Russia/Muscovy is underpowered and the AI underperforms, now here's why:

[Hamor]

I simply can't bring myself to play EU4 in its current state, Muscovy was my favorite nation to start out as. Although in 1.7 and previous releases it was seen as an 'easy' nation but took a hell of a lot micromanagement mid and early game, I can now safely assess that Muscovy is weak as piss when the AI plays it. Any player that denies that in 1.8 then you're lying to yourself heres why.

--> Local Autonomy in colonizable provinces in Siberia no longer give you the large manpower base due to having a 50% reduction. You will also notice when you load a later start date such as the 30 years war Russia has 0% LA on it's colonized provinces, lol.

---> Tartar culture groups split, Good luck getting the tartar subcultures accepted. Even with the 50% accepted culture threshold humanist gives and a 10% from a policy. It's still nowhere near enough to get them accepted even lategame as I also spammed production and tax buildings on the provs and not a single culture was accepted.

---> Hoard alliance chains, as I have done about 10 Muscovy/Russia playthroughs now I eventually got around the Ottoman,Timurid,Golden Hoard alliance chain by constantly pushing east and west (eating culture provs from lith). However whenever I've noticed this alliance chain happens to the AI then GG muscovy/Russia 9/10 times they will die a slow death.

---> Patriarch authority gaining is screwed, as most of you guys have noticed high PA is crucial for Russia to keep revolt risk low and convert sunnis faster however for some unknown reason a ''''genius'''' within Paradox studios came up with the great idea of further nerfing the already under powered religion known as Orthodox. On average it now takes 300-400 years to get your PA authority to 100% because of the rarity of the events. Worry not though my friends I made another thread here http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum...I-think-pious-evnets)-rarely-happen-now/page4 that Wiz replied on, however it wasn't the best reply I expected because he is still trying to nerf Orthodox.


So how do we restore Muscovy to its former glory so the AI and new players can consistently not get ruined?

The answer is simple, remove the ridiculous LA cap on colonizable provinces (atleast start colonies on 50% LA and give us the option to take it down over time)
Secondly remove the tartar subcultures they're fucking ridiculous nowhere on the map is that congested with different culture groups. Removing the tartar subcultures and restoring it to one main one should atleast fix the AI under performing part.

- Ridiculous AI generals fought Crimea during the 1500's and they had two six shock generals that annihilated my army, complete and utter bs

- From someone who has 1k hours + and loves playing the game multiplayer in big organised games, and singleplayer.

 

[Denkt]

Muscovy is extreamly powerful, hordes get weaker by time and a rush can remove the unstable Lithuania and a PU Sweden as treats, and with that you basicly can conquereverything and even control asian lands without oversea becuase of land connection.

 

[Hamor]

Talking as if this is still 1.7, doubt you have had a Russian play through yet. Lithuania now has so many extra provinces it can quite easily crush the rebels, I kept it in a war and raised its WE to 12 after a period of 10 years and Lith + Poland were still able to fight me and crush the rebels. Time is what Muscovy doesn't have the AI should be able to form Russia (and when I say form have its entire region at the minimum + bordering bearing sea) when you leave the AI hoardes for too long they don't necessarily get weaker if anything they might break an alliance or two making it an opportune moment to annex the weaker foe. Waiting as Russia though is poison, especially in a multiplayer game when you want to expand as fast as possible.

 

[Denkt]

I have played Muscovy in 1.8
It only took like one war and Lithuania was destroyed.
You can one day dow Kazan, make it a vassal and use it cb to feed it horde lands and nonone cares.
Sweden may be a bit trickier but it is still not hard.
You can feed your vassals useless novogrod lands and instanly go to war with little to none stability issues.

 

[balmung60]

I simply can't bring myself to play EU4 in its current state, Muscovy was my favorite nation to start out as. Although in 1.7 and previous releases it was seen as an 'easy' nation but took a hell of a lot micromanagement mid and early game, I can now safely assess that Muscovy is weak as piss when the AI plays it. Any player that denies that in 1.8 then you're lying to yourself heres why.

--> Local Autonomy in colonizable provinces in Siberia no longer give you the large manpower base due to having a 50% reduction. You will also notice when you load a later start date such as the 30 years war Russia has 0% LA on it's colonized provinces, lol.

---> Tartar culture groups split, Good luck getting the tartar subcultures accepted. Even with the 50% accepted culture threshold humanist gives and a 10% from a policy. It's still nowhere near enough to get them accepted even lategame as I also spammed production and tax buildings on the provs and not a single culture was accepted.

---> Hoard alliance chains, as I have done about 10 Muscovy/Russia playthroughs now I eventually got around the Ottoman,Timurid,Golden Hoard alliance chain by constantly pushing east and west (eating culture provs from lith). However whenever I've noticed this alliance chain happens to the AI then GG muscovy/Russia 9/10 times they will die a slow death.

---> Patriarch authority gaining is screwed, as most of you guys have noticed high PA is crucial for Russia to keep revolt risk low and convert sunnis faster however for some unknown reason a ''''genius'''' within Paradox studios came up with the great idea of further nerfing the already under powered religion known as Orthodox. On average it now takes 300-400 years to get your PA authority to 100% because of the rarity of the events. Worry not though my friends I made another thread here http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum...I-think-pious-evnets)-rarely-happen-now/page4 that Wiz replied on, however it wasn't the best reply I expected because he is still trying to nerf Orthodox.


So how do we restore Muscovy to its former glory so the AI and new players can consistently not get ruined?

The answer is simple, remove the ridiculous LA cap on colonizable provinces (atleast start colonies on 50% LA and give us the option to take it down over time)
Secondly remove the tartar subcultures they're fucking ridiculous nowhere on the map is that congested with different culture groups. Removing the tartar subcultures and restoring it to one main one should atleast fix the AI under performing part.

- From someone who has 1k hours + and loves playing the game multiplayer in big organised games, and singleplayer.

1.) All of Siberia was less than 50 base tax and pretty much rock bottom provincial manpower even before LA was a thing. The Siberia nerf is negligible, as the vast majority of Russia's wealth and manpower come from its European provinces. The main value of Siberia is, and always has been trade and acting as a highway to the squishy eastern hordes.

2.) Actually an meaningful nerf to Russia. Or anyone else in the area. Maybe try stacking Religious and your NIs to convert them faster and cheaper instead?

3.) This really shouldn't be much different from 1.7, but why are you worried about Ottomans and Timurids? The Ottomans underperform even worse than Muscovy (I frequently see the Ottomans fail to even push outside of Anatolia + the Balkans) and the Timurids are a horde, so once you're at miltech 10 or 15, their troops are basically just cannon fodder. I'm also not sure why you'd be facing an alliance chain unless you're calling them in as co-belligerents.
3.a) As far as I'm concerned, things happening differently in the Russia region in AI hands every once in a while is a good thing. Consistent Muscovite domination every single time wasn't fun or interesting. I'd have settled for even just seeing Novgorod occasionally win.

4.) This is a known not-quite-bug. Nerfing the events some was intentional, but they accidentally went too far.

5.) Nowhere on the map is that congested with different culture groups? Have you seen the new Far East? Five different culture groups with a few more on the edges, two of which contain exactly one culture.

 

[Freudia]

Russia is still strong (maybe too strong in fact). The expansion options they have available to them is only rivaled by the Ottomans, who underperforms even worse than Russia does.

The single tartar group made Russia very, very strong at pretty much no input. It was a lot like if the HRE was all one culture.

Also good on Russia for not performing as well as they did in previous builds. It was kind of dumb to see Muscovy/Russia dominate the east every single game without fail. Now there's actual variance in the map over there. Besides, lucky Muscovy probably still does perfectly fine; the only thing that really shafts them is getting dragged into the religious league wars.

 

[Hamor]

Dumb to see Russia dominate the east? lol? maybe because this games historical?

 

[balmung60]

Dumb to see Russia dominate the east? lol? maybe because this games historical?

Actually, it's dumb to see Russia dominate the east because they didn't really do that, beyond a few tribes and hordes (and when they did try, Qing beat them and actually took some land). Russia put much more effort into expanding west (and south) than east.

 

[Freudia]

Dumb to see Russia dominate the east? lol? maybe because this games historical?

The game isn't historical. You can't just play the history argument in regards to the game about why you think Russia should be amazingly stupid in this game when you get 'historical' nonsense like the Burgundian Inheritance ignoring everything that led up to it, Ottomans being unable to make historical conquests within the respective timeframes, and ahistoric coalitions resulting on dogpiling of minors just for beating up their neighbor and ahistoric coalitions forming on historic conquests.

 

[Vistariel]

I personally just have a serious problem with the 50% autonomy factor to all colonized provinces now. It affects Muscovy, all Asian and pacific islander nations looking to expand, native Americans, Africans, etc. They need to remodel it so that if the colony is connected to your territory geographically - or within the same continental domain - that you should have no permanent autonomy. I love moving OPMs or smaller nations - like the Hansa - overseas. This screws me up so much in general...

 

[MonorailCat]

Only played Muscovy one time in 1.8 for some achievements and for me it felt quite overpowered.
Since I wanted the conquer Japan achievement I focused to the east. Ate Novgorod and left Finland around as a "Western Arms trade" buddy. By the time I arrived in Eastern Siberia I had a manpower base of 430k and a forcelimit of around 160. Allied Sweden and Austria and ate some chunks out of Poland Lithuania and released some Nations so I would be safe in the west.

I fed all Sunni-Provinces to my Kazhan Vassal until I finished some idea groups to deal with unrest.

 

[mudcrabmerchant]

--> Local Autonomy in colonizable provinces in Siberia

It was ridiculous that colonizing Siberia ever gave you any significant manpower. The region should be colonized for geopolitical extension and extraction of fur, and shouldn't give anything else to anyone.

---> Tartar culture groups split,

The split is stupid, yes, but the old situation led to quick acceptance of Tartars, which meant no cultural replacement with Russians, ever. And this is one of the few areas in the entire world where large-scale culture conversion is appropriate. However, the old Tatar spread fits, and a revamp of the accepted culture system to take into account more than just base tax ratios is the fix that's needed. And/or events to give Russia free culture spread to Tatar provinces.

---> Hoard alliance chains

Shouldn't alliance chains be less of an issue, now that chain call-to-arms are only possible if you set co-belligerents? Unless the Ottos ally with hordes other than Crimea, I can't see this being a huge problem.

---> Patriarch authority gaining is screwed

Yeah, this needs to be sped up. Thankfully Wiz has commented on this already.

 

[Krajzen]

Hey guys I have another explanation of super weak Russia. What do you think about the following theory...


Historical Russia became superpower after 'Dominum Maris Baltici', I mean: after finally getting open access to Baltic 'trade node' <after brutal wars with Sweden and Commonwealth> and being able to sell it's rich resources (grain, furs, metals) to West. The main purpose of Siberia was to provide resources which later went through Baltic to Western Europe.

However in EU4 while Russia often achieves big size it usually remains economical 0 due to the fact that it colonizes super poor Siberia while caring not enough about trade power and irch provinces in Baltic/European part: it gets lot of provinces in Eurasia but still has relatively poor income because Sweden/Lithuania/whoever still controls rich Baltic provinces (such as Neva) or rich Russian provinces (such asSmolensk).

I have seen this type of Russia in AOW a lot of times: it has little or no access to sea, poor trade income, it doesn't reconquers Russian provinces controlled by Lithuania, it doesn't even annihilates all hordes (which occupy resource - rich areas of modern southern Russia) and focuses too much on colonizing poor Siberian provinces. Then it looks geographically big but it has bad income.

Seriously, it looked like that in all my AOW games. Russia is big but not enough big and strong but not enough strong.

Hey, occasionally I would like to see Russia conquering Scandinavia or Eastern Europe

 

[IIWW]

Don't shout, Krajzen But yeah, the trade system as it is makes selling give no profit, but somehow buying gives one.

 

[Clonefusion]

Guys Russia can easily become the richest nation in game, it can control its trade easily and with buildings u can Increase trade value of each prov by around 2, take that times the amount of provs u have and u have an Insane amount of prod and trade income.
The ai does not fare well cause historically Russia also had a lot of rulers and It took Russia a long time to become superpower, the land Russia historical took till 1800, u can conquer in game much faster.

 

[Freudia]

Seriously, it looked like that in all my AOW games. Russia is big but not enough big and strong but not enough strong.

Hey, occasionally I would like to see Russia conquering Scandinavia or Eastern Europe

This stems entirely from AI coding. It looks at ease of land acquisition, and its wars vs Scandinavia/Eastern Europe are harder than wars vs underperforming hordes or fresh meat China.

 

[Hamor]

Hey guys I have another explanation of super weak Russia. What do you think about the following theory...


Historical Russia became superpower after 'Dominum Maris Baltici', I mean: after finally getting open access to Baltic 'trade node' <after brutal wars with Sweden and Commonwealth> and being able to sell it's rich resources (grain, furs, metals) to West. The main purpose of Siberia was to provide resources which later went through Baltic to Western Europe.

However in EU4 while Russia often achieves big size it usually remains economical 0 due to the fact that it colonizes super poor Siberia while caring not enough about trade power and irch provinces in Baltic/European part: it gets lot of provinces in Eurasia but still has relatively poor income because Sweden/Lithuania/whoever still controls rich Baltic provinces (such as Neva) or rich Russian provinces (such asSmolensk).

I have seen this type of Russia in AOW a lot of times: it has little or no access to sea, poor trade income, it doesn't reconquers Russian provinces controlled by Lithuania, it doesn't even annihilates all hordes (which occupy resource - rich areas of modern southern Russia) and focuses too much on colonizing poor Siberian provinces. Then it looks geographically big but it has bad income.

Seriously, it looked like that in all my AOW games. Russia is big but not enough big and strong but not enough strong.

Hey, occasionally I would like to see Russia conquering Scandinavia or Eastern Europe

By far, nothing irritates me more than seeing Russia colonize to the bearing sea and not even reached the black sea.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

By far, nothing irritates me more than seeing Russia colonize to the bearing sea and not even reached the black sea.

It's a necessary reality most likely.

In real life, a big part of the reason Russia only did minimal conquests to the East (and lost to Qing) is that it's just not that easy to walk across Asia, or ship supplies before you have a good railroad setup. In EU IV, the logistics are a joke.

The only way to get AI Muscovy, which will behave like any other AI, to target the west consistently short of suicide railroad missions (forcing them to attack into often-suboptimal situations even more than the AI usually does), would be to significantly alter the power balance between East and West such that the East is significantly stronger or the West weaker. Absent that, AI Russia will always look between these two options:

1. Difficult conquests into downstream trade nodes against strong alliances.
2. Easier conquest into upstream trade that can be controlled against much softer targets.

Most players would pick #2 if not role playing, and so will the AI. This is why you see Russia conquering China more often than you see it partitioning Poland in the game. Russia seems destined to always overperform in the East and underperform in the West with the current tech group setup.

What's killing it right now are the league wars and lucky Poland. Those two things are by far the greatest odds of ruining Russia's day, but Russia still succeeds somewhat often too, so I think this is reasonable. Historically, the emergence of Russia was not very easy at all; they had a lot of disadvantages that their leadership overcame. In player hands, you can do that and then some, in the AI's it will sometimes do well and sometimes poorly.

 

[ashmizen]

It's a necessary reality most likely.

In real life, a big part of the reason Russia only did minimal conquests to the East (and lost to Qing) is that it's just not that easy to walk across Asia, or ship supplies before you have a good railroad setup. In EU IV, the logistics are a joke.

The only way to get AI Muscovy, which will behave like any other AI, to target the west consistently short of suicide railroad missions (forcing them to attack into often-suboptimal situations even more than the AI usually does), would be to significantly alter the power balance between East and West such that the East is significantly stronger or the West weaker. Absent that, AI Russia will always look between these two options:

1. Difficult conquests into downstream trade nodes against strong alliances.
2. Easier conquest into upstream trade that can be controlled against much softer targets.

Most players would pick #2 if not role playing, and so will the AI. This is why you see Russia conquering China more often than you see it partitioning Poland in the game. Russia seems destined to always overperform in the East and underperform in the West with the current tech group setup.

What's killing it right now are the league wars and lucky Poland. Those two things are by far the greatest odds of ruining Russia's day, but Russia still succeeds somewhat often too, so I think this is reasonable. Historically, the emergence of Russia was not very easy at all; they had a lot of disadvantages that their leadership overcame. In player hands, you can do that and then some, in the AI's it will sometimes do well and sometimes poorly.

If you read history, you'll be amazed by how weak Poland was, easily manipulated by Russia and defeated by Sweden, Russia, etc. I mean, the biggest challenge to Russia's rise to power was Sweden and the Ottoman empire. Russian rulers had nightmares about those two, but hardly gave a thought to Poland, it's personal punching bag and buffer state.

In game, Sweden is beatable by Russian AI, and with both Russia and Ottomans are under performing in 1.8, they don't even border each other all game long. The main problem is that historically Russia drew heavily on the Ukraine area, the second most populated and rich area of the Russian Empire. At game start, all of it lies in Lithuania, and Russia is never strong enough to beat Poland+Lithuania, even after colonizing to the Pacific.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

If you read history, you'll be amazed by how weak Poland was, easily manipulated by Russia and defeated by Sweden, Russia, etc. I mean, the biggest challenge to Russia's rise to power was Sweden and the Ottoman empire. Russian rulers had nightmares about those two, but hardly gave a thought to Poland, it's personal punching bag and buffer state.

To be clear, I was discussing the current cause of Russia's struggles in game. I was not alluding to Poland when discussing their historical hardships, but I didn't clarify there. Essentially, once it offs Novgorod Russia finds itself in a position where ANY attack on its western flank involves one or multiple lucky nations, and to make matters even worse PLC takes aristocratic for +core cost. If there's anything inordinately stacking the deck against Russia, it's the odd PLC strength in 1.8. In previous patches lack of luck and rebels neutered PLC, and in a couple non-lucky experiments that can happen brutally now. If you yank aristocratic off their early ideas (why is a historically partitioned nation taking aristocratic 2nd?! If PLC succeeds sometimes, it shouldn't be from nobody wanting to even bother with it lol) and they're not lucky, I bet you get a different outcome often.

As for the Crimea/Ottomans, that area would probably be okay if PLC didn't quickly turn into a +core cost iron luckball.