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A Newbies' Guide to Ruining Russia

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After having read several excellent AARs and having used this forum much to overcome my starting problems, I've decided to do an AAR as well. Obviously, as this is just my first real game (had two training scenarios), there will hardly be anything for the experienced players to learn. But perhaps a few cheap laughs? And then perhaps other newbies who may still be stuck with EU1 like me can learn something?

***************
Setup.
Standard GC, Russia, normal mode, annexation ON, FoW ON (turned off a few times during boring peace), missions OFF (I hate those interruptions).

General goal: an expansive, military game with the aim of conquering all the russianshielded provinces. After that establish enough economic and military strength through colonisation so as to avoid being crushed by another great power.
****************
1492-1502:
One of my reasons to choose Russia was a good, strong initial army. Or so it seems with app. 130k army to start with. The strategy suggestion at the scenario setup is sort of misleading - to put it mildly. It encourages a very aggressive start which is kind of hazardous to a newbie like myself. The recommendation was to attack south through Kazan etc. against weak enemies.

OK, fine I was going to do that, but at the same time I noticed a slight problem with my strategy: I got no colonists since I had no coastal provinces or any other bonus (Russia is Orthodox). Therefore I reconned that before Kazan, I could just hurl my superior armies against the Teutonic Order to grab 1 or 2 coastal provinces. After all TO had only about 30k army - 5 times less than Russia.

DoW TO (well, actually I had to restart because I started off with a RM attempt that expended my only diplomat :rolleyes: ) and invade Ingermanland. Boom! 10 k defending TOs defeat 55k invading russians easily. My blind confidence in russian superiority was penalised becaused I hadn't checked the tech status which is pretty poor for the russians: LT 2, NT 1, TT 1 and IT 1.

Basically my army was equipped with clubs and slingshots while the Teutons must have had early machineguns or something :eek: Just to make things worse, most of the rest of the army was going into position for a second front against the Kazan. Optimistic...all the army was needed to defeat the Teutons. Eventually they did in Ingermanland and was reinforced by new recruits which could now fight a defensive battle behind a river against the rest of the teutonic armies coming from Estonia. That was a lot easier and after being victorius, the russian army could continue to Estonia which was quickly sieged.

The war against the Teutonic order ended in an odd kind of 'success' two provinces controlled (Estonia and Ingermanland), but a loss of more than 100k army and all cash spent. To aggrevate things, the teutons could be seen recruiting in both Kurland and Meml. For that reason I accepted the peaceoffer yielding me Estonia allthough that was an inconvenient location, but it would give the one colonist I wanted.

Now, back to the Kazan. If this was ever going to be a roll over like the suggested stratgey had lured me to think, I'd need more army. Hence I took out a loan and build up about 50k army which was positioned near Kazan borders. This time it would be a well organised attack with two battlegroups roughly same size and with plans to take Lipetsk and Ryazan. DoW, move in, defeat fairly weak Kazans (10k armysizes) who fortunately were classes lower than the teutons in fightingability. I didn't have much artillery at this stage actually - around 20, but forts feel quickly enough anyway. Moved on to besiege Kazan and Tambow. Eventually around 1501 the Kazans were ready to accept a peace yielding Ryazan and Lipetsk. I signed happily because at this stage winter and sieges was grinding my army down to almost zero and I didn't want to take out another loan. At this stage I hadn't spend any money at all on cityimprovements so that was next on the list.

During this time I had accepted an alliance led by Bohemia with Hungary, Moldavia and Haseatic League as followers. For no better reason that they were neighbours to Poland-Lithuania which was from day one very hostile looking. None of my allies ever gave me any assistance in that decade though. I was later to repay them that favour ;)

Ending stats:
Army: 11/1/15 (!)
Navy: 0
Tech: 4/1/1/2
Income: 276/y
Loans:1
 
1502-1509: Era of the unwise tzar.

Building up the army and the economy went faster than expected and the appetite for the rest of Kazan readily returned. At this point I was unaware of two mechanisms which was to penalise my Russia for decades after: BB-rating and duration of peaceterms (5 years). I tried to declare war against Kazan again in order to take the remaining two Kazan provinces (Tambow and Kazan). There's was this scary warning of a -5 stability drop if I did so, but what was the alternative? Not realising I could just wait a few years and use my CB at no stabilitycost, I declared war on Kazan anyway. The war itself went as planned and Kazan was annexed within a few months (at some cost as usual to my almost all-infantry army).

The effect on the rest of the world was notheworthy: Poland-Lithuania declared war and their spanish allies followed suit plus a number of smaller, remote allies. Bad decision perhaps, but I managed to finish off and annexing Kazan (thereby enraging the world yet again) before the real action against Poland-Lithuania started.

PL was able to send their armies across my borders and set a number of provinces a flame, but I choose to build defensive infantry armies in the many forrested provinces of Russia where their cavalry is of less use.

My income was fairly good at this time (about 300/y) so I was basically drowning the enemy in cheap infantry (cost 3) as revenue arrived in the coffers.

As a result, I was able to gradually drive the battles into PL provinces. This coincided with the arrival of spanish armies which - eventhough small (about 7k)- proved to be a tough bunch of guys. I tried the same tactics again and was successfull at at higher cost. The spanish contingent ended up bouncing back and forth between minor infantry forces up in the Vologda and Far Karelia area.

I occupied Tula and Vorones and was about to drive even deeper into PL when in 1509 the Teutonic Order declared war. As PL and TO had just waged war against eachother in the preceeding years, neither of them had actually any big armies to deploy and those PL had (30-40k) were squandered at wintersieges.

During this and many of the PL wars there was always a flood of PL peaceoffers. Most of them useless. I wanted Tula because it was uncomfortably close to Moscow and I didn't want my capital attacked yet again. However even if PL sometimes offered two provinces, my claim for one - Tula - was always rejected. What's so special about this grain province? Except that it's close to my capital. Is the AI that clever?

Seeing trouble growing and being refused Tula time and again, I decided to accept the next peaceoffer from PL and turn against the TO. One enemy at a time, please! The next peaceoffer was unfortunately just one province, Vorones, but I accepted anyway to get rid of the Teutons. I was eager to conquer Ingermanland so as to link up Estonia with my main empire.

In the meantime of all this, I got the first rebellions in Estonia. Nothing I shouldn't be able to handle since it was just about 10k, but a nuisance since at that time I had no access to Estonia. So Estonia ended up being conquered by the rebels which made inroad into my taxbase (about 10/y).

As usual, my alliance provided no help eventhough it was invited every time. On the contrary, they started dropping off, with the Hanseatic League first, then Hungary untill there was just Bohemia left, but that is a bit into the future. Perhaps Bohemia can be excused because they were attacked by PL and performed terribly, loosing one province, but saved by my peace treaty. Lucky bastards!

Regaining stability was easier than expected, but the invisible BB-rating was probably the reason why the following many decades was an almost unbroken row of DoW against Russia.

Ending stats 1509:
Provinces:15 (added Tambow, Kazan and Vorones)
Army: 19/7/35
Navy: 0
Income: 331/y
Tech: 4/1/1/2
Loans:1
 
Nice! Russia is a great country to play. You can get messed up by things you haven't worked out, but it is very forgiving, because you can build so many infantry continuously. I'm interested to see how it works out.
 
Thanks, IB. You were one of those who were helpfull in making me get a better idea of why I was in the mess I'm about to report. I'm presently at 1570 in the actual play, but I hope to catch up in the AAR bit by bit.
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1509-1513, the dawn of troubed times

My decision to DoW Kazan with a peace treaty in effect wasn't very clever. Luckily, my neighbours didn't appear to be much smarter. The PL attack was much premature IMO anyway. So was the TO DoW because with the strange divsion of territory we had after the last war (I got Estonia), TO was cut off in Ingermanland. And what's more: they hadn't recruited any army in that territory, so how good an idea was it to declare war under those circumstances? My faith in the AI was in decline.

It should perhaps be mentioned that I had ignored Pskov this far. It generally followed the rest of the world in their race to see who could reach -200 relation with Russia first, but I saw no real danger unless Pskov allied with my enemies (somewhere along the timeline it allied with Denmark and Sweden which was not a problem). With Pskov standing in the way, Estonia and Ingermanland were cut off from their owners.

Ingermanland was quickly invaded and besieged. Meanwhile the teutons did me the favour of attacking the rebels in Estonia. Once they had cleared that, they were ready to be invaded themselves. I have no detailed record of this, but the teutonic army was fairly small (10-20k) so I decided to to roll forward and grab Kurland and Memel to annex all of the Teutonic Order. Now that I was at it so to speak.

One thing that I'm definately no good at, is keeping up with the swarm of messages that always seem to appear during the hectic parts of the game. Most types of messages are just set to 'log'. This is practical so I don't have to close boxes all the time while my men are being killed in the background. However, it also means that it is easy to overlook crucial messages. Such as the Hanseatic League joining the war against me!

Happily winning a siege against Kurland, I move to Memel under the leadership of the siege 'expert' Glinski (well, just 1 in siege value, but standard commanders have 0!). Shortly after, while attending recruiting somewhere else in Russia I catch a glimpse of some message that Kurland is under siege??? Going back, I find that the Hanseatic League has landed from the seaside in Kurland. Not a large army (<10k), but still an unpleasant event.

I recruit new footsoldiers all over the line. Kurland looks like a forrested area (one treesymbol in the lower corner) while Estonia and Memel are both swamps. Hence cavalry is of limited use if one can belive the manual on this point. It also costs 5 times as much (14d) as infantry. So footsoldiers it is.

Bringing reinforcements from various russian provinces over the river from Ingermanland to Estonia and on takes a lot of time. I've become ressourcereluctant enough to avoid maneuvers during winter which seems to cost a lot of attrition losses. That stops operations much of the year of course, but the first TO war had taught me attacking and sieging during winter with a 55k army was a BAD idea :confused:

In the following months as Memel was being shelled, I had forces touring Estonia, Latvia and Kurland. Whenever one province was cleared, the darned hanseatics landed in the province where I didn't have an army. One thumb up for the AI at this point.

Obviously they had a fleet located in the Gulf of Riga, unloading troops at will when there was an easy catch. I had NO fleet, but was definately inspired to build one by now :D

Memel was conquered and the entire TO was annexed. The usual warnings about enraging their religious brothercountries. Click OK without even considering.

By 1513 I was feeling ready to reap the benefits of a newly aquired second CoT (Kurland) and a steady cashflow of considerable size. The HL was still breathing down my neck, but I had eventually managed to get a small garrisonforce established in all of the coastal provinces. So wherever they landed, they were bashed easily. The beaching penalty must be considerable.

As they say, the joy of expectation is often the biggest. It rapidly turned out that Kurland was going to be much trouble: constant rebellions of 53k size! Sometimes twice a year. In the beginning the revoltrisk was just 3% - entirely due to nationalism as in Estonia. Gradually in the following years warehaustion added to it so it arrived at 11 or 12%. The HL refused a wite peace and I refused to pay them. The result was a permanent state of war with little action except an occasional HL landing in the baltic countries. Just enough to prevent a white peace due to inactivity :(

In the beginning I tried to fight the rebellion. But 53k- of which almost half was cavalry - was no joke. It simply consumed Ivans faster than I could recruit them. So I changed tactics and stuck to neighbour provinces (almost never any revolts despite the same % of nationalism...) and waited for Father Frost to do his job. Rebels suffered up to 35 in attrition during winter. Later, I could move in and finish off the mob, but in some cases that exactly coincided with a new rebellion (hey! how about finishing the first one before you start a new one!) so my force would be repelled.

Rebels managed to get in control of Kurland at least one time during the next 3 to5 decades, but I can't remember if it ever made it to independence. I don't think so.

A lesson learned from this war was the benefit of having many smaller armies compared to few hughe onces. Sure a 65k army (such as I was about to be invaded by) looks impressive, but before they can fire their first bullet (in my case throw their first stone) a lot of men have dropped off. Often 10-15k during winter. If some of it is even cavalry... :eek:

Ending stats 1513:
Provinces: 19 (added Livonia, Ingermanland, Kurland and Memel)
Army: 42/6/30
Navy: 0/1/0
Alliances: Bohemia, Hungary, Moldavia
War: Hanseatic League.
Income: 394/y, 1 loan
Tech: 4/2/2/2

I wonder if I should have invested more in tech/landtech from then start before I attacked anyone?
 
Estonia is Russian core (I think) so you get no nationalism, and 1/2 the war exhaustion. You really ought to have paid of the Hanse though. Or given them Memel, it's a crappy little province anyway.
 
Money is really tight with me. I HATE paying for peace. The downside of that is suffering long wars, I see :(

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1513-1523, The empire strikes back (sorry, couldn't resist that title)

The HL continues its' token attacks, but eventually I manage to put a fleet to sea. For ressourcereasons it is a galley-only fleet and I had my worries how it would perform since I suspect galleys have less firepower, but there's nothing specific in the manual (as always!).

It turns out that th HL has just a few warships and the rest are transporters (used to land those pesky raids). My fleet of about 8 galleys is victorious allthough the battle rages for what seems like a month - hardly realistic? I have to build new ships at the coastal provinces that unfortunately only have the capacity of 1 ship at a time. All the better that I have so many of them (one more reason to hang on to Memel).

In principle I wouldn't mind letting this go on forever except that warexhaustion is causing me trouble. Then something partly unexpected happens as the Golden Horde declares war on me. With a big BB rating there's hardly ever need for DoWs ;)

It was my plan to make war on them anyway, but this eventually forces me to make peace with the HL. I agree to paying some (surely small) amount of money which I regrettably haven't noted.

The war against the GH goes like the few recent ones: they attack, I use defensive benefits to defeat them and then counterattack almost undefended provinces. Astrakhan actually are allies of GH and declare war on me too, but nothing ever comes of their assistance.

OTOH most of my alliance dishoners Russia and only Bohemia declares war. Needless to say that they never send any troops.

The GH (Bogutsja, Saratov, Kuibyshev and Samara) are annexed into the Russian empire. Other minors should watch and learn from this! Well, they don't. I enter a White peace with Astrakhan to have some time for rebuilding.

Before all this happened, a major war broke out in central Europe as Turkey declared war on Hungary (Austria, Moldavia). Plus another alliance with Venice e.a.

As I was allied to Hungary I honoured that alliance, but had no intention of doing anything. 'Juste retour' as the french say - those guys never helped me either. The turks were not in contact with Russia anyway.

Despite fielding large armies, our alliance makes a mess of things. First Venice makes seperate peace ceding Illyria. Then Moldavia is defeated and annexed by Turkey and finally Hungary closes the deal by giving away Serbia (I think) and the war is over for their part.

I actually had a period of about 4-5 years here where I turned FoW off to be able to enjoy the turks and A-Hs slaughter eachother :D. I also watched France bash England for god-knows-which-time.

It was almost getting boring when the war closes down as mentioned, but in seperate peaces. Which meant that I was left hanging with Turkey. I thought Hungary would have included me in the peacetreaty, but I must have missed something here? Along with Turkey comes a wide range of muslim countries including Iraq and all of North Africa, but excluding Persia which had its' own alliance with a few minors (Persia and Turkey have had a few wars at this point).

Turkish and iraqui troops arrive at my southernwestern border at a route I haven't made note of (I found an on-line world map somewhere. Now I can't find it! I may edit this part later on). However something odd happens. Instead of the usual siege, the turkish army (starting 60-something strength, just tours Russia, going from province to province. As my army is rather depleted by the recent war against the GH, I avoid all but the inital battle (where I'm blasted away).

Turkey then offers peace themselves! At little cost. I was happy to accept because it had been a long time of war with just a brief pause and a russian army almost grinded down (This is actually past 1523).

The most peculiar thing is that even after peace was signed, the turkish army continues up through Russia instead of heading home. Perhaps because it's retreatroute was cut? It ends up in Ingermanland where the rest of the exhausted expedition dies off in a snowclad Ingermanland (incidentally I believe 'Ingermanland' means something like no-mans land).
White death!

Ending stats, 1523:
Provinces: 23 (added Bogutsja, Saratov, Kuibyschev and Samara).
Army: 52/10/57
Navy: 0/11/0
Alliance: Bohemia.
Income: 583/y
Tech: 4/3/2/2
 
Interesting reading, sgt, with a nice touch of humour.

My recent start at Russia took another direction, perhaps I will report on it from memory and saved games one day.

If you get some breathing time between your wars, think about exploring siberia.
 
Yes, I did consider exploring Sibiria. It would be a natural part of my secondary goal (colonizaion). However there were two problems at this stage (at least): 1) Astrakhan and Sibir stood in the way 2) I had no explorer.

I'm btw. lagging in my AAR. Playing year is about 1582. Compared to this, 1523 was an easy time. Things have gone nuts by now! :)

Anyway, I realise this AAR is much different from most AARs since I focuse on the overall strategic situations and seltern bother go into details about unitsizes and commanders etc. I suppose it's worth reading anyway ;)
---------------------------
1523-1538; Growing up

As mentioned in the previous post Turkey offered peace before wandering into the northern blizzards sometime in the mid-twenties.

Not only was this welcome as a way to avoid a much stronger enemy, but it also solved another new problem: war with Poland-Lithuania.

The russian army at this time was like a football in british soccer: kick from one end of the field to the other and back. Every time I was busy putting out fires in one end of the empire, it would burst into flames in the other end.

Eventually I got used to keeping some groups of armies in each end of the country (north/south) which remained in each their sector except for emergencies. All that walking incurs too much attrition.

There was no real emergency when suddenly PL declared war, probably gambling that I was about to be gobbled up by Turkey. And maybe the PL DoW was exactly the reason Turkey offered peace again? Is the AI that clever?

In any case, the russian army had by now been trained in anti-PL warfare: let them come crossing rivers, laying siege to a city, suffer frostbite and then counterattack their crippled forces in the spring. And then counterattack THEIR territories.

It worked remarkably well and they were waxed ('polished' if I may :D ). A helping hand were generously lend Russia by rebels in Kurland and Livonia. They had a remarkable ability to emerge during PL sieges. Of course it is frustrating to see rebels that you can hardly defeat yourself being annihilated by foreign armies with little casualties, but anyway. Free losses endured by the enemy is even better than dealing them damage yourself.

PL was supported by the Hanseatic League which actually performed far better on the battlefield, but with smaller armies so they were defeated in the end anyway. One HL army ended up in the Donega/Karelia area where it kept wandering back and forth, taking ungarrisoned cities. Stopping that raid took quite a while (deploying the usual 'pinball' tactic where a routed army is sent back and forth between two defending armies).

There were naval battles this time too with the minor fleet of PL. I haven't kept record of the outcome, but AFAIR PL had but 2 or 3 warships. Opposing them I deployed my 11 galleys and lost just one (to attrition) while the PL navy was beaten every time, but casualties OTOH were rare.

PL was obviously weakened by previous wars and their main army was some 35k strong, quite small allready by those days' standards. One particular part of much concern was the peaceprocess.

I was fully aware that allthough I did well with my defend-and- counter tactic, I did not have the army to defeat PL entirely. Therefore my aim was a maximum gain of 3 provinces. Eventually I managed to lay siege to and capture 5 or 6 and expected that to be enough to almost dictate the peace.

My plan was to demand Tula, which was uncomfortably close to Moscow, Belarus and Welikia. That way the central Russia would be linked up to the coastal regions - in particular Kurland which was always in the need of rescue for one reason or the other. Untill that stage the only access had been via Ingermanland and Estonia - a cumbersome route, crossing rivers.

The reason for this was the independent Pskov. Initially I wanted that nation to be annexed diplomatically, but eventually I never had the money for improving the relations enough. And OTOH Pskov allied with Denmark and Sweden, which was also my intention (or at least I did not need a war against them!). So a war against Pskov was ruled out. During all these decades of confused warfare in Russia, a 7k army in Pskov could stand, smiling and observing and there was nothing I could do about it.

There were countless of peaceoffers from PL - even shorlty after the outbreak of the war. Eventually they became beneficial to me, but I was always offered the 'wrong' territories. Several counter-peaceoffers were made by me. At one stage I had been offered three provinces (of which only Belarus matched), which I declined and suggest just Tula myself. PL declined that. It seemed no matter what, I could not get Tula.

As usual events would decide for me when I couldn't myself: Astrakhan declared war. Since Astrakhan had quite a few territories (5 or 6) and some army, a two-front war was not of my liking. So I accepted the next PL offer in 1528 with two territories which gave me Kursk and Belgorod (I think). Not bad per se, but a hopless frontline now with Welikia and Tula sticking inbetween, pointing to the russian capital of Moscow.

At this point I did not trust any peaceagreement with PL so I did not move my army south, but instead recruited what I could near Astrakhan.

For a short time Samara was actually conquered by Astrakhan, but as usual I managed to get a marginal advantage by outwaiting the enemy during winter.

Warexhaustion was becoming a pain too. With lots of rebellions - especially in the Baltic States. Even Glinski - my only senior officer - had trouble survivng against the rebels. Also, my armies were thinned and widespread. So given these circumstances, I accepted peace with Astrakhan for the gain of Ligursk. Less than usual, but a gain anyway. It should perhaps be noted btw. that Sibir was allied to Astrakhan and actually declared war too, but to stick to an old tradition, noone ever showed up :D

At this stage - 1530 - Russia was in a unique situation: peace! For the first time in about 30 years.

Time to pay off the loan, rebuild and get ready? Yes, no and no. In 1532 Astrakhan declared war again (talk about breaking peacetreaties).

So it was just 2 years of breathingspace. But it was enough to pay off the loan and build a little army.

Astrakhan was fast out of the door as usual, attacking neighbour provinces in general and Samara in particular. It was a war hardly worth going into detail with. Smallish armies laying siege to a lot of provinces with one army (Glinski) coming with the 60-ish artillery and doing one province at the time. Once in position, the enemy cannot recruit so at that stage it is merely a question of waiting and feeding in replacements to compensate attritionlosses. OK, admitted there was a lot of back-n-forth. Especially because Sibir was this time active, but I never felt there was any doubt of the outcome - it just took an awfully long time because I didn't have a large enough army (too little artillery).

In 1536, I was just about there, waiting for the last Astrakhan province to fall. Declined all offers and waited. Then all of a sudden - one should perhaps not be surprised - Prussia declared war (hey! what did I do to you guys?) and with it England and their minor allies (like Georgia - not that it mattered).

Hurry up, Glinski, you are needed back up north! It took a while (not in my notes) to finish off Astrakhan completely before I could annex it and make a white peace with Sibir (I think - or perhaps they yielded one province) and send Glinski hurrying back (if one can do that with 60 cannons) to the northfront where green recruits had so far been the mainstay of my defense.

And to return things to their usual order, Poland-Lithuania declared war shortly after. Perhaps this time I could get Tula? No that was till refused me, but I got Welikia at least.

That was no thanks to Bohemia, my last ally, which chickened out. I was later to rejoice when I read the tidings that Austria declared war against Bohemia and gained a province in peaceterms.

Do any of the readers have any count of how many DoWs PL have made on me? Must be 5 or 6. If the AI controlled countries get anything near the penalties human players do, the stability of PL should be near -22 or something, but there was still a blue sky over Masovia. Odd.

In any case, PL lasted a fairly short time and the most remarkable episode of those years was the defeat of an english navy. My now 15 galleys defeated 5 english warships. I had feared that confrontation expecting England to be a powerfull naval force, but that never materialised. Britain may rule the waves, but not in the Baltic!

At the end of this periode, the war had been turned as usual and Russia was laying siege to Eastprussia to absorb yet another pesky neighbour. Apart from the fleet, the englishmen were only seen in a few landings into the Baltic countries of which one was destroyed by rebels (thumbs up for you thugs!).

Russia was beginning to look like Russia, if you know what I mean. The territory stretching from north to south of course also meant that Russia was about to be ready for some major action. And major it was, but that is still far ahead of 1538.

Ending stats 1538:
-----------------------
Provinces: 33 (added Kursk, Belgorod, Ligursk, Vologda, Donetsk, Uralsk, Astrakhan, Orenburg, Polotsk, Welikia)
Army: 50/9/64 (not a lot, 'eh?)
Navy: 0/15/6
Alliances: none.
War: England, Prussia e.a. minors out of reach.
Income: 721/y
Tech: 5/3/4/3
 
If you want Poland to accept peace for three provinces you must take the capital otherwise settle for two.
 
good report, just the main story lines, well worth reading.
 
Thanks for the feed-backs.

1538-1548; trying to shape up (and sort of failing)
-------------------------------
Since the initial DoWs I made as part of my optimistic initial plan in the 15th century, not much had gone after any plan. On the contrary; it was the rest of the world that chose the order of events in my Russia. An unpleasant fact wich ia. made diplomacy hopeless because relations with most nations were -200 and money was always needed for emergency recruiting (and thus not available for diplomacy).

I was looking for a way to break that development when Poland-Lithuania declared war against Turkey. The reasons are obscure.

I basically waited for that war to pass, making sure they had been roughing eachother up. Then I DoWed PL. I wanted Tula this time! Of course Turkey and PL made peace shortly after, but they had damaged eachother enough at that time allready.

The battle raged back and forth and the PL side was mostly worth any resistance thanks to their spanish allies, but it was no big deal. In principle the rest of the spanish alliance the Palatinate, Baden, Milan and Genoa was also in war with Russia, but they obviously preferred to stay at home.

By 1545 I had had a peaceoffer from PL offering Welikia and Mozyr. As usual neither Tula nor Smolensk were at all negotiable, but I accepted the two provinces. The border started to look really weird (I should probably have a ss here...we'll see).

That marked the end of the last russian DoW for several decades, but my anticipation was that PL would declare war themselves later so I could round up the remaining provinces. My goal with this DoW had almost been reached, but as the reader might have guessed, that was not the main reason for my accept of the peaceterms. A stabilitydrop of 1 (to 2) was one reason. I really dislike this sort of semi-random event which forces one to accept either ridiculous peaceterms of a stabilitydrop. In this case I held 6 PL provinces under siege and was presented with the choice of accepting one province or the -1 stab. I chose the latter the first time in the hope thatTula would turn up next time, but didn't want to take another -1 when the same sort of peaceoffer camenext time. The other reason for peace...

Shortly after eachother Prussia (England) and Sibir declared war. again. Fighting a two-front war was rather messy and ofc. also fighting PL as a third nation (and Spain as a fourth) was far more than my army of about 60k (plus artillery) size could handle.

Prussia became the toppriority with Sibir being second. Perhaps a bit counterintuitive because Sibir is presumably the weakest of the two. However, I wanted to eliminate Prussia so England did not have an excuse to mingle and drag some of its' allies into the war (some - like Georgia - would soon become my neighbours).

It was also messy to have this Baltic nation as an eternal threat in the area where I had a lot of unrest allready. Kurland nationalism was down to 1% in 1548, but some other factors (usually warexhaustion) made sure it reached higher levels that spawned rebellions on a regular basis. In the other end, Astrakhan often revolted. Having a muslim province made things kind of hard when I had Orthodox, catholic and protestant provinces to please allready. A few other provinces had minor revolts and together with the damage done by intruding armies, it all hurt the economy.

The multi-front action really shattered the russian economy which had build up 3 loans in order to achieve favourable peaceterms (ie invest in army). IMO a loan before a DoW is justifyable if you have specific goals with what you do. Something that really hurts is having to take out loans just in order to defend and put out fires. In this periode I did both :(

Allready by 1543 Glinski, my only gifted officer, had died. It sort of compensated when the incompetent Boyard also died and left the throne to Ivan IV who had much better skills (about 7 or 9 in most fields AFAIR).

Both Prussia and England had navy in action in the Baltic and by now I was beginning to loose faith in the galleys which could often winout in the end, but seltern seemed to achieve any kills.

Ending stats at 1548:
------------------------
Provinces: 36
Army: 52/12/58
Navy: 1/17/0
Wars: Prussia (England) and Sibir.
Alliances: none
Income: 744/y
Loans: 3
Tech: 5/3/4/4
 
another nice update!

What surprises me most is your yearly income. Way higher than my yearly income. Which number is it?
Monthly incomex12?
Or your 1 jan gold - 31 dec gold?
If it is the latter, I find your income truely amazing.

As a comparison: Currently my annual income (jan 1 - dec 31 gold) playing as Poland is about 360, while my monthly income is about 130.
 
I think we probably have a misunderstanding because I find my income far too low ;)

For an exact comparison go to your F6 reports and press the econ tab. Switch pages untill you reach the table named "income". It's the sum I'm referring to. And that is an annual total of all income; census taxes, taxes, trade etc. That is: a total of both annual census taxes and monthly taxes. I guess you are only comparing to your census tax? At this point of my report my census taxes were about 250 or so.

I know most ppl refer to their census taxes (or even ready cash) in their AAR because it's what is most spendable I guess whereas monthly income goes into research (or at least that's what I do). But in reality the total income is the best way to express the nations overall economic situation/growth since incomedistribution on census taxes and trade etc. can vary widely. E.g. I have two provinces with gold right now (1584).

I guess your comparable income would be at least 360+12*130=1.920 so in fact your income is far beyond mine (what year are you referring to).
 
clear.
for a comparison, I delved deep into my old zipped archives of both my Russia and Poland campaigns. I save about every year, unless I forget.

1509
Poland: income 432 (page 9 of archive)
Russia: income 542
Poland: tech 4/1/2/2
Russia: tech 4/1/2/3

1538:
Poland: army 27/4/16
Russia: army 77/0/16
Fleets: none
Poland: income 429
Russia: income 795
Poland: tech 6/3/4/3
Russia: tech 6/3/4/4

1548:
Poland: army 6/5/63
Russia: army 80/5/16
Navy: none
Poland: income 449
Russia: income 865
Poland: tech 6/3/4/3
Russia: tech 6/3/4/4

This figures seem to confirm my suspicion that my Poland campaign is lagging far behind in income.

dont worry yet about siberia - my remark was too early.
 
In any case we have now had it confirmed that you are doing better than me as Russia :)

Here's a screenshot from 1543. It should give an idea of the strategic situation, I hope, and about all the non-russian matters that I have generally skipped.

Note Turkeys' expansion up thorugh Europe. AH doesn't seem to bother about it! :(

1543.jpg
 
Looks like Persia is ripe for the picking. It is VERY rich, and no BB points for provinces SW of roughly Astrakhan. (You get them for Armenia but not Kars).
 
Isaac,

why no bb points?
 
Bad Boy only applies in Europe. Outside Europe you only get bad boy for annexation. So you can eat Persia 3 provinces at a time (leaving them with Kurdistan and any other 'European' provinces) for absolutely no BB.
 
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