Mmm, I should try it then.
So back on topic, which one is better?
Novgorod or Muscowy now that I want to start a Russian game. :blush:
Muscowy, because the record for forming russia with muscowy is 1402. But you can try to beat it.
Plus its mission, contains - vassalize novgorod, and annex novgorod, which allow you to vassalize novgorod in one war(if you got more provinces than them, this mission will start)
But you need to just first, get core on smolensk, because after you get to vassalizing novgorod, you will instantly annex novgorod
(btw, if you got -2 stab, dow it breaking truce - it will give you +2 stability so you will be on +, and if you are just a step before forming russia - do not care about rebels, most of them will dissapear after you form russia - cept nationalists, religious zealots, and patriots - because rebels are mostly assigned to a tag, which is muscowy, and when tag change rebels dissapear - bcs they say : "Oh, we have a new country, so we no longer can rebel agains muscowy, so we need to end with this anti muscovite revolt' XD)
This will ofc, mean fighting lithuania unless you are lucky, and smolensk broke free from it, anyway, after you end mission to annex russian minor, it is very likely that you will get one of two missions : conquer bryansk or conquer smolensk. This is because there are like 3 types of missions, that bring you core on neighbouring province, so you can easily get one of them on lithuania(or you can be lucky, and get event that give you core on it).
Remember, that it is not so easy as it may appear, and you need to do few tests before you get how you should do it.
Novgorod in this matter, is type of free trading country, that start with lol goverment - i think good advice for novgorod it to destroy its own cot and becoming admin republic, as you can allways make a new cot in better place - which is moscow(because it got higher manpower) or Neva/St.Petersburg(because it is shore province, and can give you additional 0,1 colonist). Being trade league while being free trade, is not realy a good thing as if you trade in your own COT, you need to be free trade in order too keep the COT in power. After you destroy your COT, you can join some other trade league, and gain trade laws(propably on furs) which will give you additional income.
Anyway destroying COT in novgorod as moscow, to move it into moscow is not a bad idea too(because it is better place for COT as it got more manpower), but is costly and less important than when you are novgorod(as admin republic is one of the best goverment types you can get early game - actualy it is ahead of time, because you need like gov tech 18 or 19 if i recall correctly, to change it normaly)
Anyway if you got formed russia and you are republic, you can become a trade league, which makes it impossible to cot's being spawned in your country(so, you can make one huge cot over whole earth XDXDXDXDXDXDXD-- XD) - but i just say is as a tittle-tattle.
But anyway, if you play as muscowy you got more time to deal with the horde, because you are stronger in military terms than novgorod, and your troops are cheap so you can easily build them over limit in order to defeat big sand blob(and when you colonize its provinces, you will anyway increase your forcelimit, which may save you increasing your army numbers later).
If you are kind of more economical attitude, rather than warmonger, novgorod, may be better for you, but, it is in worse position than muscowy, as golden horde is very propable to annex the russian minors, before you conquer them, which makes whole thing much more complicated, and possibly forces you to wait much longer, in order to form russia, possibly even make you form russia after 1500, which is like fail, because this mean you are weak, and have very little time to take your way into asia. But on the other hand, it may make you stronger in the economical side, so, if you play well, you may be better than when playing muscowy(but it does not mean you WILL be).