Hi! Ricky Olcese here. It has been a long time, and I am glad to rejoin the forum!
I have been reading the latest dev diaries, and as an enthusiastic Muscovy/Russia player, I have some doubts about some of the announced mechanics. I would like to discuss two very specific issues about it here. I opened this new thread because I saw no comments by the devs on the dev diary, and I was told it was locked to prevent an angry debate taking place there. I'd like to deal here exclusively with two questions I feel are important about the future Russian gameplay.
Firstly, something that might be intended, but I feel the devs might have not noticed it. When the player unlocks the Russian Empire tier I reform, Russia's tech group changes to Western. This is a cosmetic change, not affecting units. Units are affected at a later stage. But as a fellow EU4 player pointed out on Reddit, Russia would be losing the Cossack estate! Even if it's cosmetic, the availability of the Cossack estate depends on having the Eastern tech group! I think the result would not only detract favour from Muscovy, but would also be ahistorical because the Russian Empire kept using cossack regiments up until WW1. Could anybody confirm this reasoning?
Secondly, there's a minor issue regarding the tribute due to the Horde controlling Sarai at the beginning of the game. There are two debuffs announced for Russia: a) a starting modifier saying "Yearly tax income -24", and b) a yearly event about paying directly 44 ducats (or another number proportional to the player's income, I suppose) to the owner of Sarai. So, you're basically paying the tribute twice?
I would simply like to discuss the aforementioned two specific issues, particularly the one regarding the Cossacks estate, because I feel it could result in the unintended consequence of losing that estate for Russia. Have you, fellow EU4 players, understood something different from the dev diary? Or is my reasoning about it correct?
