Russian Units

Yeah, Russian spear militia have no anti-cavalry bonus, but none of the spear militia do! The Russian's spearmen unit has it as pictured above. Also, for the mounted Druzhina, it says on the unit card that it has no anti-armor bonus, but that's because the unit card only lists stats from the unit's primary weapon, which for mounted Druzhina, is a spear. Once the mounted Druzhina switch to their axes, you get the anti-armor bonus. Boyars also have the anti-armor bonus, but because the axe is their secondary, it does not show it on the UC.
I agree with you though about the dismounted versions though. Dismounted Druzhina and Dismounted Boyar's sons are wholly redundant.

Also, I've fought Polish Nobles with Druzhina on a custom battle, and found that it all depends on the charge, and the cavalry bug. I tested on the perfectly flat, clear, field map, on normal difficulty. 3/10 times, the Druzhina lost the fight, but it depended on how orderly their charge was when it impacted, how you ordered the charge, and on the cavalry no-fight bug. Oftentimes, the Druzhina would just ride against the Poles, never using their axes, this was the case on 2/3 of the losses. Another big difference is how you order the charge. When I simply double-clicked on the Poles, the Druzhina lost. However, when I alt-double-clicked on the Poles, the Druzhina won every time, sometimes by quiet a large margin (18-22 men). This is because when you just double-click, it take longer for the Druzhina to switch from their spears to their axes. Alt-double-clicking solves this problem. On the battle where the Druzhina won by the greatest margin (22 men), their charge was perfectly orderly, I used alt-double-click, and the cavalry no-fight bug didn't occur.

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Originally Posted by Zanderpants

Yeah, Russian spear militia have no anti-cavalry bonus, but none of the spear militia do! The Russian's spearmen unit has it as pictured above. Also, for the mounted Druzhina, it says on the unit card that it has no anti-armor bonus, but that's because the unit card only lists stats from the unit's primary weapon, which for mounted Druzhina, is a spear. Once the mounted Druzhina switch to their axes, you get the anti-armor bonus. Boyars also have the anti-armor bonus, but because the axe is their secondary, it does not show it on the UC.
I agree with you though about the dismounted versions though. Dismounted Druzhina and Dismounted Boyar's sons are wholly redundant.

Also, I've fought Polish Nobles with Druzhina on a custom battle, and found that it all depends on the charge, and the cavalry bug. I tested on the perfectly flat, clear, field map, on normal difficulty. 3/10 times, the Druzhina lost the fight, but it depended on how orderly their charge was when it impacted, how you ordered the charge, and on the cavalry no-fight bug. Oftentimes, the Druzhina would just ride against the Poles, never using their axes, this was the case on 2/3 of the losses. Another big difference is how you order the charge. When I simply double-clicked on the Poles, the Druzhina lost. However, when I alt-double-clicked on the Poles, the Druzhina won every time, sometimes by quiet a large margin (18-22 men). This is because when you just double-click, it take longer for the Druzhina to switch from their spears to their axes. Alt-double-clicking solves this problem. On the battle where the Druzhina won by the greatest margin (22 men), their charge was perfectly orderly, I used alt-double-click, and the cavalry no-fight bug didn't occur.

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On click make a good/best charge!
The problem in own battle is that AI is buged, often the enemy break their charge and you win. And the problem with polish nobles is that the AI use them often only for throwing spears and not for charge. In campaign there are some other situations. may point with druzhina is that there no updates for them until the Zar-time, no late or middle druzhina or something from 1080 to dont know 1400 in the game the Druzhina use the same armour for example. In Real the armour development was in Kievan Rus too, dont know why CA not noticed that. There should be between Druzhina and Zar Garde(or something) a middle thing like in other nations or druzhina be upgrade a bit because the unit represent some hundret years of Druzhinas...


I have made a little MOd for Russian Faction, as player for Russians or Poland you now can realize some strategic problems they had, no more Poland easily into Asia, no more baltic provinces first for Russians, so Poland Lithuania can live.

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Originally Posted by Zanderpants

Yeah, Russian spear militia have no anti-cavalry bonus, but none of the spear militia do!

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Actually that's not true, and it's been bugging me to no end.

Almost every faction has two types of militia spearmen : "Town/Urban Militia" (sorry, I play the French version so I don't know the exact english term.)
and "Spear Militia".

Town Militia has small round shields, 5/5 stats and no trait whatsoever except "bonus in snow and trees" like most infantry.

Spear Militia is always 5/7, "bonus in snow and trees", but some of them have schiltron+anticav and some don't, almost randomly. The Russian one doesn't, but the exact same Hungarian Spear Militia with the exact same flavor text and the exact same model does. And they both cost the same too AFAIK. It's just weird like that.

@suvorov : I have to apologize for earlier, I hadn't noticed about the unmounted druzhina, in fact I didn't even know there was an unmounted version until far into my Russian campaign (haven't used infantry that much either to tell you the truth).

You are right in saying that Unmounted Druzhina don't have much point compared to Unmounted Boyar's sons. The Rus seem to have the same problem the Moors have with Berbers/Nubians. My best guess would be it's that way so that you can recruit more units of the same general kind, have double the standard cap sort of, but since you can only recruit 3 units per turn per castle at the most, it hardly ever happens that you run out of either...

Actually there is one big difference between foot Druz and foot boyars. Availability. They both come at citadel level, but foot Druz have max 4 and replinish in 2-3 turns, foot boyars have a max of 3 and replenish in 4-5 turns. The pool system works so that if you drain it the pool it takes a while to get another.

I managed to regain my homeland (a lot of turns passed, I know) after being kicked out by Mongols and Timurids. Now something really "weird" is happening, look at the screen...

http://116.imagebam.com/download/xux...7-28-05-06.png

... I had taken Mongols last settlement and they turned into horde, they headed towards Timurids domains and just fooling around Kiev for 5-6 turns. Timurids had all those armies around, definitely stronger than Mongols stacks (I had previously weakened their horde with some raids too) and yet they didn't even touch them. In the end Mongols decided to take Kiev, to be truth Timurids let Mongols take their city. 3-4 turns have passed and Timurids haven't move their armies to re-take their city. This is extremely unfair, isn't it? They keep bothering me sieging my cities and don't do a goddamn thing against Mongols? Is this some kind of conspiration against me? I even saw their diplomacy, they're enemies to Mongols, so why they act like this?

And one more thing...

http://116.imagebam.com/download/Y9G...7-28-14-70.png

... Portuguese are there since 5 turns by now. They could take Constantinople simply yawning with those full stacks... nothing to do. Why? The game is making fun of me?

Less then a single turn in the game and the only reason they survived was that the Golden Horde didn't care to rule the cities but instead left the old rulers there as long as the extremely high tribute was paid.

I had no problem winning as the Russians (in the short game) as long as I acted fast to beat the Mongols.

It was mentioned that CA cares little about historical accuracy - game balance is what they appear more concerned about. If it was historical,

Lithuania would be between Poland and the Russian principalities and more powerful then Poland who, until the Grand Prince of Lithuania married the eldest daughter of the no sons and deceased Polish king after the time frame of the game and became king of Poland and formed the polish/Lithuanian commonwealth, Poland could best be described as a minor country. Milan and Genoa were not a single entity. Spain would have been two provinces and there would not have been a Portugal until later in the game. The English rarely fought mounted as long bows would kill all the horses before a charge reached them. The French were the only group that used cross bows as a field army weapon as they just fired too slowly - they were a city/castle defense. Each Polish knight brought retainers with him - they didn't fight as separate units. Genghis Khan's empire never expanded past the eastern shore of the Caspian Sea and did no more game wise then sack Tbilisi and Baghdad. His grandson was the attacker and that was mainly in the steppes and many years after the Mongols appear in the game. The Timurids made war on the Ottoman Empire and the Mameluke caliphate for just a couple of years (and chased Bayazid out of Asia who only escaped due to the help he received from the Italian fleets. Timur the Lame was basically a Mongol (technically from a Turkized Mongol tribe) that ruled one of the three separate mongol empires (China/most of Tibet, Persia and central Asia, and the Golden Hord) - he became Khan of the Persian/central Asian part) and seemed to desire to combine the Mongol world into a single caliphate. After his short wars on the Egyptians and Turks of the game, he moved on China but died prior to being ready to attack so was vastly over stated in the game to make the game more interesting. It goes on and on - it basically isn't meant to be a historical game.