what short of being Prussia can stop the russians

[Ricox]

The AI change fronts based on number of enemies, and goes to the least defended front. So when you are done on your front, you move to where they are, now the AI will switch front again. I see this best during religious wars.

Noticed the same. It's ridiculously bloody annoying, it's basically whack-a-mole of running back and forth between fronts with your entire army of hundreds of thousands against the enemy's hundreds of thousands until someone finally engages, but not after suffering enormous attrition.

In my latest games Russia tends to have strangely uneffective army composition consist of like 90% of Infantry. Maybe it's coz of new Streltsy mechanism. It's easy to stackwipe them with proper units with back row filled with artillery.

I've noticed this with a lot of AI countries, not just Russia. The AI sometimes just makes ridiculous stacks overloaded with infantry, no cavalry, and some artillery - usually done by countries with large forcelimits. Maybe it could be a global AI bug?

 

[LegacyCWAL]

How many of those units are mercs? The AI seems smart enough to build mercs when it's short on manpower, and smart enough not to build merc cannons, but not quite smart enough to balance merc infantry with provincial cannons, especially after suffering a couple stackwipes.