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frogbeastegg
11-13-2006, 21:44
Russia needs to be unlocked before you can play as them. To do this you can either complete a campaign (on any difficutly, long or short setting) with one of the five starting factions, or you can edit the preferences file. To do this open your Sega/M2TW folder/data\world\maps\campaign\imperial_campaign, find the file called "descr_strat" and open it with wordpad. Now find the section which says
campaign imperial_campaign
playable
england
france
hre
spain
venice
end
unlockable
sicily
milan
scotland
byzantium
russia
moors
turks
egypt
denmark
portugal
poland
hungary
end
nonplayable
papal_states
aztecs
mongols
timurids
slave
end

Change it so it reads

campaign imperial_campaign
playable
england
france
hre
spain
venice
sicily
milan
scotland
byzantium
russia
moors
turks
egypt
denmark
portugal
poland
hungary
end
nonplayable
papal_states
aztecs
mongols
timurids
slave
end

Sheogorath
11-15-2006, 20:16
Your first action as Russia should be to run as fast as you can to Kiev and Caffa, taking everything on the way. Its very important that the Byzantines/Poles NOT surround you. You do NOT want them coming at you from more than one direction. Initially, income will be an issue. I suggest building some merchants to help suppliment it a bit, send them to the silver sources in the HRE, the silk in Baghdad and maybe the spices/other resources in the middle east. This can take a while, but it is well worth it.
War with the Poles is pretty much inevitable. You are far weaker than the HRE and the Poles are predisposed by the code to hate you :P
The best way to deal with them at the start is to force them to assault your castles, since their cavalry is better than yours and Polish Nobles firing range is outside the 'run away' range of your HA's.
If the Byzantines attack, HA's are your best bet. That and getting the Turks to attack them.
Also, I suggest converting ALL of your 'frontline' cities (with borders to the Poles) into castles. They WILL be attacked and you are going to need the units to defend them. Russia's rouster of city-build units is composed of suck and crap, especially since its difficult to initially get anything past those horrible peasant archers.

In sieges, it is VITAL that you destroy the enemy ram. I find that most Russian units are pretty decent defending against Infantry on walls, but put them in the streets fighting cavalry and they lose all composure and die quite quickly. You can take siege towers and ladders initially, provided you have some guys to help you.
My suggestion is that, if a vital city looks like it wont stand a siege, have a general (if you have one in/near the city) recruit all the Merc's he can. Sometimes sheer mass can substitute for quality. Your finances will take a hit, but I suggest you keep a bit of savings for such an event.

Sheogorath
11-16-2006, 18:45
After a few battles I think I have this to say:

Russia initially has access to some pretty decent mercenaries, the Slavic Spearmen are decent enough and quite good at holding walls. They do better than your typical Spear Militia in combat with cavy as well.
Alan light cavy is okay, but you can get better units cheaper in your cities. Only use them if you have to, mostly to bulk up prior to a siege.
Cuman HA's are definitly okay units, theyre essentially Kazakh's which cost twice as much, but can be recruited anywhere, I dont think their upkeep is any higher than regular Kazakh's either.

Druzhina (sp?) are good initially, but I find that they are rapidly outclassed by mainstream European cavalry, you need to build a lot of them if you want to have any hope against the Poles once they get FK's, and even initially they can have trouble against the faster Polish Mounted Nobles. Theyre good for chasing down routers though. Their main disadvantage is their upkeep, which is something like 250 per unit.
Boyar Son's are kinda meh, to me. The main advantage of javaline cavy is for use against non-javaline cavalry and infantry.
But what is the Polish army's cavalry mostly made up of when these guys are still useful?
Javaline cavalry.
Since the Turks and Byzantines both have javy cavy/archer cavy as well, these guys arent much use unless you plan on sailing to France for some land. They have decent mellee stats, so I guess you can use them as bulk-troops. I also note that they seem a bit slower than Polish Nobles.

Kazakhs are, most likely, your most useful initial cavy. Theyre basic HA's, but the key point is that the Poles DONT have them. The disadvantage is that their skirmish range is short of the Polish spear-chucking range. Still, theyre good for harrassmen and even the occasional peasant-slaughter.
A good strategy is to lure the main force of an enemy army away, and then use the Kazakhs to charge in and wipe out any siege weaponry they leave behind them. You'll take some casualties, but siege crews arent set up to fight cavalry.
One or two stacks of 3-4 Kazakhs can put a SERIOUS dent in any invasion, used properly.


I havent had a chance to do much with them, but dismounted Boyar Sons seem like fairly basic dismounted knights.

Woodsmen seem almost totaly useless. Even against already-engaged enemies they die like flies. Good cannon fodder though and not expensive, so if your into that kamikazi thing, go for it.



My advice during sieges depends on who you are facing. If its the Poles or any cavy-heavy army, stick tight, put your archers on the walls and pepper those ram opereators with arrows. Your goal should be to keep the enemy cavalry OUT of the city. Infantry you can deal with, but for me it seems like the enemy always has a larger amount of guys on horses.
A good tactic is to send a unit or two of light cavy and/or horse archers to the other gate(s, if its a city) and flank the enemy army. That way you can catch any siege weapons they leave behind AND put some extra arrows into the enemy flanks.

If it looks like a vastly superior enemy force is going to breach your gate, there is a simple tactic which may save your bacon. Take a unit of cheap units, or a unit which is almost dead (but make sure theres at least 10-20 of them left!) and have them charge the enemy ram. The guys manning the ram will stop, giving your archers another one or two volleys before they can get back to the ram! This means one or two more chances that you'll light that baby up like a greased Christmas tree.



A bit of advice on the campaign map. Ive found tha the Danes are generally pretty friendly, an alliance with them will boost your 'cool' rating with the other factions and may well set you on the way to glory. Ive got alliances with just about everybody on the map now, and trade agreements with everybody except Spain and Portugal, and in that case only because my diplomat is too slow.
Russia with lots of trade agreements is an uber-economic powerhouse, those Black Sea ports pull in tons of cash. Just go and look at all the overlapping trade-routes which head out through the Straits of Marama (where Constantinople is).

Zoroaster
11-17-2006, 10:54
I experienced something different. I took moscow, ryazan,helsinki,riga,vilnius and smolensk which provided my with enough settlements to afford technical progress. I prevented rushing to the black sea too fast in order to avoid open war too early. It worked - the poles attacked me but there were overrun by the danes. Hungaria and the byzantine ignored me. As russian general i had the most "crossed swords" signs on the map this far. I fought battles having only 7 units against stacks a twice or third that big. (remains me on playing as scythian in rome :laugh4: ) All in all in the beginnig i concetrated on purely cavalry, druzhina and lots of kazhaks. Later you get "uber archers" - the dismounted dvor. Late russia doeas really well so i suggest researching as fast as possible. The later russian infantry units are nice so i did warfare in turkish stile having 3 dvor archers and the same amount of cossack infantry (really nice) supplemented by only a few guarding infantry and 4 horse archers (mounted dvors (outstanding) + cossacks) shooting the enemy to bits. The cossack infantry does really well in ranged combat, its simple to gain and has not this high upkeep as expected.
Russian has not this muliti large unit scale as other nations but its really worth playing.
^^
try it

Debe2233
11-21-2006, 15:59
Russia is unfortunately a fairly poor area, not totally desolate but it takes longer to make as much cash as you can further west or south.

The Poles in particular I found to be a massive problem and especially on VH/H where they can simply out produce you, but you can get around this by using your cavalry which is what Russia is best at. I used a general and 4 Boyar Sons and 10 Kazhaks and hit Polands Capital, I had to sneak through their territory to do this and ambushes are fantastic with horse archers and boyar sons and easy to set up thanks to the number of trees around Russia/Poland.

(5 horse archers and 2 Boyar Sons each side of the enemy convoy and its shooting fish in a barrel and great fun to watch as the enemy turns this way and that way trying to sort their battle line out)

Once I’d sacked their cities and run off Poland wasn’t so much of a problem, I could then build up my cities using the money I’d got from them without having to expand my already stretched forces. The next time I invaded Poland it was for keeps!.

(Also because of the vast territory rebels can be a real pain, I suggest having an army of 2 Boyar Sons and 6 Kazhaks at each castle so they can ride out to deal with any that pop up)

lalartu
11-23-2006, 15:28
after having played as England and the Danes I gotta say, Russia is quite more challenging and well fun.

I'm around 1300 now and I didn't find much problem until now.

I think before, Poland was constantly trying to take Vilnius and Kiev, but were unsuccessful because I put full garrisons of spear and archers (cheap and effective).

I don't think using cavalry a lot of is a good idea since they're more expensive and taking cities with them is a pain in the butt.
Dismounted dvor however is a decent all around unit and I'm trying to build up a full army of them (they're highly armored warriors with very good missile skills, probably the best Russian infantry unit).

now, the way I started the game was by taking every visible rebel town, to the South and Southwest and then advanced east, taking the rest of the rebels. since I had 1 regions under my control, I had no problem with profits and the game was quite easy until now

What happened obviously the is the Mongolian invasion and it just so happens that as soon as they come, they lay a siege on Bulgar (eastern most town). but oddly enough, they do not take it and simply continue west. I assume it was a bug. they are advancing toward Kiev, so I'm massively evacuating the city since there's 4000 of them and I have less than an eight of that within 4 year of walk distance.

so I'm praying to my orthodox gods that they will only take kiev and continue west toward byzantine and hungary because there's not a chance right now that I can resist such an onslaught.
I also started making plans and decided I'll move to scandinavia is things go bad, so my fleet is standing by with some of the reserve forces.

also while fighting Poland, I managed to sack Iasi and another fortress near it that was lightly guarded and added about 10 000 total to my funds. it so happens that while they were sending all their forces to Riga, I moved south and cost them two cities (which Hungarians swiftly took).

rios
11-25-2006, 04:39
Like Sheogorath said, Kiev is early priority, to prevent being boxed in by the Hungarians and Polish.

Once I had castles I started making boyar sons. Leave fire at will on and set their skirmish off so you could use them like heavy cavalries, that shoot... Once the boyar sons get to silver experience they were unstoppable. They are also cheap and fast to retrain, not a bad unit imo.

Captsin
11-26-2006, 00:15
Let me tell you, it gets friggin ridicluous. THe mongols evetually come and so do the timurids, like 10 black stacks with elephants (so stupid, never happened in history). Anyway I just quit. It's impossible to stop. I had Ryazan as a fortress knowing somethings going to come up out of the east, but it was hard enough on the western front. Just as Poland and hungary both were under control ... game over. I mean I could play, but it just doesn't seem fun anymore (and why would watching all those hours of gameplay building up settlements go up in somke to elephants shooting cannon balls). Can't grab anybody from the western front over to the east as I need them over there. Guess I'll play as England, heck can't be that hard, no elephants in scotland.

Sheogorath
11-26-2006, 08:09
Oh WAH, no elephant cant stand up to my mighty siege weapon :laugh4:

Seriously though, its just a matter of finding ways around said elephants. You are trying to fight a non-European army with European tactics.

PROTIP:
The Timurids and Mongols ARE NOT the Poles and Hungarians.

As to the massive amount of units they get, yes? The Russian states historically fell to the Mongols, youre fighting history sonny jim. Youve got the same attitude the Russians developed after some of their defeats.

Perk up. If all else fails, there is a time honoured Russian tactic that almost never fails:
Meat waves!
Build huge stacks of cheap units, as many as you can, and send those unfourtunates hurtling towards those elephants and 'unstoppable' armies of cavy. Auto-resolve said battles and those stacks will start to look smaller and smaller.

The basic idea is:
Dont try to engage them at castles or forts. The Timurids will simply destroy your walls. You can do that with the mongols though, provided you have the defensive infantry/archers to keep them from busting your gates in and flooding uber-cavy into your city.

lalartu
11-26-2006, 21:44
historically mongols took a huge chunk of Russia, just like it happens in the game (except mogolian AI is really dumb andI had them walk in circles for about 40 years) and Timurlane took Moscow.

ok he didn't have elephants, but you have to make it hard right...?

I think it's a good idea and by far I gotta say Russia is the hardest faction to play with. I haven't tried Turkey or Byzantine yet, but Turkey has one of the best units and Byzantine is bloody rich. Russia starts small and has crappy units.

now, I personally don't condone quitting and surrendering, so I'll provide a basic idea of how to fight both threats and what worked for me.

From the beginning, I would suggest taking every baltic city along with other cities up to armenia (but don't take armenia and georgia). turn most of them into cities except for the border ones which should be citadels.
Riga and Vilnius and Novgorod are your best income sources and riga might get attacked by poles a few times, so keep it safe.

use orthodox priests to avoid unnecessary decent, especially since all your cities are so far away from each other, so the distance from capital dissent will be there.

it's gonna be a while before mongols come, so I'd suggest doing the following:

-annex denmark or at least take scandinavia - this is your backup resost (since nobody ever goes there) in case you get overwhelmed in Russia proper and have to retreat. turn Oslo and Stockholm into cities and build ports ports ports
-get rid of poland as soon as possible to liberate one front.
i've noticed only poland attacks repeatedly and aggressively. hungary does not.
if hungary takes Iasi, they'll be happy with it.

Kiev is by far the hardest city to hold (you can turn it into citadel, but you won't get the income from black sea ports, which would be benefitial for you since you don't have much income to play with).


now as for units: most of your units suck and you really need to use brains to win battles.
I think by far the most versatile and useful unit is dismounted dvor, it's only 150/turn and is average in price to purchase. they are excellent archers and quite good in melee combat. the only thing they should avoid are polish (or anyone else's) heavy cavalry, but for that you also get your spearmen which are slightly better than those of other factions.

I generally ignore making spears and simply build a huge force of dism dvor and later on (when you get them) mounted dvor and cossacks, to harass units in skirmish and lead them to my dismounted dvor traps.

cossacks are an excellent and cheap skirmishing unit. dvor is better because they're also a heavy cavalry unit, but that makes them slower.

both units can do parthian shot (i.e. shoot while moving) which makes them tremendously powerful. you can literally move in circles around the enemy and shower them with arrows while they're stupidly trying to catch you.

so skirmishing and dismounted dvor are the units I usually used for western battles.

when mongols arrive, within 20 or so years you get your other excellent unit - cossack musketeers. they are slightly worse than turk musketeers, but better than anything else anyone got.
I would suggest using tons of them (even tho they're expensive to buy) against mongols. place them in front of everyone and use your dismounted dvor behind them for artillery shower. mongols usually start showering you too, so make sure you place them all looosely. your dvor is good at avoiding arrows and your muskeets have very long reach.
also make sure to use landscape to your advantage. if you have more muskeeters, it's best to sit downhill so that you can always see your enemy, rather than sit up hill where you can only see them when they reach you (hills are round, so you can't see the enemy at the bottom of the hill if you're on top and thus can't really shoot them with a musket, but can shoo tthem with a bow).

but the best strategy against mongols is probably using your dvor and your muskets to distract, while your druzhina or other heavy horse units flank their infantry/missile units. now, since mongols pretty much have same good units you do plus they also have lancers, you are in a disadvantage, so simply try to kill them off slowly. catch their units when they're alone or with a weaker general and dessimate them slowly while they're trying to reach Kiev.

in my game they took kiev, but I sent army after army toward their positions and also used bridge that protects novgorod to trap their silly units (they're bad at bridge assaults), destroying their 10 or so armies one by one. eventually I took kiev and forced them out of my land, but there are obviously more of them in the south fighting the islam world.

as for timurids. if you do not take armenia/georgia, I think they should avoid you for a while and fight turkey/byzantine. that's what happened in my game. it's obvious that by the time they come, you might not be ready for another onslaught, but using same strategy and most importantly using your muskeeters as much as you can will work like a charm. use your cheap spear units to charge their elephants and use muskeeters to shoot at them, so that they go berserk. elephants seem to have issues with having thousands of arrows and bullets be thrown at them, so they panick and run away when musketers and dvor shower them with stuff.
the rest of the units are similar to mongols, so it's really a matter of using the elephant thing to your advantage (i,e, showering them until they panic or trying to confuse your enemy with your swift cossack units)


you also get a decent berdiche unit (halberd looking axe) with a good attack rating which can work like a charm against infantry and elephants if you increase their armor rating to plate or so.
but other than that, if you feel forced from your lands and losing all your territory - do what other did in that case, migrate west and become a nomad yourself. force the western nations out of their own lands with your retreating units.

if you took scandinavia, you can always take a refude there for a while until you rebuild your army and can try to retake your lands again.

so there you have it, russians never surrender:)


in conclusion, just a rehash of what units you might want to use:

-dismounted dvor: excellent overall unit, produced in citadel, needs last level archery range, rather than barracks. dual use, both great archer and good heavy infanty unit. I make tons of these
-mounted dvor: same unit on the horse. needs citadel. heavy cavalry with a somewhat good archery skill. there are less of them and they are more expensive than dismounted dvor. needs archery range and stables. I make a few of these, maybe two per army
-cossacks: your best skirmishers. needs citadel. fast and good shots. can perform parthian shot. I make a lot of these. 4-6 per army or they can even be their own army, just place them in opposite ends of the enemy force and make enemy run after them then charge them in the back
-cossack musketeers: very good musket unit, needs gun range in a city. use this against any armor units, elephants or mongols. very long range, very powerful, but doesn't like arrows or charging horses, so protect them. they can fight like a light infantry unit. they're expensive, but are worth it
-berdiche dudes: produced in city. unit with most attack, but only 10 or so defence. very long axes, so good against horses and armor. versatile and pretty good overall, but unfortunately die like ants if you leave them unchecked. I'd use these against anything western armies can throw at you that has a horse or even against elephants. they're shock troops, so avoid using them as guards. I tried them in birdge defence and they suck.


other citadel units that I never used:

-tsar's bodyguard - very heavy horse unit, but too expensive and too slow to be of any use. not as good as western units either, so I'd skip that one. they don't have bows etiher. mounted dvor is better overall
-druzhina - your first heavy horse unit, but should be replaced with dvor as soon as you have them. also slow and no bows
-boyar's sons - heavy unit with spears. not worth it I think because spears have very short range and they only have like two each. they're good for charging, but not excellent. pretty bad for skirmishing, so i'd skip these too
-dismounted boyar's - they have same stats as distmounted dvor less the missile attack, so I don't see any real purpose in them. they do appear earlier than dismounted dvor, but they're pretty pointless (along with other unit with same stats, forgot the name)

so there you have it
hope that helps

Miloshus
11-30-2006, 20:07
ooooooook...Lets make it shorter
Russians start with only one town-Novgorod
Russians have weak infantry, and strong cavalry and archers.
On the start recruit some diplomats and become ally with neighbouring factions. Start attacking rebel settelments on south and north.
When you recrut some armies destroy your allies :yes: ,
works fine 4 me.

Silvershade
12-01-2006, 12:22
The Russian problem seems really to exist early in the game as you have no economy to speak of and weak infantry options. I play VH battle/H campaign and decided to 'turtle' initially. This meant I took neither Kiev ( a trouble magnet in my first attempt as Russia ) nor Stockholm ( in order not to have a land front against the Danes), I also avoided the eastern extreme of the map, Moscow and Ryazan mark my eastern extremities. My focus has been largely in kick starting the Russian economy whilst obtaining an alliance with HRE to sandwich Poland.

Militarily I have so far focussed on Kazaks and Boyars sons for almost the entirety of my field armies, this has allowed me mobility to deal with rebels hindering trade and threatening cities and also Polish incursions whilst retraining at my twin castles of Smolensk and Ryazan can be established quickly because of the mobility of the units.

I have avoided war with all but the Poles so far and that war has really been little more than an a series of extremely one sided border skirmishes. This has allowed me to negotiate a ceasefire with the Poles after a series of crushing victories which cost them 12000 florins plus 1000 a year tribute for 5 years ( funding a fortress upgrade amongst others that I could not afford otherwise ). I fully expect a major offensive towards Vilnius sometime soon as Polish armies are beginning to appear South of that location but am happy as I can now afford a larger military, meaning an infantry force to assault and garrison newly taken territory. The plan now is to wait on the Polish offense, fight their armies in the open using horse archers then move on their fortresses at Halech and Thorn initially seiging with cavalry but adding infantry in to allow me to assault if necessary. With a half stack garrison in each plus missile cavalry forces outside I believe I should be able to hold these new positions which will also likely allow me the jump in technology to allow me a military to compete.

SwordsMaster
12-04-2006, 16:21
Well, my russian campaign seems to be progressing slowly bu surely. After over turns years of war against Poland and Danemark, Poland has been finally destroyed, and Denmark reduced to Brugge, and the two northernmost settlements in scandinavia. I am now at war with Byzantium and skirmishing on and off war with Hungary. I have to say I have been lucky enough to have not been hit by neither the Mongols or the Timurids - BOth went to Byzantium and the Turks. Which makes my life easier.

If it weren't the huge spawn rates for rebel armies and the trouble of having to conver every single one of the provinces taken, it would have been even easier.

Right now I am consolidating. Cossack musketeers have become available and they are fantastic. If you mix them together with some Boyar sons, and a lot of cossacks and mounted dvors, you will destroy nearly every enemy before the reach your end of the map.

rios
12-04-2006, 22:51
everybody hates the russians, on VH campaign it's virtually impossible to establish any alliance, so handling the hordes will be a solo mission.

all the dismounted russian 'knights' are virtually the same, moral difference but not noticiable IMO. Only advantage of russian during late period is its musketeers, with stats of handgunners and long range weapons.

On my VH/VH campaign, after taking out poland and hungry I had to hold out for 17 turns to prepare for mongols. Going west at that point meaning getting tangled into serie of little regions and 4 factions to deal with...

Sheogorath
12-07-2006, 06:05
Getting alliances with Russia requires moving fast. You need to snag a bunch of cities quickly, then make an alliance with whoever seems weakest (and isnt at war with anybody you want to ally to). Then you can climb the ladder, so to speak, until you have some decent alliances.
Not that they'll help you that much, since your only neighbors dislike you.
However, you can cow the Turks by smashing anything they send your way and maybe grabbing a few of their far-north cities if you go that far east, theyve generally left me alone after a sound beating.

IRPhydeaux
12-07-2006, 18:27
I have seem to take a very different take with my Russian campaign. Playing on H/H.

I have moved south into Kiev for the money, but otherwise I am a naval power. My empire is built along the Baltic Coast. I had some early run ins with Poland as I took Kiev and kept them out of Ryazan and Moscow to my back. Then as retribution for the attacks I took Thorn before calling a ceasefire. I loaded up with cheap units in Kiev and Thorn then sent my armies north into Scandanavia. I built a second army at Thorn and sailed into Magdeburg. I am currently at war with HRE (an ally of the Danes) and besieging Stettin to complete my Baltic circle. Once I take Stettin, I think we will have a ceasefire while I build up and wait for the Mongols. If there is enough time I might take out Scotland to have a few more ports and a base for expansion into England later. I really only have two large armies in this region but I control the waters and can have my army anywhere its needed. One thing that was vital to this process was blocking the land bridge from Denmark to Sweden. It took awhile to get the Stockholm under control and I needed some time to stay garrisoned there. I just kept the Danes locked up on the continent against the English and built up. Then when I was ready I actually skipped straigt to the fortress at Magdeburg then backtracked to Denmark.

As for battle strategy I seem VERY different. I avoid fighting in settlements at all costs. I use two seperate armies, one made up of cheap infantry, bowmen and seige equipment and one made up of cavalry. When defending, I hole up my infantry and send my cavarly out to make several attacks on any invading army. I do as much damage as I can before running out of arrows or getting pinned in somewhere - then I run like hell. I can usually get in two or three of these attacks before an army reaches my settlements. Its a long way to anywhere in Russia.

When attacking I use a similar strategy. I move to the emptiest settlement I can find, often behind the lines, and lay seige with my infantry. Then when they sally from another settlement to defend, I attack with my cavalry in the open. Usually this wipes them out.

The key to this strategy is to accept retreat over a body count with your cavalry. You win more than you lose, but you still retreat a lot. Its great for your units since you rack up experience, but bad for your generals since you rack up losses. I have two armies of about 3 each Boyar sons, Khazaks, Druhzinas. Nearly all of the units are up in the silver in experience. I usually keep my best generals out of the harrying attacks and let lower level generals take the command hit and then use their bodygaurd recklessly.

When the Mongols show up I plan to use lots of cheap infantry and seige equipment at all the fordes around Kiev and a lot of woodmen and crossbows in the forests up around Moscow. All pretty cheap. If they get through i'll just pull back both armies toward Smolensk and hug the coast, hoping they spread south against the Turks and thin out.

Bijo
12-11-2006, 02:18
Man, you guys are right in saying Russia can be pretty damn hard to play. Those Polish just keep on coming and then those Danish. Ugh: it's going slowly. But I've pushed them back and have taken two new fresh towns from them :)

The bottleneck is the weak infantry, so you should mostly rely on a woman's stratagem of throwing things at them :P (I love that line of those general speeches, lol). They make me think of Scythia from Rome... with their horse archers. Well, it's basically the same area anyway :)

In all the factions I've checked out, playing as Russia, Poland is by far the worst early enemy I've ever encountered. Their Polish Nobles missile cavalry is annoying to take care of, just like most missile cavalry anyway.


Question though: do the Russians also get gunpowder cavalry? Never tried them out yet, but I do know HRE has them.

Rothe
12-14-2006, 09:53
I started a H/VH game as Russia. Timescale is 0.5 (nothing else modded).

I quickly allied with the Danes and also the Polish. I guess the Polish will attack you no matter what and this is because they are at peace with the other factions. The game is coded so that AI factions always go to war if they are at peace with all their neighbours and I think this is the case. The player is the preferred target...

So, if you want a break from the polish invasions, ally with them and try to gift them up. Then try to get them to attack some other faction (byzantium or hungary would be prime targets).

My first invasion was Helsinki and then I went for Riga and Vilnius. Later I took the first line of provinces up to Ryazan.

So far I seem to be unbeatable on the field since I only bring kazaks and boyar sons to engagements in the field - maybe a few druzina as well (the lance cav).

I would not disregard the "weaker" russian cav too much. Of course later you get the better versions, but for the start the basic units should do. Maybe it is a bit harder than the other factions...

The diplomacy part with the polish seems to be weird. I suppose their attacks are forced (as I describe earlier) and once they lose one big battle they are quickly ready for ceasefire. The fun part is that they pay 15000 florins for the privilege. Also, after ceasefire you can sell them trade rights for some florins too (unless they used all of their treasury).

It seems that once they pay up, it takes a while for them to make up good armies to assault again.

So, overall, the polish are easy to beat. You can basically upkeep a big enough stack of cavalry to repel them with the money you get when you beat their army when they attack. Then sue for ceasefire and repeat this...

I have allied with HRE, English and Danish now that the game has gone some 100 turns forward. Polish are either neutral or at war. To keep relations up, I would recommend gifting the AI factions regularly with 300-400 florins. Also, I tend to pay them tribute 100/turn.

I also have tried to keep away from having a land border with other factions than the Polish to avoid the forced AI attacks... I try to upgrade my settlements first to huge size before trying to take out the polish entirely.

This is merely a weird preference against blizing. I also tend to press the End turn button a lot but this is because of the 0.5 timescale.

As for developing the economy, it seems that Helsinki, Riga and novgorod are good places for cities and sea trade is a good focus. I got a master merchant's guild to Novgorod.

Merchants seem to be amazing for Russians. A good way to level them up is to take them into sweden to sit on the iron (2 of them) - try to monopolize the iron at all times. A 5 finance merchant can make some 100 florins per turn off the iron and even levels up nicely (they start at 2-4).

Once I get to about 6-7 finance I use ships to take them to Flanders or denmark. Just recently I found that sitting a 8 finance merchant on the textiles in netherlands area (sout of england) can make me over 400 florins per turn off the single merchant! amazing! Just be sure to take a spy along to avoid other high level merchants and to make quick acquisitions of low level merchants in the area.

I calculated that I can make up to 800-900 florins/turn off the four mid to high level merchants that I have currently. This is a good bunch of money compared to my total income and I get more when I can take out enemy merchants too. and there is little reason to go beyond the textiles in northern France.

bukharajones
12-25-2006, 23:54
I find that charging toward Kiev and snatching up every city along the way works fine. I allied with the Poles and Hungarians early on, expecting to be at war with them. While holding them at Vilnius and Kiev, I prepared a counter strike of druzhina and mounted boyars and moved to take the borders of Iasti and whatever else while another force, relying on mercs, consolidated Ryazan, Moscow, Sarkel, Bulgar, etc. Helsinki, Riga, so forth, were wrapped up in short order.

I let the Poles and Hungarians exhaust themselves on the fortresses I took from them, using a field army between the two fortresses to relieve them as needed, then moved from Vilnius to campaign against Thorn. Seizing it, I leveled up and proceeded to choke the Poles, clashing in time with the Danes. The Poles went down relatively easy. I ignored the armies, crushed the cities, figuring I could always build more if I needed. Then I closed on Hungary. By the end of it all, I destroyhed Hungary and held large chunks of Germany, but held to begin pushing toward the Byzantines. However, the Mongols are in the Balkans, and they are a headache, but not unmanageable... the Timurids, too....

Russia is quite a bit of fun and not so hard. Generally I ignore rebels...

glasket
01-02-2007, 08:09
I am having a ball with Russia.
The tactics are well discussed above so I will not elaborate on which settlements to take.

My army looks like this (I am only 100 years or so into the long campaign).
The Russians have an advantage in that they can build archer militia (Egypt is the only other faction I think with this ability). I build these units as they have no upkeep and are great for wall defences in settlements.

Unfortunately the Russian heavy cavalry is not strong (the Druzhina are extremely weak I find against infantry and other cavalry). I only have a few of these maily used as skirmishers and to chase down routing enemies.

I use the Kazaks to weaken and lure the enemy quite a bit.

You should always have a few spear militia or spearmen to fight of the enemy cavalry/infnatry

My other unit and by far the best Russian unit so far is the dismounted dvor the super archers who double as as heavy cavalry. Build a considerable amount of these and you should be fine.

This is my very very basic summary of the early Russian units which are worthwhile to build.

katank
01-02-2007, 18:27
Druzhina are pathetic heavy cavalry. Build Boyar's Sons instead. Their javs can shred enemy heavy cav units. They can then charge in to finish the rest off. A combination of BG units and Boyar's Sons should be your shock and awe wing. Kazaks are unfortunately the best you have for a while in terms of missile cav. Their melee power is severely lacking. Spear miltia and archer militia are both fairly weak but you have to live with.

Once you get to a fortress though, you can get dismounted dvors which are awesome (one of the contenders for king of archers title). A citadel gets you cossacks and dvor cavalry which are far better. One is fast moving, the other more powerful in melee.

After gunpowder, you get to build cossack musketeers out of every huge city and they are completely devastating in their ranged attack and aren't too shabby in melee either.

Thus, you largely sacrifice early game power for a huge late game with Russia.

IvarrWolfsong
01-11-2007, 15:39
Early on, Russia is challenging, but by mid game, I found them to be incredibly strong.

First off, almost all your heavy troops use axes for the "effective against armor" bonus. You main infantry units, dismounted Druz and Boyars Sons have axes (don't recall if dismounted Dvor did or not). My Dvor Horse Archers could slaughter most knights without breaking a sweat... pepper them with arrows, tire them out by skirmishing/kiting them and then meleeing with a "can opener" axe.

I found Druzhina cavalry to be much stronger than their mediocre stats would indicate. They were more than a match for the most early cavalry. They have the bonus of having a lance for the initial charge and then following up with a good "effective against armor" melee axe. By mid game, they were still very good because, being available from very early on, I had 10+ gold chevron veteran units.

Your dismounted Dvor are great archers... long range, great armor, good morale and great melee. They also use armor piecing axes.

Boyar's Sons are similar to Polish Nobles: medium cav with javelins. They do a great job "assassinating" generals and peppering enemy heavy cav to weaken them so your axes can smooosh their heads.

Khazaks are good cavalry archers with light armor and fast movement. While not elite quality, they do good service until your Cossack Cavalry comes along. Aside form disrupting and killing enemies with their arrows, I love to use their very fast movement to dash in and kill siege/cannon crews, charge archers in the rear and chase down routing units (they will easily catch fleeing generals).

Cossack cavalry are like Khazaks Deluxe. They are stronger and tougher but I use them the same way.

Tsars guard are nice heavy cav, BUT they don't have a good charge (5). They are more like heavy infantry that moves really fast. They use swords and don't get the effective vs armor trait. They are expensive and, although viable as a small heavy strike force of 1 or two units, I wouldn't try to use them as massed European style heavy cav. On the other hand they are very well armored and so are their horses. They also have a kick@$$ armored mask after you upgrade their armor.

Cossack Musketeers are a lot of fun. I haven't invested all that much into them and I only kept 2 in my main stacks. They did a very good jobengaging from afar, and were VERY good defending walls. I am finding that when using more than 1 or 2 in the field, their long range flat trajectory missles end up killing a lot of my horse archers who dance around the battle field. I tend to use a lot of horse archers though, and if I cut down on them I could probably have a great army based on a Cossack Musketeer "fire base."

Spearmen... uhmmm ... uh... yeah. This is your greatest weakness. You never get pikes, but you do get a vanilla spearman that is blah. I almost never used them as I found my other favorite units to do better service in most types of battles (spears being worth taking only at rivers or castles I expected Mongol house guests). Against enemy cavalry charges, I rely on intercepting the cavalry with my own. This is painfull if done from the front, but great if you catch them in the side where they lose their advantage of high charge stats and your Armor Piercing axes rule the melee.

Against the Mongols, you should face them at bridges or in your cities. I prefer the cities where my missle troops can kill them from the walls and then defeat their infantry on the ramparts. Your lack of spears makes fighting them at bottle necks a bit more costly than when using other factions. I would increase by half the nuber of infantry you usually but at a river crossing.. ie if you normally use 4 spears, use 6 russian heavy infantry units.. if you use 6 spears, use 9 russian infantry, etc. Of course you could just bring some vanilla spears along, but I almost never recruited them so I used what I had. I had very good results with 6 infantry (dismounted druz/Boyars), 4 dismounted Dvor, 4 Dvor Cav, 4 Druz, a general and a catapult when defending river crossings. This gives you 8 great archer units that will slaughter the enemies as they get jammed up at the crossing. Should you infantry falter, you can rush the very melee-capable Druz up to help. I never had any Mongol army get past that, but should that not work, you always have your 4 dismounted Dvor and 4 Dvor Cav rush in because they are pretty impressive in melee. The catapult is really fun at the river, because with the enemies all packed together, you kill HUGE quantities when you get a solid hit.

Anyway the point here is that although Russia may seem weak at first, they are very, very strong by mid game. Personally, I would say they have one of the BEST rosters available.

dismal
01-31-2007, 18:49
Have now just finished my VH/VH Russia campaign, and will add my 2 cents.

I will try and build upon what others have said instead of starting from scratch.

Initial Moves: Some have said it's critical to head south west for Kiev/Caffa. I did not. I focused all my effort on grabbing as many baltic ports as I could before Denmark got them. I got Riga, Helsinki, Stockholm, and even Oslo. I eventually picked up some of the eastern provinces too, giving me a 9 or so province start before the war mongering began. Poland ended up with Kiev, the Turks got Caffa and Sarkel.

The benefits this strategy include:

- The early neutering of Denmark. They never had more than 2 provinces. When my watched towers detected their main force on a 3 turn march toward Stockholm, I sent my main army across from Oslo and took Arhus before they got they even made it.

- Limited contact with the Turks or Byzantines. The Byz allied with me and I never fought them until I had 50 provinces. The Turks did attack me eventually, but it was a low intensity war over remote low value provinces until I got around to turning my attention East.

- The ability to focus on Poland almost exclusively. My western border was basically a line of Polish provinces. When they (inevitably) attacked me, I was able to focus all my attacking might on them. Furthermore, once I was done with Poland, I had a similar war with Hungary, who controlled the next line of provinces. Once I was done with Poland and Hungary, I had a nice 25 province or so empire. I probably would have been content to focus on the East at this point, but my neighbors in the West kept attacking me so I felt compelled to keep taking their lands.

Units:

Early: The backbone of my early army was the cheap but not-so dependable Kazak. I'd supplement these with a few Boyar Sons and Generals, whose main job was dealing with the enemy heavy/light cavalry. The problem with this army is obviously conducting sieges. Against a weak force, you can get by with bum rushing the gate. Against a stronger force, you have to wait them out. One of the benefits of Kazaks is the AI seems to give them a very low weight compared to their true value en masse, so the AI armies often sally when they really shouldn't. This brought me more than a few Heroic victories and conquered cities wihout the wait.

Mid: Mid game you start to get the Dismounted Dvor. I do not have such a high opinion of the unit as some here. I'd prefer to trade it for a better single purpose heavy infantry unit, like a DFK, that didn't require so many building upgrades. That said, I made a number of these and made virtually none of the other infantry except militia and spearmen. The DD's are a below average heavy infantry unit, but they help get more missiles in the air. My mid game armies started to feature 4-5 DDs. They are a good option for pushing siege equipment, and versatile wall defenders. But, throughout the game, my armies remained Horse Archer dominated.

Late: As they become available, the mounted cossacks and dvors are a nice upgrade to the kazaks. They are just more versatile, and have less tendency to rout. I could afford them, so I made them when I could. The cossack musketeer is an excellent defensive unit that causes units to rout like crazy, and requires no special buildings. A few of these guys can sometimes turn a battle, and they gave the Mongols fits from the city walls. I tried to mix a few in where I can in place of the Dismounted Dvors. I also rested easier about leaving minimal garrisons in my huge cities knowing I could order up 3 of these in a turn if I saw trouble on the way. In general, though, the trick to winning with horse archers is to have lots of horse archers. As nice as the cossacks are in some situations, you don't want to get carried away with them.

Money: Money always seems to be a problem for Russia. You have very small poulations at the beginning, and even when the empire gets big, it doesn't seem to generate as much money as other territories. The things you do to make money are the same things you do with any other faction, but you have to be more disciplined about doing them. Err on the side of making castles into cities. Garrison internal cities with free militia only. Moving your capital can be an enormous gain.

The Mongols: Due to my initial focus on the West, I didn't deal with the Mongols as a horde, but as an empire of 10 or so provinces in the Middle East. I had more than 45 provinces at the time, but decided to conquer my way to Jerusalem instead of just drop a stack on it by water. I had plenty of troops just north of the Middle East from my conquest of the Turks, and launched a more-or-less simultaneous assault on the Mongol border cities of Antioch, Aleppo, Mosul and Baghdad taking all four.

The Mongols launched several stacks to try and take these cities back, providing for some of the more challenging battles of the campaign. Defending walls with horse archer armies is tough, but fortunately the Mongols don't have much infantry themselves. And only a few units (Dismounted Dvors, Cossacks or Spearmen) can hold the walls rather well against siege towers and ladders. The threat is rams and artillery breaches. The best tactic against these is to try and eliminate their siege units by running your Kazaks out a side door and behind the enemy formation. You can often do some serious damage to the enemy artillery units. If nothing else, you will get some use out of your kazaks as they engage the enemy's missile units. Kazaks tend to be relatively worthless inside the walls. You need to be careful not to let them rout and open your gates for the enemy.

If there was a breach, I usually defended it with my generals and boyar sons, leaving my dvors up on the walls to rain arrows down and ensure the towers keep shooting. If you have a non-commanding general to spare, use them to hold and create a pocket with a few units of boyars launching javelins. risking your commander in this way is relatively dangerous as you risk a chain rout.

In summary, the Russians are quite a lot if fun to play. They face a variety of opponents, and don't generally have the abiliity to steamroll their enemies with heavy troops so you have to be a bit more creative.

dzzirt
02-01-2007, 12:51
Any1 have tried to get horsebreeder's guild (info - https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=75649)? +2 valour to all mounted troops seems 2 be nice to me. Currently im trying to get it in smolensk but dunno how to :( Building all of mine cav units only there and when ill reach amount of about 50 ill convert it to city, but dunno whether it will work cause dunno what buildings ill loose after ill convert my castle and dunno whether ill get guild HQ (seems that ive already got 500 points required) after ill convert castle to city.

Any1 ve tried to get horse breeder's guild HQ?? If yes - any succes with it?

AlphaDelta1
02-13-2007, 17:05
As the Russians you are wise torelocate. Russia is poor and the poles have better early units. In my current campaign I decided to get out of poor Russia, and out of the Poles way by taking my entire starting force and heading south east to the Crimea. I took Caffa (the Crimean province) then sailed over to Trezibond. By the time I got there (turn 12 or so) the Turks had already taken Trezibond so I had no choice but to fight from the time I landed. Once I took Trebizond I sent forces east towards Tiblsi, and south towards Caesarea. Once I took Caesarea I had taken the heart out of the Turks.

Once I had cleaned up the Turks I was then left fighting an aggressive Byzantine force who had made some quick progress into the area. The Egyptians in the south were passive for the time being.

I managed to knock back the Byzantines in a few key battles and went onto take Constantinople. Later I blitzed south and took out the Egyptians. Their infantry just couldn't compete (peasant archers vs dismounted dvor, spearman vs dismounted boyars sons) and it was a fairly easy victory.

Once I had the middle east in my hands money was plentiful and enemies far and few. To the north west of Constantinople lay the Hungarians who attacked a few times but were easily beaten back and agreed to ceasefires. The poles spread east right to the edge of the map, and would often attack Caffa, but never managed to take it.

I beat the Mongols without much of a sweat by teching up my Eastern cities to allow me to produce mounted and dismounted archer units. I set Mosul and Tiblsi as Castles, Baghdad and Yerevan as cities, this allowed me to create the full range of troops in both areas of possible Mongol invasion. As soon as the Mongol invasion warning message appeared (A new threat) I fielded two stacks in each invasion region and sat them on the bridges and fords. I tried to field stacks consisting of 50% dismounted dvor, 30% mounted dvor/cossacks and 20% general/tsars/druzhina. A treb or catapult would of been useful but I had neglected to tech up artillery in those eastern settlements.

Once the Mongols invaded (they came in around Tibsli) I moved my two southern stacks north, blocked in the Mongols and waited for them to attack. With a full stack waiting on a ford I could take out 4 stacks of Mongols (in 4 seperate battles). They invaded 3 times, each time with 4 stacks.

I'm unsure at present how to destroy the Timurids when they arrive. At the moment I'm drifting between the idea of either:

1) A full stack of mounted boyar sons - Jav cav works great against elephants.

or

2) A stack of 30% dismounted dvor, 30% cossack musks and 40% artillery (mixed trebs and basilisk).

The real problem with the Russian roster is that there is no decent spears or any pikes. This means you can be rushed by cav/elephant heavy forces and decimated (even on a bridge).

Cheers

Atalus
02-15-2007, 20:19
I found the biggest boon to playing the Rus is to grab Olso and Stock. with those two in your control you are able to cripple the poles and the Denmark. Plus not dealing with the pope is so worthwhile

Agent Smith
02-26-2007, 02:41
THE RUSSIAN MOLNYA-VOINA (BLITZKRIEG)

Although it seems to the contrary, the Russians actually start off in a very good position. With their standing army, location, and the existence of only one true border enemy, the Russians can take a very early lead and gain power quickly.

Here is the strategy.

The Russians start with two main armies (one led by Mikhail and one led by the Grand Duke Ysevolod) and one garrison army (led by Prince Vladimir). The key is to rush out of Novgorod immediately. There are four separate paths to take at once for the strategy to be effective.

1.) The First Turn. On the first turn, take Mikhail's army due west to Riga and lay siege (it should take a few turns to reach Riga). Ne mercenaries are needed. The village is lightly defended and has no wall defenses, so it is easy to take. You can wait the two turns of siege to force the Livonians to come to you, which makes the battle easier and allows you to suffer fewer casualties (particularly because they have a tendency to sen their unit of crossbows around the flank, which is easy pickings for Mikhail and his bodyguard).

While Mikhail is heading for Riga, send the Grand Duke due south to Smolensk. On the way, hire every mercenary available in preparation for the siege of Kiev (usually that is two Mercenary Spearmen and one to two Mercenary Crossbowmen). Lay siege to Smolensk and assault it ASAP. The quicker the assault, the less of a chance that the Polish will reach Kiev first. Also, leave Smolensk a castle. It will be your main region for "homeland defense."

Prince Vladimir should take a contingent of 2 Spear Militia and 2 Archer Militia east and immediately head for Moscow.

At Novgorod, begin training enough troops for a minimal garrison and begin training a small army of 3 Spear Militia and 3 Archer Militia. This army will eventually take Helsinki, which isn't of immediate need. Also, concentrate heavily on upgrading Novgorod's economic potential. I usually try to get a Port and a Merchant's Wharf ASAP to begin an economic base. With trade established with the Danes, it should be a good start. On a side note, I usually sail my starting princess ASAP to the Danish capital at Arhus before their faction heir has the chance to marry. By gaining trade rights, exchanging/giving map information, and asking for an alliance, she will most likely have enough charm to ask to marry the faction heir in the same diplomatic exchange in the same turn. This gives you a powerful marriage alliance very early in the game.

2.) The Second Wave. Once Riga has fallen, take Mikhail's army and head immediately southeast to Vilnius, leaving a minimal garrison at Riga. At this point there should be a few more mercenaries for hire, and you'll need them to effectively battle the Lithuanians. There is really not too much of a rush in assaulting the Lithuanians because you have most likely reached it in such a short amount of time. Lay siege and, like Riga, wait it out and force the Lithuanians to sally. Once captured, IMMEDIATELY changed Vilnius to a village. There is no need for another castle and it is essential for getting Russia's economy off the ground.

Almost simultaneously the Grand Duke's army should have conquered Smolensk and be heading south for Kiev. Leave a minimal garrison at Smolensk (it takes little for Smolensk to keep it in the green). The battle was most likely easy and you probably took few casualties, so the assault on Kiev should be easy. One of two things could happen when you reach Kiev: either there are no Polish in sight or they have already sent an army/laid siege to Kiev. It has been my experience that the Polish usually do not send an adequate force, and if you let them assault they will most likely fail and leave it an even easier target. If they do end up taking it, attack immediately. The Polish won't waste any time attacking you soon anyway.

By this time, Prince Vladimir should be assaulting Moscow. Simply wait the siege out and force a sally. There is absolutely no rush away from the Western front.

Build minimum garrisons in all of your towns and concentrate on economic building.

3.) The True Beginning of an Empire. With both Kiev and Vilnius under your control, the Western front is all but secure. However, at this point, you can pretty much expect an assault from the expansive Polish in a few turns (if a war hasn't already begun). I have found it most common that the Polish's main force has been used to capture Thorn, and they will usually continue marching straight for Riga. This isn't entirely a problem. If this occurs, Mikhail's main force will most likely still be in Vilnius and Riga's defense will be limited. Simply take Mikhail's army, leave minimum defense in Vilnius (the Polish don't have enough forces to lead a two pronged attack this early) and march for the Polish army. They may see you coming and assault Riga, in which case you will most likely lose. However, Mikhail will be there in a turn or two, and you can simply lay siege to Riga and take it right back. THIS BATTLE IS A KEY BATTLE. In the alternative, the Polish may attack Kiev or Vilnius, but you already have the majority of your forces there and should be able to slug it out.

With the battle won, the Polish have most likely lost the majority of their forces. Leave a minimal garrison and march straight for Thorn on a counter attack. Take it, and let Mikhail rest. This is a great defensive spot, and due to its proximity to the rest of Poland, they will most likely send assaults to Thorn or try to pass it up to go to Riga and Vilnius, in which case you can head them off at the pass.

Kiev will most likely be secure for many turns to come because of the hell Mikhail is raising with the Polish. The goal now is for the Grand Duke to amass an army (or simply take his existing one) and head east. Start building Kiev to be an economic city and build a decent garrison to fend off the stray Polish army (usually 3 or 4 each of spears and archers will do the trick, but 2 and 2 will most likely suffice). Caffa in the Crimea is a pushover and you should be able to roll right over. again, because there is little to no risk of attacks this far east, leave a minimum garrison and head for the Grand Duke's final location: Sarkel. Take it and rest. Leave Sarkel as a castle, since it will become your first bulwark against any possible Mongol invaders.

Prince Vladimir, after taking Moscow, should take whatever measures necessary (training more militia, hiring mercenaries) to head southeast and take Ryazan. Convert Ryazan to a vilalge and prepare for the final push to Vladimir's last destination: Bulgar. Take it, convert it to a village, and breathe a sigh of relief.

If you haven't yet, make sure you take Helsinki at any point along this path with a small force from Novgorod. One extra port is always nice.

4.) The Result. Because of limiting military training to small garrisons where attacks will most likely not come, the income generated later will become extremely large for the Russians. By the end of the second wave, where I usually have Novgorod, Helsinki, Riga, Vilnius, Kiev, and Moscow under my control, an income of anywhere from 3,000-5,000 florins per turn will be coming in. By the end of the blitzkrieg, you can expect between 6,000 and 8,000 florins per turn. Since most of Russia will be small villages to start, you'll often times find yourself building every building possible before the population reaches the next level. In essence, you are sitting pretty and, most likely, you may have not even hit the 25 turn mark. In the end, your empire should include: Novgorod, Kiev, Vilnius, Riga, Helsinki, Moscow, Ryazan, Bulgar, Caffa, Sarkel, and Thorn.

5.) The Future. Taking control of Thorn is usually the last thing to occur in the blitzkrieg. From this point on it will be up to the circumstances in front of you. What I usually do is begin building my standard, professional army in Thorn and try to take out Poland as quick as possible, thus expanding your realm even further. However, depending on how things turn out in the south, you may find Hungarians at your borders, although I have rarely seen that happen, especially if you leave Iasi alone. If Poland falls, you will find yourself sitting with the ability to enjoy the game since cash will be rolling in; most of Russia is protected by the "Iron Curtain" of castles in Thorn, Halych, and possibly Iasi; and the relative proximity of the cities in Poland can be easily defended with a single professional army.

Smolensk is a great area to build a second professional army and what I call a "rapid response team." By building up a decent number of Boyar's Sons (4-6), which are available early at Smolensk, you have the capability of keeping any harassing Polish armies at bay from the get-go. They are terriffic for getting to your Western Russian towns quickly (usually in 2-3 turns) on horseback and they can rip apart any army that isn't smart enough to bring missile units along. Even a few Polish Nobles can't stand a barrage of two to three loosely formed, skirmishing Boyar's Sons attacking them at once.

The Russian cities are also set up in such a way that specialization is easier. I usually make Kiev my capital once it becomes a minor city because it literally will most likely be the center of your empire for years to come (and it was historically the capital of the Rus). Also, Kiev is a great spot to build a Theologians Guild to send your Orthodox Priests out far and wide. Novgorod obviously makes a good spot for a Merchant's Guild. Meanwhile, Vilnius and Riga make good locations for Thieve's and Assassin's Guilds to send them straight into central Europe.

All that is left is to build a professional army to stand ready at Sarkel and defend your current territory. Not much will be able to stand in your way at this point.

MY PROFESSIONAL RUSSIAN ARMY

Playing EXTENSIVELY with the Greeks in RTW, I have developed an army I tend to like when I play. And with the Russians, it works out very well, is modifiable on the fly, and is easy to upgrade as time goes on.

The main backbone is, of course, infantry for me (I can't get phalanx fighting out of my head). My infantry consists of 8 Spearmen and, early, 4 Peasant Archers. For cavalry, I take 1 General, 2 units of Druzhina, and 2 units of Boyar's Sons.

The last three spots are completely customizable for the player/need. For an assaulting force, I may place in 3 units of siege weapons or 2 siege weapons and an extra heavy infantry. For open field fighting, I may throw in 3 extra units of missile cavalry.

The key to this army is it's natural flanking and defensive pinning capabilities. The beauty of the professional Spearmen is that they are relatively cheap and they do a great job of pinning an enemy in place. Also, having 8 Spear units allows for complete coverage of the four archer units without leaving an archer flanks exposed and without spreading your infantry too thin. Even if the Spearmen take heavy casulaties, they can be replaced easily at any Caste or above settlement.

Here is my typical basic set up (excluding the 3 custom spots):


BS D S S S S S S S S D BS
A A A A
G

In a typical offensive action, there are usually enough infantry to cover the entire front line of the enemy. Using loosely formed archers, begin launching arrows at the enemy while the infantry line moves forward. The Infantry's job is to pin the opposing enemy line in place while the cavalary gets set to flank it. Also, during the approach, the Boyar's Sons can be used to soften the front lines for the impending infantry charge, moving to the flank with it's accompanying Druzhina to charge together at the right time.

The result is usually devastating. The Spearmen are great at keeping the enemy i place, and the Druzhina cut through the flank like a hot knife through butter. depending on the situation, the Boyar's Sons can even wheel slightly to the rear and charge the second unit in from the flank. The General sould stay back and plug a hole in the line when necessary, rallying the troops along the way.

For defensive actions, the half hexagon is a fantastic weapon with this army:


S S S S
S A A S
S A A S
BS D G D BS

All of the Spearmen should be fasing outward, with the two Spearmen units on each side facing outward to provide a straight wall of spearpoints on all sides of the half hexagon. The Boyar's Sons can be positioned outside of the hexagon on each flank to give them an easier time of marching out to harass the enemy as they approach. The rest of the cavlary should be used to plug holes.

This strategy works best on a hillside, so the archers can fire over the heads of the row in front of them without much problems. You can even lure the enemy into a defensive battle by positioning your army on the campaign map next to a mountain or hill and tempt the enemy into attacking you.

In any event, wait for the enemy to come to you and get peppered along the way. Depending on how they attack, each side of the hexagon has the ability to wheel and basically invert the original half hexagon, trapping the enemy in the middle. A swift Cavalry charge through the middle can put an end to most offensive assaults.

As the game progresses, I usually always keep the Spearmen for my infantry backbone. I later switch out the Peasant Archers for Dismoutned Dvor. The DD are fantastic, because not only do they take the place of the archers and fire long range missiles, but they are heavy infantry that can plug holes if need be thus freeing up your general and other cavalry for flanking. The Druzhina can be switched out later for Tsar's Guard and the Boyar's Sons can be switched out for Dvor Cavalry. If one really doesn't like Spearmen, they can be switched out for heavier infantry as well.



That's my Russian strategy in a nutshell. I hope you all enjoy it!

Bongaroo
03-08-2007, 21:23
My current campaign is Russian and I am really enjoying it. I play standard turn length, 1.1 patch, and Carls bugfixer. My early game was controlled expansion with a lot of attention paid to diplomacy. Currently I have a reliable reputation and 5 or 6 alliances with standings in all of them very good or better. My only enemy is the polish who have developed a very bad reputaion for repeatedly invading my lands. I have taken Riga, Helsinki, Smolnesk, Moscow, Ryazan, and Bulgar. Smolnesk and Bulgar are my castles with all others remaining towns. The turks took sarakel but we have yet to engage in hostilities which is fine by me. I am poised to begin a counter-offensive into Poland in retribution for their continued aggression.

My tatics have been to leave the infantry in the cities to defend my holdings and fielding all calvary fast action response armies to deal with any incursions. I have defeated many a large polish army with successful ambushes. Nothing feels better than breaking a line of unsuspecting invaders marching single file. When the ambush fails and a normal battle insues I tend to pause the game often to keep track of all the HA's. My field armies so far have consisted of a general, 2 or 3 boyar sons, 3 or 4 druza, and 4+ kazaks. The Kazaks are ineffective in melee but are otherwise fine HA's. I use them to pepper the enemy and try to get enemy units strung out for charges from the heavy cavalry. A fairly simple guerilla like strategy but effective. The large open spaces on the campaign map and ample woods to lay sieges play to the strength's of this army.

Fortunately the Mongels invaded far south and have settled around Antioch. They are now warring with the Hungarians for control of Constantanople. Since Hungry is an ally of mine I'm thinking that to help prevent the mongels from breaking out further and becoming a larger threat later, now would be a good time to send in some landing force in what used to be turky but is probably now mostly mongel. A spy is enroute to investigate the current conditions to the south.

So far a blast to play. ;)

Unorthodox
03-10-2007, 07:10
In my campaigns, I never ran into economic problems. I'd put it down to the following factors:

1) In the beginning, your troop choices are weak all-around. Rather than spending your money on weak cavarly that are still somewhat expensive, spend your money on weak militia that are extremely cheap. Spam your enemies and all rebel settlements with huge armies of spear militia. Low upkeep, low cost.
2) Make a determined dash to expand as far South as possible. The settlements to your East aren't going anywhere; nobody's going to take them, with the possible exception of Turkey.
3) Gamble - convert all your early settlements to cities, and fix up a specific border of castles (that will most likely be against Poland, maybe Hungary). For the majority of my early game, this was Vilnius-Halych-Iasi. Everything behind that was a city for the increased income. Before I reached those 3 settlements, I only had cities.
4) Make sure you capture as many coastal settlements, both on the Black and Baltic seas, to give you naval trade. Kiev is important.

I was consistently the richest faction in my campaign.

IrishArmenian
03-10-2007, 17:12
Any1 ve tried to get horse breeder's guild HQ?? If yes - any succes with it?
Yes, I have gotten it.
The key is to recruit Russian Cavalry Militia--one can recruit them without any guild.

PuppetMaster
05-06-2007, 06:41
I played some custom battles with Russian troops, and it seems like their infantry are pretty competent, yet no one has mentioned them once. Why is this?

Zim
05-06-2007, 07:24
I played some custom battles with Russian troops, and it seems like their infantry are pretty competent, yet no one has mentioned them once. Why is this?

Their infantry have trouble standing up to a lot of the other faction's later infantry, and are even worse against cavalry charges with their low defense(although they certainly do a lot of damage, especially the berdiche axemen).

People also seem to prefer to give campaign map advice in these threads than battlefield advice. If you've played a lot of battles with the Russians, maybe you could add a section on the different units and how their best used. :yes:

Alsn
06-19-2007, 01:19
I played some custom battles with Russian troops, and it seems like their infantry are pretty competent, yet no one has mentioned them once. Why is this?Because playing the campaign as the russians all your provinces that you start with are really poor and low population, this means that it will takes ages to get past peasants/spearmen from your mottle & bailey(YES! many of them arent even wooden castles :furious3:) which means that while russia certainly has some capable infantry and foot archers you wont be able to get them for quite some time into the campaign.

Silvershade
06-22-2007, 10:50
I'm having a lot of fun as with the Russians in my current camapaign after migrating to Scotland and Ireland for a start point. I've had some good battles with the English before finally eliminating them and currently have France, Spain and Denmark at war with me. France in particular are proving great fun as they have turned into a fully fledged superpower.

Facing off against western European powers with the Russian roster is proving to be fun.

Bernhard of Clairvaux
06-26-2007, 15:55
I followed the advise of Agent Smith in this thread and must agree that Russia can be incredibly strong. Thanks for the guide!

Initially you risk no two front war so it is easy to expand in the baltics and move on to Oslo. After a while especially stockholm will pump out money (I have now 5000 income from Stockholm alone around 1400) and you only need small garrisons to watch the cities. I also moved south took Kaffa and captured Constantinople, Nicae, Smyrna, Rhodes and Crete and Corinth (the Byz was wiped out by the Turks and Catolics so now I am the third Rome).

The real problems began with the Mongols. After grabbing Trebizond, Tblisi and Yerevan I ran into them and got some serious beating but eventually I managed to defend Tblisi and now I destroy stack after stack there. Keeping the inner walls manned by dismounted dvors is incredibly effective. I usually also place on unit on the outer wall close to the inner fortress to fire from the side. Russian spearmen are quite good and can fend of any attacks through the gate since the dvors make most mongol units shaken as they enter. Dismounted boyar sons can help out on the walls but the dismounted dvors are so good in melee so you can really use them only. Boyar sons can be used to attack any stronger units that might get through the gates, one unit takes out anything the mongols got. Boyar sons are also good at chasing down fleeing units.

Now, the Timurids have entered the scene to which prevented me to go on a counter attack on the Mongols who hold all the holy land. The Tims took out my cities as far as Ryazan and then they attacked Kiev. I had decided to make a stand there (I underestimated the Tims, I should have fortified at least Ryazan but I was too late). I manned the walls with cossack musketeers and dismounted dvors and repelled three or four stacks from the outer walls (cannon towers). A great slaughter it was! Elephants went down all over. However, later the came with two stacks at the same time, one stack using bombards. They got through a hole and my dear Kiev army did a great job but was sadly killed off.

As for now I am awaiting the Tims in Smolensk with a city full of cossacks and dvors. That will be the test! I am also gathering troops around Rus to make a counter attack eventually. The Tims might go directly for constantinople too. Time will tell...

Oh, and everyone else want a piece of great Rus but so far without much success since defending a city or a castle is so easy with the dvors.

In the open I love dvor cavalry, great missile attack and awesome defence.

caralampio
08-29-2007, 16:16
I just finished a Russian campaign on M/VH. My only stat-altering mod is Lite, which is minimum. I also use other mods like blood mod and Xeno Which changes the language but nothing altering the basics.

Initially I found Russia very boring. The only reason I really dove into playing this faction is that I'm touring every faction with the objective of winning a long campaign with each. The reasons that made me hate Russia were the poor initial economy, boring and weak units (at start, this changes later) and the vast distances one has to walk (I mean that one's armies have to walk).

However once I got into it I really loved the Rus. The middle and late game unit mix is very nice. Some have said that dismounted Boyar sons/dismounted Druzhima are not very useful. I found them quite tough (and like how they look on the battle map too!). Their stats of 11 attack and 17 defense don't seem too impressive when measured against a typical western opponent, the dismounted feudal knight (13/21). However they have an armor-piercing axe which halves the feudal's armor to 11. 11/17 vs 13/11 looks better, nyet? In fact I found they performed quite well against feudal and other western heavy infantry. They also have a shield which makes them better than other axe-bearing units. (I don't know if it's the lack of shield or the unwieldly 2H axe but even with the 2H-bug fixed long axe units seems to perform poorly even if they have the same or better stats than other units). My only complaint is, both are identical so why bother with two unit types? True one comes from barracks and the other from a wall upgrade, but easily one could have a single unit type spawning from both structures, like town militia. I like to build both types just for variety, however if you are a strict perfectionist who wants to use the very last advantage in a game, build only dis boyar sons because they are an earlier-appearing unit and it is more likely that you can find a settlement that can replenish them.

Now about the dismounted dvor, an excellent unit, however I don't think you can use them to entirely substitute your line infantry. They have the same stats as dis boyar sons/druzhima, they have the same axe and shield and look the same on the field when using the axe, however I found that they are a bit more brittle than the pure infantry. There seem to be factors in this game beyond what dry stats indicate. I do place them in the line in case of need but otherwise I use them as missile units, i.e. protected in the rear. Their missile power and range is impressive, they are better in that role and it is best to protect them.

Berdiche axemen, a nice heavy unit that comes out of cities instead of castles, which can be a lifesaver in certain situations (i.e. when you don't have a castle near and need an army). They can take on infantry and cavalry, but tend to suffer heavy casualties in any battle (because of the lack of shield or the slow axe, as mentioned above).

Spearmen (the ones that come out of castles) in case you hadn't noticed, are the exact equivalent of the vaunted Italian Spear militia, and in the same category of armoured sergeants and other European strong spears.

As for the earlier light infantry, as mentioned elsewhere in this thread and pointed out by the game itself as Russia's weakness, they suck. EE Spear militia can only take two armor upgrades instead of three, AND very important, they have short spears (only +4 vs cavalry instead of +8). In fact, EE spear militia is equal to western town militias. Unfortunately, they and the also weak archer and crossbow militias are your only choice if you want to take advantage of free upkeep garrisons, so if you are thinking defense, you need to bring castle units into the city.

Speaking of garrisons, your basic castle unit is woodsmen instead of the western choice, peasants. They are actually a bit cheaper to upkeep and fight a little better in a pinch. They are good for little else though except in the early game, when they enjoy a very short time of being the tough kids in the neighborhood :laugh4:

I won't comment on cavalry as that has already been covered very well by others. Moving on to strategy and politics. I had a huge advantage in that the Mongols and Timurids arrived at Baghdad and never bothered me. Some people hope that the barbarians will arrive in their territory to prove their mettle, other hope they go south. I'm in the latter category.

Russia's problem in Europe is that everyone hates you. Every neighbor will declare war on you sooner or later. I never declared war on any factions, and still I conquered all of Europe except Iberia and southern Italy, just through the need of eliminating these pestering neighbors who would never call it quits. I even conquered Cuba and Amerika before I finally got bored and swooped down on Jerusalem for victory. Dreams of the Soviet Union :2thumbsup:

Laman
09-26-2007, 07:04
Recently started a game with the Rus. Getting close to the time when the mongols come, and is not terrible teched up, can get dismounted Dvor from just recently captured Sofia only, but there are still turns left and I might get lucky (if I have understood everything correctly the Mongols may appear more or less everywhere on the eastern edge, so if they may not necessarily go after me, though I shouldn't count on that happening).

First I did was rushing towards Kiev, which I made my capital, taking Smolensk on the way. IMO Kiev is necessary, atleast if one has any interest of even the smallest amount of roleplaying (one part of my roleplaying is basing the faction leader in Kiev, while the heir is in Novgorod, so when I get new leader, he rides to Kiev while his heir rides to Novgorod), provides fairly nice income as well. Then mostly captured the remaining Rus cities (Ryazan and Moscow, Halich would go into this if it weren't held by the Polish) as well as Helsinki (mission), Caffa (nice potential trading port and only lightly defended) and Iasi (mission, starts as (poorly upgrade) castle and in good position to be Kievs first line of defense). Sent a diplomat and allied with Denmark, Poland and the Byzantines.

The only ally to backstab me was the Byzantines, they appearantly decided that despite amiable relations and the fact they already was fighting the Turks and Hungary (the Magyars however had failed to expand, so only the Turks where really any sort of problem, after the Byzantine backstab I accepted an alliance offer from their diplomat) they really wanted Iasi. They have refused peace this far, but recently I smashed one of their big armies and captured Sofia, so they may start to listen. Just before they backstabbed me I had sent armies towards Riga and Vilnius (both still rebel-held) who promptly fell. Sarkel and Bulgar are still rebels, though the Turks made one failed attempt to assault Sarkel (the entire Turkish army involved was wiped out).

What I have noticed about the Rus.
One thing towers on the border is a good idea, so when/if the Poles or other come, you can actually have enough time to prepare and gather your forces, your settlements are so far away from eachother that one really needs more time then many other factions. The idea I have, is basing a bunch of cavalry in my castles, ready to rush towards any city that is threatened, while all infantry is to be provided locally. Due to the peaceful Poles in my game it hasn't really been tested.

Another thing, while they have some decent infantry, it isn't that easilly available, it takes lot of time even to get the standard spearmen (the castle types, I haven't had time to use any, recently got able to train them in Smolensk and can train them in recently captured Sofia but that's it), on the plus side ones cities provides archers very quickly. As far as cavalry goes, Kazaks are good dependable horse archer that should avoid hth combat. Boyar Sons are competent medium cavalry, one should use their javelins to their full advantage before going to hth. Druzhina is the first heavy cavalry one get, not that bad, but very vulnerable if bogged down.

And as far as economy goes, not that good, but it is manageable.

And when it comes to capital i can see two choices to begin with, Novgorod or Kiev. The difference is mostly where one wants to have ones focus. Regardless of which one chooses Poland will always be a reasonable area to expand when the oppurtunity arises, but other then that;

Novgorod: If one wants to focus on the baltics, conquer Scandinavia and generally fight in the northern part of Europe. Good thing, not that many threats to your horse archers here, but there are problems for your armies, like Polish Nobles to name one, but they may always be a problem. Bad thing, will have to fight catholics and only catholics, Pope may become antagonistic, and crusades against you may happen if youre unlucky.

Kiev: For the southern route. Bad thing first here, those you will mostly fight, Byzantines, Hungarians and Turks, all have horse archers of their own. Good thing, only Hungarians (and the ever existing foe, the Poles) are catholic, so Pope may not potentially become as hostile, but do not count on it. Possibly greater wealth around here, but I'm not experienced enough to really judge that.

TheLastPrivate
12-04-2007, 01:56
I don't think crusades are possible on Orthodox factions. I have never seen it happen or appear on the "request crusade" listing. Ever.

nafod
12-04-2007, 18:43
Crusades definitely can be called on Orthodox factions. Constantinople and Novgorod are common options in my games, and the computer has called them on both cities while they were held by the Rus and the Byzantines.

rvg
12-04-2007, 19:04
Crusades definitely can be called on Orthodox factions. Constantinople and Novgorod are common options in my games, and the computer has called them on both cities while they were held by the Rus and the Byzantines.

I disagree. I know for a fact that unlike MTW1, in MTW2 it is impossible to crusade against Orthodox factions.

PerfectOne
12-04-2007, 21:22
I'm pretty sure I called a crusade against Constantinople while playing as Milan...and it was held by the Byzantines...

locked_thread
05-06-2008, 03:09
edit

locked_thread
05-07-2008, 04:45
edit

RollingWave
05-13-2008, 02:57
Here's a question.

IIRC correctly in RTW when you make units it takes away from the population and when you disband units it adds to it right? does this still apply to MTW2? if that's the case then wouldn't going for a mostly mercenary army early on make more sense?

locked_thread
05-13-2008, 03:01
edit

grapedog
05-29-2008, 22:05
Hmm, I'm playing as Russia and just witnessed a crusade against Constantinople get cancelled when the Byzantines took it back from the Moors.

I don't think you can crusade against Orthodox factions, but you can crusade against Constantinople and the like when they are controlled by Islamic factions.

WarMachine187
06-09-2008, 17:26
Ive just started my first russian campain on vh/vh,and its lots of fun! I like the fact that theres lots of rebel settlements and a great selection of calvary units.When i started out,i went in three directions.First i sent one stack towards moscow,then the other toward kiev taking the rebel settlement between kiev and novgorod.I sent my faction leader to helsinki and to it with just a unit of horse archers and archers.I find thats what they got going for em most.As far as battlefield advice for fighting the mongols.You have to play it smart and get them on ground that favors you.A bridge is the best option,espicially if theyr on the offensive.I havnt faced them with the russians but drawing from my experience with the byzantines,it should be a breeze.Just dont let your guard down:beam:

Eduin
06-11-2008, 05:22
I've found Russia to be one of the most enjoyable factions in the game. Always on VH/VH.

Firstly, there seems to be a misconception that Russia should take Kiev. This isn't a good idea. For Russia, you will end up in all sorts of trouble if you take anything East or South of Moscow because that puts you slap bang in the way of the eastern invaders. You want to avoid this because, well, its more expensive than the Russian economy can support.

When you start, the first thing you do is reduce your forces to affordable levels, your three generals can more or less take the surrounding rebel towns on their own by forcing Sallies and mopping up the weak troops that can't take a cavalry charge, keep a couple of archers and spears and use them as garrisons as you leave the newly aquired settlements.

With your three starting commanders/armies, send one to Helsinki, one to Moskow and one to Riga.

After taking those three you are going east, Poland is your target and you need to wipe them out if you want any chance to build. Your Moskow Army heads to Smolensk and you start aquiring Merc Spears and Xbow. Your Riga force also heads south to Vilnius aquiring Mercs en route. After taking Helsinki your spare army is moving south to join with the others. Take all generals offered, regardless of stats.

By now you have six additional settlements, 4 to 5 generals. Before joining your forces, its worth sending a force south to take Halych which is likely being threatened by the Poles with a small force, take them out, take the castle. Meanwhile join your other two forces and head straight to Thorn, once you lay siege, you'll get a strong Polish attack which you can succeed in beating by using generals to keep their cavalry off your main army. This is the key battle, lose it and you'll be on a back foot but as Poland won't be strong by then, you should manage it with all those Mercs.

Once you have Thorn, Poland should be finished. Keep attacking their towns till you have them all, most likely they will have Breslau, Krakoc, possibly Magdeburg, possibly Prague. They are stonewalled by Denmark and the HRE with Hungary to the south so its easy to take them out.

Don't retrain your merc units. When you get Thorn you should be able to make Dismounted Dvor. Start that and this will be the bulk of your Army till the objective (or the map) is yours. Forge decent relations with the Byzantines and they will cover your flank, depending on how well they have started, it may also be relatively simple to take out Hungary. Doing that takes out the two factions most likely to cause you pain.

That should set you up for the rest of the game. Personally I love stacking those Dismounted Dvor and placing them with some basic Spear units to protect from Cavalry charges which is the only pre-cannon weakness they have. Using two generals and a couple of other Horse per army till you can get the Dvor Cavalry, charge any enemy artillery by flanking them with your cavalry, much easier once you get the Mounted Dvor but more than possible with Generals/regular Cavalry.

You can now lay waste to everything to the west, you should be able to get a sizable chunk of Europe before any other faction has decent cannon, as they do develop cannon and start using them, build 2 then 4 Dvor Cavalry into your full stack armies. Personally, I don't see much need for more than 4 troops.

By the time you need to turn your attention to the east and face those Elephants, you are rich enough for half a dozen full stack armies which even the Timurids can't survive.

Regards,
Eduin

Voltigers
07-20-2008, 02:52
historically mongols took a huge chunk of Russia, just like it happens in the game (except mogolian AI is really dumb andI had them walk in circles for about 40 years) and Timurlane took Moscow.

ok he didn't have elephants, but you have to make it hard right...?

I think it's a good idea and by far I gotta say Russia is the hardest faction to play with. I haven't tried Turkey or Byzantine yet, but Turkey has one of the best units and Byzantine is bloody rich. Russia starts small and has crappy units.

now, I personally don't condone quitting and surrendering, so I'll provide a basic idea of how to fight both threats and what worked for me.

From the beginning, I would suggest taking every baltic city along with other cities up to armenia (but don't take armenia and georgia). turn most of them into cities except for the border ones which should be citadels.
Riga and Vilnius and Novgorod are your best income sources and riga might get attacked by poles a few times, so keep it safe.

use orthodox priests to avoid unnecessary decent, especially since all your cities are so far away from each other, so the distance from capital dissent will be there.

it's gonna be a while before mongols come, so I'd suggest doing the following:

-annex denmark or at least take scandinavia - this is your backup resost (since nobody ever goes there) in case you get overwhelmed in Russia proper and have to retreat. turn Oslo and Stockholm into cities and build ports ports ports
-get rid of poland as soon as possible to liberate one front.
i've noticed only poland attacks repeatedly and aggressively. hungary does not.
if hungary takes Iasi, they'll be happy with it.

Kiev is by far the hardest city to hold (you can turn it into citadel, but you won't get the income from black sea ports, which would be benefitial for you since you don't have much income to play with).


now as for units: most of your units suck and you really need to use brains to win battles.
I think by far the most versatile and useful unit is dismounted dvor, it's only 150/turn and is average in price to purchase. they are excellent archers and quite good in melee combat. the only thing they should avoid are polish (or anyone else's) heavy cavalry, but for that you also get your spearmen which are slightly better than those of other factions.

I generally ignore making spears and simply build a huge force of dism dvor and later on (when you get them) mounted dvor and cossacks, to harass units in skirmish and lead them to my dismounted dvor traps.

cossacks are an excellent and cheap skirmishing unit. dvor is better because they're also a heavy cavalry unit, but that makes them slower.

both units can do parthian shot (i.e. shoot while moving) which makes them tremendously powerful. you can literally move in circles around the enemy and shower them with arrows while they're stupidly trying to catch you.

so skirmishing and dismounted dvor are the units I usually used for western battles.

when mongols arrive, within 20 or so years you get your other excellent unit - cossack musketeers. they are slightly worse than turk musketeers, but better than anything else anyone got.
I would suggest using tons of them (even tho they're expensive to buy) against mongols. place them in front of everyone and use your dismounted dvor behind them for artillery shower. mongols usually start showering you too, so make sure you place them all looosely. your dvor is good at avoiding arrows and your muskeets have very long reach.
also make sure to use landscape to your advantage. if you have more muskeeters, it's best to sit downhill so that you can always see your enemy, rather than sit up hill where you can only see them when they reach you (hills are round, so you can't see the enemy at the bottom of the hill if you're on top and thus can't really shoot them with a musket, but can shoo tthem with a bow).

but the best strategy against mongols is probably using your dvor and your muskets to distract, while your druzhina or other heavy horse units flank their infantry/missile units. now, since mongols pretty much have same good units you do plus they also have lancers, you are in a disadvantage, so simply try to kill them off slowly. catch their units when they're alone or with a weaker general and dessimate them slowly while they're trying to reach Kiev.

in my game they took kiev, but I sent army after army toward their positions and also used bridge that protects novgorod to trap their silly units (they're bad at bridge assaults), destroying their 10 or so armies one by one. eventually I took kiev and forced them out of my land, but there are obviously more of them in the south fighting the islam world.

as for timurids. if you do not take armenia/georgia, I think they should avoid you for a while and fight turkey/byzantine. that's what happened in my game. it's obvious that by the time they come, you might not be ready for another onslaught, but using same strategy and most importantly using your muskeeters as much as you can will work like a charm. use your cheap spear units to charge their elephants and use muskeeters to shoot at them, so that they go berserk. elephants seem to have issues with having thousands of arrows and bullets be thrown at them, so they panick and run away when musketers and dvor shower them with stuff.
the rest of the units are similar to mongols, so it's really a matter of using the elephant thing to your advantage (i,e, showering them until they panic or trying to confuse your enemy with your swift cossack units)


you also get a decent berdiche unit (halberd looking axe) with a good attack rating which can work like a charm against infantry and elephants if you increase their armor rating to plate or so.
but other than that, if you feel forced from your lands and losing all your territory - do what other did in that case, migrate west and become a nomad yourself. force the western nations out of their own lands with your retreating units.

if you took scandinavia, you can always take a refude there for a while until you rebuild your army and can try to retake your lands again.

so there you have it, russians never surrender:)


in conclusion, just a rehash of what units you might want to use:

-dismounted dvor: excellent overall unit, produced in citadel, needs last level archery range, rather than barracks. dual use, both great archer and good heavy infanty unit. I make tons of these
-mounted dvor: same unit on the horse. needs citadel. heavy cavalry with a somewhat good archery skill. there are less of them and they are more expensive than dismounted dvor. needs archery range and stables. I make a few of these, maybe two per army
-cossacks: your best skirmishers. needs citadel. fast and good shots. can perform parthian shot. I make a lot of these. 4-6 per army or they can even be their own army, just place them in opposite ends of the enemy force and make enemy run after them then charge them in the back
-cossack musketeers: very good musket unit, needs gun range in a city. use this against any armor units, elephants or mongols. very long range, very powerful, but doesn't like arrows or charging horses, so protect them. they can fight like a light infantry unit. they're expensive, but are worth it
-berdiche dudes: produced in city. unit with most attack, but only 10 or so defence. very long axes, so good against horses and armor. versatile and pretty good overall, but unfortunately die like ants if you leave them unchecked. I'd use these against anything western armies can throw at you that has a horse or even against elephants. they're shock troops, so avoid using them as guards. I tried them in birdge defence and they suck.


other citadel units that I never used:

-tsar's bodyguard - very heavy horse unit, but too expensive and too slow to be of any use. not as good as western units either, so I'd skip that one. they don't have bows etiher. mounted dvor is better overall
-druzhina - your first heavy horse unit, but should be replaced with dvor as soon as you have them. also slow and no bows
-boyar's sons - heavy unit with spears. not worth it I think because spears have very short range and they only have like two each. they're good for charging, but not excellent. pretty bad for skirmishing, so i'd skip these too
-dismounted boyar's - they have same stats as distmounted dvor less the missile attack, so I don't see any real purpose in them. they do appear earlier than dismounted dvor, but they're pretty pointless (along with other unit with same stats, forgot the name)

so there you have it
hope that helps

:idea2:

Excellent man, i had not captured Armenia or Georgia and i think that is why the Mongols are still wandering but i think i can apply your strategy, seemed pretty fascianting

Mangudai
09-09-2008, 03:59
I had a very different approach than most people on this thread.


Cheapskate
Russia has a few cities worth developing, the black sea ports and Novogrod are good trade cities. The rest of the territory is not worth developing into cities, the future income is too low to justify the expenses. Besides, you can't afford to build in all your cities simultaneously, unless you relocate. Castles are easy to keep happy and you don't need any buildings to produce your primary unit Kazakhs.


Meat Waves
Kazakhs are almost as cheap to recruit as they are to maintain. I use 'em up and throw them away. I don't garrison anything beyond a minimum. Polish and Danish invaders should be fought in the field. The Danes are helpless, the Poles tougher. If you lose a field battle, retreat, reinforce, and fight again.
Russia can invade Hungary or Turkey with just Kazakhs, the attrition is high, but on a cost basis Russia does well.

With late game units steamrolling is easy.

HopAlongBunny
09-25-2008, 18:10
I love AgentSmith's expansion plan. It works very well, but it also places Russia at war with just about everyone.

It is safer to do the northern expansion: Sweden/Norway; Inverness; this sets up the real plan. Annex Denmark and England. With Nov/Vil/Hel/Smolensk/Mos you have a good foothold in your homelands and pretty easy to defend; once Denmark and England are out of the way the trade revenue should be huge.

You will need that revenue. Poland will attack sooner or later and that campaign can be extremely long. Most games they go east: Kiev, Iasia, Sofia; all w/o getting in conflict with Hungary:dizzy2: Once the Polish campaign starts, plan on at least 3 battles a turn_more if the AI calls a dogpile on Russia.

attilavolciak07
11-09-2008, 15:49
Russia is one of the factions I tend not to expand with. I mean, the Russian economy is delicate and needs improvement. So, if you conquer the whole lot of territory from Novgorod to Moscow and beyond, and further southward, you have to spend more money on each city for maintenance, improvements and military means. If the Russian acquire too much territory they get trapped, their troop numbers are spread thin between cities and some cities are neglected by the user for being too far off and unimportant. I tend to play the best with Russia when I stay in a cozy, minuscule empire, yet an empire that is economically sound, technologically advanced, and militarily-strong so I can eventually launch an attack on Poland. I would suggest using your Orthodox brothers, the Romans, to good use as well, such as setting up conflict with the Hungarians, of whom would most likely support Poland or be unstable allies at best for Russia.

As for units, one thing I noted about Russia is that their early on units contain militia, mostly, but there are some exceptions. The Kazaks are pretty good troops. They are horse archers with wicked speed, perfect for hit and run raids. They carry a small sword, so should be kept out of hand-to-hand combat but in terms of archery, they are simply wonderful.

The Boyar Sons are also worth noting. They can double as missile troops (when wielding the javelin) and hand-to-hand when they carry their axe. They are also on horse-back and are somewhat fast and have great stamina.

The Druzhina are the cream of the crop for me. I got my first recruitement of them within the first 6 or so turns; they are Russia's heavy cavalry for the early age. They are descendents of the Vikings when they settled in the area and wield the traditional heavy battle axe.

Sebastian Seth
11-12-2008, 07:20
I dont think the russian infantry is worth recruiting at all. I havent reached too far in my russian save but so far I havent build any infantry or archery buildings in my castles.

My armies are relatively small but they are pretty much composed of:

Mercenery Spearmen
Kazaks
Boyar Sons
General

In open field battle I try to bind the enemy spearmen and elite troops with my spearmen. Before it turns to brawl I try to thin the elite forces with Boyar Sons (Javelins) and Kazaks (Bows). Then when brawl is on going I'll usually charge the ranged units with the kazaks, the elite units with boyar sons and general (preferably from behind them).

In castle defence I usually have just militia archers or crossbow militia in addion to those. I usually try to block enemy from coming over the walls with the archers. (Never successfull but buys little time). I'll usually let them come trought the gate and put the mercenery spearmen right in front of the gate in round formation. The objective is not to stop them with the spearmen but to slow them down and let them come trought in small groups. Then when they get trought they meet arrows, javelins and repeated charges from the cavarly. (IMO game is broken when it comes to cavarly and pathfinding in cities but weak AI balances that.)

Castle attacks are bit more difficult to me. I tend to lose so much men in the attack that I lose the castle in next opposition attack. I have some success with going straight trought the main gate and then spreading kazaks & boyar sons around the city but the weakness of my infantry really shows here.

Generally I try to make use of the fact that most russian forces have ranged weapons. This is usefull when you are fighting on the narrow streets because the units behind are not just waiting their turn. Later this will be huge problem... I cant think how to get past dismounted civalric knights. But I'm looking forward on getting druszina's, dvor's and tzars guards.

My first attacks where:
Moscow, Riga and Helsinki.
Next waves:
Helsinki -> Stockholm -> Oslo -> Arhus (Lost Arhus in two turns and now back in Oslo for a regroup)
Riga -> (Castle below novgorod) -> Kiev -> Polish castle south west from Kiev
Moscow -> Ryazan -> Caffa (General died of old age)

Main key in strategic map moving is that I recruit the footmen from the destionation and travel with cavarly.

The rebel spawns are putting me of tought. Theres two rebel fleets destroying every ship that leaves port in skandinavia and large number of rebels roaming all over russia. I have 18 years old heir with 5 stars allready just by killing rebels in vicinity of novogrod. I may have to handle the files to get rid of the rebels and restart since they are actually matching me in streight in russia and that is binding too much of my attack streight. The amount of them is not that unrealistic as such but when compared to the number of settlements and population in scandinavia and russia they are too strong. (I may have tuned them up by accident. They come in stacks of 5 and about 1-2 per turn.)

But my main strategy is really: Take out danish to secure economy, Take out polish just because they will do the same for you if you dont, get constanttinopole as ally or as province, Take every little castle there is just to turn them ordodox and later slow down on mongols.

BlackKnight1234
04-05-2009, 10:15
I was playing with russia and i conquer too much land(holy roman, poland,hungary,denmark,some lands from turks all east-nort).But i see that mongols come in 60-65 turns I dont know why???????But it was good for me

Barry
04-06-2009, 19:15
I shall attempt to make sense of your post BlackKnight, did you over-expand, ie had major rebelions because you gained too many settlements too quickly? Or did you conquer so much land that you came into contact with the Mongols? You said it was good for you so I suppose that this is the case and you beat the Mongols, I can only congratulate you on this feat and wish you more luck for the harder Timurids!

Alexander: The hellenic empire
06-24-2009, 13:26
[QUOTE=rios;1332459]everybody hates the russians, on VH campaign it's virtually impossible to establish any alliance, so handling the hordes will be a solo mission.

JUST ALLY WITH THE HORDES AND DESTROY EUROPE!

:2thumbsup:

oz_wwjd
06-25-2009, 04:33
I've found it almost impossible to ally with the hordes. In my most recent game I expanded to Ryazan and had to deal with repeated attacks by the Mongols at Ryazan and the timurid hordes attacking Kiev. Every attempt I made at diplo with them was rejected,hell it was hard enough keeping those damn elephants out of my cities, I only survived due to the fact that I had crushed poland earlier and my Cossack musket spam at all my cities that would be threatened by the hordes,and had alliances with most of the surrounding nations,so I could concentrate at the threat at hand.

Calgacus
11-09-2009, 19:19
In common with pretty much everyone else here, starting as Russia I proceeded with a mixture of caution and tempered expansionism, and soon found myself being handed my little furry Cossack hat on a plate by Poland, Hungary, and Denmark to the point where my economy rapidly spiralled into terminal decline. So, I re-started, but this time I made international diplomacy the centre of my approach. I launched an all-out charm offensive from turn one. While the standing armies were sent off to secure rebel-held Iasi, Vilnius and Riga, I started building diplomats, and sent them off as soon as possible to make contact with three key powers: Poland, the Pope, and the Byzantines.

This strategy (such as it is) is based on the notion that as Russia's early period armies are a bit, well, naff, and the economy is fragile, it would be better to avoid war for as long as possible, while teching up the country's economy and military establishment furiously behind the scenes.

The first state to establish friendly relations with is Poland. Initially, they don't like you, they will attack you, and they're right next to you. If you can get a diplomat to them and start giving them trade rights and map information, followed by a hefty chunk of your starting money (around 5,000 florins should do it) you can get an alliance. This slowly begins to improve your international reputation. Once your diplomat reaches the Papal States, go through the same procedure, and secure the Pope's allegiance: this (I think) makes it less likely that Catholic factions will go to town on you. Certainly this has worked for me. Finally, the Byzantines seemed like appropriate alliance material for several reasons. They are the only other Orthodox faction in the game, so I assumed that they might be stauncher allies than the Catholic factions. More importantly, they were near my south-western frontier, and might help me out if the Poles or Hungarians kicked off. I sent a diplomat and a princess to Constantinople, and, after a ridiculous amount of bribery, secured an alliance and a royal marriage. I rejected Hungary as allies, again for several reasons: the Hungarians are weaker than the Poles, and therefore less of a threat to Russia. They also have contiguous borders with Poland and the Byzantines, meaning that sooner or later you are going to have to break the alliance, with possible penalties for your international reputation.

After this point I secured my Scandanavian holdings through an alliance with Denmark. The more alliances, the better your reputation, and so the easier it is to get further allies. It is vital to keep your relations with these key allies up to the 'Outstanding' or 'Perfect' level with regular, small gifts of money, administered every couple of turns by diplomats stationed in their territory.

This was all done with the approach of the dread Mongols in mind; I most certainly did not want them turning up near Sarkel and traipsing through my beautifully administered state, slaughtering, pillaging and generally being ill-mannered. So, I stationed a diplomat near Tblisi to intercept them. After about 60 turns of fostering international harmony, building up my economy, and not fighting wars, my reputation was 'Very Reliable'; I was also filthy rich because I hadn't needed to build masses of troops. As soon as the Mongol Hordes arrived (east of Yerevan), I improved relations with them through the distribution of liberal donatives, and then a couple of turns later hit them with 8,000 florins and a request for alliance. They accepted and happily toddled off to sack Asia Minor, leaving the sacred soil of Russia unviolated.

Now, by the time they start threatening to break through Constantinople and approach Iasi, my Dismounted Dvor and accompanying high-calibre troops will be ready in my western fortresses (no legions of pitiful clown militia waving tiny spears for me). Also, the Mongols' war with the Byzantines (once they've polished off the Turks) will provide me with a legitimate excuse to break the alliance with them, and fight them in conjunction with the Byzantines (and possibly the Poles/Hungarians) in the West, while opening up a second front using troops at Sarkel, and moving down through Tblisi and Yerevan. Hopefully, by the time the Timurids invade I'll have thought of a way of stopping their ghastly Arakanese Zebra Gunners, or whatever other ahistorical tosh their armies are composed of this week...

oz_wwjd
11-15-2009, 03:20
I may be strange but I don't use dis dvor much if all all, I like relying on my cossack musketters once I get them to win battles,and for that I need decent pikes. so I usually hire some Landsknecht pikemen,as they are avaliable quite near my territory. Add some artillery to that,and against the poles/hungarians and there calv-heavy armies-I usually stand a good chance of winning battles,provided I choose my battlefield wisely and make sure they can't outflank me,or get behind my pikes,as by the time they get to my forces,there morale has been reduced by mass musketfire and artillery,to the point that they mostly rout as soon as they hit my pike-line.

Aggressor
08-25-2010, 09:23
100% agree with earlier comments about how the Mongol invasion is a joke. EIGHT full stacks attacked me and moved through Russia taking every city along the way. To make things worse I only had 3 full stack armies to defend them and one of those turned rebel! typical.

Its very difficult as the Russians to gain territory outside of modern day Russia, to upgrade your towns and castles AND build up enough armies to defend against the Mongols because of how tight the money situation is in Russia. I think you either have to consolidate early on and just wait for the Mongols to invade and wipe them out and then gain territory (by this time you'd have to be very fast to grab 45 regions though) as fighting the Poles for example and the Mongols on both sides of you will just turn into a disaster.

I started my campaign again and found the best thing to do is just to board everyone onto a ship at the start of the campaign and either take over the British Isles or Denmark, the latter was my initial target. I've now wiped out the Danes, have all of Scandinavia and Hamburg. The poles then attacked me at Novgorod which I found very odd considering i'd moved closer to their main cities at Arhus and were there for the taking. So I took Magdeburg, Stettin, Breslau, Thorn and Krakow whilst they themselves marched into Russia and took the rebel states there. I offered them a ceasefire and an alliance to which they accepted. Now I have a buffer between myself and the Mongols. Good times.

Since then the HRE have waged war (they were in alliance with Poland funnily enough but the Poles decided to break the alliance with the HRE) so my intended targets are now to push my empire into Germany and down towards Italy. I also sent a ship to take Inverness at the top of the British Isles as English cities have huge potential to be money makers but thats a task for later on.

In terms of military power the Russians late game are incredible. Particularily the Dismounted Dvor, Berdiche Axemen and Tsars Guard. The Dvor Cavalry also deserve a mention. Early on it can be a real struggle at times, I found the best strategy was the create plenty of woodsmen (cheap), horse archers, and Boyar Sons whilst making the numbers up with mercenaries.

I'd ask anyone to take the above advice into consideration when playing as the Russians as I was absolutely gutted when the Mongols arrived, it can be a total game killer as the Rus!

where's yur troosers
11-08-2011, 11:00
I am playing a Russian campaign on H/M. Currently on turn 90.

I considered the advice above and expanded to Riga, Helsinki, Moscow and Vilnieus (you will have to forgive my spelling) in what appears to be the standard opening.

I was going to have a crack at Poland as they seem to have better units at least at the start, but they offered me their princess and very favourable terms for an alliance so I said yes and tried something a bit different.

For one of the missions I received some ships which I used to blockade the land bridge between Denmark and Sweeden. That stopped the Danes going north so I snapped up Sweeden and Norway. I was also allied to the Danes and was faced with a tough decision when they declared war on my Polish allies. I opted to stick with the Poles - they were a greated potential threat, but I was able to swipe Arthus, Hamburg and Stettin from Denmark which vastly improved my economy. The Ploes hold only Thorn on the Baltic.

At the same time I was expanding south and east. I took Isai and as expected that brought the Hungarians knocking. They were already at war with my Byzantine allies and between us we brought them to their knees. I took Bran, Sophia and Bucharest.

I have used horse archer armies to roam the stepps slowly taking all the rebel settlements up to to and including Sarkel. Those remain largely undevelped. I do not find that they generate much money and are a pain to police - even cavalry take ages travelling dirt roads to dispose of rebel armies.

The last Danish town was Antwerp which I took, sacked, sold every building and then traded with the Turks for Tablisi - it seemed like a good idea at the time. I did not think I could hold it against all the hovering Catholic armies (it was too far from Hamburg to reinforce easily) and I was planning on moving into Turkey in any event.

So there you have it. In one sence everything is hunky dory. I have a nice empire, no real threats as Poland have remained allies and have their forces focssed on a protracted struggle with the HRE, the economy is OK (ish), and the Mongols have gone to Antioch. Yet I am disatisfied.

My castles (even the ones I have taken from the AI) are growing ridiculously slowly so I am nowhere near getting Dvor cavarly or cossacks. The other Russian units are no that much fun - much prefer Polish Nobles and Strelkzy (again apologies for spelling). And in spite of not recruiting an assassin let alone using one and staying loyal to my allies whenever possible my reputation is poor.