Am I playing this right, how does russia make it's money?

[jeffreymdbeck]

So i'm having my first real play through of Moscovy that hasn't backfired in the first 25 years. It is currently 1520 and I'm earning 39 month but i just feel so freaking poor... I've got vast tracks of ever rebeling land, too small a navy, only 63% religious unity, litteraly not a single cannon, I'm playing 'russia' but havn't had more than 10k troop reserves since 1450. I'd like to calm my role and regroup my country but if i'm not constantly at war farming money from my neighbors I'd go super broke or be unable to put down all my rebels.

On the flip side I have some good placement, I own iceland so could become a colonizing power if i chose, I've got that little island off of England so i could take some of their nice territory. But how am i going to get any sizeable trade money without conquering all of Ludbeck(cause killing germans is always easy), or burning through all of england to get some of the english channel pie.

[bun]

I had problems making money as Russia too. I would like to know how can I improve my economy.

[Songbird]

Ideas: Religious -> Offensive -> Trade -> Expansion

The ideas alone will sort out the religios unity problem. Until you get the +3% strength I suggest making a vassal that eats the muslim land.

Manpower wise I don't know sry, I usually never dip below 10k unless multiplayer as muscovy.
Usually start building barracks with my money if I can't improve the economy anymore. You will also invest into military development quite a bunch unless you run a second early military idea group.

Moneywise you want to be the main and pref. sole player in the nowgorod trade region early game. Kill Novgorod, Lithuanian Order and Riga asap. Just pump all your money into it with other traders. Once you are big make Kazan your main trade node, you should have 100% possession of it in most games. As russia you will have access to tons of fur, iron and copper which make for some sweet trade income. You should start colonizing siberia around 1500 and the money will come rolling in.

About the navy, don't worry. Just make a little crimean fleet to help siege the ottomans once you get there and keep a small fleet protecting trade in nowgorod trade node.

[bun]

Originally posted by Songbird:

Ideas: Religious -> Offensive -> Trade -> Expansion

The ideas alone will sort out the religios unity problem. Until you get the +3% strength I suggest making a vassal that eats the muslim land.

Manpower wise I don't know sry, I usually never dip below 10k unless multiplayer as muscovy.
Usually start building barracks with my money if I can't improve the economy anymore. You will also invest into military development quite a bunch unless you run a second early military idea group.

Moneywise you want to be the main and pref. sole player in the nowgorod trade region early game. Kill Novgorod, Lithuanian Order and Riga asap. Just pump all your money into it with other traders. Once you are big make Kazan your main trade node, you should have 100% possession of it in most games. As russia you will have access to tons of fur, iron and copper which make for some sweet trade income. You should start colonizing siberia around 1500 and the money will come rolling in.

About the navy, don't worry. Just make a little crimean fleet to help siege the ottomans once you get there and keep a small fleet protecting trade in nowgorod trade node.

Thank you for your help, I'm going use your tips when I will play as Muscovy. :D

Oh, and you also said Lithuanian order, not Livonian order :p

[Songbird]

Yeah my bad.

If you start a new game as msucovy build up to your force limit, put your excellent general in charge of the bigger part of your army and as soon as everthing is built declare war on novgorod(with the mission take nowgorod). Stack wipe them and proceed to take land. Kill off odoyev(they will be in a trade league) after nowgorod is pretty much broken and annex it. After you have 100% warscore (or 99%) with nowgorod take all their land that borders with a different country other than you or your vassals.

This will make sure you get all the juicy nowgorod land yourself.

[matthewday1]

Muscovy is playing the long game fer sure. Your long term is colonies in a race to the Pacific, but you have to secure a base in Novgorod node and Either vassalise or conquor Crimean node. Don't screw around and get distracted too much in Europe. Once you have colonised to the Pacific, you get to conquor china and roll in ducats and manpower.

[matthewday1]

Colonies for Russia are important, because they become part of the rodina, Mother Russia, never an independant colony. So you get to add a ridiculous number of provinces to Russia, fully cored and cultured from scratch. hundreds of regiments. lots of ducats too.

[DaftCanuck]

I went Trade first to make sure to solve my early money problems. Second I went with Quantity because I love having massive amounts of manpower. My third idea group was Expansion so I could start expanding east. It is 1570 and I just finished off a coalition against me by the Ottomans, Bukhara, Gazikumukh, and the Golden Horde. My current income allows me 2 colonists at once, 76 units, and 1 person converting, this leaves me a surplus of 10 ductas a month. I feel this game is going slower and that I could have made a few choices differently during several wars that would have allowed me to win them sooner. But hey, the motherland will reign supreme.

[DrUltraLux]

Humanism > Trade > Administrative isn't a bad tactic either. Reducing all that seperatism and giving you a good boost to reducing national unrest. Trade not only boosts your income, but the Trade-Humanism "Exchange of Ideas" reduces idea cost and improves prestige. Administrative reduces core creation cost and improves on merc hiring which reduces the manpower overhead a little if pushed hard in a war.

Expansion, Influence and Quantity are also excellent for Russia.



Offensive is just always a really good idea as well.

Offensive-Humanism "The Liberation Act" is great for stability with -1 National Unrest and -5 Years of seperatism.

Offensive-Expansion "Risk Assessment Policy" gives -10 Aggressive Expansion Penalty as well.

So Expansion > Offensive > Humanism is also a good combo early on for Russia (or any of the big nations with super-power/conquest goals). Expansion gives you that one colonist early as well, allowing for peaceful growth into Siberia.

So the 8 ideas that really help Russia out would be:
Expansion, Administrative, Humanism
Trade, Influence
Quantity, Offensive, Aristocratic

For Policies the top ones would be:
Risk Assessement Policy
The Licensing of the Press Act
The Liberation Act
Provincial Taxation System
Exchange of Ideas

That allows for a big stable expansionist Russia that maintain frequent wars, absorb other cultures easily, not form coalitions against it easily, and maintain a decent volume of trade income, is also a colonial power, and doesn't suffer as much from religious plurailty.

I also found a sneak tactic is to try and grab some tengrist land east if you can. Though it is a huge stretch that I only managed once. Tengrism and chose Sunni or Orthodox as your syncretic religion. You can switch the syncretic back and forward, slowly converting them all, building your religious unity without too much rebellion.
<3 Tengism.

[Songbird]

@Gaiyamato I don't agree on quantity, at 1600 I had a 400k army without it. And I think while humanism might be a good pick religious just does the same thing but better. You can literally have 100k soldiers police your country while fighting 2 wars against superpowers at the same time during the 10 or 20 years your regions of nationalism.

Instead of quantity I'd pick up defensive. Create 3 layers of forts near your european provinces and not even the AI is going to be stupid enough to attack you. I fought a very good russia player in MP and between all the forts and scorched earth I had to creep years worth of time into his land eventually running low of manpower. That was with prussian space marines and the backing of ottomans. It eventually turned into an "arround the magginot line" kinda deal and we had to hit him in his asian provinces. (AI doesnt do this)

Religios is pretty insane for russia because you have so much stuff you want to:

1.) religiously convert
2.) culture convert
3.) heretic and heathen enemies (you are the only orthodox guy left at some point)

3% mission strength and an extra missionary almost makes humanism trivial because you will be able to convert sunni lands extremly quick combined with some stab and patriarchal authority. There is a certain policy that gives you a bunch of cultural conversion + the culutral conversion benefit from religious ideas + muscovity ideas = 60-70% culture conversion reduction, who needs humanism now? ^^

[DrUltraLux]

I agree, once you are large enough Quantity could be swapped with something else needed. Offensive is a better military ideology instead, so is defensive. Also also like Plutocratic a lot personally. However Quantity gives some good policy combo with the other idea groups I listed.

Offensive and Aristocratic both give really good policies as well as being decent idea groups themselves.

Religion > Humanism I also often agree there. However Humanism again offers the lower seperatism ideas and policies, and gives a whopping -50% cultural threshold bonus, which can help if you are expanding into areas with acceptance of cultures outside of the Russian group. I think they both have fairly equal merit really.

The only issue with no seperatism reduction, no accepted culture benefit, no direct reduction in negative opinion, you will run huge 15-20+ points per turn per province you are converting toward rebellions. Any expansion beyond a couple of provinces often leads to rebellions before you can convert them, even with religion. It slows down growth a lot.

Remember also if you have a culture that isn't accepted you take some heavy economic and military penalties. Growing a Russian economy as you expand into Europe and Central Asia is very much reliant on either converting the cultures as quickly as possible, or having them gain acceptance. Humanism allows both scenarios, as it reduces the seperatism faster, decreases what is required to have the culture accepted, and boosting religious stability and reducing negative opinion from differing religion. Which makes it easier to more slowly convert them, then later convert the cultures. Making for a much more stable and consistently growing nation.

Plus the Humanist positive events are all very handy, and the negative ones don't do much damage at all.

Humanist + Plutocratic is actually on it's own not a bad way to stabilise and grow the economy.

EDIT:
The religious idea you are thinking of that gives cultural conversion is Religion+Influence, and it is only 20%. Less than half what Humanism gives.

[Songbird]

@Gaiyamato

Well I am talking culture conversion, not acceptance. With the religious-influence policy you get -20%, with the religious final idea you get -25% and russia gets another -20% thats 65% reduction in diplo cost to convert. Thats about 6-12(+policy cost) diplo per region which is almost nothing considering you will stockpile diplo as russia and not really use it other than to diplo annex stuff from time to time and push diplo tech.

If I recall humanism doesn't give any bonus to culture conversion but to culture acceptance, which is a different modifier.

[DrUltraLux]

Yes, culture acceptance, what I was talking about. I find it better because you don't have to spend diplo points on converting. Albeit with your way it winds up insanely cheap much of the time. Better to tech/conquer with those points IMO. Also converting runs the risk of making your neighbours hate you.

Just played a game trying out the different ideas. Both styles work just fine, however I found interestingly the superior combo is Become a Republic (or start as Novgorod), get Plutocratic > Humanism > Religion (switching back to a Monarchy when you can of course).

No rebllions ever again, permanent 125% religious unity and you can convert to your heart's content. Plus an extra merchant.

I also managed to become Tengrist with some messing about with Perm and by a fluke managed to save the Zoroastrians.

So I now have Tengrist>Zoroastrian Russian Administrative Monarchy. The extra merchant and bonuses is very useful.

I think in answer to the OP though, there are tons of ways to improve your stability and increase income as Russia. Chosing the right ideas is the best way though. Expansionist Russia suffers a lot from cultural and religious division, so focusing on those seems to be the way to go.

[jeffreymdbeck]

Thanks everyone for your thoughts!!! My economy is still largely dependant on frequently draining Riga, Livonian order, Ryzan, Georgia, Crimea, allof whom are one state countries that cough up 3-5 hundred dollars. every few years and allows me to partly keep my prestige and military tradition up. Ended up going with religious ideas with a manpower build up mission. WHile my mission was bu9ildijg i was able to convert to 100% religious tradition.

[frank2351]

I'd put more energy towards trade and peace if i was you. Expand to east and south, make friends in the west.