Kievan Rus

Hey,

since it's been a while since I last played them, I just decided to give them another try and wanted to hear your opinions.

1. Where do you settle?
2. How/where do you block the barbarian horse archers?
3. Any additional ideas?

I tried Kievan Rus since I havent tried it in the SVN.

The UHV provinces are located slightly south but most of them in the north or north-east. That saves you the trouble of trying to settle in the barb spawning area.

1. Kiev at spot. Next town south, just above wheat. Next town north on the east side of the river, near game (check province boundaries). One archer to the town north, no contestants there. One archer and one horse archer to the town south. Rest stays in Kiev area to defend from HA. Before stationing your own horse archers, make sure to destroy the pillage expressway leading SE from Kiev. You can rebuild it later and only serves to facilitate barb pillaging. Open borders with Byzantium, open borders with Bulgaria if orthodox. Trade techs.

Additional cities: To the west, settle a city N-NW of the dye. Poland will declare on you for this later but they are weak. You should have orthodoxy in one of your cities by now, build monastery and spread religion to all new cities at once. You need this for the UHVs.

Defense: Once you get spearmen, give them forest promotion and place them to the east. That will end the barb threat.

Additional cities: From the city in the north send a settler to the ENE, slightly NE above independent Kharkov. Found the city NE of the stone. Start to build walls in your cities. Eventually Kharkov will flip.

Conquest: With Kharkov flipped, prepare trebuchets for Minsk and Smolensk. Capture Minsk and raze Smolensk. It´s a great city but it will flip to the Moscovites. Build a new city a few tiles to the west, still in the Smolensk province but outside Moscov flipzone. If you are ending the game by completing all the UHVs you can take it instead. Now you should have UHV2.

Buildings: For UHV1 you need 8 churches (which makes you able to build 2 cathedrals) and 8 monastaries. Church/mon should be one of the first buildings in all of your new cities. Once the stone is secured, make two cities build the cathedrals. Rest start with walls/castles.

Mongols: A double promoted Druzhina is stronger than a fortified guisarmier behind walls/castles. But if you are short on time or resources you might have to stick to static defenses.

Now you should be done with all the three UHVs

Other stuff, techs: Feudalism, Blast furnace, Siege engines, Aristocracy, Plate armor. Those are the major ones you need.

Civics and stability: You have slowly increasing stability once the first years are over. Start with Feudal law and State Religion once you have your three first cities and stability hits +5. A few turns later, convert to orthodoxy. Then when stability is high again (around +6) switch to manorialism and serfdom. You need all those farms for the food UHV.

You need a lot of units and religious buildings. And settlers/workers. So forget all the wonders. Or the corps. Or having tech lead. Wars are mainly defensive. Dont expand south towards Bulgaria or Crimea.

About Kiev:
I'm not sure if we should have a stone resource closer to their spawn area.
Probably it's not needed, but I don't mind it either way.
I find the food UHV fairly easy - even 50.000 food is manageable, not just 20.000 - and if you don't want to play around and get as much food as possible, spending valuable resources on that (like I do in all my playtests ) then the other 2 UHVs are not that hard either.

The UHVs are hard in the sense that you need long time planning. All those religious buildings wont be builtin a day.And neglect defense and the mongols will crush you.

ezzlar said:

The UHVs are hard in the sense that you need long time planning. All those religious buildings wont be builtin a day.And neglect defense and the mongols will crush you.

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Yeah, that's sure.
Kiev is among the harder civs overally, but I don't find them too hard or luck dependent, at least on Monarch

As for me, the strategy is this way:
1. Kiev (not Kiyv) at start point, defend with axeman, first to build - spearman. First city SEE near iron, 2 tiles N silver (Bielovodsk), iron+defended by river, second is W to the stone (it is named Kursk and indy city is also Kursk before flip), after Kursk flip and become Kharkov.
2. Horses near Kiev and iron near Bielovodsk are for the stack to come to the north (Smolensk, Novgorod, Belozersk and settle one more city near stone).
3. At start, as Byz and Bulgaria dislike each other, check what the state will give more techs for change. Usually Byz don't have Farries, so using gold I take 3-4 techs from them and 0-1 from Bulgaria. Both of them agree open borders.
4. All 3 east cities (Kursk, Kharkov and Bielovodsk) work for defense. Ten good-promoted archery units in each of them + castles + druzhina are enough to stop the main of mongols.
5. 3 cities W, SW and S from Kiev, near dye, copper and future sulphure, better place them before mongols not to let Polish and Hungarian settlers to take those territories. 2 more cities after mongols on the Black sea shore to take Konstantinopol after.
So as only mongols will be finished, Kievans will have 11 cities (Smolensk and Beloozero will flip to Moscow), 9-10 from which will be good with hammers. Lithuanians are vassalized easily, and Moscow becomes vassal as only their starting stack of boyars is destroyed.
6. Techs. Start with feudalism, after to plate armour. All other techs are not so critical. Anyway, Kievans will not be tech advanced before mongols, because of damned big army needed.

BTW, AbsintheRed, sorry for not made Kievans CNM, haven't time at all. If everything will be ok, in several days I will finish it. Is it ok with your exam?

Komar said:

BTW, AbsintheRed, sorry for not made Kievans CNM, haven't time at all. If everything will be ok, in several days I will finish it. Is it ok with your exam?

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Don't worry, everything is perfect if it will be updated eventually
Take your time, and tell me when you are ready

Okay, so here is how I did it (savegames attached, including the 880 one):

This game was off to a great start as Byzantium didn't have Farriers, so I could trade with Bulgaria and Byzantium and got an additional 5 techs, including Machinery and Feudalism. Orthodoxy spread quickly, so all I had to do was tech Vaulted Arches and then go for Plate Armor (followed ultimately by Chivalry).

I made 22.5k food until the game was over in 1290. 25k seem possible, but even for 30k I'd have no idea what to do...

By the year 1017 my Empire looked like this

I settled Kiev on the spot, used 1 Horse archer to raze the road all the way down to the iron, 1 horse archer each to "meet and great" in the north & south (north: follow the road to vikings, germany, french, spain, cordoba and then possibly back home; south: arabs, hungary, venice, poland, back home)

my other 2 town were the one next to the deer/fur in the north and the one above the wheat in the south(-west) - I think thats the ones you meant as well, ezzlar, or? (there is also the wheat/iron-combo along the barb highway)

By the time of this picture my settler for city no5 is finished, a crossbowman and a road leading to the stone awaits it, so by 1023 the city will be built.
so far all I built where workers, some archers/crossbowmen and settlers.
Plate Armor is ready in 6 more turns.

My city no4 is founded closer to Kiev than you seem to do it, I do this as I don't mind the little overlap and I can move defenders more quickly among the cities.

By 1100 AD My empire was at 8 cities:

The one next to the stone mentioned above is in red. Kursk flipped (blue) and I recently founded 2 more cities (green). The one in the south is in Kiev (Province) placed to that it will reach Barley and Wheat (the one close to Kursk), the other one will steal Moscows Horse and get the Pigs in that area.

I built: 3 Granaries, 1 Wall and Pressburg Castle, and 3 Churches+3Monasteries, so far. No other buildings, just expansion.
Currently building 2 armored lancers to take out the 2 independent cities in the North (Minsk&Smolensk)

28 Horse Archers killed so far, 16 Workers currently active. This was a really "barb-free" game. In the previous one I had twice as many.

The year 1203 AD (1 turn before the research of chivalry):

In the north I conquered the 2 independent cities and founded one in the province north of Minsk.
In the south these are my final cities. Armitrevka might not the perfect but the silver would have been pillaged anyway. Also: This is where about 45-50 of the 60 Keshiks attacked. Once or twice there were 7-9 close to the city (5 spawned on the previous turn, too far away, moved closer and 4 more spawned closer as well). If you get more food this becomes infinitely easier, as you'll have your golden age much earlier and thus more knights ready. still, I managed to kill all keshiks on the offensive (although fortified Woodsman3-Macemen on 75%def-tiles helped).

At this moment I am 5 turns away from UHV1, at 12k food (+300-350/turn) and own 10 provinces.
In order to get 30k+ food you'd need a lot more cities, but how do you do that? The independent cities in the north block expansion untill you can built 2 lancers and in the east there are the horse archers...

I'd love to see a similar game description for a 35k+ food game.

The key is conquering the indy cities as early as possible, and to never stop with the expansion while your stability enables it
I remember I had at least 700-800 food/turn after 1250 (Keep in mind, that's before the recent barb changes. I will have to play a new Kiev game with the latest version )

but how? they start with crossbowmen (Minsk) or archers on a hill (Smolensk).
And I checked, in my entire game I had 1 merc: an unpromoted knight, ca in 1225 AD.

Plus: if you expand to the north...how do you defend those cities? while most mongols come from the south-east, some also came from Moscow...

I don't think the barb wins really change the game for Kiev since the barbs usually attack you for the first few turns and all cities are owned by independents.

I dont find it possible to take the indies early. You need trebuchets. And since you can start with settling those empty UHV provinces I dont think there is a rush either.

Even if you could take one or two cities that means that your barb defense is gone.

I only said to take as soon as possible
Obviously you need to consider when you are strong enough to do that, while leaving proper defence to the south and to the east

actually, I conquered Smolensk this time as soon as it went to size 2 with 2 HA + 1 Axeman (leaving 1 HA, 1 Axe + 1 Spear on "barb duty") and then built 2 Druschinas to conquer Minsk (with the help of the surviving HA from Smolensk) and while they recovered I built 2 Trebs for Novgorod.

Now it's 1158 and I got 10004 food and am ~10 turns away from Chivalry (UHV1 is safe, Kiev will soon start building the 2nd cathedral).

while I probably won't make the 40k or even 35k food, 30k might actually be possible...
It's really true, size matters, go big or go home, etc

Chep said:

actually, I conquered Smolensk this time as soon as it went to size 2 with 2 HA + 1 Axeman (leaving 1 HA, 1 Axe + 1 Spear on "barb duty") and then built 2 Druschinas to conquer Minsk (with the help of the surviving HA from Smolensk) and while they recovered I built 2 Trebs for Novgorod.

Now it's 1158 and I got 10004 food and am ~10 turns away from Chivalry (UHV1 is safe, Kiev will soon start building the 2nd cathedral).

while I probably won't make the 40k or even 35k food, 30k might actually be possible...
It's really true, size matters, go big or go home, etc

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Sounds great!
I'm fairly sure 40.000 is possible with the latest version.
Maybe even 45 or 50k with some luck in the beginning and optimal play

YEAH!


35k should be possible, 40k by 1300 as well, but 45-50 by 1290? that would be another 50 percent more than that, and I built almost nothing but expansion untill 1200.

since I didn't know that there won't be any barbs in Novgorod one could maybe found one more city there or even venture into Moscow (but beware, there are Keshiks there)...but 45k+? I got 5-6 techs from Byzantium&Bulgaria + Machines from the Arabs at the start, I took Smolensk a few turns after it spawned and....I want to see it. possibly with screens/saves every 20 turns.
(If anyone is interested I have a couple of saves from the game above)

something that could be changed: Kiev doesn't get Mercenaries. At least for the Mongols there should be some "helpers" available

edit: both games ~40 HA and ~60 Keshiks killed, so yeah, they always spawn in the same numbers, just sometimes they decide to wait for reinforcements before attacking^^

I donno how you do it....in my games barbs doesnt stop spawning....they still some in 1000ad. in every 3-4 turn. I am getting desperate, they move so fast, 50% to kill my HA and spear too (in practice, not theoretically) and kill all the workers and land. so tell me how to stop them!!

look at the picture above:

remove the road leading towards Kiev from the S-E.
Place your 2 Axemen + 1 Horse-Archer on the Forest tile 2 east of the horses.
After building 1-2 workers in Kiev add a spearman to the mix.

The horse archers should either attack your fortified axemen or stop south-east of them.
if they attack and retreat: use the horse-archer. if they stop: don't do anything, let them move onto the horses (in 50% of the cases they will decide to attack the axemen anyway). and then kill them there (this way there won't be a 2nd one killing your weakened unit).

Important:
- Bratzlavs outer circle (at least in the east, especially the cows) should _NOT_ be improved! (else the barbarians will go there instead of attacking your axemen). only improve these tiles once you're strong.
- Do not settle another city in Kiev, untill the horse archers no longer are a problem for you.
- Axemen are almost as strong as Spearmen when defending and are even stronger once they get the woodsman-promotions

Chep said:

Kursk flipped (blue)

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[flipped] or [revolt and join]?

SanJose said:

[flipped] or [revolt and join]?

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It won't flip automatically on spawn
It had to be a revolt situation, which may happen if you put some cultural pressure on them
Of course it's much better to conquer them eariler if you are going for the food UHV

yeah, revolt+join.

conquering them might be a good idea, however it is usually guarded and I don't think you'll have the necessary troops before 960AD -> just conquer Smolensk & Minsk, if Kursk isn't yours by then use your troops to take it.

but since I knew that it would ultimately join me I didn't pursue a conquest-strategy, might help with getting some more food, yeah.