Completed Muscovy/Russia. Now have questions.

[Otay]

Just completed Muscovy/Russia which is the first game I have played all the way through. Now I have some questions, some of which may be unique to this nation while other questions are general in nature:

a) Force Limits - How do you increase? I fought a disastrous war against Poland late in the game who took a good portion of my western provinces. I went into the ledger to compare the armies and saw that Poland (or Commonwealth as it was known in my game) had a force limit of close to 800 while I had something around 500. How did this happen? My territory went from Minsk all the way to the Pacific. The Commonwealth's consisted of what would be Poland and much of Central Europe. I had plenty of cash to buy troops but didn't want to go over my force limit.

b) To State or not to State - Is it a good idea to incorporate a territory as a state? I tended to do this with the exception of those territories where I had a trade company established.

c) Units suffering casualties - How does this work and how do you fix it? I had plenty of soldiers in my manpower but constantly seemed to have this alert. I understand how sailors work, just keep you ships in port and you will not lose sailors but what about the army?

d) Sudeb Nik, Oprichnina, Streltsy (Russia specific) - Is it a good idea to keep up them? I realize that raising streltsy gives you free regiments but it always blows through your force limits.

e) Income balance - Is there a recommended division for income, i.e. 50% trade, 30% production, 15% taxes, 5% misc.?

f) Prestige - How can you increase and/or maintain a positive number? Towards the end of my game, my prestige simply tanked. Went down into the negative numbers with no hope of increasing it. The biggest problem was counter revolution of -5.

That is about it for now. I did enjoy this and will probably play again soon. Thanks for the help and advice.

 

[Nostalgium]

Right, I'll go by these one by one:

A) You can increase force limits in a number of ways. One is through simply getting more land. Each province provides... Eesh, from memory I think it's 1 Force Limit per 10 Development (not simply military development, just total), so simply through expanding, you will grow your force limit. This base is further expanded by national ideas (such as Quantity giving a boost to Force Limit), all of which stack. The Regimental Camp building also gives a flat +1/2 to Force Limit depending on rank, making it effectively contribute as much as a single 10/20 development province before modifiers. The AI generally likes to build a lot of those buildings.

B) Generally speaking, you want to state as much land as you can. This is a rule with a lot of exceptions, but if you're pretty new, stick with the general rule for the time being. Non-stated land cannot go below 90% Autonomy by default, which essentially means you're only seeing 10% of the yields from that state. This means all base stats - tax, production, manpower and yes, force limit contribution, are being reduced by 90%. If you stated everything except your trade companies, you pretty much did the right thing. As I said, there are a few exceptions and adjustments, but generally speaking, state what you have the governing capacity to.

C) I'm assuming you mean attrition here - the little skull icon next to the unit when it's standing in a province. Man oh man, manpower management and attrition is what Russia will truly teach you once you've got a couple of games under your belt. So, to boil it down, every unit has a base weight, and every province has a base capacity. You can see this when you have an army selected and hover your cursor over the province. If the unit weight exceeds the province supply, it will take attrition. This is a percentage of the total army size, is capped at 5%, and will automatically drain your manpower pool each month to replenish. If your manpower pool can absorb the loss, it's no big deal (unless you're low on manpower and trying to recover), but if you poorly place several armies, this can be an enormous drain on your manpower per month.

You can deal with this in one of two ways: The easiest is to split your armies into smaller stacks while at peace to park them in several provinces, and only merge them together when you're preparing for war. This means you're not eating more attrition than you have to. The second, more cumbersome method is to ensure your armies are parked in provinces that can supply them. This generally means finding high-development, good terrain (farms, grassland) provinces that don't suffer from harsh winters, which are few and far between in Russia.

Like Force Limits, many things modify how much attrition you take in each province. Your national ideas, whether it's winter, what kind of climate it is, etc etc., but like with States, you generally don't need to care about this while still learning the game. Simply look at the tooltips and see if the province can support your army, and that alone will take you far. Especially if you go through the slightly annoying micro of splitting your stacks at peace.

D) When playing Russia, I tend to use the Strelsy exclusively for my infantry. However, don't keep what goes above the force limit unless you have the economic backbone to support it. They're free units, so deleting the excess ones isn't a big deal. For the other two Russian abilities, I tend to use Reform Sudebnik when I've just stated territories, and Oprichnina when I'm having rebel troubles. No big mystery there.

E) No, not really. You want as much income as you want from any source you can get it, and how it all balances out is between your accountant and God. However, with that said, Production and Trade are way better to focus on, as they yield much better returns than tax past the very early game.

F) Prestige can be gained from a number of sources. Over time, you can get it from national ideas (you might notice this has been a theme), having Power Projection, some Monuments (if you own the Leviathan DLC), a Merchant Estate privilege, and one Admin advisor. I also think there is an Orthodox Icon that gives some, but don't quote me on that. You can also get prestige in bulk from events, winning battles, and winning wars. As for the Counter Revolution, that can be "easily" countered by declaring war on the Revolutionary Target. How easy this actually is depends on the strength of said target, though. You will not be losing prestige while fighting or having a truce with the Rev. Target.

I hope that helps clear up some things, and feel free to ask followup questions if there's anything else you're wondering about or want me to elaborate on!

 

[DukeLeto42]

A few points to add to Nostalgium's:

a) Force Limits - How do you increase? I fought a disastrous war against Poland late in the game who took a good portion of my western provinces. I went into the ledger to compare the armies and saw that Poland (or Commonwealth as it was known in my game) had a force limit of close to 800 while I had something around 500. How did this happen? My territory went from Minsk all the way to the Pacific. The Commonwealth's consisted of what would be Poland and much of Central Europe. I had plenty of cash to buy troops but didn't want to go over my force limit.

Take a quick look at the force limit wiki page. Generally speaking, though, I suspect the PLC built a lot of the "+ force limit" buildings, probably had a relevant idea to boost it, and more importantly had more development. Most of the land Russia tends to take is rather low development, while the PLC sits close to the high-dev provinces of Europe. Generally speaking, you want to eat the portion of the PLC that is of your culture group ASAP.

b) To State or not to State - Is it a good idea to incorporate a territory as a state? I tended to do this with the exception of those territories where I had a trade company established.

Stating is a fantastic way to boost income... if you have the gov cap and spare admin points. In general, definitely state where you get the real benefits (such as in own group / accepted culture land).

c) Units suffering casualties - How does this work and how do you fix it? I had plenty of soldiers in my manpower but constantly seemed to have this alert. I understand how sailors work, just keep you ships in port and you will not lose sailors but what about the army?

If you're over the local supply limit or in non-occupied enemy territory, you will take attrition. Some amount of that is just a fact of life - remember, this is a period where more people died outside of battle than in it - but you can plan carefully and avoid having massive stacks in a province as much as possible. Of course, this also splits your troops up and makes them more vulnerable, so it's a tradeoff.

d) Sudeb Nik, Oprichnina, Streltsy (Russia specific) - Is it a good idea to keep up them? I realize that raising streltsy gives you free regiments but it always blows through your force limits.

Streltsy deal +10% fire damage, which makes them effectively a better version of your regular infantry. It's much better to use the Streltsy ability and replace your regular infantry with them, so you can win wars without having to pop the ability in the first place.

As Nostalgium notes, use Oprichnina when it's going to help. In some cases a rebel stack will spawn next to your armies and be easily flattened, but otherwise when a couple rebellions are near spawning in the distant corners of your empire (happens a lot for Russia), don't hold off.

e) Income balance - Is there a recommended division for income, i.e. 50% trade, 30% production, 15% taxes, 5% misc.?

You can do some amount of long-term planning, but at the end of the day do what gives you the best returns in the short-medium term. Sure, you might eventually get enough production efficiency to make that workshop worthwhile, but in the moment that +.2 church is fantastic and will pay for itself in 42 years or less.

f) Prestige - How can you increase and/or maintain a positive number? Towards the end of my game, my prestige simply tanked. Went down into the negative numbers with no hope of increasing it. The biggest problem was counter revolution of -5.

Win more. Ok I know that sounds rudely "do better"-ish, but a big victory can give you a lot of prestige. When you're wiping an enemy off the map or peacing them out for a while, look for all the extra terms you can add - have them revoke cores, break treaties, give war reparations, etc. Many of those terms come at no diplo point cost but can really pile up the prestige. From there, you just have to maintain it, which is where Nostalgium's suggestions will come in handy.

 

[Blizzrd33]

Just completed Muscovy/Russia which is the first game I have played all the way through. Now I have some questions, some of which may be unique to this nation while other questions are general in nature:

a) Force Limits - How do you increase? I fought a disastrous war against Poland late in the game who took a good portion of my western provinces. I went into the ledger to compare the armies and saw that Poland (or Commonwealth as it was known in my game) had a force limit of close to 800 while I had something around 500. How did this happen? My territory went from Minsk all the way to the Pacific. The Commonwealth's consisted of what would be Poland and much of Central Europe. I had plenty of cash to buy troops but didn't want to go over my force limit.

State the areas with the most development and accepted cultures.

b) To State or not to State - Is it a good idea to incorporate a territory as a state? I tended to do this with the exception of those territories where I had a trade company established.

Yes. When I last played Russia a few patches ago, my rule of thumb was to state areas with 30 or more development. Trade company the rest.

c) Units suffering casualties - How does this work and how do you fix it? I had plenty of soldiers in my manpower but constantly seemed to have this alert. I understand how sailors work, just keep you ships in port and you will not lose sailors but what about the army?

Attrition will be likely due to supply limits and having more troops in a province than the local supply limit. Split your armies into two smaller stacks before marching across Siberia is generally a good idea to avoid losses to attrition.

d) Sudeb Nik, Oprichnina, Streltsy (Russia specific) - Is it a good idea to keep up them? I realize that raising streltsy gives you free regiments but it always blows through your force limits.

If raising more Streltsy would give you more troops than your force limit, you can disband the surplus to generate manpower if your army professionalism is high enough.

e) Income balance - Is there a recommended division for income, i.e. 50% trade, 30% production, 15% taxes, 5% misc.?

Most of your income will be from trade by the time you've reached East Siberia. The exact breakdown isn't really important, but try to build buildings and pick idea groups that help give you the biggest bonuses, depending on your income breakdown.

f) Prestige - How can you increase and/or maintain a positive number? Towards the end of my game, my prestige simply tanked. Went down into the negative numbers with no hope of increasing it. The biggest problem was counter revolution of -5.

Russia should take Religious Ideas and this helps to prevent prestige decay. Taking war goals such as breaking alliances of defeated enemies and forcing them to change rivals are good sources of prestige.

That is about it for now. I did enjoy this and will probably play again soon. Thanks for the help and advice.

Good luck, Russia is great fun.

 

[Otay]

Right, I'll go by these one by one:

A) You can increase force limits in a number of ways. One is through simply getting more land. Each province provides... Eesh, from memory I think it's 1 Force Limit per 10 Development (not simply military development, just total), so simply through expanding, you will grow your force limit. This base is further expanded by national ideas (such as Quantity giving a boost to Force Limit), all of which stack. The Regimental Camp building also gives a flat +1/2 to Force Limit depending on rank, making it effectively contribute as much as a single 10/20 development province before modifiers. The AI generally likes to build a lot of those buildings.

B) Generally speaking, you want to state as much land as you can. This is a rule with a lot of exceptions, but if you're pretty new, stick with the general rule for the time being. Non-stated land cannot go below 90% Autonomy by default, which essentially means you're only seeing 10% of the yields from that state. This means all base stats - tax, production, manpower and yes, force limit contribution, are being reduced by 90%. If you stated everything except your trade companies, you pretty much did the right thing. As I said, there are a few exceptions and adjustments, but generally speaking, state what you have the governing capacity to.

C) I'm assuming you mean attrition here - the little skull icon next to the unit when it's standing in a province. Man oh man, manpower management and attrition is what Russia will truly teach you once you've got a couple of games under your belt. So, to boil it down, every unit has a base weight, and every province has a base capacity. You can see this when you have an army selected and hover your cursor over the province. If the unit weight exceeds the province supply, it will take attrition. This is a percentage of the total army size, is capped at 5%, and will automatically drain your manpower pool each month to replenish. If your manpower pool can absorb the loss, it's no big deal (unless you're low on manpower and trying to recover), but if you poorly place several armies, this can be an enormous drain on your manpower per month.

You can deal with this in one of two ways: The easiest is to split your armies into smaller stacks while at peace to park them in several provinces, and only merge them together when you're preparing for war. This means you're not eating more attrition than you have to. The second, more cumbersome method is to ensure your armies are parked in provinces that can supply them. This generally means finding high-development, good terrain (farms, grassland) provinces that don't suffer from harsh winters, which are few and far between in Russia.

Like Force Limits, many things modify how much attrition you take in each province. Your national ideas, whether it's winter, what kind of climate it is, etc etc., but like with States, you generally don't need to care about this while still learning the game. Simply look at the tooltips and see if the province can support your army, and that alone will take you far. Especially if you go through the slightly annoying micro of splitting your stacks at peace.

D) When playing Russia, I tend to use the Strelsy exclusively for my infantry. However, don't keep what goes above the force limit unless you have the economic backbone to support it. They're free units, so deleting the excess ones isn't a big deal. For the other two Russian abilities, I tend to use Reform Sudebnik when I've just stated territories, and Oprichnina when I'm having rebel troubles. No big mystery there.

E) No, not really. You want as much income as you want from any source you can get it, and how it all balances out is between your accountant and God. However, with that said, Production and Trade are way better to focus on, as they yield much better returns than tax past the very early game.

F) Prestige can be gained from a number of sources. Over time, you can get it from national ideas (you might notice this has been a theme), having Power Projection, some Monuments (if you own the Leviathan DLC), a Merchant Estate privilege, and one Admin advisor. I also think there is an Orthodox Icon that gives some, but don't quote me on that. You can also get prestige in bulk from events, winning battles, and winning wars. As for the Counter Revolution, that can be "easily" countered by declaring war on the Revolutionary Target. How easy this actually is depends on the strength of said target, though. You will not be losing prestige while fighting or having a truce with the Rev. Target.

I hope that helps clear up some things, and feel free to ask followup questions if there's anything else you're wondering about or want me to elaborate on!

Thanks, these are great and I tried them on some saved games to get a better understanding. Now for some follow up questions:

1) How can you break the power/influence of the Boyers/Patriarch/Cossacks/Burghers? It seems that they are bringing down some aspect of your regime, whether it be admin, prestige, autocracy, etc?

2) Does the AI cheat? It seems that when looking at other nations, they would have to have had very high admin/diplomacy/military scores to get where they are with force limits, ideas, etc.

3) So are suggesting not accepting Sudenik, Oprichnina or Strelsy only when needed? Can you specify which regions the oprichnina would go?

4) May be a dumb question, but should you have a building in every province's building que, if available?

Again, thanks for the help.

5) What is the difference between a red numbered percentage and a green one? I often see something like a red +200% for diplomatic technology and a green -10% for administrative technology. What is the difference and how can I adjust or mitigate the one that is bad and increase the one that is good?

 

[DukeLeto42]

1) How can you break the power/influence of the Boyers/Patriarch/Cossacks/Burghers? It seems that they are bringing down some aspect of your regime, whether it be admin, prestige, autocracy, etc?

You can go for minimizing their influence - maximize crown land (you'll probably want to do that eventually anyways) and remove all privileges. However, while they reduce maximum absolutism there are a lot of benefits to happy estates and some potent buffs you can get for yourself. Your clergy estate in particular will help get that conversion going.

2) Does the AI cheat? It seems that when looking at other nations, they would have to have had very high admin/diplomacy/military scores to get where they are with force limits, ideas, etc.

The AI does do some cheating. They don't actually have Fog of War limits and instead try to play reasonably as if they don't. They also pay nothing for military access treaties, since that means the AI can only ask "is this necessary" rather than asking if they can afford to spend the relations slots or the temporary monarch points for them. There are also a handful of nations that are marked as "lucky," getting some minor buffs to help ensure certain big players will survive (Poland / PLC gets this for the first 150 or so years, as I recall). For the most part, though, they still play by the same rules.

3) So are suggesting not accepting Sudenik, Oprichnina or Strelsy only when needed? Can you specify which regions the oprichnina would go?

Oprichnina doesn't go anywhere; it's a blanket reduction to all active rebels' progress. So use it when you need to reduce rebels, and don't use it when there aren't rebel factions threatening to fire.

4) May be a dumb question, but should you have a building in every province's building que, if available?

Focus on what you gain from a building, not if there's an open building slot. Eventually you might want to just fill in all building slots, but that's just because money will likely stop being the limiting factor.

5) What is the difference between a red numbered percentage and a green one? I often see something like a red +200% for diplomatic technology and a green -10% for administrative technology. What is the difference and how can I adjust or mitigate the one that is bad and increase the one that is good?

Those are modifiers to the point cost to take a specific technology. Red is bad (more expensive), green is good (cheaper). There are a number of factors that modify the cost, so mouse over them to see what's what. Generally, the cost reductions come from neighbors already having the tech, and increases from being ahead of time on tech (so either wait until that goes away or take it early to be ahead of your neighbors and to get the innovativeness) or because you haven't accepted one of the Institutions.

 

[Nostalgium]

Now for some follow up questions:

@DukeLeto42 already covered most of them, but I'll go over each in turn regardless:

1) They usually don't bring down anything at all, unless you upset them by having them at low loyalty. Tradeoff between Absolutism and Privileges are a long topic, but to oversimplify it: Absolutism is better if you're going to conquer massive territory, Estate Privileges are better if you don't. If you're playing a more relaxed/casual game where you don't plan to annex all of China in three wars, you don't actually need 100% Absolutism. Other than that, the fine Duke has explained the gist of how you reign them in: Maximize your crownland through the interaction, and revoke their privileges. Sometimes this will lead to revolts and short-term drawbacks, but you can't become the Senate without executing a few numbered orders.

2) Like the rightful liege lord of Arrakis says; generally no. Not in the fields you "notice", anyway. I'd call their cheats "administrative", and the AI generally pretends not to have those cheats. However, the most recent patch made it very much better at handling its economy, so they get very good force limits, troop numbers, and general states of well-being. This is particularly noticable in starts which are "too big to fail", like the Ottomans, or have relatively isolated homelands, like Spain.

3) Basically, yes. There isn't a reason to click the Strelsy unless you're expanding your army, and the Oprichina are best saved for when you have several revolts ticking up at once. They are, for example, excellent to use if you have several Nationalist rebellions coming up after conquering land. They don't stop the rebellion, but they help a lot in buying time for your armies to get there to put them down when they spawn.

4) Again, Leto has it: Until you make enough money that it's basically meaningless, build the building you'll get the most out of. You can decide this by looking it over and considering every province and building the best in each one, or you can do what I do, which is decide on an arbitrary number for each building - say 0.10 for Production from workshops - and use the macrobuilder to build the building in every province above that number. This isn't the best way, but it's good enough for single player.

5) Red is a bad modifier, green is a good one. This is context sensitive, so +15% will be red if it's tech cost or army maintenance, but green if it's about morale or production efficiency. It's basically just a visual aid to help you not needing to remember which modifier does what for every mechanic in the game. Usually, by hovering over the percentage (or the value it modifies) you can see what's causing it.