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I most certainly can honestly tell you that Chronicler thinks it's a good idea for Muscovy to attack the HRE before forming Russia. :) That said, we agree on the HRE. I did play "form HRE as Russia just to see if I can" once, but that was a challenge for fun rather than a strategy.

All I have ever claimed is that the best strategy is whatever the situation requires.

But yes, controlling HRE as any nation is a good thing. Because you get loads of manpower.
 
What is the appeal of playing in Russia early in the game?

I ask because I've never done it, and I actually don't know. But AFAIK provinces are average to poor, with little supply, armies take ages to travel, you start with the eastern tech tree, and you have the annoying GH as a neighbour...

So besides challenge, what is the appeal?
 
Knowing that you need to have ship on the shore, to load troops on it in EU3 is also, good thing. But da fuq have this with basic russian strategy, and da fuq have this to the thread, who ask who is better, muscowy or novgorod?
 
What is the appeal of playing in Russia early in the game?

I ask because I've never done it, and I actually don't know. But AFAIK provinces are average to poor, with little supply, armies take ages to travel, you start with the eastern tech tree, and you have the annoying GH as a neighbour...

So besides challenge, what is the appeal?

Well, russia got very good potential, and i seen russia who defeated austria in MP.

Plus russian provinces are not poor, most are quite decent.
Comparing it with sweden, or livonia it is heaven. Plus it give you more time to make russia superpower.
Plus some provinces in russia are just RICH, like muscowy, novgorod, kiev, and most are decent - or have a good base tax, or have furs as resource. None of provinces with russian culture start with wool, some start with iron, and i think there is at least one with cooper(not sure thou), plus when you conquer the golden horde, it got many good provinces. AND russian provinces got mostly very big manpower(aspecialy novgorod, muscowy, kiev, which belong to the best provinces in game).
In addition to all this, Russia got many good national decisions, missions, and is in very good position, to make asian conquest, and colonizing siberia brings it richness, and increase its trade. It can easily become the most powerfull nation in both SP and MP(i heard elcyion playing russia was fighting like whole world, and managed to kill few players before he was contained and defeated), and got very low stab cost, from its religion.
 
Well, russia got very good potential, and i seen russia who defeated austria in MP.

Plus russian provinces are not poor, most are quite decent.
Comparing it with sweden, or livonia it is heaven. Plus it give you more time to make russia superpower.
Plus some provinces in russia are just RICH, like muscowy, novgorod, kiev, and most are decent - or have a good base tax, or have furs as resource. None of provinces with russian culture start with wool, some start with iron, and i think there is at least one with cooper(not sure thou), plus when you conquer the golden horde, it got many good provinces. AND russian provinces got mostly very big manpower(aspecialy novgorod, muscowy, kiev, which belong to the best provinces in game).
In addition to all this, Russia got many good national decisions, missions, and is in very good position, to make asian conquest, and colonizing siberia brings it richness, and increase its trade. It can easily become the most powerfull nation in both SP and MP(i heard elcyion playing russia was fighting like whole world, and managed to kill few players before he was contained and defeated), and got very low stab cost, from its religion.

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:
 
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).
 
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).

If I read that right Muscowy should be easier as it allows me to pretty much blitz everyone around me.

But forming Russia in 3 years is insane! I quite doubt I can beat that, I'm not THAT good. :unsure:
 
Dont even think about rushing yourself. Forming Russia in 3 years was done by basically crippling the nation (as much as you can in 3 years anyway) best set yourself the goal of forming russia in 1470, that way you dont need to depend on missions at all.
 
and as golden horde in 1420 is likely to be at TSC
You cannot even begin to hope to predict this in the least.

Actualy not, you can easily support like 60k stack
Sure, if you like horrendous amounts of inflation from all the minting you have to do, on top of tying up advisors (or God forbid your one NI) on force limits mods. 1415 Russia isn't going to have the monstrous manpower and force limits numbers yet, IIRC - and even if it does, again, sup mass inflation.

Just wait.
 
Dont even think about rushing yourself. Forming Russia in 3 years was done by basically crippling the nation (as much as you can in 3 years anyway) best set yourself the goal of forming russia in 1470, that way you dont need to depend on missions at all.

Actualy forming russia in 3 years cost at maximum 3 inflation, and few loans possibly, after which you can just make yourself bankrupt to reduce inflation by half, then annex novgorod, then form russia, and start releasing nation to minimize infamy, then just wait until bankrupcy modifire expire and annex your vassals one by one, which is both after 5 years

Or you may repay loans, and release enough vassals to be under infamy limit, and reduce your army to be at the forcelimit, reconquest your cores, and wait for stability to regain. It is not realy crippling, as it give you 2 centralization steps, and cores over whole your territory.

Whatever this need incredible skill and great plan, so is propably not best if you are still noob at the game. But forming russia in 15 years is pretty possible and easy enough to try it.

You cannot even begin to hope to predict this in the least.


Sure, if you like horrendous amounts of inflation from all the minting you have to do, on top of tying up advisors (or God forbid your one NI) on force limits mods. 1415 Russia isn't going to have the monstrous manpower and force limits numbers yet, IIRC - and even if it does, again, sup mass inflation.

Just wait.

You can make russia at 1415 without sup mass inflation very easily. If you conquer all russia cores, you can make easily 60k troops. Lol if you want to conquer GH easily you just need to conquer your cores. With all non hore cores, russia can make 60k without much of inflation, easily.
 
here goes on a couple of screens, of the test game I did prior to the mp game stnikolauswagne mentioned in the op, it was the first time I played Moscowy on DW, so I was probably very slow and did lots of silly stuff, but it goes a long way to prove that its very easy to build a big army very early (I think I had the current amount around 1411 or something like that), I did war mint a bit in the early stages, and had not yet managed to get a MoM, but 2,3% is hardly a disaster in this contex

moscowtestgame1.png

moscowtestgame2.png
 
here goes on a couple of screens, of the test game I did prior to the mp game stnikolauswagne mentioned in the op, it was the first time I played Moscowy on DW, so I was probably very slow and did lots of silly stuff, but it goes a long way to prove that its very easy to build a big army very early (I think I had the current amount around 1411 or something like that), I did war mint a bit in the early stages, and had not yet managed to get a MoM, but 2,3% is hardly a disaster in this contex

moscowtestgame1.png

moscowtestgame2.png
That's 30k. Iwanow said you would need twice that to face down the Golden Horde. You're not gonna manage that, which is the whole point. Double your troops to 60k and you're suddenly paying 7.8 on maintenance instead of just 2.6, because of the penalty from force limits. You'd need to mint 2.5 ducats just to stay revenue-neutral for the year. That would accrue .17 inflation a year.

Compared to the much simpler task of waiting until 1460-1470 to form Russia, giving you time to conquer more territory, increase your revenues and force limits, and maybe even begin expanding trade some, it's a no-brainer.
 
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I've tried this a few times and am finding it hard. I've got ryazan annexed. Tver is in novgorods sphere. Bryansk and Slomensk are firmly in lithuanian hands. Novgorod and lithuania are allied.

I currently have the vassalize tver mission but I doubt I'll get a chance to use it before the casus beli expires. The only country willing to ally with me are the teutons. Denmark and poland have both managed to carve pieces off of them so their power is somewhat broken.

I can't afford to deal with novgorod and lithuania at the same time and the gh seems willing to let lithuania off with a defeat concession every 5 years instead of chopping pieces off of them.

So I have no possible allies (despite having positive relations with pretty much every major power I just get impossibles) and enemies that I can't deal with at the same time on 2 fronts. Think I'm just stuck and I'm not sure what I could have done differently.
 
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That's 30k. Iwanow said you would need twice that to face down the Golden Horde. You're not gonna manage that, which is the whole point. Double your troops to 60k and you're suddenly paying 7.8 on maintenance instead of just 2.6, because of the penalty from force limits. You'd need to mint 2.5 ducats just to stay revenue-neutral for the year. That would accrue .17 inflation a year.

Compared to the much simpler task of waiting until 1460-1470 to form Russia, giving you time to conquer more territory, increase your revenues and force limits, and maybe even begin expanding trade some, it's a no-brainer.
The Golden Horde is quite doable with 30k.
 
The Golden Horde is quite doable with 30k.
Perhaps for you. lol. I'd have some trouble with it; I handled them with 25k as Byzantium before, but only long enough to create a vassal buffer zone, not to colonize the whole thing.

But that's beside the point; Iwanow explicitly proposed 60k troops for this and said it was feasible to fund this in the 1410s as Russia. Further, I recall when I posted about aforesaid Byzantium situation that he saw the screencap and said "Only 25k?" leading me to believe that he's not making the same argument that you are. My opposition is to his ludicrous suggestion that it is anywhere remotely resembling a good idea to:

(1) Mint to support 60k troops so you can form Russia a few decades ahead of schedule;
(2) *Actually proposing bankruptcy as a good idea for doing so* instead of just forming in the mid-1400s like a reasonable human being who isn't at your or PrawnStar's level.

It's less "What he's proposing is impossibly fast!" and more "Trying to do this as fast as he is with the means he's using is stupid." If that makes sense.