Originally Posted by
lalartu
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
Russia
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) 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.
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