Why be tactical in battles?

[Czar Alexsandr]

Well the AI's certainly no Hanibal of Carthage.. the game can be fun and there are times where you'd be a fruit bat not to use tactics. Or maybe it was just my beginners poor start? Ah well. Here's how the first Russia campaign went.

Anyways.. Hungry and Poland were tough.. bitter.. nasty confrontations that left me in pretty bad shape. Consider when you are outnumbered by troops that are more developed than yours and when the majority are good troops for their time. Poland had chain mail upgrades and tons of Polish Nobles and Streltzky while Hungry had Hungarian Nobles, Magyamar Cav, and a mass of not kidding.. fuedal foot knights. And to make it worse.. both were fighting me. Iasi was the Hunish front, Kiev the Polish front. I was outnumbered and against better quality stuff most of the time.

Well by proper tactics and intuition I won most of the battles, albeit by a slim margin, and lost many soldiers and gained many veterans. I had to make Boyar son's beat Polish Nobles and Kazacks beat Hungarian Nobles. The rest of my armies were Spear and Peaseant or Milita bows to. Nothing special. I had a few random unit of Druzhina in very high risk areas and with the better generals but not much. During battle I had to trust my tactic would work and watch not being able to see if it was working or not. It was awful.. but it was fun! Lol. Anyways.. my point is.. try a different location.. this wasn't my first campiagn so.. I wasn't that new.. And maybe you're rushing the game? I mean sure you can and whatnot but the AI can only be expected to do so much. At least in the beggining there's some good fights. Personnaly.. I'm gonna take this game slow and see what the AI can do.

[dismal]

Russia has a general lack of heavy infantry and heavy cav, plus faces a fair amount of missile cav. They are not going to be able to use the bum rush tactic at all.

Your armies have clear weaknesses, and must avoid letting them be the prevalent factor in battles.

I have been playing the Russians, and they have been more fun than the western european heavy inf/cav armies that can cut through anything the AI can put up like a buzzsaw.

[Carl]

You'll love the scots then dissmal.

[dismal]

You'll love the scots then dissmal.

I played the scots and they do get some decent heavy infantry and heavy cav straight from castles (feudal knights, DFKs, etc.) En masse, these are more than good enough for anything the AI has to offer. I just sent stacks of heavy infantry/cav outward until the game was over.

I wouldn't say I have found Russia hard, per se, but harder than the Western European factions. It's so big (and rather poor) that you sometimes have to make do with what's available. And when your army is a bunch of kazaks/boyar sons/assorted junk you need to use them more carefully. Plus the variety among the enemies is higher.

[Steph]

Perhaps the fix is to make Heavy Cav (and dismounted knights) significantly more expensive than they are now to maintain. The problem is not so much that they are powerful, but that I can afford to have too many of them. And maybe give the AI a cost break on higher difficulty levels.

I support this idea!

Stéphane