The thing is that still draws to the same problem; Muscovy can expand obscenely quickly because the neighbouring AI are totally hopeless against Russia. It is not that Russia is inherently powerful (because they're extremely easy to defeat or diplo-vassalise as any European power, possibly excluding Lithuania due to the tendency for the two to become rivals) it's because Russia (like France, really) is prone to being fed 'free' land by incompetent AI losing wars that they either shouldn't have started or shouldn't have lost (or both). In the rare event a coalition is started against Muscovy it's nearly inevitably a few of their steppe neighbours who then mass their armies and march them into Siberia to die, giving Muscovy more land.
In 1444 there are no 'deep' Russian provinces, so blaming AI's handling of Siberia is just plain wrong.
I might add, I haven't once seen them expand into Europe and only once have I seen them attempt to do so (which... was against my Poland which ruled the northern half of the HRE and France, which rather ended badly for Russia.) which may also be part of the problem; because they never annoy the big European powers they never really end up fighting a major power (except the Ottomans, who as I pointed out seem to think Siberia is a primary target for invading Russia)
Russia never fights Europe because the AI prefers to expand through the path of least resistance, which, in this case, are the Steppes and then the Chinese/Indians. Given, I as a player do the same thing, expanding through Asia is much easier than expanding through the Commonwealth which is likely to incur the wrath of European luckies whom can put up serious resistance. In my last Sweden game I simply annexed Kazan (a 3 province minor Steppe Horde) and that put the Ottomans and British (!?) in a Coalition vs me, which the British then promptly DOWed me using the Coalition CB. Luckily 166% Discipline swedish deathstacks made mincemeat of the Ottomans and the British were only able to dispatch a 30K expeditionary force.
EDIT: Oh yeah and of course Lucky rather breaks everything just like it does with the Ottomans, keeping them equal to or ahead of non-lucky European nations resulting in far superior troops than they should have
The Ottomans are fine. Most of the time they dont even reach their historical borders. Now, if the Ottomans were, on a regular basis, expanding into India then I would see cause for complaint but I never even seen them make it to Persia, as they prefer to expand in Egypt and North Africa.
Russia just turns into what it became in the 1850s a little earlier. A sweden player that doesn't prioritise defence and mutual protection against the Muscovites deserves to lose their kingdom.
Frankly in my current Sweden game the Russians are a pushover, never mind any time the Ottomans get Crimea rather than Russia.
Your Sweden though, you are even more OP than the Russians are, and you are in a position to knock the Russians down early and replace them before they could expand into Siberia.
Asian countries do not have that luxury, dealing with the Russian bear is far more difficult for them.
