Russia

[glasket]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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

[IrishArmenian]

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]

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?

[BlackKnight1234]

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

[where's yur troosers]

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.