Anyone played the Russians in the 1000AD scenario?

[Rellik]

I wanted to play the 1000AD scenario so I could take one civ (Russia) into the modern age, with all the other civs having realistic/historical placements around the map, and the New World containing Native civs too, not just barbarians....

But I'm having problems with the Byzantines.
I start out with building improvements for my cities like normal, and use my starting settlers to make a city next to the Iron source to the east.

But soon several units of Barbarian horse archers start comming in from the east (one unit always heads straight for my new city and takes out the workers building the iron mine). This would be tough enough since I don't much military and I need to send all the horse archers I start with the contain the barbarians, but at the same time the Byzantines (who I didn't even know I was at war with the first time since they're not on the score list!) go across the Baltic in a boat with a couple of higher-tech units (a couple of nights or a praeatorian and a pikeman is what I've seen so far in my various tries) and capture Petrograd. There's nothing I can do about it, my low tech units get slaughtered so I just go after the Barbarians before they do too much damage.

It's all down hill from there. The Byzantines start sending more units every once in a while, by land and by sea, to either reinforce the garisson in Petrograd or (more commonly) attack my city of Kiev. Whenever I try to build up an assault force to take back Petrograd, more Byzantine units come and I lose my assault force defending. My pikemen are good against their knights, but they get killed by praetorians and my Axemen and horse archers just plain suck.

What is so infuriating is that if they have ie: a Knight and Praetorian or other infantry in a stack, if I select my Pikeman it will only give me the option to attack the Praetorian, infantry, etc.... (not the Knight that pikemen counter!), etc...

My score drops very low because I am building no economic or cultural buildings in my 3 cities, I'm just building unit after unit just to hold back the Byzantines. Soon they just send too many units for me to handle and I lose Kiev and when they get gunpowder I have already lost the game.

My medieval history is a bit rusty, but the scenario information does say that the Crusades are just begining and me (and most of Europe) start off at war with Saladin. I'm pretty sure that the Byzantines never ignored the Arabs/Crusade/Holy War thing, and instead developed a vendetta against the Russian Empire and started pushing hundreds of miles north into the Ukraine.
Oh, and it appears that most of Europe is also at war with the Byzantines, however not enough to distract them from poor little Russia, apparently.

Has anyone had any experience here? I don't know how much time I've wasted on this scenario

 

[Rellik]

Anyone?...

 

[Kal'thzar]

I havn't tried the russians, but you have tried using catapults on teh stacks havn't you?

 

[Rellik]

on their field armies? not really, catapults die really fast in close range...

 

[Rellik]

so are the byzantines not supposed to show up on the score list?

 

[Greencardman]

If you read the beginning text, there are minor civs and major civs in the scenario. Being a minor civ means they do not do dimplomacy, cannot be contacted, and are constantly at war with every other civ. The Byzantines are probably one of these if their name doesn't show up.

To try and answer your other problem, I have a theory that the scenario is actually set up that way, and that you're supposed to lose Kiev. When i was playing the Holy Roman Empire, and I decided to conquer the Byzantines, they had control of Kiev the whole time.
So i dunno, maybe i need to read my history books a little more. Did the Byzantines get that far north? Maybe the scenario is set up for them to capture Kiev, and you're supposed to win without it. I don't know. I'm also not sure about how to hold petrograd. I don't think the scenario is weighted evenly, which may means the russians are just harder to win with.

Oh, and those barbarians on horses are the mongols.

Anyways, my theory would be to try and hold off any barbarians on horses with pikemen/spearmen while you build your iron mine. Maybe send your horse archers around the barbarians and try and capture on of their cities. Then use the iron to build axemen to counter the byzantines swordsmen/preatorians and pikemen to counter thier knights. Also, maybe try send someone down there to pilliage, that will slow them down. They're in Asia Minor, so you can pilliage from the top or the side.

And yes, the game always picks the best defender for the attacker, so your pikemen will always face swordsmen, and your swordsmen will always face knights. However, this helps the defender, because your pikemen will always face thier knights/etc. So the key to winning combat in your case will be to always be the defender. Since atackers don't get a bonus anymore like in Civ 3, just meet their armies in the forest. Maybe try give your units the woodsman promotion. Then wait for them to attack. If you ever need to attack a city, bring some catapults. And thats my theory on how to win as the Russians....

 

[Zeviz]

This scenario is very close to real world history (at least when it starts ), so if you want to dominate the world, playing a country that was completely overrun by enemies in 13th century isn't a very good idea.

The city you are calling "Petrograd" is actually Kherson in Crimea, on Black Sea. Petrograd is on the Baltic Sea in the north and wasn't built until Peter the Great's time, hundreds of years later. Russia didn't control Crimea until 18th century, so you are unlikely to keep control of that area in the scenario. (The lone horse archer that starts the scenario in the city represents one of Russian princes who conducted successful raids into the area, but never even tried to permanently annex it.)

So unless you want to play Russia for RP reasons, I recommend an easier country, like England. Its location on an isolated island will be much better for your builder playing style.

If you do want to play Russia and try to rewrite history, you have to build several longbowmen (maybe even gathering money to upgrade your existing archers) and station them in your southern cities. You have to expand to north-east to avoid vastly superior enemies on your southern border. Just be careful with the Vikings north-west of you. They are also "minor nation" like the Byzantines.

Also, send one of your horse archers as a scout to the East to make contact with Indians, Chinese and Mongols. You can gain a lot of technologies by being smart in buying from various civilizations things that others don't have and reselling them for more things you need.

Good luck with your world domination.

 

[Rellik]

Thanks for the tips!

Greencardman: you can't build pikemen without iron

Zeviz yes sorry I have no idea why I was calling Kherson Petrograd. The name just popped in my head.
Longbowmen get killed by knights and Knights are immune to first strike I believe

I guess the Byzantines just can be fought. They start off with several cities with very good infastructure so they can pump out good units quickly.

Maybe I should just try giving up Kiev, hmm... I always quit when the Byzantines captured Kiev, but one time they captured Kiev and a nearby group of French Knights (allied with me) "helped" me by taking the city back and promptly razing it. Then in the next fiew turns, Byzantine troops continued pushing north towards Novogrod. Hmm, I hope that's not the case if I let them have Kiev intact....

Yeah I know Russia was weak in these times, but in the game of Civ4 there really aren't any "comebacks". If I get my ass kicked early and am behind in score, I'll stay there the whole game. Culture and expansion and constantly increasing production allows dominating powers to continue dominating.


Do you guys have any tips on how to make money? Kiev is pretty developed, I didn't want to take any barbarian cities/make my own new ones because I didn't have enough gold income and eventually I'd go into debt.

 

[Zeviz]

You do need pikemen for fighting enemy knights, but luckily your source of iron is easy to get and protect:

The first thing you should do is move settler and worker (guarded by horse archer) to the spot north of iron. Next turn, start Moscow and use worker to build iron mine.

Meanwhile, use your extra archers to garrison Moscow and Kherson and use all 3 of your riders to capture barbarian town east of it. After that I've stationed one horse archer on hills south-east of it to watch for incoming Mongols, but they never came! I guess they were supposed to be trained in that barbarian city I've captured. Or they couldn't appear because they appear only in Fog of War and my sentry was making sure there in no FoW there.

Afterwards, you can send one of your horse archers to the east to meet Indians, Chinese and Mongols (weak AI civ that's not even hostile).

As for dealing with Byzantines, unfortunately I can't help beyond general advice of "build longbowmen and pikemen", because I haven't been able to deal successfully with their threat myself. I've decided to go play other civs and other scenarios until I get more experience. Russia starts in a tough spot sandwiched between Byzantines, Vikings and Barbarians, so it's harder to play than anything I've done so far in a civ game.

 

[Greencardman]

Hmmm... i know from playing the Holy Roman Empire that they start at war with the Byzantines, and i think some of the other civs do as well. You might try contacting them and asking for help. Also, I'd head west too. There are some barbarian cities between the holy roman empire and the east that are easy to take, and can provide some nice starting points. Then yes, I'd find some iron. Also, fight your fights with spearmen and axemen if you have to, if you have access to copper. Try build a barracks and give them the woodsman promotions, and fight all your fights in forest tiles.

 

[Rellik]

Unfortunately the kherson/kiev area is all plains

and how do I get enough gold for all these new, undeveloped cities that I take from the barbarians?

 

[Rellik]

anyone else?

 

[Rellik]

so the mongols never invade?

 

[diet_punk_rock]

same thing happened to me but i was playing the germans

 

[Rellik]

bump bump..

 

[Greencardman]

No, the mongols never invade. Some barbarian horsemen do come through to pilliage though from the city to the west of the iron. Generally the mongols are busy fihgting china. Every time I've played they've been at war with them.
On another note, i managed to keep kiev, but i lost kherson. One of the things i did do was send one of my horse archers on the very first move of the game down into the byzantines territory to pilliage their horses. Works wonders, because they don't have another one hooked up yet. So yeah, that held off the knights for a while, so you may want to try it. I think i even got down to thier iron before i was killed.

 

[Kolyana]

THis sounds like a fun scenario! I'll give this a whirl over the weekend!

 

[Rellik]

so did u try it? ~

 

[diet_punk_rock]

I wanted to play the 1000AD scenario so I could take one civ (Russia) into the modern age, with all the other civs having realistic/historical placements around the map, and the New World containing Native civs too, not just barbarians....

But I'm having problems with the Byzantines.
I start out with building improvements for my cities like normal, and use my starting settlers to make a city next to the Iron source to the east.

But soon several units of Barbarian horse archers start comming in from the east (one unit always heads straight for my new city and takes out the workers building the iron mine). This would be tough enough since I don't much military and I need to send all the horse archers I start with the contain the barbarians, but at the same time the Byzantines (who I didn't even know I was at war with the first time since they're not on the score list!) go across the Baltic in a boat with a couple of higher-tech units (a couple of nights or a praeatorian and a pikeman is what I've seen so far in my various tries) and capture Petrograd. There's nothing I can do about it, my low tech units get slaughtered so I just go after the Barbarians before they do too much damage.

It's all down hill from there. The Byzantines start sending more units every once in a while, by land and by sea, to either reinforce the garisson in Petrograd or (more commonly) attack my city of Kiev. Whenever I try to build up an assault force to take back Petrograd, more Byzantine units come and I lose my assault force defending. My pikemen are good against their knights, but they get killed by praetorians and my Axemen and horse archers just plain suck.

What is so infuriating is that if they have ie: a Knight and Praetorian or other infantry in a stack, if I select my Pikeman it will only give me the option to attack the Praetorian, infantry, etc.... (not the Knight that pikemen counter!), etc...

My score drops very low because I am building no economic or cultural buildings in my 3 cities, I'm just building unit after unit just to hold back the Byzantines. Soon they just send too many units for me to handle and I lose Kiev and when they get gunpowder I have already lost the game.

My medieval history is a bit rusty, but the scenario information does say that the Crusades are just begining and me (and most of Europe) start off at war with Saladin. I'm pretty sure that the Byzantines never ignored the Arabs/Crusade/Holy War thing, and instead developed a vendetta against the Russian Empire and started pushing hundreds of miles north into the Ukraine.
Oh, and it appears that most of Europe is also at war with the Byzantines, however not enough to distract them from poor little Russia, apparently.

Has anyone had any experience here? I don't know how much time I've wasted on this scenario

i tried it with the germans and everything went well until 1700. it started taking for ever to end the turn. also at the beginning. it said i had no contact with basil, but i was at war with him. at 1800, the game file was 2 gb big. yeah thats rite 2 GB. so it didnt open. i would not try it if i were you.

 

[dracop]

Ok I beat this on Prince with the Russians. I wont give the whole game away (much of it is obvious once you get establsihed), but Ill get you past the Byz.


Walkthru:

Basically, the key to winning and becoming powerful as the Russians is in holding Kherson and building up to take Constantnople. How to hold Kherson: At the start of the game, Kiev already ahs Barracks bnuilt; set it to build Longbowmen right away. You ahve some Civics upgrades, that adds experience to troops, select the in Turn One. Upgrade one of your archers in Kiev and send it to Kherson. When that new Longbowmen comes out, dbl promote City Defense and send it packing on over to Kherson.

You settler should build a city on a hill tile adjacent to the Iron (if its next to it on a tile you can instantly defend it and move back on raods when Barbs go squatter on you - you could also jsut build the city on top of the Iron and that iwll give you access as well,, along with City Defense and Hill Defense bonuses (which add to the Archer units defenses - Barbs cant take this). Send one of your Archer units from Novgorod and keep one of your Horse Archer units roaming nearby.

One thing you may ahve alreayd noted: you start the game alreayd at war witht he Byzantine and the Vikings. At turn one, take two units of Horse Arcehrs and plant them nearby your Byz border. You need two Horse Archer units for this (I grabbed the HA from Kherson the instant one of the archer units arrived). Once both are on the border, send them over the Byz horses pasture. Make sure both units have a 2 movement points, use one movement point on one H.Archer to kill the pasture, and one mp from the other to kill the road, move your Horse units to the road section to the northeast (jsut inside the Byz border). On the next turn, do another double whammy on the terrain and finally move your units back insid eyour own borders. What you have just done is eliminate the Byz horse supply - eg, no more knights. Keep your Horse Archers nearby but dont engage the byz. You ahve also slowed them down quite abit and essentially forced them to invade by sea. By the time they send their first force agasint you (usually some Pike and a Knight or two), you should have two longbowmen in Kherson, one of which should have the double promotion for City Defense. This will stop them cold. If you want to eb safe, take your third Horse Archer form the north to help garrison (HA mobility is a HUGE factor in your holding the center of your nation, I keep one roaming between Moscow - the Iron city, and Kherson, this gives it easy access to killing Barb warrs). When you see the Knights/Pike, regardless if its by land or sea, get 1 tile away from Kherson, take your 2 HAs and move SW. There is an Iron Mine to the SW of Constantople nearby Athens. In order to attack you, the AI leaves itself with onyl longbowmen and as such, will not attack you from city garrisons. You move your HAs to that Iron mine and take it out. Once you ahve done that, Byz = dead (sali and fredi keeps them weak ever after, he is attacking them at same time they are attacking you). Try to save your HAs. In essence, the strategy to beat the Byz is an old fashioned Horse and Iron Raid - destory their production and it takes them forever to rebuild it because they are under pressure from other areas.

General Guidelines:

Dont use the Horse archers for garrison duty at all, keep them ranging around yoru empire eating up Barbs. This gets them exp which allows you to pickup promos.

Build Wonders in Novgorod and Kiev. The AI doesnt really build any, but Russia has Philo leader trait = 100% GP birth rate. If you build wonders to take advantage you can ahve some fun. Use the Great Engineers to instant build Wonders you have NOT been working on. SO when you get a GE born, open up Novgorod or Kiev (try to spread the wonders around, you get more GPs overall that way), pick a wonder you havent put any work toawrds, and isntant build it with your GE. THings like The Oracle give you a free tech - evil grin. Pick the most EXPENSIVE tech you can (not the most useful). THen turn around and start at the bottom of the diplomacy list and pickup every tech you can i trade from the WEAKEST AIs (so you dont shoot yoruself in the foot). The way you trade tech depends on difficulty setting; on Noble, you can trade a 1400 RP tech for a tech or group of techs with RPs that cost up to 1400. Mouse over the AI offerings to see what it cost. On harder settings, you ahve to mentally discount your RP cost by 10% (or so) for each additional level of difficulty (so on Prince I mentally assume the RP is worth 90% of what it says when I mosue over - this is what that tehc is worth to the AI and I ahve to offer techs that cost more to get the same thing). After 3 wonders I was popping out GPs every 10-15 turns it felt like; I use the Great Artists to shore up my CUlture in Kherson, Kiev, and Constant once I took it). GEs to insta build wonders (I left them sleeping when I had none buildable, until I picked up a tech that allwoed a new wonder).

TRADE tech with the AI, I described above the best way to do it. If you focus your research in one area and get advanaced in it, you can rapidaly surpass the AI in tech and they will all trade with all the other techs ot acquire it. Drama/Music etc. were beautiful cause the AI didnt ahve them.

Early on (first 50 turns), defend agasint occasional invasion by Byz and Barbs. By 50 turns you shoudl ahve a decent force of Knights, Macemen, and Cats (I had 2 Knights, 2 Mace, and 2 Cats). The AI does not keep a strong defense at Const. It stockpiles troops and when it gets a stack of 3 anything, it sends it up against you. If your stack is appraoching Const and you ntoice mroe than 2-3 units defending, backoff for abit and wait until they invade you again, When they do, send your stakc to take Const. Once Const falls. its all over for Basil (Byzantine). Salli will eat the east, the Germans iwll eat the west. You can have Athens too if you want it although while Const is a Gateway/CHokepoint city, Athens makes you a player in the Mediterrnean (and changes your diplo quite abit).

At thsi point you can focus on expansion east while using a CUltural offensive in the west (I grabbed Danzig, that mountain town to SW of Kiev, and the one NW of Athens all via pumping culture). THose wonders help a ton with this.

If you try this and ahve any difficulty let me know and ILl tell you how I overcame/avoided that.

Was fun until I overcame all the challengers, then it was a boring buidlfest. I everntually outbuilt the AI to an extreme and it jsut couldnt catch up.