Giving Russian a proper age 2 timing attack!

Age of Empires III: DE III - Discussion
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Russian units don’t need buffs to their units. They gain value over others civs because their units are very cost-efficient. This begins at the start of the game already. Their villagers cost 90 food instead of 100.

Later on, Strelets and all other units will be getting upgrade cards to make them even more efficient.

It doesn’t matter that they are less pop-efficient. Because no one is throwing max pop armies at each other. Both players are going to trade units and the Russian player has much more efficient units. Meanwhile the Russian player is only paying 90 food per villager, which adds up. Ontop of that Russia is great at Raiding.

Russia can rush and/or gain a strong map presence with Block Houses. Denying mapcontrol, especially Hunts is very strong in this game and can easily win you the game if you do it properly.
And they can play a game of attrition which will benefit them because of their cheap but efficient units.

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very cost efficient?
cuirasiers is the most cost efficient units. 1100hp area 2 damage 62 with full upgrades.

Strelet suck, strelet is very deficient because it takes 10 population (making its real cost to 100 extra wood for building a house) then strelet dont cost 38 food and 10 wood, they cost 38 food and 20 wood

cossacks takes 1 pop because it would be imposible to rush if they costed 2 pop, because a lot of more wood would be needed

blockhouses are not good, you can only build 7 and enemies can build infinite. And can build more towers than russian using a card

efficient? musketer is not efficient, try to use a musketeer to kill a naginata while there are a bunch of yumis there, you would need cossacks and maybe put musks on meele, but 120 hitpoint muskeeter is not efficient.

villager costing -10 food is not so good, what is good is the less time they take to create

i think russia has a bad late game, they should have 220 pop as chinese.

At 2nd age i think russia is good except if enemy goes age 3 and use cannons

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but now we play many maps not only great plains, what is your rank right now on DE??, as this is not a age 3 complete colecction forum

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do you have any filmed or recorded match? i want to learn when to use infatry training 2, chrch and advacned aresenal

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I think a cool buff for Russia that would be unique and helpful would be to increase building creation speed. There is nothing worse as a Russian than having people minutemen your villagers on blockhouse 1 second before it goes up. Maybe say, a 40% increase. Then you wouldn’t have to use as many villager seconds on walking vils and building, thus giving a slight boost to a middling Russian eco in age 2. My second idea would be to make Russian musket hp the same as every other team, but make them cost more to still be fair. It is misleading to new players that Russian musks are weaker than other teams’ musks. It is pretty unusual because there is no marker or difference in naming other than the hp stat itself. Finally, as I previously stated somewhere, we could move fencing school or dueling school to age 1.

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So I play a ton of 2 vs 2 and Russia does pretty good but russia’s main issue is that they are a downward slope. They start out really strong and are really good in age 2. The issue is by endgame the enemies units are so much better and russian economy does not scale well. They need a late game econ boost. I honestly think russia is decently scaled even in one on one but I would need to see stats. They are a double edged sword.

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I don’t understand the blockhouse limit anymore. It seems to me the only reason for it is the strelet spawn card which sucks anyways.

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I agree. They really need 220 pop big time. It makes no sense considering they were huge population wise. That would help a ton making them better endgame.

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I feel like you are correct in stating Russia’s strengths, but it’s just not reality in DE.

Yeah, you can try the same old strategy to contain your opponent in Age 2, but the fact that the starting herd is huge in competitive maps and that most good players push the herd under the TC anyways, 8 times out of 10 if the opponent plays defensively, trying to contain them won’t work.

Everybody anticipates Russia to rush in Age 2. I’ve seen people just stick 2 outposts over their early herd and gold, and I can’t pick off villagers with weak strelet attack and bad range without losing some men. Sending cossack under outpost and TC fire is a waste of HP. They send 1 military shipment like x-bows, and they play under the TC while settlers keep gathering. If I make more units, here comes the minutemen and there’s just not much Russia can do.

It’s just too easy for other civs to FF on these maps and honestly 9/10 times, that happens as people know how to deal with the outdated Age 2 Russian rush strat.

You say that you get strong map control due to the presence of blockhouses. Yeah, initially. But it’s of no use if you have all this map control and not the ability to truly contain them or deny them their initial resources. They will simply come back in Age 3 with stronger units and take those blockhouses down anyways, as Russia’s weak Age 3 comp can’t definitely stop them anyways.

And yeah, strelets do get upgrade cards over time, but they will still be weak, it’s not practical when other cards are of more use in Age 2 and 3. Whoopie, I send Strelet Combat, but they still lose to average, un-upgraded skirms anyways. I try to mass 40 versus 20 skirms, but they can just send 7 hussar to ruin my day, and 10 Russian musks can’t even stop that because they’re so damn weak in Age 3. Buffing my strelets in age 3 is like taking an airsoft gun and turning it into a bb gun, while my opponent has a real pistol. It still won’t beat a normal civ’s comp or skirms and goons.

I mean, it is what it is. Russia historically has had no answers for its early age 3, despite all its strengths.

I’d say, just give strelets more range in Age 3. I can deal with me spamming 30 strelets fighting 20 skirms, knowing at least most of my strelets are actually doing something rather than getting picked off.
And move National Redoubt from Age 4 to Age 3 to help buff Russian musks a little more, and maintain some map control or give Russia a defensive option against the incoming FF army.

Please just give Russia a decent army comp to survive age 3 lol

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Ok first of all, let’s dissect this statement:
" I’ve seen people just stick 2 outposts over their early herd and gold. " This is an immense investment, since 1 Outpost costs 250 wood. Lets assume you were playing vs a civ which gains 1 Outpost and 200 gold from Age 2 and builds another outpost. After seeing this, you should expect no aggression from them, because they just used 250 wood on a building that is not a house, a stable, a barracks or a batch of Crossbows/Pikes.

The correct answer to this play is ignore their outpost and go for Age III. They won’t be aggressive with 2 outpost because they spend 250 wood on something that can’t run to your base.

If your enemy manages to FF vs you as Russia, then you must have done something terribly wrong. I have been at the receiving end of a russian rush as China, the most vulnerable civ in the game. If China gets rushed, it cannot FF, or China will instantly lose the game because they have no units by the time the first strelets move in.

Now you are sounding like you want Russia to be strong at all stages of the game. This is simply wrong and you cannot expect this. Russia is good at early aggression and at a prolonged game, but they are weaker in the midgame compared to strong midgame civs like Germany or Spain. You just have to accept this. To balance this out, Spain or Germany are nowhere near as good at rushing and all in as Russia.

Same answer as above. You will want to either deal high economic damage in Age 2 or end the game. If you do not deal enough damage, other civs like Spain and Germany are going to be a little stronger than you in Age 3. This is simple game design, and its good. We don’t want all civs to be the same. You will want to play for Age IV, send your upgrade cards for Strelets and other units. Your Kossaks are only 1 pop and 2 Kossaks are better than 1 Hussar for the same pop. Get rid of enemy artillery and move your strelets into close range and you will do well. You also have the best settler raiding cav in the entire game. Make use of this and with your efficient units you will always win a war of attrition. But you will have to be patient.

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You are not wrong (again) about all those points, but that’s the dilemna I’m trying to point out -

A normal players will see he/she is going up against Russia. Defensive Age 2 activate:

"The correct answer to this play is ignore their outpost and go for Age III. They won’t be aggressive with 2 outpost because they spend 250 wood on something that can’t run to your base."

–> So both of us FF then. But,

“You will want to either deal high economic damage in Age 2 or end the game. If you do not deal enough damage, other civs like Spain and Germany are going to be a little stronger than you in Age 3.”

Like I said before, the turtling playstyle negates the Russian rush and is easy to do on DE maps. It’s not great plains on TAD where the starting herd is just 4 bison and the enemy is forced to venture out 5-6 seconds away from TC in late Age 2 (with dumb settlers pushing the herd back out in the open sometimes).
Why am I gonna lose an entire cossack just to whack a settler under TC or lose half its HP from the outpost? The TC outranges my strelets. I can’t take outpost down just yet. I can’t even pressure gathering settlers without losing a strelet or Rusketeer here and there because of the range.

But we decide to FF and the typical goon/skirm/falconet combo comes out. I know you insist saying that mass, upgraded strelets and cossacks are the solution. But if that were the case, then why does every other Russian player still lament on Russia’s Age 3?

Yeah, strelets are supposed to counter skirms, but that’s a joke in Age 3 as they kite you with 20 range and pick you off with 3 shots. Competent people know not to sit there with 20 skirms against 40+ strelet.
And yeah, strelets are supposed to counter goons. But goons will put up with strelets due to their relatively high hp to the strelet and the strelet still has awful attack. And they can run away from a bad situation and kite.
You suggest to close in on them, but good players won’t let that happen. Strelets can’t answer their counters.

You try to flank with cossacks, yeah, but goons are sitting the back waiting for you.

You send the 5 cav archers card, but even they can get kited by goons due to cav archers needing to finish the attack animation.

So I can’t win face-to-face, so I try to raid on the side. But that’s an expensive route and I would prefer using military cards on a different unit to defend against their incoming army. And it’s not a scare for players at this competitive level who are very alert and smartly have goons on hand.

In the midst of all this, I want to boom and I wanna make artillery, but with my settlers on food and wood to mass strelet, where’s the gold?
Since mass strelets can’t win against skirms or goons, I need to have some kind of stand-up army.
It’s too food-heavy and settler production is stifled (no boom). Age 4 is delayed from lack of food.

So yeah, I see the solutions you are trying to push, but it’s been tried many a times from my experience to do various things, but mass strelets isn’t the answer. Nor cossacks

"Now you are sounding like you want Russia to be strong at all stages of the game. This is simply wrong and you cannot expect this. Russia is good at early aggression and at a prolonged game, but they are weaker in the midgame compared to strong midgame civs like Germany or Spain. You just have to accept this."

Yeah, I totally get it man. Russia can’t be perfect, I do concur. But all I’m trying to convey again is that despite Russia’s strengths, its Age 2 isn’t that threatening, and its Age 3 is doomed as you can’t fight, raid, boom, or age. I do believe the civilization shouldn’t dominate every stage of the game, yes, but if the civ just simply can’t hold its own, then it’s more of a doomed design, and not a playstyle issue. Even in old forums back to 2006 for this game, you’ll see people talking about Russia’s trash Age 3. But back then, people mainly played maps where they only had 4 animals for their starting herd. Thus, the aggressive, containing playstyle was viable back then.

And it’s not a war of attrition if the strelets can’t kill (due to being kited). It’s literally jsut sending men to their deaths, wasting food lol

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You ask, what’s changed?

Russia as a civilization - none.

Competitive AOE3 TAD to DE? Literally the map pool. And the extra food does make a difference.

Russia didn’t get weaker. But the main strat was to throw a crap ton of units and keep villagers off their hunts (no food = no settlers = no army or age up). But when you have like 8 bison to start with (4000 food), you just don’t need to walk away from base and risk get snagged by cossacks.

So Russia didn’t get weaker. The maps just took away Russia’s strength at controlling map/hunts.

There’s no point in getting map control if the enemy can chill in base and age up to 3 to retake map.

And Age 3 Russia has always been as weak as it’s been. Now people are realizing “Oh ****, something needs to happen to get Russia competitive again.” You just can’t win 1v1s unless the enemy is a noob and doesn’t defend well

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I was referring to EP not competitive TAD. Point being exactly that on maps. The maps are very similar in terms on hunts on EP and DE. So what changed from EP? Why do they suddenly need help on DE?

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The problem is Russia is garbage 3 and up. Strelets should not be completely worthless at that point. Honestly, I think their early game is decent right now but their lategame is utter garbage. There should be no Civ with only one option. That makes the game shallow as hell. They should at least have a chance but there is no chance at that point.

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