Been just playing russia casually and the one thing that has caught my attention is the fact that russia starts with 5 vils, which is the standard for most euro civ but it makes their start kinda akward for a few reasons.
1- since you make vils in batches of 3, it means that you can queue a second batch without dropping a house, which while a mild inconvenience is annoying
2- since you normally get the first shipment about after the second batch, it means that eco theory is comparatively really bad compared to just sending wood trickle, which makes them really predictable, not to mention a 14 vil age up kind requires some idle time at the tc
3 - for an eco grind civ, getting ahead of the vil curve is important but since russia stats the same as everyone else its a lot harder to build an advantage.
4 - since the vil batch is 260 cost, the first in queue is later then other civs, which while you do better in the long run make the start awkward
So suggestions for this?
I think russia can take a page out of the port start and start with maybe 6-7 vils instead of 5.
This will be better cause in the case of problem 1) you will always going to get pop blocked because of the batch system anyway so atleast this way you get something in exchange and it deals with problem 4) cause you are kinda getting vils in advance in exchange for the batch coming late.
It makes eco theory better cause by the time you get it you can be at about 15-16 vils which while like not stellar makes eco theory a much better option, also it allows you to take less of an eco hit if you are forwarding with more vils.
It also allows russia to be somewhat more ahead in the vil curve which is important if it wants to build eco advantage and get more out of its bonus
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No absolutely not, they already have a good eco no reason to also give them a better start. Because you train vills in batches you literally train them faster and cheaper. If you give them more starting vills you will give them a stupidly good eco for no reason at all.
If you wanna create the second Germans just say it buddy. Russia is a solid team pick no need to make them op, if you wanna make them more viable in 1vs1 you should look into other aspects of Russia instead of their starting villagers.
for no reason at all ?
Russia is considered as the most worse civ if you play the game properly. There is also no one who agrees that Russia is good. Its actually being far away from that and the case that they have to send two upgrades card in Age2 makes it weaker as before.
I agree with you btw that giving more vills is too scary but something needs to be done with Russia otherwise its ALWAYS 5 Cossack, 5 Ruskets as the opening with an boring 14 vills idle Age up.
Yes in 1vs1 Russia is not doing that good, but it’s playable you say it like they are absolutely unplayable. In team games Russia is as I said a good pick and if you ask other top players e.g. JulianK or Revnak they will tell you the same.
The Reason for this suggestion is because the current attempts or even thoughts on changes to russia has just been underwhleming imho.
we are not going to give them vil cards or anything, that would absolutely break them, we cant make their units better, that just makes them even more reliant on the rush opening. Things like the logistician start sounds promising but turns out to be too slow to be impactful. Russia has to inflict damage in order for the civ’s design to work and maybe its just the meta but people are way too good at defending and aging up now.
It just feels like the russian opening is where like 90% of the problem with the civ lies cause its very strong late game.
If just adding vils is off the tables another slightly out there suggestion is to have their TC (but maybe cost more) provide 5 more pop space, sort of in the vein how blockhouses provides pop space, that would make a 14 vil age up be able to transition into a blockhouse much sooner, but I like this idea less.
Russia is good in a team game but I would argue thats more due to being able to focus your unit comp which means russian units can stand out much more and less to do with their eco scaling. Cossacks are OP and if you dont need to worry about making strelet you are just able to focus on your strength
Yes I can see your point, I think if we want to add villagers at the start we should only add 1.
With one extra villager gathering food there should be less idle TC time for the age up sadly I don’t know how to make mods so I can’t test this theory.
Giving them more starting villagers would be too much. They only really need a small boost like a 50 coin crate. Then they could go for a Market and get hunting dogs almost right away. Or save it and get a batch of Musketeers or Cossacks slightly sooner.
I gave my suggestion a while back. A buff so slight it would only impact the civ slightly:
- Start with a 500f crate
- Reduce settler cost to 255f
- Porucnhik starting HP = 135
2 Likes
unless you also give them extra 50 wood thats basically never going to be used since with 200 wood that means they are 50 short of a house and would be instantly blocked.
as for saving for a batch you gather that during transition to age 2 anyway that doesnt change anything
we are talking about a change of 1-2 vils at best, probably 1 and asian and african civs already start with 6 as the standard.
you cant do that one since the unit is just a reskinned halb, do that and you either need to make it a seperate unit or buff the base halb way too much
50w or better treasures are basically everywhere on maps these days, it would help the 14vil market opening a bit
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I have published a mod to test this so you can try tbh after trying this a bit you still idle a bit to do the 15 vil age up without a food treasure and you still kinda age up around the same time.
What it really do is just allow you to have 14 vils working in transition, everything else feels the same
yeah but I feel that is really an inflexible way to allow for a like a barely better start, heck im not even sure its that better. Its not like germany where you can do stuff like market into mine to sell stuff.
Ok I’ll try the mod the next days, just can’t do it now because I have no WiFi at the moment.
Do you know a guide about creating a mod? Because I posted some time ago the ideas about a china rework and want to test them out as a mod.
I am most working from here as the basics and then just using existing mods as references
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They should definitely not be getting 50 extra wood. Otherwise they could just immediately put down a Blockhouse.
You can get wood from Distributivism and treasures so it should be doable.
I’d be fine with a full 100 coin crate and then you’d have the option to sell the extra coin for wood if you got some coin treasures.
Isn’t that the whole point of making it a separate unit? Now it can be buffed independently.
For team game Russia is also not good but at least not the worst.
If rush they are slow, lack of food and pop in early game, these make Russia can’t start to train any unit if not having enough resource and pop. Strelet lose skirm range battle always get HR, Cossack lose to most of cav battle for same number batch training. Main card Boyar was nerfed and divided into different cards.
FF they don’t have any advantage, same as FI.
Russia main problem is if they are under pressure for raiding will be big problem for them to do continuously batch training. Even Russian build the blockhouse to defend vils they are still under more pressure than other civs.
Team game too many Otto due to top OP civ, they FF 5 min something just send 5 spahi or 2 falcs when Russia only trains 2 batches army. Sending cav archer to raid vils, if Otto want to boom just 3 TCs more efficiency, more greedy FI if not under early pressure just send team spahi once comes 12/16 units Russia gets nothing can do.
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if you need to be sending Distributivism then you have effectively locked in your build order so like it would change nothing
I meant that due to how the mechanic of the russia debuff works, giving it 135 starting HP would give the unit a base HP of 225, effectively allowing it to scale even harder then it already does. You would have to change the russian debuff or the vet upgrade to do this
Then have them make it a unique unit, whatever it takes. Shouldn’t be too hard.
its already a unique unit proto, but they just copied the stats. no idea why they did it that way
You don’t have to go for a market strategy, you can just save the resources and spend it on something else. Having the extra coin just gives you the flexibility to reliably go for a market in the first place.
It’s not like giving them an extra villager would give them any more flexibility either. That just lets them do what they do now but faster and better.
I see no reason not to do this now that it’s a separate unit from halbs.
it does because eco theory is now a more viable option then just wood trickle. that allows you to play gold heavy age 2 a lot more easily as it boost all gather.
it also maybe makes a potential logistician play better as well since with eco theory you are aging with 18 vils, so you have like 20 vil in transition so you have a more solid eco in that double barracks play.
then the easiest way to do it is to set the vet tech to like +10% or something so with the russian debuff the age 2 hp is 140
