Russia Still Worst Civ in Game Despite Changes

Age of Empires III: DE III - Discussion
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The changes were welcome but did not affect balance much at all. A competent Russia player will actually lose to most rush civs even when Russia is defending with a BH and sending all unit cards.

For example:

  • Auto-loses to Azap rush even w/strelet counter due to high number of azaps + 3 huss (cossack cards also become useless to defend against this)

  • Auto-loses to Lakota Warhut start, even if 4 axes are sent first and muskets are made in the first batch

  • Auto-loses to Mexico rush of any variant

  • Auto-loses to boom civs that successfully defend the sub-par rush, which is very easy to do and predictable
    My proposal is the following:

  • Reduce the cost of villagers by 5f (so 255f for batch of 3).

  • Give Russia a 500f crate in the beginning instead of multiple 100f crates. This will allow that first set of settlers to start being created one or two seconds earlier and incidentally also goes with their “batch” theme, having it given all at once rather than in pieces.

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Well, in a way, the estrelet combo with Cossacks no longer has the potential of before that you could put in with a single card, but in exchange you can have a better musk at age 2 and halberdiers, well, it’s actually very expensive and difficult to do when you have a lot of macro in food.

But Russia is still very strong in the rush, any slight buff to her economy will make her tougher in her rush and attrition game.

Yesterday I tried to do that Shake2020 of the azap rush, I beat him playing with Russia and it’s not because I’m a better player than Shake, surely he’s better than me, I just tried to rush him and he made a double barracks, as I know that their units are better in the first batch, in fact I lost the first exchange because I started with musk, so I went back I made another blockhouse, I changed to estrelet and
some musk in case he comes with heavy cavalry, the 5 Cossacks to raid and make treasures, he practically lost all his mass fighting the exchange with estrelet it should be noted that he also had the support of my 2 blockhouse hitting him. With Russia you can manage a lot of things to win and I realize how other Russians beat me because I don’t always play Russia.

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None of your anecdotal experience makes Russia “just fine as is”.

And I’m not saying that it doesn’t have any potential. It just needs a small boost to be on par with the competition.

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Russia is fine, it has a more unfavorable match, that’s why it’s Tier C, not because the enemy civis are good at doing what they have to do, Russia will have to buff, if we remove the counters, it enters Tier A for sure, Russia has always had the good rush that It punishes many civilizations, anyone who doesn’t defend themselves well loses against a Russian Rush and now you have more chances to make the musketeer viable at age 2, even with a card change to grenadier when you no longer need more troops but more siege… Even when Russia had +100 food and the blockhouse gave 10 population, the boyars gave 15% damage and health to Russia’s unique units, they kept saying that Russia was a weak civilization and put it in Tier C, Russia is strong.

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i love how the age 2 halbs are just absolutely terrible. 120 hp and 32 dmg to cav for a heavy price. really just a worse pikeman in almost every regard. slower, worse vs cav, lower siege and more expensive. the only advantage is that they beat some of the worse pikes in melee

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Sorry but i cant agree with your opinion and comments. Your comments showing actually that you dont have much idea from or about this civilisation or how you have to play them. I will try to explain how i see current state of Russia.
In the first comment you typed from the experience of a single Game which by the way does not have any meaning. You need always to see more as just one Game. As well you typed from the most worse match up what Russia has in this Game - Versus the Ottomans. The Ottomans can do whatever they want in this matchup versus Russia and Russia just dont have the tools to beat the Ottomans in good Hands.

Also what is a “estrelet”?

Furthermore you meant about Russia " But Russia is still very strong in the rush, any slight buff to her economy will make her tougher in her rush and attrition game" - Unfortunately its also wrong, because their “mighty” push got nerfed heavily with the last patch since your main comb was Strelet/Cossack before, flanked with some Rusket for Cav protection. Now you can not just send Boyars, you need to send two cards. So it means especially in the concept of Russia (spamming cheap and effective units) that one of your main advantages (upgrading the whole comb with one card) is gone. So your timings become clearly worse compared to before. To be fair youre right about the blockhouses (they are one of the best Russian things).

Also in your second comment you typed “Even when Russia had +100 food and the blockhouse gave 10 population, the boyars gave 15% damage and health to Russia’s unique units, they kept saying that Russia was a weak civilization and put it in Tier C, Russia is strong.” - Yes and even then this was just the output of frustration if you play in a Meta, where literally every other civs has tempo, DPS, tanky units or cavalery which just deletes all your Units. As well we shouldnt forget the fact that even if you reach age3, your Goons are particuarly worse compared to other goons. Because your anti cav needs to stand on the ground to be effective while other goons can just kite you for ever.
Therefor we come to the next point in this Meta - The range of Infantry units. Russias best Unit (Strelet) has unfortunately only 14 Range until Age 4. Back in the days they got 4.5 speed to can compete with other Infantry. But nowadays in every game you just get outranged because even civilisation exists which have easy acces to drummers or even have faster skirms as well.
Also not to forget - If Russia is doing a FF/Semi-FF its just two classes slower and worse compared to a lot of civs.

So until we dont change the start or the crates we will always end up as we did in 95% of the games from the past - 5 Cossacks, 5 Ruskets oga boga into massing age2 Units or 700c for massing early on Cossacks as meatshield and pray that your enemy does not have much anti cav. So you can see all those points are being far away from “Russia is fine” because as easy it is - Its just not fine and if you cant defend a proper Russia push in Age2 or if you lose later on versus them it means just that you played worse or didnt had the right unit combo in this Game.

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I just did a game where I did a very successful rush by all accounts against a China player. Mind you I’m top 200-300.

  • He went blind FF (700c into wonder).
  • I got great treasures in age 1.
  • I got steel traps early while being aggressive in age 2.
  • I took out 3 settlers + a TP + a village and took out his disciple and explorer early.
  • I did not suicide any units.
  • I did not lose a single settler as he did not get to raid.
  • He went to Age 3 with flying crow wonder and when his skirms came out, left them without micro for at least 5 seconds.
  • Later when his flying crow came out, it was surrounded by my units so it only got one “close-range” (weak) volley in.
  • I had complete map control, buying time with my rush and keeping him pinned down in his base as much as possible.
  • All in all this guy wasn’t that good - you can tell from the type of blunders he was making.

After all this, he comes with a humongous army and steamrolls all of my defenses, pulls out age 3 siege (yes I had cossack), blazes through my Colonial Militia TC and wins with a resoundingly successful army. His micro was poor, his macro was poor, yet he won with flying colors. He got so severely outplayed yet won. I had to keep fighting uphill battles every time with intense micro and he was just chilling.

Now I’m not necessarily asking for a nerf to China again, this isn’t about that.

All I’m asking is for a very small buff to Russia because enhancing the rush can indeed make it too powerful, however my two suggestions above will NOT break the civilization, they are genuinely minor and will only help to EVEN the playing field. Many people are saying their age 2 halbs need a buff and I’m not even suggesting that here - though that may need to be visited if this is not enough.

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As a buff for Russia, what would you think of removing the +2 range from “Strelet Horde” and adding +1 range to Vet and Guard Strelet?

It would allow Russia to get range 18 Strelets without needing a fairly weak card. It would also allow for 15 range Strelets in age 3 which would be kinda nice.

I like the idea of the one crate of 500f, though I don’t know about reducing the cost of vills again. Reducing the cost of vills would boost the Russian economy through the whole game

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I like it, I’m for it. Small and not game breaking.

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“Estrelet” is at best what they are maybe called in another language and at worst a minor typo. Stop being pedantic.

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If this is the only one what you have to complain about im still confident ngl.
wish you a good weekend m8 :slight_smile:

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but what you give them in addition to strelet horde if you take it away there?!

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Lol trying to take the explanation out of context.

Are you assuming that Russia is not used for a match explanation?

Literally the author says that Russia against Azap is self-losing, I simply told him that you can win and show my example as I did against a player who really knows how to play.

At what point in your head did you think that I claim that Russia has a good match with the Ottomans? Rather, I said Russia was probably C-tier because it has more bad games than good, at the time it was explosively better it was still C-tier in the total set of civilizations. and the developers have helped Russia with cards that improve their notorious weaknesses, for example, as was the range of the estrelet, the siege, Anti cav, in fact in this peculiar case I congratulate the developers because they understood well how to help Russia without making it broken in at least 1v1. What about the booming civilizations like the British, Swedish, Dutch, and Japanese that have been greatly weakened over the course of Definitive Edition? Where their early game has been nerfed and also their boom that are practically very susceptible to rush, they almost always have to make walls, sacrifice time by not being able to collect resources and surely lose villagers in the first duel.

There are many British players who say that you can’t beat Russia, the truth is that you can tell in the gameplay that it is real, in the past it was a somewhat balanced game.

Russia has to be in Tier C for the sake of the game, they’re too good at running, they’ve nerfed too many boom civs already, for them to buff Russia and still make it much more favorable than expected.
which are already the parties against civilizations on the rise.

If you don’t like the civilization because you consider it outdated for current competitions, feel free to stop using it, because for many it continues to be a consistent and well-made civilization both in its concept and at a competitive level, I stopped using Spain for the same reason. reason, many people consider it even A-tier, so there is no need to get into a maze where the game changes in mechanics, unit stats have succumbed to traditional civilizations ruining their advantages for the game. which was normal at the time. unfortunately you just have to put up with it

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couldn’t be bothered to read the whole thing because I actually don’t care what you’re arguing about. I just thought you sounded really rude and obnoxious and you just confirmed it.

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okay, then you can be happily looking forward i guess, now where you know that i am a “rude and obnoxious” person just because i have asked what a estrelet is, but okay.
I guess there have to be some other reasons why one question is hurting you so much. I guess just go over and ignore if you have a problem. Not needed to interact more than if one is hurt from just a question^^

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I’m not sure if anything needs to be added. Strelet Horde was just +10% hp and the free spawns for years before the range was added so it’s basically a revert (to the card being fairly bad, but it’s a buff to the civ, so I’m not sure if I care).

That tends to generally be the type of change I’m for. Don’t make massive change, keep things stable and bring them to where they need to be slowly over time. Doing things like that is really only a bad move when something is super OP and desperately needs to be nerfed

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Add + 0.25 speed? (4.5 to 4.75)

@PichulaJr could make an effort to write better, but seriously, wouldn’t you know how to guess that a “estrelet” is a “strelet”?

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ofc i could had done it… but usually if you see someone typing “Russia is fine” its either the case that they don’t play this civ or lose to this civ. Also i just think his argumentations didn’t made sense because a lot of his text was just an assumption of his own without facts or ideas to solve this while i have shown ways how to fix stuff in terms of Russia because i have played them probably 4000x times on a solid level (doesn’t mean that others cant be part of a discussion about them, but then please with useful input and examples). So pretty much a lot of text without fundamental background which does not brings solid things into the discussion.

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Russias in a terrible state, it was weak before the patch and now it is worse due to changes to boyars and poruks urgently need buffing their probably the worst unit in the game other than arsonists lol.

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They don’t need many changes but some help around the III age would be welcome. An eco buff like cheaper villagers or something similar should work well. Perhaps it’s an unpopular opinion, but I would like to see useful grenadiers in the game. They really suit the Russians, and now when they have a card in the II age (2 grenadiers + artillery foundry), it would be fun to use them as a siege unit, e.g.

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