Chapter 23: Consolidation

After a short wait, about 4 days later the beys that would come have come and the ones that have not, are all listed and being dealt with in one way or another. Walking into the throne room, I witnessed a huge crowd of men the largest I have seen in this room ever. I walked in and everyone began to bow with their hand over their heart showing respect, I walked through the crowd and to the throne and I sat down.

After I sat my left-hand vizier began the meeting "We have called all the beys in Bithynia and lands claimed by the ottomans in conquest, to swear allegiance to your new Sultan Alaeddin! All here have shown you are loyal to the sultan and the swearing is just customary and will be done quickly so we can deal with more important matters at hand... Our sultans' new campaign!"

I must mention that there are also beys here from my lands in Macedonia and Thrace as well, as Karasi. They are a core of my power as well no need to leave them out, I can use their sure loyalty to my advantage and make them official sanjak beys of areas important to me like Bursa or Abydos, as they can oversee but I will still hold the true say in these areas. As the ceremony began to kick off the beys all went through the process rather quickly, no one attempted an assassination or tried anything stupid... So, I could say it went rather smoothly!

After the ceremony, the new system was introduced to the bey, who were surprised and then happy as they not only did not lose in swearing loyalty, but they also get to rob the men who did not swear loyalty. They will also be appointed as Sanjak beys, this is a big come-up for them as with the backing of my administration their profits will be higher and their children, I promised to allow them to be educated in our universities and then give Timars allowing them to become sipahis.

After the finalization of the customary part of the meeting, we began to discuss military capabilities and our direction for the campaign. I just listened to the beys list their current capabilities, the number of men they hold, the food they can bring, etc.. after grasping what they can do, our directions were obvious and easy to decide. We shall push all the bordering kingdoms off their thrones, taking them by force and creating a new border for us.

I shall raise 2/4th of the available militia units in Abydos, Thrace, and Macedonia. This will bring us 20,000 trained fighting men, who will be moderately armored and well-armed. Using all the salaried forces and bringing my General Mehmet down here to raise his experience and lead the janissary and Kapikulu armies into battle and siege. The militia and provincial forces led by Suleyman will work together to conquest the Jandarids in the east first. Mehmet and I shall lead the household and janissary units and militia units into Saruhan lands.

The militia is mostly lightly armored but well-trained. They are as follows for the militia I employed in the army I will lead:

Leading an army with a little more than 30k men is a bit difficult when it comes to logistics. But luckily for me, I have been slowly stocking up on food and feed, planning to have many campaigns in this next campaign season. My father's stock of food is being used on the second army led by Suleyman so that solves the food for the beginning of our campaign, whilst the rest can either be bought or looted in our newly conquered lands.

My main targets that must be taken in this campaign are Ankara and Izmir (Smyrna). Izmir is a system city so that is very important for me, but Ankara while not originally a system city is now a system city. Once I became a Sultan, I unlocked the DLC versions of the game luckily for me a few more strategic cities were added to the game map, the most famous being Ankara and Edirne(Adrianople). Now that I have finally become sultan and linked up all our lands, I will expand our borders once more and this time taking more than half of Anatolia in just one campaign if it works in my favor, I should crush these loosely ruled Turkmen beylics.

But first, we must get all the correct armor and weapons shipped to Iznik(Nicaea). I am told this can take up to two weeks, and the gathering of food and conscription of the militia should take only a day or two at most, and the extra day is just to allow some more people to volunteer, instead of being drafted up. But now that I have to wait a bit and all the wheels have begun to spin, my job as sultan is finished for now and I will head to my new jewel Iznik.

After 2 days of gutting the court, treasury, and weapons depot of bursa I left with all my troops toward Iznik, where we will ship all the coin, family heirlooms, and extra items like weapons, and roman artifacts to my palace in Thessalonica where it will stay until we take the red apple. My trip to Iznik this time traveling with my elite army is so much faster than when we marched with that random assortment of recruits, I fought the rebels with, and in less than a day we are already outside the crumbling double gates of Iznik.

The ottomans of this period and the Romans just did not have the money or power to move the number of people needed to keep up the repairs of such huge and complex city walls. But that doesn't mean I cannot, I could repair the walls without the system if need be, but I don't need I already have paid for the repairs a few days ago and tomorrow morning the repairs will be done as the week will be up. But the real reason why I needed to make it to a system city is that the system stated that I needed to come to a system city to receive the rewards for becoming a sultan which I only received once, that being the additional system cities now available for conquest. So, I want to know what else I can get for no longer being a vassal, and now being in full control of a decent chunk of land, system show me my rewards!

<Reward: Can choose two faction-specific building that is not available to the ottoman faction>

Seeing the screen, I chose the <Naval academy/Admiralty special building tree> and <Merchant bank> this was an easy choice I regretted not having been able to focus on training naval officers and having pirate captains lead individual vessels. And the merchant bank is great as it will give me access to build banks in all my system cities, granting system-trained merchants and bankers for everyone I build. it is a no-brainer that this will help my economy a lot.

<Reward: Recruited units will reflect your current military reforms. All new Kapikulu and Janissary units can now be recruited from the system. But the same recruitment rules still apply>

<Reward: handgun units are now unlocked; awarded 10x janissary musketeer units>

No way! I can finally use handguns! The musket and arquebus are not that great a weapon overall as they are useless when it comes to unarmored hordes like the Turkmen tribes in Anatolia, as the reload time is long. but when fighting European armies this is a great weapon to deal with heavily armored men, as at least every 2 minutes one of these men can take out a knight if we are lucky. and I unlocked them just in time so I can recruit several more of them for tomorrow as the week is just ending meaning the "system turn" is passing.

I thought of arming the militia with muskets, but I decided against it for the time being as if these men were to rebel during the campaign it could cause a significant issue for us, but with pike and spear units we can control them easier as they aren't capable of too much or too little. But these janissary men will be completely loyal for the most part they are extremely disciplined and trained men as well they can be called expert marksmen. The biggest downside to early musketeer units is the lack of a standardized weapon and the janissary men focused solely on solo marksmanship, line fire is but a dream for now. But in the future, I hope to have these marksmen trained in line fire at least, but as of now, it is not a big deal as these men are the best and only musketeers in the world!

After entering the city, I headed to the system-designated garrison/training field. There I met these new janissary men, the first system recruited janissary men. I was happy to see this iconic soldier in front of my eyes, they were wearing the classic bork hat, some had huge feather plumes and some just wore the standard felt hat. The body was garbed in a bright red, blue, or green cloth hirka, and some wore a wool jacket over that, and on the legs, some had leopard skins over their usual loose red pants. All wore a powder horn and small leather pouch on the waste these two items held their gunpowder and ammunition. All had a small yatagan in their cummerbund, and a sword hooked on their waists. Seeing them lined up in marching order they held the musket by the rest and had it on their shoulders, all lined up like this it was a nice sight reminiscent of the 16th-17th century armies.

Telling the men to rest in the garrison I took a small guard and left toward the government palace here to find a place to stay the night as it was getting late. After a short and uneventful night, I received news from Suleyman that most of the rebel beys have been dealt with and the rest are fleeing out of our lands. Hearing the good news I smiled, but now that isn't important to me, I looked at my recruits for this turn and my smile grew even wider. This week I recruited another 8 units of the janissary musketeers, bringing the total number to 2,160 men!

Last night I also paid the system to start the building of the Naval academy in Thessalonica and Abydos, also I paid for the first tier of the merchant bank to be built there as well. Adding the naval academy will be a huge help to my navy and will also help my Ottoman university. The university is technically a collection of academies spread across my lands and isn't truly centralized just yet, but once I take control of Istanbul, I can build a giant university ground as a headquarters for all the academies spread around.

Once the naval academy begins to output naval officers and captains, I can begin to take the fight to the Italian merchant republics, as I have the proper ships and cannons these ship crews do not have proper leadership so I have not used them for fear I would die at sea in a naval battle. Another reason we haven't moved to conquer the islands in the Marmara and Aegean seas is that I am currently building a fleet of larger ships to take on the European carracks should they come here and crush Venetian and Genoese smaller war galleys. We will also train more and more marine-styled warriors, and probably will be included in the janissaries as well considering my navy is standing. Also, I have already recruited and built 6 Carracks fully crewed and armed with cannons!

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