Religious Ideas as Russia: What's the point?

[Vulpes Cinerea]

With which nations and on which year do you beat them? If you say Venice 1450 then I'm impressed.

Actually yes. You vassalize byzantium after the Ottomans attack (you need to get to Constantinople first) and you call in all your allies. Make sure you have Austria and PLC and you're golden.

If that doesn't work, a good general strategy is to snatch Constantinople to deprive them of a major power spike. When you do that, you can defeat them with the right allies soon. Otherwise you just wait till 1550. It's either hammer them soon or wait till their troops get worse. But still you can beat them with just Byzantium in the 1440's if you do it correctly.

But enough me, what do you advocate? Administrative + what? And how do you beat the Ottomans or a big PLC without the 10 discipline that my combo gives?

I would open with a military idea since you need all the admin and diplo you can get in the beginning. Defensive, Offensive, Aristocratic and even Quantity are viable. As a second Idea group I would take Religious or Admin, depending on the focus. If you go heavily into the east and south, I like Religious. If you focus on Scandinavia and PLC you can get away with Admin. I would still take Religious for the CB and the conversion power.

 

[Cancerofthehead]

Admittedly it's not the super-earlygame anymore in my run, but here's my situation in 1501:

View attachment 635443

Fighting Lithuania would involve me fighting them, the Kalmar Union and France (catholic DoTF). Same alliances apply for Denmark.

And Ottomans is Sunni DotF, so I can't fight the Europeans Horde either. And Nogai is allied to Chagatai and Timurids.

(And people wonder why I mostly play Asian Sunni countries)

Well, time to try out the Influence opener.

Well you are a little bit past the point of prioritizing one mil point per month vs one admin m, and you seem to be in a bit of a rough diplomatic spot now. But it should be salvageable.

Some of those guys are going to end up in a war sooner or later, which could give you a great opportunity. Alternatively I would be seeing if I can attack the great horde, siege them down (at least the war goal and capital) and then fight a defensive war until you can peace them out and strip the Ottomans of DOTF (and hopefully Mameluks take it). If you can ally Circassia, Crimea, and/or shirvan and promise them land it should buy you time before they peace out.

 

[klingonadmiral]

But it should be salvageable.

Well, too late for that. Already restarted.

 

[Don_Quigleone]

By the time most of these bonuses are relevent, the difficulty of the game is not. The bonuses from religious conversion helps to counteract the resistant of muslim conversion and that early boost from religion conversion very powerful.

EDIT: I'm sorry. Did you really ask who takes quantity as RUSSIA?!?!

Literally everyone dude! You are throwing away your countries greatest stength and that makes me very very sad.

Honestly, as Russia quantity is really overkill. Between Russian ideas, orthodox religion and early game expansion you'll have more force limit and manpower then you need. And further to that, many of the places you want to invade (the steppe, Mongolia, Persia) have lowish force limits so big massive armies just take tons of attrition.

In terms of manpower, Quality or offensive achieve mostly the same thing, as you lose less manpower in the first place, and your armies punch harder. And with the combat bonuses you get from streltsy and cossack regiments, you probably are one of the best placed countries other than Prussia to produce "space marine" regiments.

That and by 1550 if you're expanding at a good pace you'll probably be struggling to control so many armies and give them all generals.

Quantity only helps in the first 50 years, and frankly as Muscovy they're not that difficult. Novgorod and the hordes are weak, Lithuania won't invade due to the personal Union with commonwealth and Denmark and Turkey are far away.

 

[Big Bad France]

I like religious first as Russia. I suggest using estates to increase relation slots, hire mercs to get claims on Novgorod, marry and PU Ryazan, take from Novgorod what you need to form Russia, and vassal feed the rest. Feed your vassals in other areas where you go to war as well. Integrate Perm first so you can expand into Siberia as soon as you form Russia. You can fill out the religious idea group fairly quickly because you won't be using admin points on coring. Take influence second and defensive third. Defensive is a godsend if France takes defender of the faith, and it is also very helpful in an early war against the Ottomans.

 

[Cancerofthehead]

Honestly, as Russia quantity is really overkill. Between Russian ideas, orthodox religion and early game expansion you'll have more force limit and manpower then you need. And further to that, many of the places you want to invade (the steppe, Mongolia, Persia) have lowish force limits so big massive armies just take tons of attrition.

In terms of manpower, Quality or offensive achieve mostly the same thing, as you lose less manpower in the first place, and your armies punch harder. And with the combat bonuses you get from streltsy and cossack regiments, you probably are one of the best placed countries other than Prussia to produce "space marine" regiments.

That and by 1550 if you're expanding at a good pace you'll probably be struggling to control so many armies and give them all generals.

Quantity only helps in the first 50 years, and frankly as Muscovy they're not that difficult. Novgorod and the hordes are weak, Lithuania won't invade due to the personal Union with commonwealth and Denmark and Turkey are far away.

Honestly, after my first few campaigns, where I always took quantity, I quit taking quantity ever. It just isn’t as impactful as others for most of the game.

Aristocratic and Offensive are my go to
groups, the siege bonuses are more useful and less common than straight army modifiers. I usually go with quality late as a QOL group so I can pay less attention to my armies.

If I am going to use significant cavalry, aristocratic is a no-brainer first mil pick, but just the other bonuses are solid (and I would pretty much always put it over quantity). Offensive is particularly good with humanist (that -separatism is one of my favourite policies for being quite powerful all game) but is still great without, 20% siege speed.

 

[Blizzrd33]

Who is the green province on your eastern border? Why not attack Uzbek?

You still have options to keep going

Looks like Polockas has separated from Lithuania in that area.

I take Influence -> Admin -> Religious -> Diplo as my first 4 groups when playing Russia. I delay taking too much Sunni land until I've got the first couple of Religious Ideas as part of my 3rd group. When fighting the hordes, I just take key trade centres and forts, but not large slabs of land until I have the ability to convert them en masse. There are plenty of Christian lands on your Eastern borders to focus on prior to that.

 

[klingonadmiral]

So guys, thanks for all the help.

Focussing more on vassal feeding than direct coring (one downside of permaclaims - they look so tasty that I have a deep desire to take them for myself) allowed me to finish administrative ideas by 1511. The Hordes better already start to dig their own graves, because once I hit tech 10 and form Russia I will give them a swift death.

 

[BlazeKnight_]

Admittedly it's not the super-earlygame anymore in my run, but here's my situation in 1501:

View attachment 635443

Fighting Lithuania would involve me fighting them, the Kalmar Union and France (catholic DoTF). Same alliances apply for Denmark.

And Ottomans is Sunni DotF, so I can't fight the Europeans Horde either. And Nogai is allied to Chagatai and Timurids.

(And people wonder why I mostly play Asian Sunni countries)

Well, time to try out the Influence opener.

If you have problems dealing with the AI,, then try just straight up taking MP meta idea groups. Full meta player will absolutely shred through any AI armies, as AI does not stack military bonuses (or any bonuses...) well from idea groups.

 

[Don_Quigleone]

If you have problems dealing with the AI,, then try just straight up taking MP meta idea groups. Full meta player will absolutely shred through any AI armies, as AI does not stack military bonuses (or any bonuses...) well from idea groups.

What's the meta?

 

[alexti]

Looks like Polockas has separated from Lithuania in that area.

I take Influence -> Admin -> Religious -> Diplo as my first 4 groups when playing Russia. I delay taking too much Sunni land until I've got the first couple of Religious Ideas as part of my 3rd group. When fighting the hordes, I just take key trade centres and forts, but not large slabs of land until I have the ability to convert them en masse. There are plenty of Christian lands on your Eastern borders to focus on prior to that.

I think that's an optimal way to play Russia. Catholic land is easy to convert, you can get some conversion via vassals, diplo-annexation gives you full cores and if you go after Poland, that's a large culture to accept and easy to convert giving a solid boost to economy (and metropolitans). Horde land early on is mostly negative - better take 300 mana from them while you can (later they will be too small to rival) and conquer them later - you'll have better missionary strength then and together with +2% area conversion bonus from missions it will be much easier to absorb that land in 16th century.

 

[Blizzrd33]

So guys, thanks for all the help.

Focussing more on vassal feeding than direct coring (one downside of permaclaims - they look so tasty that I have a deep desire to take them for myself) allowed me to finish administrative ideas by 1511. The Hordes better already start to dig their own graves, because once I hit tech 10 and form Russia I will give them a swift death.

Once you fill out the Influence and Admin groups you will get access to the Vassal Integration policy for an extra 20% discount. And if you keep all of your vassals happy (above 120 relations) you will be a good chance to snag an extra 15% discount with the Loyal Subjects event. All those discounts are very tasty, can recommend.

Before the end of the Age of Discovery, be sure to fight a big war with Denmark and jag their vassal Norway using the Transfer Subject age ability. You only need one solid ally (Poland, Austria or England) and the war is not even that difficult. Let your ally do most of the sieging and once you get above 75 War Score you'll have enough to ask for Norway in the peace deal. Norway will usually start colonising the New World for you while they are your vassal, before you eventually integrate them.

 

[petertju]

- having to devpush institutions

Focusing on this since you already got a lot of advice on your other points. As Muscovy, it really isn't necessary to devpush for institutions. You are close enough to Europe to get Renaissance, Colonialism and Printing Press. Try to push to get as much as you can at 0 or max 10% extra cost. This is still overviewable, afterwards you can just wait for them to spread to you, this will give you around 2000 extra MP per institution.

You might be afraid you will lag behind in tech, but countries around you will suffer the same problem. For Military it is totally fine to pay the extra MP because there aren't that many other milpoint sinks and this is the most important one to keep at a high level.

 

[Steel_atlas]

So guys, thanks for all the help.

Focussing more on vassal feeding than direct coring (one downside of permaclaims - they look so tasty that I have a deep desire to take them for myself) allowed me to finish administrative ideas by 1511. The Hordes better already start to dig their own graves, because once I hit tech 10 and form Russia I will give them a swift death.

Its better to vassalize and force convert them.

They will have accepted cultures that you wont and you can use your missionaries to convert their provinces so by the time to you integrate them you can culture swap the provinces.

 

[klingonadmiral]

Bad economy as Russia? You should really get to know how the economy works before talking about relative worth of ideas.

Here's what I mean with bad econ:

Only barely making even as a major not filling its forcelimit in 1600 is the very definition of having a bad economy. Trade goods are bad (3.5 for pelts, your most common non-trash product is nothing more but okay, and Iron also is a bit of a late bloomer), low Siberian development, and a horrible trade setup for Asia going through my hated Astrakhan node.

 

[Big Bad France]

If you conquer the Ottomans, China, or India, your trade income will skyrocket.

 

[klingonadmiral]

If you conquer the Ottomans, China, or India, your trade income will skyrocket.

Conquering Ottomans will not directly help my trade income since Constantinople doesn't merge with Novgorod until Lübeck. But war with the Ottomans is planned once I hit tech 19, to deny them DotF status (the reason Great Horde still exists. What a great game mechanic).

But I would like to put Russia's economic situation into perspective by citing another of my more recent runs (which no longer exists as I clear my saves folder and only kept my most treasured games):

Bengal in 1600: 1195 dev, 173.4 ducats/month
Russia in 1600: 1718 dev, 137.84 ducats/month

And my Bengal campaign wasn't even that trade focussed, mostly because post-Dharma the Bengal node kinda stinks.

 

[cetvrtak]

Here's what I mean with bad econ:

View attachment 636046

Only barely making even as a major not filling its forcelimit in 1600 is the very definition of having a bad economy. Trade goods are bad (3.5 for pelts, your most common non-trash product is nothing more but okay, and Iron also is a bit of a late bloomer), low Siberian development, and a horrible trade setup for Asia going through my hated Astrakhan node.

Move those two merchants from Kazan and Siberia to collect in Novgorod and transfer from Crimea. You own the entire Kazan node, so everything is transferred anyway. And Siberia should be more or less the same story. It won't make you magically rich but it is a good start. Your trade income is really low. Russia has 15 ducats in 1618 start, so you can see how much you're missing. How do you rank among other countries in trade income?

Edit: few other points - you can afford to lower the army maintenance (I usually have it at 25%,later on even 0%) and mothball forts when not at war. Leave the corruption rooting out to the ahead of time tech bonuses (of course, try to stay ahead of time).

 

[Big Bad France]

Conquering Ottomans will not directly help my trade income since Constantinople doesn't merge with Novgorod until Lübeck. But war with the Ottomans is planned once I hit tech 19, to deny them DotF status (the reason Great Horde still exists. What a great game mechanic).

But I would like to put Russia's economic situation into perspective by citing another of my more recent runs (which no longer exists as I clear my saves folder and only kept my most treasured games):

Bengal in 1600: 1195 dev, 173.4 ducats/month
Russia in 1600: 1718 dev, 137.84 ducats/month

And my Bengal campaign wasn't even that trade focussed, mostly because post-Dharma the Bengal node kinda stinks.

There is an event to move your capital to Constantinople, rename it Tsargrad, and get free development. Then you can still use a merchant to collect what doesn't get directed there in St. Petersburg. But I'd say that India is probably the most lucrative first target, looking at your map. Maybe Ming falls apart in the meantime.

 

[Steel_atlas]

Conquering Ottomans will not directly help my trade income since Constantinople doesn't merge with Novgorod until Lübeck. But war with the Ottomans is planned once I hit tech 19, to deny them DotF status (the reason Great Horde still exists. What a great game mechanic).

But I would like to put Russia's economic situation into perspective by citing another of my more recent runs (which no longer exists as I clear my saves folder and only kept my most treasured games):

Bengal in 1600: 1195 dev, 173.4 ducats/month
Russia in 1600: 1718 dev, 137.84 ducats/month

And my Bengal campaign wasn't even that trade focussed, mostly because post-Dharma the Bengal node kinda stinks.

Can you post your trade node setup?

The only thing I can think of is you have traxonia and oriat blocking your trade line from China.

Getting to China doesnt help if you cant pull the trade to Novgorod