Hi, I've started multiple games as Russia in 18 civ (Prince). Catherine's the leader. What happens is research lags from the beginning. I expand to take advantage of the imperialistic feature, but not excessively, and go to war to extend my territory, but I do so slowly without rushing.
Meanwhile, the world gets civilized, founds religions and next thing I know mother Russia is lagging way behind everyone else. And by 1000 AD while I'm still in the stone ages, I'm totally demotivated.
Anyone have tips on this? I wanted to recreate the Russian Empire from Europe to Asia (SLOWLY, as I mentioned before) but it seems I'm lagging farther and farther behind the other civs.
I've played Romans and English in Prince on this map, and done rather well, so I think there's either something I'm not getting about the Russians, or maybe there's something wrong with 18 civ as Russia?
If you've played as England and Rome on the Earth18 map, you know how tightly packed Europe is with both civs and resources. Russia, on the other hand has lots of open land and fewer resources. Moscow is far weaker than the European powerhouse capitals of Rome, London, Paris, Madrid, Berlin, and Athens. The main advantage Russia has is space. Russia can usually settle 10-12 cities without war, while France struggles to get a second city, Spain and Rome are usually forced to settle weak North African locations, England needs galleys to get anywhere. A game as Russia is very different to a game with any of the other European civs.
Russia's land may not have as many food and production resources as Western Europe, but the land does have a lot of potential. Most of the land is covered with forests and criss-crossed with rivers. Chop the forests for workers and settlers and build cities along the rivers as you beeline for Currency and Code of Laws to keep your economy afloat. Catherine may have lost her Financial trait in BTS, but there is no doubt that you will want to line those rivers with cottages early on. A couple of scientists might be helpful in the early push for the important economic techs, but I usually play Russia as an almost pure CE.
Not sure how people feel about discussing details of the Earth18 map without spoilers, but if you've played a few times as Russia, none of this will be new. Here are some of my thoughts on city locations and dealing with the surrounding civs:
Spoiler:
Moscow is a decent, but not great, capital, by Earth18 standards, at least. It has some good production, with hills, cows, and horses, but doesn't have any strong food sources. I like to settle 1S and 1E to gain iron and wheat in the BFC, though this does lose a few forests. Even with the wheat, you will still probably want to farm a couple of the grasslands. For your next few cities, head west to block Frederick, who will be your main competitor for land. There is a very nice spot between you and him (6W of your settler's initial position, I think) that has horses, cows, pigs, and deer. This city can be a real powerhouse, often stronger than Moscow. Alternatively, you can split these resources between two cities, with one city 1W of the cows claiming the cows and horses along with a fish and another 1S of the pigs claiming the pigs and deer along with a wheat. An early war with Germany is sometimes necessary to claim this region, but you need to be very quick or you will find yourself fighting with chariots against spearmen.
Once Germany is blocked off, you can start heading north. A few of the stronger sites include silver and pigs in southern Scandinavia; copper, iron, and deer in northern Scandinavia; furs and lots of river grassland somewhere north of your capital; gems, copper, and deer to the north-east; and cows, wheat, deer, and fur even further to the east. With Germany blocked (either peacefully or with a quick war) it is possible to claim the rest of this land peacefully.
Whether or not you fought an early war with Germany, border tensions will be high, so be sure to keep up your military. Try to bribe Rome, France, and Greece into war with Germany to keep Fred busy. Also make sure to keep an eye on the ever-greedy but usually backwards Khan to your east.
Later in the game, be sure to devote some cities to workshops and watermills to improve the production of your flatlands. State Property, fittingly, is a valuable civic for your sprawling empire, both for cutting maintenance costs and providing food for these improvements.
It's often possible to claim enough land as Russia to play for a peaceful victory fueled by a balance of cottages and workshops, but you said you wanted to recreate a Russian Empire from Europe to Asia. I tend to go for Europe first to conquer the richest land on the map. Advancing into Europe requires large numbers of troops and with your many cities, drafting is a powerful tool, even though many of your cities will be a bit low in food sources. When your cottages start to mature, your workshop-boosting techs are in, and you have a larger empire than just about anyone else, you can eventually roll through Europe, set up production centers in the big European capitals, and basically choose whether to head for space or continue your conquest into Asia and Africa.
Hope you can find something useful in all my rambling. The key with Russia is patience; don't expect the early conquest that you probably had with Rome. Wait for your cottages to mature and your advantage in land will pay off. Good luck!
Your rambling was fantastic and informative, thank you. Have you ever gone all the way to Asia as the Russians? Is it feasible?
I felt so bad, seeing all these wonders being built around me while I was fooling around building cottages (I did enjoy those action-packed early turns as England and especially the Romans).
It is feasible to get a RL Russia in 18 civs, but...
Normally Persia controls central asia pretty fast, and the China , Japan, Mongolia and Korea get a good grip of the Eastern Siberia.... IMHO it is far more useful to march west, smash europe and then come back to east
The land in Europe is much richer than Siberia, so I always go that way first. If you can manage to take Europe, you've basically won the game, and can definitely push into Asia, it just gets a bit tedious moving all those stacks around.
I have been trying a few starts with Russia since this thread was started, with some interesting results. I played Russia on Earth18 a lot in vanilla, but the changes in BTS (Cossack nerf and Imp instead of Fin) put me off a bit. However, taking advantage of Imp in the opening is very interesting.
Starting with a Settler build gives you the Settler on turn 20, and two cities with a worker in each on turn 35 (assuming St Pete goes 1N of the forested deer to the west). However, I really don't like starting with a Settler build, especially without a 3H tile to take full advantage of Imp. Worker first seems better, but raises the question of what to research first. There are three key early techs for developing Moscow: Agri, AH, and BW (for chopping). AH first allows you to improve the horses and cows right away, but Agri first saves a couple of turns on AH and allows for a farm on the wheat to the south (assuming you didn't settle in place). However, I like starting with BW and producing the Settler (second build, still at size 1) with two chops. This gives you a Settler on turn 24, only four turns slower than going Settler first, and you have your first worker out as well.
One idea I haven't fully tested yet is going Agri, AH, Wheel, BW and building a worker then chariots instead of Settlers and trying to rush Germany and maybe Rome as well. I'll let you know how that goes.
Well, I've started a new game. I started Moscow 1S, 1E of the starting pos and was excited to see that wheat pay off right away.
It's -2600, I have 3 cities: Moscow + 1 city where Minsk would usually + 1 city where St-Petersburg would normally be (with access to precious copper and blocking the Germans from direct access to Scandinavia).
The aim now is to leave settler building to "Minsk" and "St-Pete" and develop Moscow to offset the early maintenance penalty of expansion (meaning cottages, some farms). The other 2 cities will build a couple of combat units for defense, then a couple of settlers to expand this growing empire North and South.
I was among the top 3 in the world until the 800s then started dipping as everyone else built wonders. However, I took advantage of the time to build up an army with which I took all of Persia's Siberian possessions 1100. Quite a few cities along a plains/desert corridor south of the Urals.
I'm aiming for the Greeks who massively settled in Northern Siberia east of the Urals. PROBLEM: they already have macemen, I have swordmen. I'm going to have to build A LOT of troops to make up for technical disadvantage.
And I'm already facing a huge problem: now that my empire is getting large, it takes 8 turns for a unit to go from West to East (where my main battlefront is). Which means I have to constantly build units until the conquered cities can take over war production.
It's all pretty exciting, but frustrating because I usually play advanced, civilized civs, not backward conquerors. Hopefully after I settle a good empire I can catch up (right now I'm a middle power).
Could really use some advice on how to keep the war footing going while increasing money and research...
We do care but we just care more about our wins than someone else
I have to say I have never tried a full game of Russia, compared with the European starts the surrounding lands look poor. Even China and India have better capital locations.
The thing with the land, is you have to develop it with cottages and keep going East. Then you build units on a rolling basis: the cities farther East built units to keep pushing, the Western cities develop to maintain the whole infrastructure.
I had to accept being backward (fighting riflemen with macemen) until the early 20th century, when it all paid off and I became a powerhouse. When I decide to build an army, I have a massive army of tanks in 4 turns because I have so many cities; beautiful.
It all really comes together when you get railroads, though: that's when the empire really comes into its own. Unfortunately, Hatsheput got her cultural victory just as I was going to DOW her to cut her off. Oh well, the satisfaction I get every time I look at my Russian empire is enough...
All I can say about Russia on 18 Civ Earth is "Wow".
I'm currently right near the endgame, and this is by far the best game of Civ I have ever played.
Basically all throughout, me, Asoka and Huang have been vying for the lead. For almost a millenium we were never further than 50 points apart, it was that close. I pushed Huang a few hundred down the board when my defensive pact with Saladin came into force, but other than that, the top 3 have been evenly matched all throughout.
Now, there are around 7 Civs who I reckon are about 5 turns from launching spaceships. Monty has almost all of North America under his control, as well as Inca and America as his vassals. Me, Asoka, Huang, Saladin, Cyrus and Frederick (My vassal) are all very close as well, I simply cannot tell you who is going to win.
And to make matters even worse, over 60 (yes I counted them) declarations of war have just broken out.
Montezuma declared war on Asoka and his vassals, which activated his defensive pact with me and my vassals and also another with Saladin and his vassals. Montezuma had a defensive pact with Huang, so when me and Saladin declared war to honour our defensive pacts, Huang declared war on us.
At this late stage in the game, I don't know who is going to win, and its been the same all the way through. Cyrus has never and probably will never go to war (so has the best chance at a diplo/space race win), I've just been elected into the UN after the fourth vote, and Egypt look to be around 25 turns off a cultural victory.
Whatever happens, and whoever wins, this is easily going to be the most frantic 25 turns of my Ci 4 career.
Yeah, Huang just decided to attack me for some reason or another. I'm guessing I'm closest to Space Race because Asoka has as well. My only friends in the world are my vassals, Isabella, Frederick and Tokugawa, Saladin and his vassal, Julius Caesar, and the ever neutral Cyrus. St Petersburg's nuclear power plant decided to explode while it was building my Engine, reducing city size from 32 to 15 . 3 more turns and I am outta there!
Asoka and Monty have gone nuclear on each other, I think the Mongols have a few to use up on me as well.
Edit: What happens if two civs launch a spaceship on the same turn, to arrive on the same turn?
Well, I've finished a game as Russia on Earth 18civ.
Basically, Asoka/Huang were 1 turn away from Space Victory, and a UN vote was called. I chose diplomatic victory in the hope that Cyrus might win rather than 1 of my 2 main rivals.
As well as this, Egypt was 1 turn away from a cultural victory. In 15 turns, the world's population had been reduced to about 40% of what it had been, thanks to mass stockpiling of nukes. There wasn't a city left above 20 size, except St Petersburg ironically.
The war in North America wasn't going so well, in 7 turns of fighting I had moved forward about 2 squares. Despite Monty being a long way down on technology, he just had innumerable infantry. I had about half of my 120 offensive units over there, but I just couldn't make progress. I managed to capture a few small Indian and Chinese cities, but it was barely worth it.
So, it looked like it all came down to whoever's turn went first. And the winner was...
Spoiler:
Cyrus! So I was pretty pleased that neither of my two main enemies won, Cyrus was left with the largest population, and in the end it was pretty easy for him.
Ok, basically I'm not happy. Sure in terms of sheer size I recreated Russia but as a soulless backwater! I didn't even build the kremlin.
There has to be a way to expand russia historically and make it a real cultural and military powerhouse.
Resolutions:
- get a religion.
- build wonders early and often.
- why necessarily go for nationalization? Free market, along with corporations, can definitely make up for maintenance
- armies: I think the right system is to build a core army of foot and hoofed troops then build artillery that is expendable and renewed every time it dies off.
- secure the western front early: make peace in the west so I can focus on the Chinese and mongols. I do hate them so.
- techs: trade early, trade often. I will almost never be top techer until the end of the game, might as well accept it and trade for money and other techs.
- yes I do need a navy!
- change the leader to Peter! Change of flavor
I sure hope to get a RL Russia out of this fancy list. The tough part is #1, found a religion. And it's important because it generates gold...
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but we just care more about our wins than someone else 
.... 
. 3 more turns and I am outta there!
