Muscovy/Russia need a nerf

[thetrue7man]

So far this patch I've seen it go pretty hard one way or the other and not really in between.

It was probably not a good idea balance wise for whether or not Muscovy gets to form Russia (or the matter of when in the cases where they are significantly delayed) to be a 550 government capacity difference on top of the ideas. Which nations get hit the hardest by debt that game undoubtedly plays a role as well.

 

[Celdur]

I don't understand this complain, this is Russia in a pretty historical strength level. I've seen PLC with 500 FL, in 1650, (i play in very hard too) and Russia being a punching bag for it even though they themselves also have 300 FL, and are controlled by a Transoxiana - Oirat alliance with 200 FL each.

The real problem is that Muscovy is very weak at the start of the game, their economy is too weak to support their army and any, ANY reverse in fortunes cripples them. They have to go from strenght to strenght, from victory to victory or they are doomed. Paradoxically they have low resilience, unlike the Ottomans for example.

 

[Celdur]

Russia is quite fine in SP, I'd say it's on the stronger side rather than weaker. However in MP Muscovy => Russia is blatantly and ridiculously OP.

1. Army Quality is way too good: +10% Art CA, -10% Fire Damage Received, +5% Morale, then +10% Fire Damage from Streltsy and +5% Discipline actually make Russian army quality comparable to French one.
2. Wild quantity modifiers actually make Russian military the most powerful in game, beating any other nation without any possible competition. If you take 100k Prussian troops and face them with 150k Russians, the Greencoats will wipe the floor with Gray spacemarines.

So basically Russia has a quality compared to French coupled with undisputed and unparalleled top-1 quantity modifiers.

And why shouldn't they be comparable? Has Russia in any war shown its soldiers to be cowardly? if anything they fight to the death way too much which is one reason they sometimes have horrendous casualties, and they only have 5% morale to reflect that in the game. You know, an army that breaks and runs doesn't have huge disastrous battles, and in Borodino they stood head to head with the French at their peak.

If anything they are underpowered. But, part of the problem is that European Russia geographical area is not developed much in the game, the hordes, Muscovy itself, Kazan, etc have big provinces and few tags, so conquering a huge amount of land is "easy" for any nation controlled by a human. When we get more granularity, more tags, which means more AE, less critical provinces more back and forth and for the east to not be able to be consolidated after 1 big victory for any of the powers of the region it'll be much more fun and balanced.

 

[EarlKonrad]

I don't understand this complain, this is Russia in a pretty historical strength level. I've seen PLC with 500 FL, in 1650, (i play in very hard too) and Russia being a punching bag for it even though they themselves also have 300 FL, and are controlled by a Transoxiana - Oirat alliance with 200 FL each.

The real problem is that Muscovy is very weak at the start of the game, their economy is too weak to support their army and any, ANY reverse in fortunes cripples them. They have to go from strenght to strenght, from victory to victory or they are doomed. Paradoxically they have low resilience, unlike the Ottomans for example.

It's not that Muscovy's starting eco is bad but that their immediate routes of expansion aren't that profitable on the short term and the really good expansion paths (into China, India and Balkans) are those that the AI will naturally avoid. So they end up being able to field a lot but their eco struggles to grow.

 

[Dominion]

Russia is always trash if it isn't in player hands.

Reason being their massive amount of maybe six lvl2 forts in 1820.

Move in, barrage, assault, move on. Peace out for 70% warscore six months after declaring war without going into combat once.

Bonus points if they've just been at war with Ming so it takes them three years just to get their troops back to Europe.

 

[LAF1994]

The problem is that they are unrealistically able to march tens of thousands of troops over the steppes, which means that they can easily overrun Mongolia and China.

 

[RAID186]

Russia probably benefited the most from this patch. Even as an AI.

-They don't rely on ANY allies, almost ever, so the debt spiral doesn't screw them over as much.
-Should they run into an income issue, quickly rushing Siberia can bring in a solid income via trade/production. (in MP I was even beating GB for income, Novgorod matched the Channel in Trade Value), and you only need to spend MP, no ducats. TC improvements excluded.
-PLC still trash, even more so with new trees focussed on ganking them, and PLC already had horrible income issues.
- State limits gone. Pretty simple.
-Cossacks hohoho, big win, not a change, but easier to manage and keep powerful enough for the boni
-Ming debt spiral, easy conquest of the East, relatively early.

I love playing Russia, but I should not have it THIS easily.

 

[Father of Nations]

Both Muscovy and Russia are blessed with strong military ideas, they‘re just not making use of it and instead are fighting wars of attrition against poor Steppe hordes, yet are also unable to gain access to the rich Asian trade nodes.

 

[Fiestinian]

Both Muscovy and Russia are blessed with strong military ideas, they‘re just not making use of it and instead are fighting wars of attrition against poor Steppe hordes, yet are also unable to gain access to the rich Asian trade nodes.

When do people do the switch? Losing those early Muscovy military ideas and cash/relation is awkward but the increased gov cap is needed before full nat idea unlock

 

[EarlKonrad]

When do people do the switch? Losing those early Muscovy military ideas and cash/relation is awkward but the increased gov cap is needed before full nat idea unlock

As soon as you integrate Perm and have enough ideas that by becoming Russian you can establish Siberian Frontiers. There isn't much point in sticking with Muscovy's ideas for long, unless you want to take advantage of their religion related idea.

 

[Orioniys]

One of the reasons why AI is bad at Muscovy / Russia. The logic for orthodox icon usage is broken. AI is using icons semi randomly, and he is not saving patriarch authority.
The funny side of it, is that it looks like someone from the staff edited it without reading original developer comment, breaking it as result.

 

[EarlKonrad]

One of the reasons why AI is bad at Muscovy / Russia. The logic for orthodox icon usage is broken. AI is using icons semi randomly, and he is not saving patriarch authority.
The funny side of it, is that it looks like someone from the staff edited it without reading original developer comment, breaking it as result.

Interesting. Got some source on that? How did you come to that conclusion?

 

[Orioniys]

Interesting. Got some source on that? How did you come to that conclusion?

It's kinda a special case, AI will do value for icons = 1 means that AI will use the icon as soon as he can without saving PA , and right now almost every icon have base value 1. In the rest of the game value 1 is completely normal value, so my guess is that someone edited it without realising how it actually works.
I've tried changing the base value to 0.1, multiplying it with different cases, if AI is at war etc. 0.1 means that AI will use it at 90 PA. And I think this the intended value.

Don't get me wrong, it's easy to make mistakes like that.

 

[Celdur]

Russia probably benefited the most from this patch. Even as an AI.

-They don't rely on ANY allies, almost ever, so the debt spiral doesn't screw them over as much.
-Should they run into an income issue, quickly rushing Siberia can bring in a solid income via trade/production. (in MP I was even beating GB for income, Novgorod matched the Channel in Trade Value), and you only need to spend MP, no ducats. TC improvements excluded.
-PLC still trash, even more so with new trees focussed on ganking them, and PLC already had horrible income issues.
- State limits gone. Pretty simple.
-Cossacks hohoho, big win, not a change, but easier to manage and keep powerful enough for the boni
-Ming debt spiral, easy conquest of the East, relatively early.

I love playing Russia, but I should not have it THIS easily.

include your timeline and i suggest you play on Very Hard. ALL nations are "THIS easy" Russia just has the map seudo advantage of taking big provinces and having its name look big early on. But on Very Hard there is no debt spiral, hordes have 30k FL in 1444, PLC is a menace, etc. Its much more interesting for people who dominate "normal" or "hard".

It's not that Muscovy's starting eco is bad but that their immediate routes of expansion aren't that profitable on the short term and the really good expansion paths (into China, India and Balkans) are those that the AI will naturally avoid. So they end up being able to field a lot but their eco struggles to grow.

Their eco is bad though, specially for the geographic size they control, Novgorod + Muscovy + Kazan have the same amount of provinces than Scandinavia + Denmark, even if they look massive on the map it doesn't accurately portray their economic potential on top of that half are either White sea trade (lost) or are wrong culture and wrong religion and take significant investment of MP to make productive and bordering many hostile nations, not tucked away and safe "up north". FL is not bad at all due to the large number of Grain provinces (+0.5 FL) and ideas. But this incarnation of Russia has been designed to be able to field a large competent army only if it grows massively into Siberia and the steppe. If they are thwarted for any reason there is no chance of them being able to make use of their ideas.

The problem is that they are unrealistically able to march tens of thousands of troops over the steppes, which means that they can easily overrun Mongolia and China.

That's true for any nation in the game, if you play in that area. Vice versa a human Steppe horde player can overrun the same area + Eastern Europe easily. And it will stay the same until the develop the horde land with the same granularity as the rest of the world, there were many tribes that composed each horde and they were very difficult to military conquer even into the XIX century. There is plenty of room for more development in that area which should contain a massive amount of provinces and be a headache to control due to the vast size. In contrast to the compacted cities and tight development of Western Europe, which is depicted in the game, even more so with Emperor.

 

[Big Bad France]

My sample size is very small, but in my current campaign, Russia never formed, Sweden owns Novgorod, and the Commonwealth is east of Moscow. I have never seen a campaign where AI Muscovy couldn't even manage to conquer Novgorod before this one.

 

[yellowbiz]

This is impossible, Russia is underpowered.

This being said, Russia clearly benefitted from the current patch. I would still like some screenshots and stats from numerous games to back your claim, because in my experience, they have a high FL but they rarely are able to fill it.

I don't get it, you say it's underpowered but in the post you linked, people clearly disagree that it's underpowered, so which is it?

 

[deathbypie]

I don't get it, you say it's underpowered but in the post you linked, people clearly disagree that it's underpowered, so which is it?

Maybe this will help

 

[Sfan]

I don't get it, you say it's underpowered but in the post you linked, people clearly disagree that it's underpowered, so which is it?

Yes, I was indeed being sarcastic. It's just that every patch, there is a thread for every major nation (especially Russia and Ottomans) saying it is weaker, and one saying it is stronger. Always. That's kind of hilarious. As usual, people tend to forget that their game is well... a one game sample.

 

[yellowbiz]

Yes, I was indeed being sarcastic. It's just that every patch, there is a thread for every major nation (especially Russia and Ottomans) saying it is weaker, and one saying it is stronger. Always. That's kind of hilarious. As usual, people tend to forget that their game is well... a one game sample.

That makes sense then, I didn't get that it was sarcasm

 

[Morbus Bubbonicus]

Russia is rather balanced, if in a wrong way. Russia have a lot of АД but russian lands are TRASH. it is a wasteland,arctic and grain, with occasional fur and copper. So it rarely can sustain its FL.