Ottomans Guide: Winning the Rise of the Turks

The Ottomans in 1337 are a mid-sized Anatolian beylik with an empire’s worth of scripted destiny. The Rise of the Turks situation gives the whole opening a built-in scoreboard, your unique content is — by community consensus — the deepest in the game, and your neighbors are a buffet of one-province beyliks. The catch is that the opening is a race with a rhythm: Anatolia first, consolidation second, Constantinople third. Skip a step and the empire arrives wobbling.

The opening race: Anatolia only

Everything in the first years happens inside the Rise of the Turks situation, and its actions are your toolkit:

• Press Claims is your bread-and-butter casus belli generator, and it comes with a conquest-cost discount in that war — use it for essentially every Anatolian grab.
• Offer Diplomatic Protection converts a neighbor into a friend: a big opinion and trust boost plus one bordering location, integrated. The price is a guarantee — you’re taking them off your own menu — so spend it on beyliks you intend to vassalize, not eat.
• Seek Byzantine Relations belongs to phase three; hold it (see below).
• Invite Turkish Migration unlocks once you hold more than 120 locations and seeds Turkish pops into a location of your choice — your late-consolidation tool.

The first targets pick themselves. The Germiyanids almost always lose their three subjects — Karasids, Saruhanids, Aydinids — within the opening months, scattering western Anatolia into easy bites. The greedier line, documented on 1.0.9-era patches (verify it still works on yours): declare on Germiyanids before the breakup and annex them whole — you inherit all three subjects in one war. Add the Ahis early, before they ally the larger Karamanids or Eretnids or get eaten by them. And check who can simply be asked: the Candarids start with high opinion of you and often accept vassalization through the ordinary subject action, no war required. Watch for the randomized events offering to vassalize neighboring beyliks — always take the vassal option even when they might refuse.

The division of labor that makes all this stick: vassalize the Greek-populated countries, conquer the Turkish-populated lands yourself. Your vassals convert their own pops for you; your direct conquests integrate cleanly. You start with a Greek pop majority in your own lands, which is exactly why this matters.

Consolidation: the two divides

Ottoman internal life is the management of two gaps — Greek/Turkish in culture and Orthodox/Sunni in faith — and the guide’s toolkit for closing them, in rough order of impact:

1. Your extra cabinet seat on active conversion or assimilation duty.
2. Vassals that convert for you (check the vassal is Turkish and Sunni before counting on this).
3. The Feudal Theocracy government reform, which carries a serious pop conversion speed modifier.
4. Invite Turkish Migration once past 120 locations.

Early on, the Persianate Bureaucracy event asks who your court is: keep your language (legitimacy and prestige), compromise (Greek pop satisfaction), or go Greek (the identity-run option). Take one of the first two in a normal campaign.

Meanwhile, put your construction budget where your people already are: Bursa, İznik, and İzmit hold your densest population and highest control — roads and buildings there first. They stay the economic core even after the capital eventually moves to Constantinople.

Phase three: the city of the world’s desire

Byzantium in this era is usually mid-collapse — often fresh from losing a war to Bulgaria or Serbia. Before you draw the sword, play the situation’s diplomatic card once: Seek Byzantine Relations is only available while you’re the stronger party and can fail, but if accepted it grants the Sovereign of Anatolia bonus (faster integration, monthly legitimacy for a decade). Its acceptance odds are best before your first Byzantine war, which is exactly why it’s a phase-three opener and not an afterthought.

Then Press Claims again — available while they hold Anatolian land — and fight the first Byzantine war with a defined shopping list: their Anatolian mainland, the province of Constantinople (budget patience; the siege is famously long), and a handful of locations around Selanik to release as a small vassal — that pocket carries gold and gemstone RGOs. Keep that vassal Greek in culture (you’ll want it later) but push Sunni conversion, watching its loyalty. And leave Byzantium alive: a rump Byzantium you’ll finish later beats Balkan lands lost to Serbia or Bulgaria now.

From there the campaign opens out: the scripted arcs run through capturing and developing Constantinople, the Enderun, capital politics, and the centralization-versus-tradition reform tradeoffs that define Ottoman flavor — a state that is strong outside and permanently negotiating with itself inside. Play the events; they’re the best content in the game right now.

Common death spirals

Sources checked

The backbone is the wiki’s long-form Ottoman guide — written by a self-identified dedicated Ottoman player who labels his patch (1.0.6) and his uncertainty explicitly, which is exactly the sourcing behavior we trust most and imitate. It’s cross-read against a full-length Ottoman campaign retrospective on r/EU5 and a Paradox forum thread documenting the Rise of the Turks victory rules. Because the primary guide predates 1.2 and 1.3 — patches that touched estates, trade, and war heavily — treat specific modifiers (the protection action’s exact yields, the migration threshold) as patch-sensitive and check tooltips; the strategic shape of the opening is corroborated across all three sources and current-patch player reports.