Of Azabs and Turkish Barracks...

I have to admit that my favourite faction is the Turkish Sultanate... And having played them both in MTW and M2TW, it's fairly obvious their greatest strength lies in their deployment of light/medium cavalry. (Where are my Sipahi's of the Porte dammit?!)

And it stands that one of their weaknesses is their lack of decent infantry. Of course, the Janissaries make up for this a great deal.

But!

It seems that the Turkish Barracks in the Castles is almost useless. I say "almost" because it does give me access to Naffatun but little else! I don't find the Azabs particularly useful at all... Javelin throwers? In a Horse Archer-heavy army? What the-?

So I end up building Barracks only in Cities and Stables and Ranges in Castles.

Someone please correct me if I'm wrong, but does anyone else find this true for themselves? And has anyone found a use for the Azabs?

Both Naffatuns and Javelins are highly useful against Elephants...whether that alone is sufficient reason to build the barracks I'm not sure.

I built barracks the castles of Yerevan and Tbilsi in order to prepare for the mongol invasion, but once the mongols came the dread from these Khans caused the azabs to panick way early, and so on....Better to build cities in the eastern provinces once the area is under control for the Jannisary infantry.

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Originally Posted by Viking

I built barracks the castles of Yerevan and Tbilsi in order to prepare for the mongol invasion, but once the mongols came the dread from these Khans caused the azabs to panick way early, and so on....Better to build cities in the eastern provinces once the area is under control for the Jannisary infantry.

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Agree. I only have 2 castles for my Turkish empire that stretches from Kaukasus, Bosphorus to the Gibraltar: Aleppo and Dongola. Works like a charm and thoose eastern cities rakes in cash to my treasury.

The only time I hired Azabs was to boost a garrison of a castle with a deplenished unit pool. They actually managed to help hold the gate and take out the enemy general and win me the battle.

Overall, they are slightly better than peasants and worse than town militia, but having a unit is better than not having one if you have space.

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Originally Posted by PseRamesses

Agree. I only have 2 castles for my Turkish empire that stretches from Kaukasus, Bosphorus to the Gibraltar: Aleppo and Dongola. Works like a charm and thoose eastern cities rakes in cash to my treasury.

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well then you do not use Qapukulus which you can only produce in castles. Pity...

I used Azabs only for garrisoning castles away from borders, just to maintain civil order. For my main infantry forces I used saracen militia and janissaries.
During my hole campaign I think I built only one or two barracks, just to recruit nafatuns.
I used javelins a couple of times against the elephants, but wasn't too impressed.

I have taken out two great lords and there bodygaurds with a mass of javelins. Find them useful at the walls as well.

i just use em as fodder. they make great arrow absorbers :laugh4:

in Kingdoms dismounted hashams work as DFK, making it worthwhile to build barracks

I see that Naffatuns are rather useless against Elephants, anywhere else expects in city defense. I like using hills and artillery, combined with harassing cavalry archers and Janissary, elephants are dead meat, sometimes amok even before they get to charge speed.

Both naffatuns and javelinman can be very useful defending cities, bridges. So, IMO a building up a few castle barracks upto naffatun level wont hurt.

Funny how azabs were used extensively in the Ottoman campaigns of Serbia... they were used as support for Jannisaries with sipahis on the wings,
and yet they're nothing but peasants in m2tw..

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Originally Posted by TheLastPrivate

Funny how azabs were used extensively in the Ottoman campaigns of Serbia... they were used as support for Jannisaries with sipahis on the wings,
and yet they're nothing but peasants in m2tw..

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They did it probably to make a balanced game.
It's not historically inaccurate though, most of the time Turkish infantry are zealous-inexperienced mobs only worth supporting tribal light cavalry and medium archer-cavalry: backbone of Turkish armies.