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so i've been struggling with Muscovy. i have all DLC's
I've had 12 failed runs. the first one i was attempting to get relentless push to the sea. i successfully formed Russia and made it to Ming/Korea by 1590 then got into a war with Ming and Korea over a tributary and lost. that game i had integrated perm after i formed Russia
so i tried to pick up the pace and play more aggressive but it seems i have either had really bad luck or the game is conspiring against me because it seems that each attempt it has gotten harder and harder to even form Russia.
my issues tend to be finding the right balance between mp generation , manpower, cash, when to integrate vassals, spawning institutions and tech levels.
my last game, i spawned renaissance and the Kalmar Union attacked me. i was mil tech 4 they were 5 and i sent two armies to defeat their one and was defeated that might have been fine except that i had 0 manpower since the start of the game i had both positive nobles and st Michael and i through my 2 wars with Novgorod and Tver took too many casualties that manpower never went above 0. i try to switch between st Michael, St. John Climacus and Icon of Christ Pantocrator for spawning and spreading institutions.
anyways I've tried to look up guides for playing Muscovy and they tend to be either total beginner guides or basically saying "its easy just do this" or outdated. and for relentless push east its describes as you can get it easily in a normal game of Russia.
i've tried just consolidating Novgorod and vassals before turning south and east. switching between Novorod and Rezan/ horde. Tried first idea religion or defensive feeding novgorod into Beloozero and Pskov or just straight up coring it directly. trying to stack tech cost reduction before teching up, using the +1 mp estates, the rebuilding the Kremlin always spawns after i've dev'ed it up beyond 32 to spawn renaissance, using the development icon and edict. trying to time integrating vassals to form Russia as early as possible. so it would be nice to get some advice that is for someone who has 2366 hours and is just trying to improve his game and stop his reliance on cheats and earn some achievements.
Just to check, since you say you have 2366 hours: do you have a nation that you find easier to play? If for example you're used to an Ottomans or France-like power curve where you generally have superior troops and relatively good access to institutions, high dev provinces, that Muscovy generally lacks. I personally find Muscovy much easier than most Western tech group nations (France, Castile) because they have many more options in terms of how you want to play, but they pay for that by having average military and no economy NIs except for tax modifier (I don't particularly care for stab cost reduction as an NI).
I'll give you a tl;dr: Replay the Novgorod war until you're not losing manpower on it. I'm not sure where you're losing MIL points but tighten that up, you absolutely need tech 5 as an eastern nation, just never be behind mil tech ever.
You listed a bunch of modifiers, but I don't know if you know why those modifiers are important. Just to make sure we're on common ground, this is how I prioritize resources:
This list isn't exhaustive but it's usually what I think about. Feel free to trade prestige for mana and vice versa, just make sure you know exactly what you're losing. 10 prestige isn't a lot but it doesn't come back anywhere near as quickly as 50 mana. This list is also geared towards people who don't really know what to prioritize, in reality there is no hard and fast hierarchy of resources and it heavily depends on your country and your skill. I frequently will spend manpower over almost anything if given the option because I tend to float a lot of manpower considering how hard I prioritize it. Similarly, be aware of the difference between being economical and hoarding.
There's several things in your post that stood out to me, and probably will to others:
1. my last game, i spawned renaissance and the Kalmar Union attacked me. i was mil tech 4 they were 5
This is a weird situation to be in. Unless by "spawned" you mean you devpushed it. Right now I'm assuming that you spawned the origin point of the Renaissance, which is incredibly lucky but I think possible, and pretty much a free institution for you. If you devpushed it then it's a very different story. I'm sure you already know how bad being behind in mil tech is.
2. i sent two armies to defeat their one and was defeated that might have been fine except that i had 0 manpower since the start of the game
This is the biggest sticking point for me, as a beginner myself. I've hated, cheated my way past, and eventually learned the basics of EU4's combat. I'm not going to say that the combat is rewarding but learning it is basically the #1 thing for learning this game. Luckily enough, Muscovy is probably one of the best nations to learn this combat system with, since situations like this where you'd (most likely) win as France or Ottomans by outnumbering Sweden, Muscovy needs even more troops to win a fight. It's not that Muscovy's troops are bad, they just don't have Castile or France tier military ideas. This also holds for Russia but less so since forming Russia means you're already pretty beefy, so the lack of a +20% morale hurts less. You won't necessarily win offensive wars but it'll be hard to seriously lose defensive ones unless you're somehow outnumbered.
3. i had both positive nobles and st Michael and i through my 2 wars with Novgorod and Tver took too many casualties that manpower never went above 0
The AI knows how much manpower you have and how many troops you have, and they will wait for you to hit 0 manpower before declaring. They even do it to other AIs, one of my more minmaxed strats as Ethiopia is to leave one Adal province unsieged on the borders of Warsangali and Marehan (requires RNG), wait for them to declare while sitting on 100% warscore, and then vassalize Adal to get a free defensive war with whoever attacked Adal.
This might be the most useful bit of advice in terms of directly improving your Muscovy game: practice the Novgorod war.
I'll restate this so it's easier to see, because I did write a lot.
- Make a save any time between December 11, 1444 and 1448 (try to declare on Dec 11 if you can though). After you save, declare on Novgorod and win the war. Check your manpower. If you're below 4000 men (I'm being generous here, you should ideally lose nothing, acceptable losses would be 1-2000), reload and do the war again. Use mercs if you have to, consecrate all the metropolitans and drive up the patriarch authority, but whatever you do keep your manpower high. You also want to finish the war as quickly as possible, but this goes hand in hand with preserving manpower so just focus on the manpower. Do not trade manpower for a quicker end to the war.
My guess is that this will be hard for you. It is really hard for me, so I just use mercs and go into debt, because I find a ducat deficit much easier to manage than a manpower deficit. I'm assuming you probably aren't using very many loans, and I get why. Muscovy isn't really an economic juggernaut and it is pretty easy to bankruptcy spiral with them if you don't move faster than your rate of financial collapse.
4. i try to switch between st Michael, St. John Climacus and Icon of Christ Pantocrator for spawning and spreading institutions.
If I'm being honest with you I rarely ever use the holy icons, I prefer to just let patriarch authority build up for the passive manpower bonus and national unrest. I did use the icons on cooldown when I was new though, so maybe that'll help you. I do think they're very powerful, I just don't really need them as Russia most times, unless I was about to fight a Great Power. I much prefer having a stable supply of manpower and -3 national unrest over institution embracement cost or spread.
Developing institutions is frankly extremely tricky and as a new player it took me 8+ tries as Ethiopia to figure out what I was doing. It is possible to just ignore devpushing institutions as Russia but I'd recommend against it as a new player unless you have very clear goals in mind on what to do with your mana. Devpushing institutions is in my opinion a safer way to play Muscovy. It is less efficient than just using your mana to core and diplo annex. Of course, you can only use these points by winning wars of conquest, and to win wars of conquest you need manpower, which you don't have. This is why I consider devpushing a safer strat, as it doesn't hinder you if you're already on the backfoot and in the (extremely bad) position of having traded all of your 8000 starting manpower for Tver and half of Novgorod.
However (because nothing in EU4 can ever be simple), that mana can also be used to just take techs at a research malus. It can also be used to get ideas (although this probably doesn't apply to you since that's tech 5 at earliest and Muscovy needs admin to core Novgorod).
5. . i've tried just consolidating Novgorod and vassals before turning south and east. switching between Novorod and Rezan/ horde. [paradox spam filter is being triggered on this sentence for some reason] trying to time integrating vassals to form Russia as early as possible.
I don't really get what you're saying here in terms of EU4 strategy. I know you're frustrated but I'm not sure what you mean here. You "tried" consolidating Novgorod and your vassals before turning south and east? That's pretty much the only thing you can do in Muscovy's first 5 years. You literally have no choice, you're weaker than Lithuania (if allied with Poland) and Denmark, you don't have enough missionary strength to convert Horde land which is wrong culture anyway, as well as Horde units at tech 3 being better than yours (2 pips!), you don't have Siberian Frontiers or colonists yet, you don't even want to go after Livonia since Livonia + Teutons + whichever german minors they've allied would probably wreck 1444 Muscovy even if they eventually lost the war, for land that is again wrong culture and religion.
Regarding the rest this is more or less minutia. Estates, Religious or Defensive ideas, stacking tech cost reduction are all things that might help keep you above the water, but they won't help you if you're unable to maintain a manpower pool. This is one of the reasons Quantity is so powerful, especially with the current merc system. I won't tell you to take Quantity since if you learn the combat system you can beat most of Muscovy's enemies without it (Great Powers excepted). Quantity does make it a hell of a lot easier though. It's kind of like Defensive that way, except where Defensive can be a bit misleading thanks to the huge morale boost, meaning you might win battles you should have lost, especially when you're taking more casualties than the other guy; one of the reasons Sweden is so tough is thanks to that 20% ICA meaning you're almost always trading manpower unfavourably which goes even harder when terrain, supply, general pips, tech difference are factors. In an offensive war you don't really have the time to bother with fighting 100% favourably 100% of the time unless you really know what you're doing. It's definitely worth it if you're intent on winning, say, a coalition war, but it's not really worth for Finland, imo.
Muscovy's game starts with how you choose to partition Novgorod and what you core, what you leave to vassals and making sure the war costs as little resources as possible. Their next step is the choice between chilling and forming Russia while taking out Ryazan and Odoyev, OR trying to transfer PU Sweden (a more advanced move, ideally done with allies and frankly not worth it) OR going religious early and going for the gold mine in Bashgird (Kazan). You can also optionally go after the Great Horde or Crimea (I think they have a pretty high chance of being allied/guaranteed by Ottomans though) but I don't really see the point in securing the trade node that early.
The reason your choices are as such is because you want to form Russia asap. Muscovy starts out with a pathetic Governing Capacity of 300 since it is a Duchy, and while it won't fill up immediately, the benefits to forming Russia (like eastern slav cultural union immediately making all of Novgorod and Lithuanian Ruthenia accepted culture) are pretty huge. You get Siberian Frontiers as well which guarantees that you'll grow in dev even if you fuck absolutely everything else up. You can also form Ruthenia if you want a different set of NIs.
There's also the option I haven't talked about, which is that you're actually doing everything correctly but are just extremely unlucky. In which case I recommend doing a run where you just alt f4 or otherwise crash the game when you get a bad event or a bad heir/monarch. See if having "good" luck will save your strategy.
Finally, there is the cheat option, but I highly recommend cheating "properly" rather than just using the console.
If you made it this far and still can't figure it out, do what I did to learn everything**:
- go and find the Custom Difficulty mod on Steam Workshop and install it.
- enable it, launch EU4, choose your nation, go in game
- Depending on your skill level and general comfort level with the game, change the following:
Literally Can't Fail:
Military:
- General Land Leader Buff +2
- General Naval Leader Buff +2
Optional: Siege Ability, Supply Limit
Admin:
Yearly Corruption -1.00 (these two really hammer home how important prestige is and how incredibly bad corruption is)
Medal Points Plus One (I really don't know, Paradox spam filter is blocking me saying the name of this resource, it's the 2nd one on my hierarchy)
Optional: Stability Cost (unnecessary due to other changes made imo)
Diplomatic:
Diplomats +5 (really any number you want)
Diplomatic Upkeep +However many dip relations you want. Go ham, do whatever the hell you want. I once gave myself 20 dip rel and allied every GP in Europe, and then immediately lost to a coalition of german OPMs after all my allies dishonored call to arms. I was even HRE Emperor. It was karmically so perfect I wouldn't be surprised if my ruler converted to Vajrayana on the spot.
War Exhaustion Reduction -0.10 This one is huge. Do not underestimate this one. It's on par with prestige imo. This is one of the modifiers you want to graduate from as quickly as you can, but it's also really hard because War Exhaustion + Unjustified Demands is one of the most insidious death spirals in the game for a new player. Honestly whichever dev implemented it and made it cost exactly 75 DIP, and then ensure every source of WE reduction was either tied to stuff like DotF or Innovative, I see what you did. Good job.
Optional: Max Promoted Cultures +as you need it, because stuff like culture groups and accepted culture is in my opinion secondary to learning combat and ducat/mana/prestige management. It is important though and a big part of Mughals' position as a top WC tag.
Optional: Diplomatic Relations +as you need it. I don't recommend this but sometimes you forget about Annexed Subjects modifier because you really want nice borders. We've all been there. And as a new player who took Diplo/Influence because of guides and then got bored and stopped using them until I realized why they were so good, new players in general should choose their own idea groups with a bit of guidance in terms of knowing what the powerful parts of the group are.
Economic:
Yearly Inflation Reduction +0.10 This is also really powerful. You can up it to +0.20 if you're at risk of loanspiraling, but honestly you should work up the courage to hit that big beautiful Bankruptcy button. It won't hurt, much.
Optional (Not Recommended); Land Maintenance -10% Land maintenance is one of those things that does apply universally to all nations so it's best to play with base values. Armies are pretty cheap anyway, at least in terms of ducats.
If You're REALLY Struggling For Money: Global Tax Modifier +Whatever%. I recommend upping tax modifier if you truly cannot figure out finances as it is the least snowbally way to make money. Trade/Production is how you actually make money, and that's a system you have to learn. Tax is just dev.
Government:
Legit/Rep Tradition/Horde Unity/Devotion Plus One. This is purely event insurance. It is recommended if you plan on getting a lot of dip relations though as RMs have a legitimacy fee.
Other:
Institution Spread +20-40% depending on distance from Europe (imo Muscovy doesn't need this but I did use it in Africa. It ends up not mattering a lot because frequently your highest dev is where you devpushed, which if you're small enough is almost always 10% of your dev. This goes even harder if you devpush the capital as is optimal)
General Monarch Skill +2.00
This is the big daddy. If I'm being honest, with just this you'd probably be fine if you've played the first 50 years more than 5 or so times. Also, if you're still reading this take a break, it's been a while and you should, I dunno, hydrate or something.
Okay, that's all of the modifiers for someone who can't figure out what they're doing at all. As you figure out what your strat is and how far you can go, you should start turning down these modifiers. This part is up to you. I don't know what you find difficult and not, I can guess but I personally am not good at EU4 so I doubt I would be accurate. I can imagine what the game is like for someone who is frustrated playing Muscovy, which I was.
For reference, this is what I use playing casually when I don't have time to alt-f4 and want to fish for cool PUs:
Monarch Skill One Plus, alternately Monarch MIL +2, Monarch ADM +2 (You can also alt f4 for this but it's extremely tedious. I can play with shitty monarchs, I just don't unless there's some sort of payoff. You can also sub in your favourite monarch schooling/point increasing mod, there's a ton out there, just be aware that no matter what the cost is it's still a cheat, the game is designed around having shitty monarchs every once in a while. My ideal is a mod that ensures a minimum of 2/2/2 for every player monarch.)
Diplomats +5 (this is pretty much just cheating past the diplomacy system, I just really want to land the Burgundian Inheritance, like, ever. I just got my first natural PU (Portugal) the other day as Sweden and I literally hooted like a goddamn owl),
**(that wasn't watching Florryworry, Budgetmonk or lambdaxx, although you will learn a lot watching someone who's good at the game. Just make sure you're actually watching them play and not some "tutorial"; the majority of youtube tutorials for mapgames tend to be edited down and missing the important parts for entertainment value. Look for streams or other longplay unedited content so you can see what they're doing specifically if you also choose to go this option)
Wow, what an awful spam filter. If there's any weird reading parts of that, it's because it was giving me a hard time. Seems to hate numbers and the names of things from the game for some reason.
the last time i played Muscovy and got the achievement form Russia was 2015.
i started out this year trying to get more achievements i started out as Ashikaga and got Sakoku Law, Bright Spark and Absolutely
and tried to get Made in Japan but i ended up messing up and missing it by 50 years. then i tried to get Kirishitan Japan and planed for Made in Japan but that proved too difficult so i switched to Portugal and got The Navigator and Magellan's Voyage all within one or two games all of them were easy with minimum stress.
then i tried Muscovy to get relentless push east considered an easy achievement and have played 30 games in a months time all but two a complete failure two i got close the first game i got stuck on the borders of Ming and the second time was the last time i tried to get the achievement i got half way to the peninsula. I've gotten help from reddit and gotten better but i gave up this achievement is to me very hard difficulty using the eu4 wiki page. whereas all the ones above are easy. I've realized that I'm a tall casual player and to get the achievement one has to be a very aggressive map painter. because you need to conquer all the provinces under the potential Siberian frontiers. and half of them are protected by the Ottomans "defender of the faith". and the rest are protected by Ming "tributaries". i mean in 2016 i got the chrysanthemum throne and that was easier to get then relentless push east. now that i think about it the whole game has became four times harder. i thnk it has to do with trying to make smaller countries or playing vassals have a easier time.
I've tried deving institutions and then I'm behind on techs but have a better economy. I've tried not deving up and then declaring bankruptcy twice. I've tried allying Sweden and Poland and I've tried not. I've tried vassal feeding Novgorod and then i struggle integrating them I've moved onto direct coring them so i can integrate them faster and that slows down my adm income I've tried getting all three estate mp's and getting statutory rights and I've tried without I've tried level 1 advisors and I've tried without. each has its ups and down. for ideas I've tried first idea being quantity/religion/defensive then second religion/defensive/quantity. manpower is less of a concern for me now its more economy and mp production.
1 month ago i gave up on getting it and switched over to getting a grand duchy which led to a much more enjoyable game and less stressful game i started out getting economy then defensive. then i decided to take a break mid game and play AOE2 and get all the campaign achievements. once that's done I'll go back to grand duchy but i think it will be a while till i go back to relentless push east. unless i find help for my play-style or become a better player that is use to the new features. the problem is that my memory of playing Muscovy in 2015 was that it was much easier then the current iteration.
Off the top of my head, Muscovy / Russia is not easy, and PDX usually screws up with them. Good news is the last patch is good enough. You will need a lot of try / error to play well with Russia.
It's better to focus on missions until you form Russia. Don't get too aggressive until you get Administrative for less coring costs.
Money problems
Russia has always had money problems in EU4. Instead of picking crappy ideas like Trade or Economy, be smart at the beginning. Reduce Army Maintenance when in peace, same mothball forts.
States, trade companies
If territory is rich, make it an state; example, Astrakhan; then Reform Sudebnik to decrease autonomy; you can decrease autonomy manually if you can deal with it; less autonomy is more money and manpower. Add culture related if you have free slots.
If territory is poor, but has trade power modifiers, make it a trade company; example: Mangazea, you will need to include the entire terrioty, and add trade investments for trade power and production, and that's +1 merchant.
War Reparations and ducats
Unless better reasons, get WR and ducats from juniors. If war score is enough, same thing, get WR and ducats from war leader. Big countries like Ottomans and Ming are money cows.
Estates
Size land and summon diets whenever possible. At the beginning add estate privileges as needed. I had 4 Cossacks privileges up to get more cossack units.
Manpower
You will have manpower issues until you become Russia. Focus on missions as Muscovy. Consolidate infantry and replace with streltsy. Watch out for attrition. Your regiments should not be more than max supply in the area. Check for provinces like Krasnovodsk to get a reference for your regiment size.
Ideas
Usually will go Religious Offensive Administrative. Before I used to get Defensive instead of Offensive, it really helps to keep manpower, but if you use reduce siege time needed from Offensive, at the end you get the same manpower and expand faster.
i was playing Muscovy to try to get the relentless push to the sea achievement because i was on a achievement run and the stupid wiki page labeled it as easy so i thought if i got Sakoku Law and The Navigator, both medium difficulty, this should be doable. how wrong i was.
i have a question, when it comes to streltsy, do you create it through government or through micro builder? because i found them no different from regular infantry in terms of creation cost in the micro builder.
i cannot make any territory east of the Urals into trade company. also how do you deal with ottomans and Ming protecting every country that you want to conquer?
i would be happy to play a version and turn off expansions where i could get the achievement where ottomans don't defend the faith every country i need south of my starting position and where Ming either collapses or doesn't have every country to the Urals as a tributary.
would i prefer to play the game normally of course, but i don't have the skill as a player or the game time to be strong enough to deal with Ming and/or Ottomans and their vassal swarms. unless there are tips other than just attacking secondary allies because that is very frustrating and time consuming trying to fabricate claims if possible on places i don't want in order to justify on someone else just to not drag ottomans into a war with me.
i was playing Muscovy to try to get the relentless push to the sea achievement because i was on a achievement run and the stupid wiki page labeled it as easy so i thought if i got Sakoku Law and The Navigator, both medium difficulty, this should be doable. how wrong i was.
i have a question, when it comes to streltsy, do you create it through government or through micro builder? because i found them no different from regular infantry in terms of creation cost in the micro builder.
i cannot make any territory east of the Urals into trade company. also how do you deal with ottomans and Ming protecting every country that you want to conquer?
i would be happy to play a version and turn off expansions where i could get the achievement where ottomans don't defend the faith every country i need south of my starting position and where Ming either collapses or doesn't have every country to the Urals as a tributary.
would i prefer to play the game normally of course, but i don't have the skill as a player or the game time to be strong enough to deal with Ming and/or Ottomans and their vassal swarms. unless there are tips other than just attacking secondary allies because that is very frustrating and time consuming trying to fabricate claims if possible on places i don't want in order to justify on someone else just to not drag ottomans into a war with me.
I don't know if you've answered your own questions by now since this was more than half a year ago, but since no one else answered these questions...
1. I only use the government interaction for Strelsky, and to be honest I mostly use it for the war exhaustion reduction. It's a nice little -2% WE for free, and you get units out of it when you're in a pinch. The units themselves aren't that strong especially early: their bonus is +10% fire damage, but fire damage doesn't really start coming online until later in the game.
2. You should be able to make any provinces that you have not turned into states as long as it is outside of your subcontinent (in the case of Musocvy, that's anything not in Eastern Europe which ends at the Urals). If you cannot make TC out of land east of the Urals, it's probably because you already full stated it.
3. You don't need to fight the Ottomans or Ming much at all in order to get the Relentless East achievement. Conquering the northern provinces from Uzbek/Oirat/Mongolia would accelerate your push east but not really necessary, and of those only Oirat/Mongolia is going to be reasonably allied to a GP like Ottomans or Ming.
If you are still wanting to try for the achievement and you are having problems, I'm happy to offer my thoughts. I actually find Muscovy to be one of the easiest and probably the most enjoyable starts out of all the majors, but I do take a little different approach than most suggest on here.
