ottoman empire

[randell765]

Excellent, I have the ottoman empire, This sounds bad but what am I supposed to do with them? I am trying to cross a country into Serbia or mabey I will head towards Romania but the bottom line is that I cannot get them accross the border, do I need to declare war on a specific country with them? Who is north of them? How do I get them moving?

[06 Maestro]

Don't declare war on Bulgaria, they will soon be your ally. The OE's initial big concern is the Russians.

[randell765]

You have to be kidding?  Russia is all the way to the east/ne of them.  the ottoman armies on the east have no hqs and the ottomans hq are all the way nw.  I can't remember but I didn't see any rail points for them, do I move the armies one at a time to the north east?

[SMK-at-work]

You get a few rail points - enough to move 1 unit frm Istanbul to the Cauacasus each strat phase, plus a little bit more IIRC.

The Russians will quickly roll over the caucassus if they put their mind to it....but they can't do that AND beat up Austria...decisions, decisions.....

[06 Maestro]

So far in my games I have not had much action on the OE/Russian front. I've just left it up to the Russian AI to liven things up over there. As SMK noted, there is enough rail to get one OE unit to that front per turn and another one part way. If you really wanted to, I suppose you could launch a decent attack in about 6 months. I have not done that, but rather just build trenches and reinforce those positions and move units to Bagdad and Palistine-I figure the Brits will come eventually.

In time, the OE should be able to play a major roll in knocking down Mother Russia.

[SiTheSly]

There are four raw material points in three hexes right next to border in Russia. Move over an HQ and set up attack positions. Then when the Russsian AI does a SM out of those hexes jump in and take them. After that just transfer the 3 Industial and 3 raw materials every turn to germany.
 
Thats the only success I've managed with the OE, it hardly seems worth fighting the BE since there are no resources in that area. I'm not sure if taking India and Alexandria reduces the BE trade in the East Med though but its just as easy to use the OE navy and Austria to stop that.

[JWW]

In my current game I advanced on Alexandria with the Ottomans after taking one Russian resource center.  The Russians held on to the other ones but never attacked, and I did not press the issue.  So I advanced on Alexandria, and the British responded with six corps in a defensive posture.  Now I don't know where those corps would have been otherwise, but I think I tied up several British corps with three Ottoman corps and one HQ.

[SiTheSly]

I tend to fine that they are not tied up for long and will zip around the western front so I'm not sure of how much benefit it is unless your right next to Alexandria in which case they normally attack and blow away the OE units. Using the OE fleet to block the East Med is however worthwhile since the Brits gain 2 raw materials from the shipping in that area which in a way is like destroying 10 strength of infantry and if not collected they are lost for good. Which raw material resource did you take the one worth 2? In which case thats nice since you can transfer the point to the Germans - taking is almost worthless since the Russians do not miss it and cannot transfer it and you gain no caputured resources since you need two.
 
Certainly better than doing nothing with them though.