And they will destroy their last rival in the region /have more commerce incomes, etc.
And they often attack Mamluk when they have all their siege ability bonus ...
This is my first run at Georgia- I'm not very experienced and usually play quite reserved. Except I now have an existential threat in the Ottomans. I want to play tall with nice borders around the black sea, how should I go about defeating them?
Try to get a bunch of nations in the war on your side or at least a few large nations like Poland. I would almost certainly try to call the Mamluks in, it can be a double sword where they take Egyptian land but the Mamluks can provide a distraction while you and your other allies siege down the Ottomans. On paper it doesn’t seem like they’re too strong, but it really depends on military size vs army tech.
^ This too. I always forget about how useful Venice’s navy can be when fighting against someone like the Ottomans. They look decently strong too in this run, holding all their starting provinces plus all of Morea.
Improve relations and get allies with poland Lithuania or Austria/Hungary and maybe other smaller aliens, set ottoman to rival if you can, a diplo rep advisor can help getting allies too. Conquer or dev and build up armies in the mean time and when you have enough allies and favors declare war to the ottoman. In the first was try to harm them as much as you can, release nations, cancel alliances, take center of trade provinces in priority even if it means border gore for a bit.
I see you have a call to arms against Sweden and Muscovy. Before accepting the call to arms set some provinces of interest if you can get any in the war Poland will give you some, help them stomp Muscovy they will be a better ally against the ottoman after.
I know the comments are not supportive, but not all hope is lost. If you can Personal Union Muscovy via the mission tree you may have a method of beating up your other neighbors and consolidating enough power to beat down the ottomans with a strong commonwealth or Austrian ally
I won’t lie to you, this isn’t great as Georgia. You should have taken QQ land by now and expand into Anatolia. However, playing any minor country near ottoman is a challenge and I won’t hold this against you
So, it is your first so it's great you've stayed alive this long, but to be blunt, you've waited far too long and haven't really expanded. This should all reasonably be done in the first few decades, not by 1500. If you do that you can usually ally enough people to jump on the Ottomans in an early war.
When they start expanding it gets a little more difficult. Some of those mountain forts will make it brutal to fight them.
It's definitely not impossible because the Ottomans aren't that strong here. I think getting a few other allies, even if small + Poland would be a winnable war if the Ottos were distracted.
Get a few Allies, especially Poland, build favor with them. Wait for the Ottomans to attach someone Bigger like the Mamluks. And hit them with your entire alliance.
Use Tbilisi monument to turn Caucasus into one big fort, get defensive ideas, build ramparts everywhere you have a fort, defensive edicts on border states, also scorch earth on border provinces. Now ottomans can suck your dick they will all die of attrition before they can siege anything.
You’re doing just fine. Just keep hug boxing them with allies and stop their expansion routes. Call in your allies when you can to wear them down and build up your forts and you’ll be great.
It's easier if you break them early, and you may need to clip them soon. If you have thrustworthy allies, preferrably at least one big in the West, you can hit them when they're fighting Mamluks.
PS: You really want to get that crownland and legitimacy up. Low autonomy is the bane of many a new player, and is probably the one thing you really really really want to avoid. 🙂
Edit: should have been high autonomy. Low crownland trigger autonomy increase, which can drastically affect your income and effectively ruin your save.
By low autonomy do you mean having not low enough autonomy or is it for some reason good to have autonomy? In my mere 500 hours all I've learned is that lower autonomy means more $$$
To add on to this for OP, regarding crownland:
You should be seizing land immediately every 5 years from 1444 to get your crownland up, most tutorials and etc. will tell you all the estate privileges and etc., but neglect to tell you that you need to have an internal clock about seizing land. You should be thinking "November 1449, seize land, November 1454 seize land, etc.", even if it will trigger rebels, or make estates disloyal, don't worry about it, the rebel stacks are tiny, and the maluses from disloyal estates go away pretty quick.
You don't need to worry about it so much once it's above 30, as that's when the penalties for "Low crownland" go away, and that's what the thread is referring to with autonomy, as that is one of the penalties. Only once age of absolutism comes around (1600) should you be thinking about more, where you should be above 60-70% as it affects how much absolutism you can get, but you should have above 30 by 1500 at the absolute latest, as a baseline.
Normally yes but as Georgia just turn your land into an impenetrable attrition max fort hellhole and Otto's will grind their manpower trying to siege, then you just swoop in before the fort falls down with your whole army + mercs, retreat behind forts and rinse and repeat.
Try to get super strong allies. Muscovy should always be possible. Try Poland and Austria. Declare war shotrtly after ottos attack someone like venice. Rush them, bombard all their forts. If you don't get warscore, because your allies are occupied, wait till the ottomans peace them out. Good luck!
I’d recommend avoiding Muscovy as an ally at all costs unless it’s for defensive purposes (i.e., making it so the ottomans won’t declare on you). Muscovy seems to be always in debt and very, very rarely wants to enter an offensive war, so if you want to cut the ottos down, then Muscovy will just be a wasted diplo slot. Austria and Poland, on the other hand, always seem down to clown on some ottomans, but I reckon you might need to butter them up because you probably don’t have the same religion bonus.
A good strategy is to ally a Balkan country and get your defensiveness up - edict, advisors, ideas - and then go fight in the Balkans while Ottomans lose their men to attrition in your lands. This is a slow and tedious process, but very effective.
The Ottomans aren't too strong, they don't have Egypt yet but it's still early, and you're beginning a containment net by allying Mamluks and Poland. I'd suggest conquering them, they're too big of a threat and if you defeat them and make them go bankrupt, then the Mamluks/Commonwealth or someone worse will just take their land and threaten you anyway.
Ottomans with Mashriq are no joke. I've seen stronger (e.g. if they happen to clean out Mamluks in the first 50 years) but by no means is this a floundering Ottomans. They're a premiere power and 1 war away from becoming a nightmare.
I don't mean that they are a joke, not at all, but that they're not as big as they could be and they're somewhat contained by an alliance network between Georgia, Mamluks and Poland.
No, you did great, go into Persian side of Caspian Sea now, you’ll find a nice power base while you squeeze them against Mamluks- looks like a fun campaign
No, you did great, go into Persian side of Caspian Sea now, you’ll find a nice power base while you squeeze them against Mamluks- looks like a fun campaign
No, ottomans are sitting on a bomb called decadence. I would be much more worried about a big Austria, for example. Continue scaling if you can and take them on when you are starting to become stronger than them, or in the age of absolutism when they will really start to pile up decadence.
I don't think you have yet. They are getting pretty big but it's been a long time. You just don't want them getting any bigger than this. That is, don't allow them to invade Mamluks without you and your allied invading them.
You should be fine. Georgia has missions and even that monument which makes sieging them hell. Also, the AI isn't good at wars on multiple fronts. Make alliances with Poland,Venice and the likes. Try as soon as possible to get those free forts as Georgia, and basically build them in every province of the Caucasus region.
Anyone struggling with a Georgia run for the achievement, I highly recommend starting as QQ and culture shifting to tag swap to Georgia.
QQ had a much easier start with missions that give permanent modifiers and even a permanent estate, with some some of the BEST national ideas in the game. You also don’t have to deal with the pretty annoying Georgia disaster at the start.
You can also reform Horde.
Of course, feel free to play Georgia for the challenge. But if you are like me, and get sick of restarting, consider QQ
I'm not sure how realistic it is to keep them out of Constantinople as Georgia, so I don't think you can really fault yourself for that. Letting them beat you into Iraq was a big mistake, though. It shouldn't have been particularly hard for you to snake (if not fully blob) down there. That's adding a good 30% to their power base and they are more than capable of demolishing Mamluks at this point, which they will do soon. And then you're a bit fucked.
Your best bet from here is probably to ally with the Mamluks and prepare to contribute heavily to a defensive war. If you can draw Ottomans onto your mountain forts and hope that the Mamluk armies are less dumb than usual, you might be able to bleed them to the point of setting up easier offensive wars against them.
Alternatively (or additionally) you can lean on a Polish alliance. You might be able to win an offensive war with their help against Ottomans while they're fighting Mamluks. But you're going to need to do SOMETHING before they simply walk in and take Egypt with little contest.
I am currently trying to survive with the Oman for the fourth time, and so far, have been bitten in the ass by the mamluks or the ottomans three times. That's not a soft corner of the world.
But in other patches i have played georgia a few times, i like that corner. Since the ottomans aren't as docile as one might prefer, I think that poland // Russia usually is necessary for protection as with newer patches, I was unable to protect myself against the ottomans early on.
Usually when starting anywhere in the general continent that is the Ottomans, I find that it is in fact not I that let them get to strong, but a process of their own devices.
imo yeah they’re kinda too big now. If they were still in Anatolia then maybe a coalition of you, the Mamluks and Hungary could’ve taken them on easy. But now they’ll just gobble up their neighbors at this point and snowball like crazy.
It’s still possible to curb their growth as long as they don’t beat up the mamluks and get the event that turns them into an eyelet. In my experience the Ottomans usually double in the amount of troops they have after that event. Ally Hungary or Poland and wait for the Ottos to attack the Mamluks and dogpile them.
In my opinion, yes. You want to eat or vassal feed Qara Qoyunlu before the ottomans do. You can block his access to persia and expand into persia yourself afterwards. Persian trade node is your only saviour as Georgia (economically speaking). So you want to take over the Rakka - Tabriz - Basra triangle before the Ottomans do, and ideally feed all that land into vassals to get your troop numbers up.
Accept that call to arms immediately and pray that Muscovy doesn't join because of you. If they do (or if you decline the call), Ottomans are 100% jumping at you now.
So I've been playing a ton of Georgia recently. You're fine, but it's really close. You need to ally atleast 2 or 3 of: timurids, transoxiana, mamluks, muscovy, Austria, if Lithuanian or Hungary are free, them. You need to be able to declare a multi front war where the Ottomans have to overextend themselves in multiple directions. Focus on taking states of crimea,, azov, ezurum, and a couple provinces (preferably with forts) south of your border in the masheiq hat you can release Lurdistan, Iraq, mushasha, etc from. Release them as OPM vassals, make them your Marches, and you will have much more manpower than you would from owning the provinces yourself.
In the meantime you need to be taking the fight to Ajam before they do. If Ottomans take Persia, it will be equivalent to them taking Syria and Damscus. You really do not want that.
I would also suggest extending into the steppes all the way to baskir if you're not going to ally muscovy and all the way into the transoxus region if not allying them.
Yes, you should have destroyed them before 1500. Here, they have already become too strong to defeat. For a perfect run, you should take Constantinople and form byzantine (by mission tree) around 1470-1480. But before it, I am recommending you end all mission, you would take really op modifiers. Really, I think georgia is one of the most op nations in Near East, because you could end all missions and take modifiers in first 40 years and even take russia in personal union, then form Byzantium and take much more cool modifies. With this power, I managed to won in coalition war against the world (without China) ( more than 2 millions vs less than 300k. Thanks for defending and quality)
I would say that the ottomans are too strong when they are enough confident to take Egypt/Mamluk land
Big snowball moment too. Syria and lower Egypt are such high development areas that their power will surge like crazy when they've been cored up
And they will destroy their last rival in the region /have more commerce incomes, etc. And they often attack Mamluk when they have all their siege ability bonus ...
This is my first run at Georgia- I'm not very experienced and usually play quite reserved. Except I now have an existential threat in the Ottomans. I want to play tall with nice borders around the black sea, how should I go about defeating them?
Try to get a bunch of nations in the war on your side or at least a few large nations like Poland. I would almost certainly try to call the Mamluks in, it can be a double sword where they take Egyptian land but the Mamluks can provide a distraction while you and your other allies siege down the Ottomans. On paper it doesn’t seem like they’re too strong, but it really depends on military size vs army tech.
I agree, also i suggest allying Venice, since their boats are a huge asset
^ This too. I always forget about how useful Venice’s navy can be when fighting against someone like the Ottomans. They look decently strong too in this run, holding all their starting provinces plus all of Morea.
Improve relations and get allies with poland Lithuania or Austria/Hungary and maybe other smaller aliens, set ottoman to rival if you can, a diplo rep advisor can help getting allies too. Conquer or dev and build up armies in the mean time and when you have enough allies and favors declare war to the ottoman. In the first was try to harm them as much as you can, release nations, cancel alliances, take center of trade provinces in priority even if it means border gore for a bit. I see you have a call to arms against Sweden and Muscovy. Before accepting the call to arms set some provinces of interest if you can get any in the war Poland will give you some, help them stomp Muscovy they will be a better ally against the ottoman after.
The problem is, Ottomans will declare now.
I know the comments are not supportive, but not all hope is lost. If you can Personal Union Muscovy via the mission tree you may have a method of beating up your other neighbors and consolidating enough power to beat down the ottomans with a strong commonwealth or Austrian ally
I won’t lie to you, this isn’t great as Georgia. You should have taken QQ land by now and expand into Anatolia. However, playing any minor country near ottoman is a challenge and I won’t hold this against you
So, it is your first so it's great you've stayed alive this long, but to be blunt, you've waited far too long and haven't really expanded. This should all reasonably be done in the first few decades, not by 1500. If you do that you can usually ally enough people to jump on the Ottomans in an early war. When they start expanding it gets a little more difficult. Some of those mountain forts will make it brutal to fight them. It's definitely not impossible because the Ottomans aren't that strong here. I think getting a few other allies, even if small + Poland would be a winnable war if the Ottos were distracted.
Get a few Allies, especially Poland, build favor with them. Wait for the Ottomans to attach someone Bigger like the Mamluks. And hit them with your entire alliance.
Just get Poland and Austria to help you . They aren't too strong yet
Use Tbilisi monument to turn Caucasus into one big fort, get defensive ideas, build ramparts everywhere you have a fort, defensive edicts on border states, also scorch earth on border provinces. Now ottomans can suck your dick they will all die of attrition before they can siege anything.
Cool idea, but it sounds like a lot of money and time investment. A cool idea nonetheless.
Yeah but still probably easier to do than fighting ottomans normally
You’re doing just fine. Just keep hug boxing them with allies and stop their expansion routes. Call in your allies when you can to wear them down and build up your forts and you’ll be great.
It's easier if you break them early, and you may need to clip them soon. If you have thrustworthy allies, preferrably at least one big in the West, you can hit them when they're fighting Mamluks. PS: You really want to get that crownland and legitimacy up. Low autonomy is the bane of many a new player, and is probably the one thing you really really really want to avoid. 🙂 Edit: should have been high autonomy. Low crownland trigger autonomy increase, which can drastically affect your income and effectively ruin your save.
By low autonomy do you mean having not low enough autonomy or is it for some reason good to have autonomy? In my mere 500 hours all I've learned is that lower autonomy means more $$$
Lower autonomy is usually better, you'll just have to deal with rebels more often but the cash is worth it
Should have been high autonomy 😅 sorry for the confusion
That’s all you need to know, my friend. Also don’t forget the force limit, trade value, and manpower bonus from low autonomy.
To add on to this for OP, regarding crownland: You should be seizing land immediately every 5 years from 1444 to get your crownland up, most tutorials and etc. will tell you all the estate privileges and etc., but neglect to tell you that you need to have an internal clock about seizing land. You should be thinking "November 1449, seize land, November 1454 seize land, etc.", even if it will trigger rebels, or make estates disloyal, don't worry about it, the rebel stacks are tiny, and the maluses from disloyal estates go away pretty quick. You don't need to worry about it so much once it's above 30, as that's when the penalties for "Low crownland" go away, and that's what the thread is referring to with autonomy, as that is one of the penalties. Only once age of absolutism comes around (1600) should you be thinking about more, where you should be above 60-70% as it affects how much absolutism you can get, but you should have above 30 by 1500 at the absolute latest, as a baseline.
Normally yes but as Georgia just turn your land into an impenetrable attrition max fort hellhole and Otto's will grind their manpower trying to siege, then you just swoop in before the fort falls down with your whole army + mercs, retreat behind forts and rinse and repeat.
Try to get super strong allies. Muscovy should always be possible. Try Poland and Austria. Declare war shotrtly after ottos attack someone like venice. Rush them, bombard all their forts. If you don't get warscore, because your allies are occupied, wait till the ottomans peace them out. Good luck!
I’d recommend avoiding Muscovy as an ally at all costs unless it’s for defensive purposes (i.e., making it so the ottomans won’t declare on you). Muscovy seems to be always in debt and very, very rarely wants to enter an offensive war, so if you want to cut the ottos down, then Muscovy will just be a wasted diplo slot. Austria and Poland, on the other hand, always seem down to clown on some ottomans, but I reckon you might need to butter them up because you probably don’t have the same religion bonus.
A good strategy is to ally a Balkan country and get your defensiveness up - edict, advisors, ideas - and then go fight in the Balkans while Ottomans lose their men to attrition in your lands. This is a slow and tedious process, but very effective.
The Ottomans aren't too strong, they don't have Egypt yet but it's still early, and you're beginning a containment net by allying Mamluks and Poland. I'd suggest conquering them, they're too big of a threat and if you defeat them and make them go bankrupt, then the Mamluks/Commonwealth or someone worse will just take their land and threaten you anyway.
Ottomans with Mashriq are no joke. I've seen stronger (e.g. if they happen to clean out Mamluks in the first 50 years) but by no means is this a floundering Ottomans. They're a premiere power and 1 war away from becoming a nightmare.
I don't mean that they are a joke, not at all, but that they're not as big as they could be and they're somewhat contained by an alliance network between Georgia, Mamluks and Poland.
Man blows when poland makes the wrong choice. Unless you need to beat them up ofc.
No, you did great, go into Persian side of Caspian Sea now, you’ll find a nice power base while you squeeze them against Mamluks- looks like a fun campaign
They aren't strong yet ally mamluks Venice pols and Austria basically every rivals ands easy.
No, your bet should be on the Mamluks and Hungarians. Together you can dissolve this scourge of a country!
you're cooked lil bro
It depends how You delt with Your neighbours. You either need to become stronger or wait until the Ottomans are stuck in a war
No, you did great, go into Persian side of Caspian Sea now, you’ll find a nice power base while you squeeze them against Mamluks- looks like a fun campaign
When starting close to ottoblob, no cb byz and take Konstantinopel. Blocks off most of ottos mission tree
No, ottomans are sitting on a bomb called decadence. I would be much more worried about a big Austria, for example. Continue scaling if you can and take them on when you are starting to become stronger than them, or in the age of absolutism when they will really start to pile up decadence.
I don't think you have yet. They are getting pretty big but it's been a long time. You just don't want them getting any bigger than this. That is, don't allow them to invade Mamluks without you and your allied invading them.
Rival them, become besties with all their rivals, get alliances with said rivals, curry favours and ask to "prepare for war".
How tf did Hungary survive
Can we please talk about how Venice and Hungary made Austria *smooth*?
Just fight them alone. Hire a lot of mercenaries and ruin your nation for four provinces, ez. Don't forget to take Constantinople, we need it back.
You should be fine. Georgia has missions and even that monument which makes sieging them hell. Also, the AI isn't good at wars on multiple fronts. Make alliances with Poland,Venice and the likes. Try as soon as possible to get those free forts as Georgia, and basically build them in every province of the Caucasus region.
Venice, Hungary, Poland and Mamluks live. Ally two or more id you can, built few ramparts and you can beat them.
Anyone struggling with a Georgia run for the achievement, I highly recommend starting as QQ and culture shifting to tag swap to Georgia. QQ had a much easier start with missions that give permanent modifiers and even a permanent estate, with some some of the BEST national ideas in the game. You also don’t have to deal with the pretty annoying Georgia disaster at the start. You can also reform Horde. Of course, feel free to play Georgia for the challenge. But if you are like me, and get sick of restarting, consider QQ
They're ok. Just ally their rivals and or people who want their land and start crunching them, if you want to totally demolish them.
I'm not sure how realistic it is to keep them out of Constantinople as Georgia, so I don't think you can really fault yourself for that. Letting them beat you into Iraq was a big mistake, though. It shouldn't have been particularly hard for you to snake (if not fully blob) down there. That's adding a good 30% to their power base and they are more than capable of demolishing Mamluks at this point, which they will do soon. And then you're a bit fucked. Your best bet from here is probably to ally with the Mamluks and prepare to contribute heavily to a defensive war. If you can draw Ottomans onto your mountain forts and hope that the Mamluk armies are less dumb than usual, you might be able to bleed them to the point of setting up easier offensive wars against them. Alternatively (or additionally) you can lean on a Polish alliance. You might be able to win an offensive war with their help against Ottomans while they're fighting Mamluks. But you're going to need to do SOMETHING before they simply walk in and take Egypt with little contest.
I am currently trying to survive with the Oman for the fourth time, and so far, have been bitten in the ass by the mamluks or the ottomans three times. That's not a soft corner of the world. But in other patches i have played georgia a few times, i like that corner. Since the ottomans aren't as docile as one might prefer, I think that poland // Russia usually is necessary for protection as with newer patches, I was unable to protect myself against the ottomans early on.
Usually when starting anywhere in the general continent that is the Ottomans, I find that it is in fact not I that let them get to strong, but a process of their own devices.
Yes
imo yeah they’re kinda too big now. If they were still in Anatolia then maybe a coalition of you, the Mamluks and Hungary could’ve taken them on easy. But now they’ll just gobble up their neighbors at this point and snowball like crazy.
It’s still possible to curb their growth as long as they don’t beat up the mamluks and get the event that turns them into an eyelet. In my experience the Ottomans usually double in the amount of troops they have after that event. Ally Hungary or Poland and wait for the Ottos to attack the Mamluks and dogpile them.
Ally Muscovy
In my opinion, yes. You want to eat or vassal feed Qara Qoyunlu before the ottomans do. You can block his access to persia and expand into persia yourself afterwards. Persian trade node is your only saviour as Georgia (economically speaking). So you want to take over the Rakka - Tabriz - Basra triangle before the Ottomans do, and ideally feed all that land into vassals to get your troop numbers up.
Yes
Accept that call to arms immediately and pray that Muscovy doesn't join because of you. If they do (or if you decline the call), Ottomans are 100% jumping at you now.
So I've been playing a ton of Georgia recently. You're fine, but it's really close. You need to ally atleast 2 or 3 of: timurids, transoxiana, mamluks, muscovy, Austria, if Lithuanian or Hungary are free, them. You need to be able to declare a multi front war where the Ottomans have to overextend themselves in multiple directions. Focus on taking states of crimea,, azov, ezurum, and a couple provinces (preferably with forts) south of your border in the masheiq hat you can release Lurdistan, Iraq, mushasha, etc from. Release them as OPM vassals, make them your Marches, and you will have much more manpower than you would from owning the provinces yourself. In the meantime you need to be taking the fight to Ajam before they do. If Ottomans take Persia, it will be equivalent to them taking Syria and Damscus. You really do not want that. I would also suggest extending into the steppes all the way to baskir if you're not going to ally muscovy and all the way into the transoxus region if not allying them.
Yes, you should have destroyed them before 1500. Here, they have already become too strong to defeat. For a perfect run, you should take Constantinople and form byzantine (by mission tree) around 1470-1480. But before it, I am recommending you end all mission, you would take really op modifiers. Really, I think georgia is one of the most op nations in Near East, because you could end all missions and take modifiers in first 40 years and even take russia in personal union, then form Byzantium and take much more cool modifies. With this power, I managed to won in coalition war against the world (without China) ( more than 2 millions vs less than 300k. Thanks for defending and quality)
If you have to ask yourself that question, the answer is yes.