I'm playing as them now, I've formed Russia and got my economy in a good, not great, situation. The main problem I'm facing now, is a succession war with Denmark over Bohemia, and those were my only 2 allies and Bohemia is against me. The mechanics of PU's and stuff that goes with it is still kinda rusty to me.
Playing as Muscovy is Impossible!?
- Thread starter Maria Theresa
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Bohemia isn't really useful as an ally, unless you're going for Poland which I don't believe you should. Priority for Muscovy is getting Novgorod and then expanding south and east. There will be plenty of time later to get your cores from Poland and Lithuania. Also, if you're lucky you may just get your culture provinces for free from rebels.
Only serious threat (if you play with lucky nations ON) are the Ottomans. Everything else you're just gonna steamroll if you survive the first few years, which isn't that difficult. Use that great general you've got, attack with numerical advantage and both Kazan and GH will start crumbling.
Only serious threat (if you play with lucky nations ON) are the Ottomans. Everything else you're just gonna steamroll if you survive the first few years, which isn't that difficult. Use that great general you've got, attack with numerical advantage and both Kazan and GH will start crumbling.
While it isn't relevant for beginning I make my Russia the defender of the Orthodox faith which helps me staying in warfare mode much longer. There aren't that many Orthodox countries and most of them are already near you.
I don't think I got attacked by the Golden Horde or Kazan really early though. But I did crush them. Now Kazan is gone and the Golden Horde is a single province on the other side of Georgia (How it got there I don't know).
I don't think I got attacked by the Golden Horde or Kazan really early though. But I did crush them. Now Kazan is gone and the Golden Horde is a single province on the other side of Georgia (How it got there I don't know).
No, it's not "very difficult". It's "a bit tricky"; none of your neighbours are Lucky, and none of them are terrifyingly strong.
I would even go so far as to say that I think it probably takes more skill, effort, and luck to get a favorable outcome from the HYW as England than it does to turn Muscovy into Russia from a 1444 start. Mostly, prospering as Muscovy takes calm.
The biggest problems I am having are: Coring Costs of both conquests and colony's is the same and Overextension is a killer.......Also can Never take out a country more than 3 provinces at a time. because of Overextension an coring costs.
You can vassalise Kazan in the last war you fight then start selling them uncored conquered provinces. They will spend their adm points coring them and you can annex later on. Make sure you core enough Tartar provinces to get it as an accepted culture though. Also note they will be sunni so when you do incorporate them you'll need decent missionary strength and the extra missonary from being Defender of the Faith.
This also works with the other hordes btw.
This also works with the other hordes btw.
The problem is that if a Vassal has more than 3 provinces you can't Diplo annex them. (-1000 because of too many provinces) PU's are different.
1- Ally with Crimea.
2- Wait for they to fight each other.
3- ???
4- Profit.
Also, go either Religion or a military idea that isn´t Quantity.
You CAN Diplo-annex them. You CANNOT diplo-vassalize them if they have more than 3 provinces.
What I did was first max out forcelimit for army, then fabricate claim on Novogord and take a couple of provinces. Kazan declared war right after followed by Golden Horde. It took a while, but I defeated both but had no manpower after. Thankfully, once you beat them once that seems to put them in their place.
Later, wars with Sweden got tough, I lost 1 war then beat the next time; again exhausting my manpower.
Same thing is happening now with the Ottomans in the 1610s.
The key to winning in Russia is to let them come to you and beat them in the motherland.
Defensive Ideas are an absolute must. Eventually you can easily field a giant army.
Later, wars with Sweden got tough, I lost 1 war then beat the next time; again exhausting my manpower.
Same thing is happening now with the Ottomans in the 1610s.
The key to winning in Russia is to let them come to you and beat them in the motherland.
Defensive Ideas are an absolute must. Eventually you can easily field a giant army.
Started an Ironman game simply to get the achievement this morning after playing a few regular games. As per usual the start is build up to 4 cav/16 inf and wait for the inevitable dows while working on the diplo game with Ryazan. Diplovassalize them after the first round of horde wars were won. GH attacked first and tried to bring his 14k across the river into Kasimov where I had 4/12 with the 2/3/3 general waiting for them. Chased their armies down and eliminated them and got a few ducats while moving to do the same sort of thing to Kazan. Crimea moved in and ate the GH and ever since they have been sporadically warring with Kazan and I haven't heard a peep from either.
Moving on we head north to the smashing of Novgorod. War #1 took the colonies, Kholm, Torzhok, Neva, Ingermanland, Kexholm, and Olonets for exactly 100 war score. War #2 took the remaining provs other than Nov itself, war #3 was the end. All wars follow the same basic pattern of sending 4/8 to find and kill their army while my other 8k inf plus vassals run siege duty. In between war #1 & 2 Tver was run over and eaten, between 2 & 3 OPM Yaroslavl was annexed and I also got to vassalize a 6 province Livonian order after ~6 years of occupation.
Next step was allying Poland to assist against the Danes who were busy annexing Norway then Sweden and had taken 3 Livonian provinces. The first war against them returned 2 provs to LO (they still have Osel) and gave me Savolax and Viborg. Since that war completed I sponsored a successful Smolenskian revolution in Smolensk/Bryansk/Kursk while technically joining Poland/Lith in a war against Crimea... I spent the war keeping any of the hordes involved from crossing my southern border and funneling money into rebels. After that war the annexation of Ryazan (for the lovely mission) and Pskov was completed just as war #2 with Denmark started. I plan to take the remainder of Finland and call it a day on that front. Currently annexing Perm and about to hit adm 10 and start on the religious ideas to make horde stomping for long term gain a thing, 12 years to convert Kasimov is fine when I only have one wrong religion province but that won't do for taking swathes of horde lands.
First idea was diplo simply for the faster cores and better reputation. Faster claims are nice enough but I generally don't have to wait for a claim to start a war between the border friction events and having to rebuild some manpower or wait on truces. Second set is defensive, filling it out left me 1 or 2 techs behind the Danes but between the national ideas, the defensive ideas, and the 50% larger army I'd probably be able to beat them without my allies. Oh, did I mention England came asking for an alliance a few weeks before I started war #2 with Denmark? Blockade issue resolved.
From my playthroughs, I've found that the key in the early stages is, as someone else mentioned, don't let the hordes interfere when you're at war with Nov, beat them down before starting it. And also don't leave weakened Novgorod any neighbors to take chunks out of them. Even a guarantee is no help since the ai is dumb enough to start a war when fairly weak plus the whole getting dragged in by allies thing. My goal in the first war is always to cut them off from everyone else.
Moving on we head north to the smashing of Novgorod. War #1 took the colonies, Kholm, Torzhok, Neva, Ingermanland, Kexholm, and Olonets for exactly 100 war score. War #2 took the remaining provs other than Nov itself, war #3 was the end. All wars follow the same basic pattern of sending 4/8 to find and kill their army while my other 8k inf plus vassals run siege duty. In between war #1 & 2 Tver was run over and eaten, between 2 & 3 OPM Yaroslavl was annexed and I also got to vassalize a 6 province Livonian order after ~6 years of occupation.
Next step was allying Poland to assist against the Danes who were busy annexing Norway then Sweden and had taken 3 Livonian provinces. The first war against them returned 2 provs to LO (they still have Osel) and gave me Savolax and Viborg. Since that war completed I sponsored a successful Smolenskian revolution in Smolensk/Bryansk/Kursk while technically joining Poland/Lith in a war against Crimea... I spent the war keeping any of the hordes involved from crossing my southern border and funneling money into rebels. After that war the annexation of Ryazan (for the lovely mission) and Pskov was completed just as war #2 with Denmark started. I plan to take the remainder of Finland and call it a day on that front. Currently annexing Perm and about to hit adm 10 and start on the religious ideas to make horde stomping for long term gain a thing, 12 years to convert Kasimov is fine when I only have one wrong religion province but that won't do for taking swathes of horde lands.
First idea was diplo simply for the faster cores and better reputation. Faster claims are nice enough but I generally don't have to wait for a claim to start a war between the border friction events and having to rebuild some manpower or wait on truces. Second set is defensive, filling it out left me 1 or 2 techs behind the Danes but between the national ideas, the defensive ideas, and the 50% larger army I'd probably be able to beat them without my allies. Oh, did I mention England came asking for an alliance a few weeks before I started war #2 with Denmark? Blockade issue resolved.
From my playthroughs, I've found that the key in the early stages is, as someone else mentioned, don't let the hordes interfere when you're at war with Nov, beat them down before starting it. And also don't leave weakened Novgorod any neighbors to take chunks out of them. Even a guarantee is no help since the ai is dumb enough to start a war when fairly weak plus the whole getting dragged in by allies thing. My goal in the first war is always to cut them off from everyone else.
I always hire advisors, max my troops, and have 1 diplomat fabricatings claims on Kazan (Simbirks) because 90% of the time they DOW. GH usually doesn't bother me because they prefer to DOW Georgia. Kazan are idiots and divide their troops. 12K and 8K. The 8K chase Perm's troops and due to attrition end up at 4K. I use my 21k to destroy the 12k army and then finish off the rest. By the time all their lands are occupied the claim fabrication has also ended and I take Simbirsk plus two more provinces, thus effectively ending the Kazan threat. Then I DOW novgorod.
95% of the time LTH PU's with POL so my western border is safe and can go to war when I choose (when POL does th stupid which they usually do)
95% of the time LTH PU's with POL so my western border is safe and can go to war when I choose (when POL does th stupid which they usually do)
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Muscovy is hard but playable so long as the poland Lithuania union happens if not you screwed
and the kalmar union doesn't break up , you can't fight Sweden or Lithuania at the start
get ryazan conquest mission, vassalize them. let ur vassals do siege for u, and be aware of attrition. in my case, golden horde got into war with both kazan and crimea, which made me join the fray and get 2 provinces. after that, take a bite off novgorod and lithuania. again, u hunt for enemy stacks as ur vassals siege. in my case, i chased whole lithuanian army of 18k to liga and guarded the entrence with 17k while my vassals and my addtional 2+2k army sieged every other provinces. sure, i could have merged all my armies and try to wipe out lithuanians, but then crimea joined the party and i figured i can let them fight each other; i took like 4-5 provinces and went off to bite novgorod. when i returned 5 yrs later lithuania and crimea was still fighting lol...
get ryazan conquest mission, vassalize them. let ur vassals do siege for u, and be aware of attrition. in my case, golden horde got into war with both kazan and crimea, which made me join the fray and get 2 provinces. after that, take a bite off novgorod and lithuania. again, u hunt for enemy stacks as ur vassals siege. in my case, i chased whole lithuanian army of 18k to liga and guarded the entrence with 17k while my vassals and my addtional 2+2k army sieged every other provinces. sure, i could have merged all my armies and try to wipe out lithuanians, but then crimea joined the party and i figured i can let them fight each other; i took like 4-5 provinces and went off to bite novgorod. when i returned 5 yrs later lithuania and crimea was still fighting lol...
I think the most important thing about playing Muscovy at the beginning is to not try and rush things. With a lot of countries, especially the smaller ones, you're in a mad rush at the beginning to seize power before your neighbors do, but for Muscovy you start out in a good position already. Your biggest fear is that you slip up and look weak, at which point your neighbors will not hesitate to swoop in for the kill.
In my first game, I pushed in aggressively on Novgorod, planning to finish them off in a few short wars, and then soon after moved in on Lithuania as well, hoping to break them as well. As it turns out, this was a huge mistake, as both wars depleted my manpower, and by the end of things I was in a spiral of doom, with everyone attacking me from all sides.
In my second game, I decided to take things more slowly. I built to my force limit, and for the most part just sat back and relaxed. Annexed vassals, built armories, had just two short wars. First one to annex Ryazan, then another to take a single province from Novgorod. Then, I sat and waited for Lithuania to show weakness. After a few more years, the opportunity came when Poland's forces were decimated in a war with Crimea, and Lithuania's manpower was also somewhat depleted. Declared war, then sat back in Moskva and let them siege. Kept close enough to pick off any stray small armies, but far enough to escape in case they tried to attack.
Eventually, between the attrition and chipping away at their armies, they were out of manpower and low on forces. At that point I struck, forcing their armies back and pushing into their land. Still, I only sieged a few provinces, got enough warscore for the two provinces I had claims on, then left taking only those and a bit of gold. This left me with almost full manpower, which I used to start another war with Novgorod, this time for more provinces since I'd been building up my claims. By this point I had annexed all of my vassals, and in this second war I was also sure to get them to release Finland, to keep from having a border with Sweden, who I allied. I had taken their colonies in the first war, but didn't pay for them and let them rot to nothing. (not worth it early game, I got them later on anyways)
At this point, I continued to whittle down Novgorod and Lithuania over time, taking things slow and only grabbing stuff I had claims on. At some point Ukraine rebelled out as a OPM, I fabricated a claim on them and force-vassalized them, then made Lithuania/Poland spit out all of it's cores over the course of a few wars, allowing me to claim a lot more land than normal and have a fairly strong vassal as well. Novgorod was eventually annexed completely, too.
During this time, I'd been getting my tech and ideas up as well, starting with Diplomacy to make claims easier and allow myself more vassals. It was only around the time that I got my second idea, which I made Religion, that I started to actually push into Horde land. I'd so far managed to avoid war with them completely, due to a combination of keeping my Agressive Expansion penalties low, my wars short and my manpower high. At this point I had gotten well ahead in tech versus the hordes, and my armies were much larger as well, so they didn't really stand any chance. Religion proved key in converting the provinces I took in short order, as were the various decisions I took that boost conversion rate, There's 4 you can take at various points, which add a total of +5% chance, which is huge. A few of them also increase revolt risk, but they are very much worth it since as long as you keep your religious uniformity high, you have very little problems with revolts anyways. Even when I got into the Time of Troubles later on, which does +10 revolt risk, I was still only at 6% RR in most provinces, which I reduced to 3% with an advisor. If I had kept my Patriarch Authority higher, I might have had none at all, though I'd lowered it mainly to fund my newly built artillery.
Once you get to this point, you're fairly safe. Just keep in mind your strengths and your weaknesses, and don't overextend. Your main adversary will likely be the Ottomans, who can easily be as strong or stronger than you at this point. The more western powers should keep to themselves, unless you overextend and get a border with Austria or something. Try to keep friendly with your western neighbors, especially Sweden and Poland, while pushing hard to the East without taking un-claimed provinces or going over 100% overextension. Past that, your wars should focus on vassalizing smaller neighbors on the baltic and possible the balkans, if you can beat the Ottomans down.
Once you reach admin tech 10, you'll want to form Russia. For me, I didn't get any claims on anything I didn't already own, but if you didn't push into europe much this is a good time to do so. Once you've pressed those claims to your content, you'll also note that you have the choice to move to St Petersburg. DON'T. (yet) Instead, work up to +3 stability, try to spend any excess MP, and start westernization. You'll need to spend a few years to get up to +0 stability, but then once you do, you can enact the St Petersburg decision, granting you another +3 stability for instant max stability with no positive stability penalties. This saves you hundreds of admin points and years of time, and as long as you don't get unlucky with events, you can easily westernize in less than 5 years. Faster, if you get +stability events and/or the Defeat Rebels mission early on.
After westernizing, you should be the premier power in the world. Keep slapping around the Hordes, use your free colonist to race for the east coast, force the HRE into a PU, whatever you want. Just don't make any foolish mistakes, such as taking too much land too quickly, or getting your armies ate by the (for now) still superior western nations. Use numbers and attrition to your advantage and nobody can beat you.
In my first game, I pushed in aggressively on Novgorod, planning to finish them off in a few short wars, and then soon after moved in on Lithuania as well, hoping to break them as well. As it turns out, this was a huge mistake, as both wars depleted my manpower, and by the end of things I was in a spiral of doom, with everyone attacking me from all sides.
In my second game, I decided to take things more slowly. I built to my force limit, and for the most part just sat back and relaxed. Annexed vassals, built armories, had just two short wars. First one to annex Ryazan, then another to take a single province from Novgorod. Then, I sat and waited for Lithuania to show weakness. After a few more years, the opportunity came when Poland's forces were decimated in a war with Crimea, and Lithuania's manpower was also somewhat depleted. Declared war, then sat back in Moskva and let them siege. Kept close enough to pick off any stray small armies, but far enough to escape in case they tried to attack.
Eventually, between the attrition and chipping away at their armies, they were out of manpower and low on forces. At that point I struck, forcing their armies back and pushing into their land. Still, I only sieged a few provinces, got enough warscore for the two provinces I had claims on, then left taking only those and a bit of gold. This left me with almost full manpower, which I used to start another war with Novgorod, this time for more provinces since I'd been building up my claims. By this point I had annexed all of my vassals, and in this second war I was also sure to get them to release Finland, to keep from having a border with Sweden, who I allied. I had taken their colonies in the first war, but didn't pay for them and let them rot to nothing. (not worth it early game, I got them later on anyways)
At this point, I continued to whittle down Novgorod and Lithuania over time, taking things slow and only grabbing stuff I had claims on. At some point Ukraine rebelled out as a OPM, I fabricated a claim on them and force-vassalized them, then made Lithuania/Poland spit out all of it's cores over the course of a few wars, allowing me to claim a lot more land than normal and have a fairly strong vassal as well. Novgorod was eventually annexed completely, too.
During this time, I'd been getting my tech and ideas up as well, starting with Diplomacy to make claims easier and allow myself more vassals. It was only around the time that I got my second idea, which I made Religion, that I started to actually push into Horde land. I'd so far managed to avoid war with them completely, due to a combination of keeping my Agressive Expansion penalties low, my wars short and my manpower high. At this point I had gotten well ahead in tech versus the hordes, and my armies were much larger as well, so they didn't really stand any chance. Religion proved key in converting the provinces I took in short order, as were the various decisions I took that boost conversion rate, There's 4 you can take at various points, which add a total of +5% chance, which is huge. A few of them also increase revolt risk, but they are very much worth it since as long as you keep your religious uniformity high, you have very little problems with revolts anyways. Even when I got into the Time of Troubles later on, which does +10 revolt risk, I was still only at 6% RR in most provinces, which I reduced to 3% with an advisor. If I had kept my Patriarch Authority higher, I might have had none at all, though I'd lowered it mainly to fund my newly built artillery.
Once you get to this point, you're fairly safe. Just keep in mind your strengths and your weaknesses, and don't overextend. Your main adversary will likely be the Ottomans, who can easily be as strong or stronger than you at this point. The more western powers should keep to themselves, unless you overextend and get a border with Austria or something. Try to keep friendly with your western neighbors, especially Sweden and Poland, while pushing hard to the East without taking un-claimed provinces or going over 100% overextension. Past that, your wars should focus on vassalizing smaller neighbors on the baltic and possible the balkans, if you can beat the Ottomans down.
Once you reach admin tech 10, you'll want to form Russia. For me, I didn't get any claims on anything I didn't already own, but if you didn't push into europe much this is a good time to do so. Once you've pressed those claims to your content, you'll also note that you have the choice to move to St Petersburg. DON'T. (yet) Instead, work up to +3 stability, try to spend any excess MP, and start westernization. You'll need to spend a few years to get up to +0 stability, but then once you do, you can enact the St Petersburg decision, granting you another +3 stability for instant max stability with no positive stability penalties. This saves you hundreds of admin points and years of time, and as long as you don't get unlucky with events, you can easily westernize in less than 5 years. Faster, if you get +stability events and/or the Defeat Rebels mission early on.
After westernizing, you should be the premier power in the world. Keep slapping around the Hordes, use your free colonist to race for the east coast, force the HRE into a PU, whatever you want. Just don't make any foolish mistakes, such as taking too much land too quickly, or getting your armies ate by the (for now) still superior western nations. Use numbers and attrition to your advantage and nobody can beat you.