• We have updated our Community Code of Conduct. Please read through the new rules for the forum that are an integral part of Paradox Interactive’s User Agreement.

stnikolauswagne

Lt. General
36 Badges
Mar 16, 2011
1.513
0
  • Europa Universalis III
  • Pillars of Eternity
  • Rome: Vae Victis
  • Victoria 2: Heart of Darkness
  • Victoria 2: A House Divided
  • Sengoku
  • Semper Fi
  • Rome Gold
  • Victoria: Revolutions
  • Europa Universalis IV: Res Publica
  • March of the Eagles
  • Magicka
  • Lead and Gold
  • Heir to the Throne
  • Crusader Kings II
  • Europa Universalis III Complete
  • Divine Wind
  • Europa Universalis IV
  • Europa Universalis IV: Art of War
  • Europa Universalis IV: Conquest of Paradise
  • Europa Universalis IV: Wealth of Nations
  • Europa Universalis IV: Call to arms event
  • For the Motherland
  • Hearts of Iron III
  • Victoria 2
  • Europa Universalis III Complete
  • 500k Club
  • Crusader Kings II: Holy Knight (pre-order)
  • Europa Universalis IV: El Dorado
  • Pride of Nations
  • Mount & Blade: Warband
  • Europa Universalis III Complete
  • Europa Universalis IV: Common Sense
  • Europa Universalis IV: Cossacks
  • Europa Universalis IV: Mare Nostrum
  • Crusader Kings III
So, after a MP game last night in which i was basically forced to play Novgorod over muscovy (20th April beta with "bugged" conquer Finland mission), it got me thinking: Which of those two nations is actually better for forming Russia? If you are willing to play really, really gamey you can be a administrative Republic (with a decent Free Trading slider) Russia with sliders almost ready for westernization by 1450 (Forming Russia around 1430 or so).
In contrast as muscovy you may be able to form Russia reliably around 1420, but after that you have a "bad" form of government, "bad" sliders and little advantage. What do I miss? (besiders Missionaries, but thats a general problem of westernizing countries)

Points of note: The muscovite missions that give +bt and +mp CAN be done as novgorod if you know how.
Beating Muscovy is not that hard, thanks to the admin Republic and a decent supply of good generals combined with the stupid AI
Getting the cores required for Russia mainly depends on knowing how to get the right missions and a little luck.
 
Novgorod start as a merchant republic as far as I know, how could you switch to an administrative republic so early ?

Anyway its depends a lot about your missions, as Muskowy I got every single mission to form Russia early in game. Sadly Castilla decided to annexe a part of Novgorod and ally with Lithuania. I'll let you guess how that ended
 
The way to become an admin republic is this: Destory your cot on day 1. Since you cant be a merchant republic you will get an event that transforms you into an admin republic in the first week or so (not to a noble republic as might be logical). After that join venices trade league and happily set up trade in venice, lübeck and amsterdam.
 
I think it's way easier to beat Novgorod with Muscowy than the other way round....
 
If you play the 5.2 beta or multiplayer, than Novgorod is a FAR more powerful position. Musowy is basically only good if you manipulate the AI and nothing does wrong as you play. In a head on war at game start, Muscowy gets beaten by Novgorod badly.
 
Care to explain this part?
The missions are available to muscovy AND russia. Now, normally you dont notice that since you need to annex those nations even when forming novgorod from russia. But if you really care about that basetax and manpower you can release those nations as a opm vassal, cancel vassalization and then get those missions. As novgorod you can also afford to just leave those nations alive as opms (as you can see in our thursday game where most russian minors are still alive in one way or the other (tver will follow).
 
The missions are available to muscovy AND russia. Now, normally you dont notice that since you need to annex those nations even when forming novgorod from russia. But if you really care about that basetax and manpower you can release those nations as a opm vassal, cancel vassalization and then get those missions. As novgorod you can also afford to just leave those nations alive as opms (as you can see in our thursday game where most russian minors are still alive in one way or the other (tver will follow).

Makes sense, thx.
 
If you play the 5.2 beta or multiplayer, than Novgorod is a FAR more powerful position.
For some reason, playing NOV makes me want to break things. It's probably something to do with the fact that they face near-Burgundian cavalry recruitment costs, but don't have Burgundy's census taxes.
 
I formed Russia with Muscowy in 1470. I could've formed it at least 10 years earlier, but due to a bug I will explain I had to lose over 10 years...
Muscowy is better than Novgorod for forming Russia IMO because it has cool missions. A lot of them tend to give you cores on provinces required for Russia. Also, I used a few personal unions to expand very quickly. I was in a Personal Union with Ukraine, Crimea and Mazovia (which had annexed almost the whole initial Lithuania) and I inherited them at the same time.
The reason why I lost 10 years is that I got the mission to Vassalize Novgorod, which gave me cores on Novgorod, Archangelsk and the province between them (can't remember its name). Anyways, it was too big to vassalize at once, so I had to conquer some of it first. The second time, It was like 101% warscore for vassalization, so I annexed more. The last time, my cassus belli was gone. It was due a game save bug that seems to happen commonly. The game screwed up the cassus belli when I saved, so I had to cancel the mission and do more missions until I got the one to vassalize Novgorod again...

After I formed Russia I annexed most of the Golden Horde (it was so long that it annexed Croatia, so Bohemia and Hungary helped me get rid of the European horde, and I got it from Cherson all the way to Syberia. Then I got the northern part of Nogai and the whole Kazakh... then I got bored and started another game. I still have the save though. I have a lot of colonization to do in Syberia and some Asians to crush!

Anyways, back to your question: I think Muscowy is better. Also, Novgorod tends to have trade related problems, as they are a Merchant Republic, and should keep people in their trade league.
 
There is no possible way to reliably form Russia in 1430 as a republic Novgorod. It requires getting amazingly lucky with border dispute events. Considering the fact that you don't even border several of the cores needed at the start I really doubt it will ever happen. I don't doubt that you could conquer the territories that quickly depending on how silly the a.i. is, but you just flat won't have the cores.

While disbanding the CoT is a valid strat, it also means you will run into some very tight financial situations early on (before you can get some trade established) with the tribute payments and colony maintenance.
 
There is no possible way to reliably form Russia in 1430 as a republic Novgorod. It requires getting amazingly lucky with border dispute events. Considering the fact that you don't even border several of the cores needed at the start I really doubt it will ever happen. I don't doubt that you could conquer the territories that quickly depending on how silly the a.i. is, but you just flat won't have the cores.

While disbanding the CoT is a valid strat, it also means you will run into some very tight financial situations early on (before you can get some trade established) with the tribute payments and colony maintenance.
I guess it doesn't hurt that much to just annex the required provinces with full BB, since a lot of the surrounding lands are future cores and thus you are not obliged to use them for BB burn, through Cleansing of Heresy CB.
 
Both Novgorod and Muscowy are orthodox ...
and it doesn't hurt to wait a little sometimes , in 1500 you can be so powerful the game is a cakewalk after
 
There is no possible way to reliably form Russia in 1430 as a republic Novgorod. It requires getting amazingly lucky with border dispute events. Considering the fact that you don't even border several of the cores needed at the start I really doubt it will ever happen. I don't doubt that you could conquer the territories that quickly depending on how silly the a.i. is, but you just flat won't have the cores.
But it does work. As I said you need to be quite gamey about it. The key to it is imo missions. Heres how I got the cores in the aforementioned game: Mission to attack a rival gave me a core on nizhy novgorod (alternative was getting the core on yaroslavl since muscovy conquered that province). That meant that no matter which core I got I could take two provinces in the war (the core i have+ the province I didnt get a core on).

Due to the way of how forming russia works (you get a choice between provinces) I would then either have waited 50 years, or (more likely) got the core through missions. After taking yaroslavl I bordered moscow, so I was elligible for missions on that province. my next missions was conquering tver ( the province)[Btw I guaranteed Tver the country and made sure Muscovy wont annex them]. I then annexed them and got the core. Would I have gotten a mission to either vassalize them or conquer their other province I would in both cases have vassalized them and made them into an opm.

That way the only mission i could get on them was "diploannex them" for a free core. All of this should be "easily" reproduceable since there are 3 missions and 2 events that give you the needed cores. The tricky part is now getting the core on moscow. What I did was the (allegedly very gambly) way of letting the GH conquer moscow. Now I was eligible for the "save our russian brethren"-mission for moscow and moscow only. I got quite lucky and got it on the first try. Now I simply blitz-krieged the GH for moscow. Now all I will need is a mission on Smolensk and I will have formed russia.

This all is a little depending on luck, but as long as you plan carefully you can always have a backup plan. Let me explain: There are exactly two provinces (novgorod and moscow) which you need for sure to form russia. All the other requirements give you a choice. So you can always take one set of those three provinces and then hope for missions/events on the other three. That way you only need to hope for a core on moscow.

Tl:dr: Yes, luck is involved, but careful playing can remove that.
While disbanding the CoT is a valid strat, it also means you will run into some very tight financial situations early on (before you can get some trade established) with the tribute payments and colony maintenance.
Luckily tribute payments are only 1 gold per month. The colony maintenance can be put at 0 imo, since the province in question is of little value early on. As for the rest: If you spend your first slider move on Free trade (controversial move though) you will be a admin republic with 40% Trade efficiency and +3 Free trade. That means you should be able to get 5 merchants into venice(through trade league), lubeck and antwerpen. With that kind of income you can afford a lot more than you could as muscowy.
 
Just a quick note on Muscovy: Empire is not a "bad" form of government. It's not Administrative Republic, but it's otherwise a very good form of government that's quite good for absorbing the remnants of the Golden Horde. (And Russia becomes an Empire real fast.) The only negative is that you need the right ruler to westernize, but Russia doesn't have to Westernize right away if they're focusing on the East. They can afford to wait for the right ruler while they colonize the hordes.

Conversely, Novgorod doesn't absolutely need to become Russia immediately. If you have to wait for the last province to core, it's not a crisis.
 
There is no possible way to reliably form Russia in 1430 as a republic Novgorod. It requires getting amazingly lucky with border dispute events. Considering the fact that you don't even border several of the cores needed at the start I really doubt it will ever happen. I don't doubt that you could conquer the territories that quickly depending on how silly the a.i. is, but you just flat won't have the cores.

While disbanding the CoT is a valid strat, it also means you will run into some very tight financial situations early on (before you can get some trade established) with the tribute payments and colony maintenance.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PCtPlgpkmfk
 
Muscowy has the best position to war the catholic world since it has no oceans, usually impossible for defender of the faith etc to get there.

Good position to grab things you may want. It has also the best missions imo.
 
You're forgetting about the Empire, Chronicler; Blobhemia or Austria will still kick your ass.

Warring against the Catholic world is not the best plan for Russia's early expansion, and by the time you are ready to turn west, Russia will have oceans.

Finally, even if you don't have oceans, your target probably does. Castille, France or what have you can come through their territory into Russia. (Which you want. You want them to march into scorched Russian earth in the wintertime.)