turkic or Turkoman primary culture, and under the Kingdom rank.
What are the geographic constriction on being a an Anatonlian Beylik, specifically? Assuming you have to be in Anatolia (no tags in modern Turkmenistan), how strict is it? Capital has to be in Anatolian region?
 
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Their culture should be majority Turkish. Greek started to lose ground especially after the Mongol conquests. Especially countryside was exclusively Turkish while greek was only seen in walled settlements. One of the reasons that Ottomans embarked their Balkan campaigns in earlier period of their times was due to Gazi warriors. Nomadic Turkish warriors that were seeking plunder. This is why the Ottomans start as the Strongest beylik even though Eretnids and Karamanids are much larger and much more populated. Needless to say Karamanids also hold old Seljuk Capital.

These constant influx of Gazi warriors seeking glory, plunder and slaves is the sole reason why a small tribe of Kayı could raise large armies. Larger than ERE at that one.

IF there was anything left on Anatolia to plunder they would have gone for it instead crossing to Balkans. That alone indicates that majority of Anatolia, Western part included, was Turkified. Especially countryside. Mongols displaced A LOT of Turkic people. That flocked to Sultanate of Rum for protection. Sultans resettled them across Anatolia. Turkish was majority in this centuries in Anatolia.

People would say that Greek was a big minority in Ottoman Empire until 19th century which is true. But it is not the same phenomenon. Because Turkish population was resettled to Balkans from Anatolia in the later stages of the Empire. It was a big migration akin to earlier centuries. That probably tipped the scales in favor of Greeks in Anatolia.

Plus, there was a lot of social mobility in Ottoman Empire. Especially in the 19th century. Many of the Greek subjects of the Empire migrated to newly built industrial harbors like İzmir. They also become a significant minority in İstanbul by this period of time, even though in classical times a Greek Ortodox was forbidden to settle in Constantinople, except for the designated small areas, that was lifted in 1856. The city experienced a lot of migration again, which also coincided with the development of Northern parts of the city. Which were free to settle for everyone. Many of those places become bustling hubs of Ottoman Intelligentsia. Beyoğlu, Pera, was envisioned as Little Paris, or Paris of the orient.

Anyways. I am trying to say Greek should not be this much in the majority. It should be almost equal to Turkish but Turkish should be majority, especially in the rural areas.


SOURCES: One in French, One in English and one in Turkish

Turkish one: One of the most renowned Turkish historians wrote about it in his book: Osmanlı İmparatorluğu'nun Kuruluş ve Yükseliş Tarihi 1300-1600. Page. 34 states, with my translation, "Byzantine villagers exhausted from the constant raids, did not flee from Bythinia completely as they did in other parts of Western Anatolia."

English one: Donald M. Nichols's The Last Centuries of Byzantium 1261-1453, page 84 states "For as the Turks were emboldened to settle in the countryside, communications between Byzantine cities began to break down. Before long towns on the Black sea coast to the east of Sangarios river was isolated. Commerce was no longer possible, agriculture was abandoned, refugees from the interior swarmed to coastal cities and Constantinople."

French one: Irebe Beldicenau-Steinherr in La Population non muslumane de Bythinie states the same as the Turkish source.

It is clear as day. I have also primary sources about it both in Greek and in Ottoman Turkish, this one is written a century later tho,.

Countryside was belonged to the Turks. They were so rampant that anywhere outside of a walled City was not safe, anywhere besides walled cities were Turkified.
 
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Slave pops, as it's the pop type employed in the building.
Does this mean that slave units keep track of their origin pop type and just kill slaves employed in slave barracks? Because normal regiments suffering casualties kill your soldier pops randomly across the board, at least that was my understanding.
 
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Tbh the Ottomans did have no weak spot at this time. Later they did, due to overextension and corruption, but for the first 2-3 centuries of the game they really were steamrolling. I have no idea what downsides should their bonuses have, and giving them random debuffs just for the sake of downsides is even more gamey, in my opinion.
A country with no weak spot doesn't exist, they steamrolled for the same reasons that many other countries in the past and future did, which is their situation relative to their neighbour's
10% control is insane, i like most of these buffs but this one doesn't make sense, why should you give the Ottomans such a big control bonus when you have turkic migration to represent the spread of Ottoman Turkish authority in the region?
 
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One concern I have is that the modifiers sort of encourage you to wage wars against other turks in the beginning, when historically (as far as I know) Ottomans mostly expanded at Byzantium’s expense in the years after 1337, and later acquired lands of other beyliks, some peacefully others not.

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?
 
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Does this mean that slave units keep track of their origin pop type and just kill slaves employed in slave barracks? Because normal regiments suffering casualties kill your soldier pops randomly across the board, at least that was my understanding.
It will probably keep track where it was trained, and thus it will have access to whether his origin building employs slave or not
 
One concern I have is that the modifiers sort of encourage you to wage wars against other turks in the beginning, when historically (as far as I know) Ottomans mostly expanded at Byzantium’s expense in the years after 1337, and later acquired lands of other beyliks, some peacefully others not.

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?

Yes Ottomans should be able to press claims in Balkans right from the beginning
 
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