Muscovy strategy
From EU3 Wiki
Ok guys, here is the long awaited Muscovy strategy. It’s just a guide for the start of the game, after the first 50 years everybody should go on how he likes.
[edit] The Start
First of all, I presume that you start the game at the historical beginning and do not move the time sliders. Playing Russia later on might not be a real challenge as it is extremely big and powerful by the time of the American War of Independence. However, it also might be fun to interfere in this war with Russia…. ;-) anyway, let’s get back into the dark middle ages.
Be prepared for a real tough start. You start with only five provinces, which are rather poor, and lousy 60 Ducats. Even worse, one of your provinces is not connected to your capital. There are three minor states directly in your vicinity: Tver, Quasim-Khanat and Yaroslavl, of which Quasim is your vassal. The only good news about this is that Quasim will help you out from time to time (with an occasional 1.000 men army dropped into your wars...) and you can easily ally yourself with Yaroslavl and Tver. Bad news is hat Quasim plays rather aggressive later on and grabs provinces from your enemies while you are distracted with the major battles.
I also presume that you want to unite Russia someday when you start playing with Muscovy. Bad news again: The provinces you need (see here[1]) are either Yaroslav or Tver and Chernigov or Smolensk - and these two are occupied by Lithuania at the beginning of the game. You also need Novgorod, and that is the capital province of the Novgorod Merchant’s Republic to the north.
You are squeezed between some major powers and your small neighbours. To the west, there is Lithuania, one major enemy. They hold some of your core provinces, so you have a CB on them. Bad thing is they are allied with Poland, and that means if you go to war with them the Polish armies will also swarm you unless you manage to make a separate peace with them.
To the north, there is the Merchant’s Republic of Novgorod. You have very good relations with them, their culture is Russian, you can ally easily with them (although you can’t do a marriage with them as they are a republic) and they behave friendly towards you unless you annoy them. Bad thing is, they have Novgorod as their capital province, and you need that for the Russian unification. So there is no way that you can avoid a confrontation with them sooner or later.
To the south, Quasim, your vassal, acts as some kind of buffer against the Golden Horde and Crimea who are dangerous in the beginning of the game. It can be annoying that Quasim gets attacked whenever you have a war with these guys in the south. Any occupied territory of your vassal lowers your war score and decreases the chance for a good peace negotiation. Do not think that Quasim is a “wall” against the Hordes; they are rather an additional front you have to care about.
To the east, your worst enemies in the opening years wait to jump on you: Kasan, Nogai, and behind them Timurid and Sibir.
Right after you start, Kasan will attack you. As they are allied with Crimea, you will most likely be attacked from both sides. And you start with only 3.000 men….
[edit] Your first steps
It might take a few tries until you find the right first steps to survive this tough first six months. I started the game four or five times and every time Kasan and Crimea attacked me after three or four months. There was only one case in which Crimea didn’t join Kasan, and unfortunately I couldn’t seize this occasion because the war with Kasan went so badly.
Here are the first steps you need to do to survive:
1. Make allies with whoever is possible around you: Tver, Yaroslavl, Novgorod. Give them military access and offer them trade alliances. You will most likely not succeed in forming military alliances right away, but after a short time. Do NOT make marriages with them.
2. Use your money to build at least three cavalry units.
3. Take a loan. YES, seriously. You don’t have a chance to survive if you don’t. Buy at least 11.000 men of infantry mercenaries. You don’t have the time to build them.
4. Move an army of 12.000 men to the east and repel the first Kasan attack. Kasan moves in with a first 1.000 men detachment that you can instantly erase with your force. Move another 5.000 men to your southernmost province and move into Crimea’s northernmost province, hold it, repel the first Crimea attack and move south into Woronesh. By that you keep Quasim from occupying these provinces (they don’t have a fort), and you keep Crimea from attacking Quasim or your territory. By the time you have occupied Woronesh and repelled Crimea’s reinforcements, you might be able to form a separate peace with them, maybe even with getting one province or some ducats from them as tribute.
5. Move into Kasan (Simbirsk) simultaneously. Now comes the tricky part: Kasan is starting to throw “huge” armies (7.000-9.000 men) at you. You can either repel them just by holding Simbirsk, or split up your armies, try to get two or more provinces and then quickly make peace at very good terms before Kasan can conquer them back (don’t take your hand off the pause button!). You are most likely not able to have a years long war going on right at this time, so be happy if Kasan gives you Simbirsk (which they did in my case) and make peace with them.
Congratulations, you survived maybe one of the toughest starts in EUIII!
[edit] After the war – general strategy
Now, after approximately one year, you can breathe a little. It might be wise to disband around 4.000-5.000 of the mercenaries. Ok, they would come in handy in your next adventures, but you have taken a loan, therefore your income should be very low and you will fall into the financial trap if you don’t get out of the deficits soon. It’s your decision. EDIT: I just learned that mercenaries cost double in maintenance *sigh*, and of course they do not ever change to better troop classes when you reach a new land tech level - so it might be a very wise decision to disband them one by one and replace them with regular troops whenever you have the time and the money.
But let’s take a look at your governmental decisions first:
General policy sliders: As you start the game with a rather low stability, leave them as they are for now. You also need all tax income you can get, so a lower stability might hurt you badly this early in the game.
Advisors: Good news - you get excellent advisors right at the beginning of the game. Take one for Land Tech, one for Stability and one for Government. If a good Production advisor is available, fire the Stability guy and hire this one.
Budget sliders: Move Trade and Naval to Zero and freeze them there (right-click on the sliders). The reason why I wouldn’t invest any money into trade is that Muscovy is simply not a trading nation. Your goal is to expand the Russian empire and defend yourself, and therefore you need to make many wars. You can’t avoid getting a low reputation after some decades, and at least then your merchants are screwed anyway. Also it’s too costly in the beginning of the game. And why no naval money? Well, it will take at least a few decades until you have conquered a sea access AND made it into your core province, and only then are you able to build a fleet. So you can totally ignore Naval for now.
National ideas: Everybody has his favourites. I picked Military Drill right away as first idea to have that extra cutting edge. If you plan to expand even more aggressively and faster than I did, choose Deus Vult – almost no one except your friends has the same religion than you have around you. However, that gives you lot of BB early in the game, and you don’t want the entire world hate you and declare war on you every five years early in the game, believe me. Idea of the New World: You will need this unless you only want to conquer Europe and forget about the rest. I wouldn’t pick it as first idea though, as you might not be able to use it properly at that time. Remember, you don’t have a port early in the game, thus don’t have a fleet, and you are blocked to the unexplored east by Kasan, Sibir etc. for the first decades. Besides Military drill, Bureaucracy makes sense as it gives you extra income which you desperately need, and it makes the unification much faster. National Banks might also be a good idea to decrease inflation (from which you might suffer faster than you think). Scientific Revolution is also a good thing. I’d personally forget about all the religious ideas and the naval ideas, it’s really not worth it, at least not for Muscovy.
Your army: Your army is the core of your game with Muscovy and you should give absolute focus on it. Always invest a big chunk of your money in Land Tech, look out for a Land Tech advisor if you don’t have one, and don’t forget to convert your troops into the best units once you got to a new Land Tech level. Rely heavily on cavalry, build up a huge cavalry army. The reason for that: You will have a vast empire with widely spread borders, and you will fight in huge provinces – therefore you need a fast force to move around. It takes units almost a year from Moscow to go to your eastern provinces after you defeated Kasan, Sibir and the likes! Also, already Stradioti cavalry can tear any huge Timurid army into pieces early in the game. With the next step, Spahi cavalry, you are almost unbeatable throughout the eastern hemisphere as long as you are not outnumbered 2:1 or your morale is low.
Allies: In the beginning, most probably only nations that are also Christian Orthodox will like you. That gives you very few possibilities. Allying yourself with one of the major powers in Europe that does not fish in your starting grounds (like France, Burgundy, Austria) might come in handy, but to get your relation with them to a point where they don’t decline would cost you too much. So, my advice is to ally with the Russian minors, Novgorod and maybe Georgia for now.
Dealing with your next enemies: Lithuania in the west was unusually weak in my game. They had constant trouble with revolts, and their ally Poland was eaten up by Austria and Hungary early in the game, leaving them with only four provinces. So, Lithuania never declared war on me and Poland did once, with the result that I grabbed half of Lithuania’s provinces. You need a war with Lithuania in the first decades to be able to grab Smolensk from them, which you need for the Russian unification. Be ready and seize the opportunity when it comes! The Teutonic Order might declare war on you from time to time, but is usually not a threat as they can’t raise a huge army. As long as you don’t have any access to their homeland, beat their armies and try to get a white peace or even press some ducats out of them after they lost some battles. Kasan, Nogai, Sibir and Timurid to the east are more trouble in the early game (until 1500 or so). They have huge manpower and after your initial war with Kasan might declare war on you every five years. Hold them off your borders and grab one or two provinces each time. If you feel strong and are not distracted elsewhere, you can destroy one of them in each war, Kasan first, then the Golden Horde, then Nogai, then Sibir etc. Timurid is unfortunately extremely stubborn with peace making. They know that they are HUGE and that you are not able to tear them apart until, let’s say 1520 or so. So the best you can get from them even with holding two or three provinces is white peace. And you even have to wait until they offer it, they won’t accept your offer. I had eradicated Kasan and the Golden Horde from the map by 1500 and reduced Nogai to three provinces (Nogai is weak and accepts tribute payments after two or three lost battles). Same with Crimea, who become weaker and weaker, being squeezed between Lithuania, Hungary, Poland and the Ottomans. Also they are fighting numerous wars with Genua. To grab the Crimean and Genuese Black Sea provinces early might be a good idea for a sea access and a faster opportunity to build a fleet.
Try to keep your stability high, use the opportunity to grab provinces when someone declares war on you rather than declaring war yourself. You need a high stability for two reasons: Distances in your vast Russian empire are huge, so suppressing revolts becomes annoying once you’ve gotten bigger and bigger. It’s not fun at all to be at war with Nogai and Timurid and then have 12.000 men revolt in Moscow…. And you need the extra tax income. Some of your provinces are rich, many others not, as you just conquered them and most of them do not share your religion.
Dealing with your “friends”: Yaroslavl, Tver, Quasim and Novgorod should be your friends in the first few decades. After you have grown and repelled the worst attacks, you must start to think about them as you need their provinces for the Russian unification. Now there might be players who are lucky and patient with diplo-annexation – I’m not. First thing I did was breaking all ties with Tver, wore my relationship down and declared war on them. Be sure to break any tie you have with them (military access for each side, trade agreement etc.) to avoid an even bigger stability hit. Hopefully you did not do marriages with them, because breaking up that gives you a stability hit. If you are really mean you also break all ties with Yaroslavl except the military partnership. If you then declare war on Tver and Yaroslavl doesn’t join you, you have a CB on them! War with these dwarves should be easy. But Novgorod is a tough one. They are widespread along your northern border, they are wealthy, and they might already have an army of 8.000-10.000 men, which combined can hurt you if you are not prepared. They are also allied with the one province minor Pskov – good thing, you can grab them when you are at war with Novgorod. Just be sure to siege them right from the start and make peace (annexation) with them before you end your war with Novgorod. You can wear your relations with Novgorod down and wait and hope that they will declare war on you. But most likely they won’t, and if, then only when you are at war with Timurid, Nogai, etc. and are really distracted. If you want to attack them, you more or less have no choice than to accept the -3 stability loss – remember, you need Novgorod for the Russian unification! You might not be able to reduce them to their capital in the first step. Move in small troops into their vast eastern provinces and siege them, concentrate your main army to their cores in the west. It took me three wars to eradicate Novgorod. After the first, you own some of their core provinces, and next time they should be so stupid to declare war on you themselves.
After that, you have your “core” together and can now play freely as you wish. The game still is a challenge then. You might still not have beaten up Timurid in the east, as most of their territory is Terra Incognita for you. To the south, you soon are at touch with QuarKonlyu, the Mamlucks and the Ottomans. Try to ally with Georgia, but stomp them occasionally if you don’t need them anymore. As every new game in EUIII, it’s always a matter of opportunities and occasions how you move forward. You can explore the vast east and colonize all these cold northern territories of Siberia; you can, after annexation of Crimea, wait until you can build a fleet and colonize other parts of the world; you can move south and beat the Persians, Mamlucks and later on the Ottomans; and of course you can do what real Russia never managed to achieve: control Europe entirely – I leave it up to you.
