Russians...

First strat article for you boys on the new site D... I had some fun w/ the Russians this weekend....

Russians have a few nice bonuses
Free civ1
+1 border/civ research
+100% Attrition damage & free attrition research
+25% attack vs. supply wagons (including the despot) & artillery
Better taxation b/c of the larger borders
Spies 1/2 price

Otherwise they’re pretty much a vanilla civ until the late game where they get some stuff that's pretty worthless /.

I think they’re quite strong and can be very fun using the following strat

-go sci-com
-scout to front border then far corner then back to edge of 2nd city, then opponent’s territory.
-queue all the civies you can. You need all food ruins if at all possible from here until classical so try to manipulate it as such.
-Send 1 civie to wood, then 1 farm, 3rd civie to scout for your cap rare then the near corner, 4th to build your 2nd city.
-Next civies to wood, build 2nd woodcamp, start market, cap 100 wood, and build 5th farm @ home.
-After 2nd city goes up, build 2 farms there and continue manipulating ruins until you have 160 food.
-@ 160 food go civ2, send next civie to border & build 3rd city. Queue 2nd caravan while 3rd city is going up. The bummer here is that you just spent 110(city) + 52(civ2) + 10(caravan)? (or so) food that you usually would spend getting to classical quicker. The good things are you'll have nice taxation income, your attrition will eat any enemy rares in your wider territory and your econ spots in your home city will be a bitch to raid w/o a despot b/c he has to run through all that attrition.
-Go mil1, then get a tower up behind 3rd city and a rax beside it.
-Go classical, build stable, get mine started
-Build HA first and unless he has LC or FA waiting (try to look w/ scout first) raid caravan. If LC or FA are waiting, send HA to rares. Build HC next and send to wherever HA didn’t go (Caravan or rares). 2nd HA to next weak spot, 2nd HC to help where needed. Cycle cav back to stable before dying if possible. It is imperative that your raiding work as w/o it you’re open to 2 huge problems
FA/HI/Catapult classical attack and despot raiding with the cav. Also while raiding kill his defensive units in favor of raiding. Individual units are golden at this stage of the game so keeping yours around and killing his is obviously important.
-Build temple at 3rd city, get unis, get senate at home city, get taxation, get despot. Republic is an option if you want someone who can bribe, you have great rares and feel like booming, and your raiding worked well. Your wealth should be pretty good from the 2 caravans + taxation @ this point. His should be bad as he has no caravan and his taxation income will be poor b/c of the territory push.
- If the despot raid comes, kill the despot with cav, use FA to kill HA and HI to help w/ HC or LC. Use president to bribe if you went republic.
-If the FA/HI/Catapult assault comes it's hopefully weak from the raiding. If you lose your city it's probably game over so focus your attention on the battle. Your tower and temple will help if he comes. Attempt to kill the despot (and siege wagon if it’s French) very early (like the first 10-20 seconds) in the assault with Cav. I typically find that 1 HC, 1 LC and 2 HA can very quickly kill a despot especially if you use forced march or ambush. Micro the HC/LC so they get one or two hits then run while the HA finish the job. After that the army will get killed or hurt badly by attrition. Make sure you help kill his army as soon as he starts retreating so your counter attack has less resistance.

From here you should have map control, access to most rares and the ability to boom or to press the attack. I prefer the latter… no reason to see if he’s an amazing boomer so you might as well kick him while he’s down.

Games attached
Russian v. Nubians (Wolf)
Russian v. Iroquois (LordAof)

I think you can find the J2RE here

http//www.java.com/en/download/manual.jsp

Can you upload mold's renamer somewhere so we can have it? Would be good to post it and sticky it.

Don't have time to think through the strat in detail, but I'll get back to it after these papers roll

basicallly a russian borderpush with all the details, nice research D

Katyusha rocket rush ^^ Those things are crazy.

If you sci-com immediately, what is your wood situation? Or are you taking sci-com to get more wood early, then get the 2nd city later than normal?

>basicallly a russian borderpush with all the details...

The only difference being that you gotta be aggressive after the border push. I find I get my ass kicked in classical/medi if I don't raid from the 3rd city. When fighting a bigger army it's a lot harder to kill his supply & let your attrition kick in so you need to keep the fighting going constantly & not let him build up a force capable of sieging you if possible /.


>If you sci-com immediately, what is your wood situation? Or are you taking sci-com to get more wood early, then get the 2nd city later than normal?

I went com2 early so I had extra wood for the market early & then the tower and barracks by the 3rd city. Plus I wanted the metal I'd usually spend on the tower for an extra HC in classic. It might be smarter to just go sci if you were fighting an ancient raid nation....

Who would ancient raid the russians?! shock

Nothing wrong with it as long as you micro your raiders. And remember to get the heck out of his territory once he hits classic.

[quote22fccb3578="_RU_Firre"]Who would ancient raid the russians?! shock[/quote22fccb3578]

Russians can get really fucked by ancient raids, wolf should know ^^

Liupang did it to me once... Really he fucked me up so bad by doing it, after i realized he wasn't retreating it took me to long to build a rax, i was allready dead, i researched civ2...