Into the Renaissance: Russia

[analysismike]

The Steam achievement is to beat Into the Renaissance on Emperor or higher. Here is a strat that worked for me on Emperor (after several failed attempts trying other things like liberty first):

Phase 1: Prepare for the Mongols
Around Turn 70 you will get attacked by the Mongols. Everything you do up to that point should be preparing for this. To start I build national college in Moscow and delayed second city while I scouted around and finished NC. The key techs are ones that give you Mongol-busting units (pikemen and crossbows). The Policy branch is honor. You will fight plenty of barbs and will need the combat bonus vs the mongol horde.

I found that I could get no more than three cities adequately defended by the time the mongols attack. Found the extra cities near luxuries and sell whatever you don't need to Byzantium. Don't explore west, as you will probably run into Sweden or Austria, both capable of sending a host your way as you are fighting the Mongols. If they don't know about you they won't attack. Build national wonders, especially NC and heroic epic.

Phase 2: Fighting the Mongols.

It took me until about turn 110 to turn the tide of the Mongol invasion. To repel the mongols, it is important to focus fire. All Mongol units have march and probably a nearby kahn, so they heal FAST. Try to conserve your units, but it is worth it to sacrifice a unit to take out a Kahn. You will start to get extra great Generals. Use them to pop a citadel in the middle of an Mongol group at your boarders and use crossbows/horses to pick off the stragglers. The AI is incredibly dumb about pillaging citadels. As you turn the tide, keep your units packed tight and cycle backed injured units, as Keshiks will mow down stragglers.

You will reach a point where the military is doing fine, but you'll want more money and happiness as your military grows and you conquer Mongol Cities. Tech towards metallurgy (for Cossacks) and Printing Press (Theaters). Take policies down the right hand side of Commerce to get extra gold and happiness from luxuries.

Phase 3: Winning

Having turned the tide on the Mongols, you'll notice that you are pretty far behind in the victory points race. I suggest sending the Russian Horde down the eastern edge of the map and taking the Ottomans in the rear. Since you get VP for every city of a different religion you conquer, taking out the Turks will net you a sack of VP. Continue to sell extra Luxuries to Byzantium, and Western Europeans that wander your way. By this time your military should be big enough that the Catholic countries won't pick on you so you can explore that way if you wish.

Tech wise, get cannons then fill in naval technologies. Harbors can be useful for connecting cities. Take liberty for the happiness bonus, and the increased worker production can speed along the long road needed to connect your new ottoman conquests. After the Ottomans keep your war machine rolling through the Ayyubids. After taking down the Ayyubids, I fortified everybody and clicked "next turn" until I won, but I could have pressed the Military harder.

 

[Xile]

Or just play Austria and abuse the UA, it's beyond broken. You can diplo marry Vatican on turn 20-25 or so, after that papal primacy + aesthetics puts resting point with Catholic CSs nearly at allied. Because there are so many CSs clearing a barb camp will give you influence with a lot of them. Staying friendly with European civs will be effortless as well, just denounce Russia and Byzantium when the other Catholic civs have had the chance to meet them.

Austria makes deity seem like prince in this scenario. God, I hate Austria in G&K.

Enough with the ranting though. Russia is probably the most painful civ to win the scenario with, so if you just want the achievement just go with Austria, though I found winning as Byzantium pretty easy as well.

 

[Heretiv]

I have been working on this achievement, and it is now almost in the bag.
I must say that the scenario is a beast!
Due to the map size and slow pace, also the sheer number of opponents and city states, there is a lot going on. It is a real marathon effort. I still have 18 turns to go and they will be slow for sure.

Anyway, I used a similar method to above but with a poorly executed strategy.

I started the Patronage tree to try to get HRE votes with the initial culture.
Then I made a swerve into honour to get faster XP and importantly culture from the raging barbs.
Stupidly I took a couple of levels of Liberty to get a free settler, but on reflection I should have continued Patronage or gone into Commerce earlier.

I left the national library very late (turn 80ish) which was foolish and meant I did not have any real tech advantage for warfare. Also it meant cossacks and trubuchet/cannon came in late.

It is possible to grab a lot of VP from the religious conquest.
It works perfectly well for Orthodox troops taking catholic cities.
I had Sweden, Austria and Netherlands all DOW me.
It was slow, but with a lot of city razing I beat Sweden back to the Baltic coast.
I had a real problem with other nations sending settlers into my lands - I had a very loose city layout so plenty of space for them to spam cities inside.

It would have gone a lot better with a good strategy for 'wide happiness' but I guess I didn't plan for that too well - I did try to get the bonus happiness for garrision, walls, castle, but for much of the game my happiness was in the red.

One good way to salvage that was to 'liberate' cities of opposing religion - as long as you have open borders with the recipient all your attacking troops stay put and any remaining defenders get teleported away when the ownership of the surrounding area swaps. You have to keep an eye on who lost land to who to make this one work.

I found it hard to keep my army size up - I was 3rd from last in terms of size, maybe I am just not focussed enough on spamming units out.

 

[Maxym]

Enough with the ranting though. Russia is probably the most painful civ to win the scenario with, so if you just want the achievement just go with Austria, though I found winning as Byzantium pretty easy as well.

Russia is one of the easiest civs to win this scenario with. I was one capital away from a Domination win on my first try of ItR. Their UA is just that powerful. Yes you have to deal with Mongols, but you know they are coming and you cam just steamroll everybody once they are done with. All you need is their cap and some high strategic/lux cities.

You are right though, Austria is very easy as well. and achievement is for Russia on emp plus. I will dig up my write up later...

 

[IAmOzymandias]

Yeah, Austria is BS. Worst idea for a trait in the entire game.

 

[scheva007]

Or just play Austria and abuse the UA,.

So to get the achievement "win as russia on emperor", you need to play as austria?

Sounds logical

 

[Maxym]

It was my first stab at the ItR scenario, i chose Russia and Emperor to get the achievements and it worked out ok.

I rolled the Mongols around T100, DoWing them on t 75 to get the last bit of gold i needed to win my 1st HRE (Byzantines were nice enough to pay me to fight).

Built only 6 other cities but ended up annexing coastal cities to buy navies. I had horses instead of iron near my cap so I fought mongols with knights.

Swung west after taking a good peace deal from genghis, and attacked Austria who were fighting Dutch and Swedes at that time. Completely wiped them out, then did the same to Dutch except leaving one marginal city for Swedes to take and get the diplo hit instead of me. After that my march, two tap Cossacks blitzed through France and Spain, clearing out all units outside of cities and Cannons took care of that.

I thought it will be hard to invade island nations and Africa but by annexing and buying privateer navies it was quite easy, if i knew how easy i would have prioritized Domination victory earlier.

I have gave it a try and managed to get everyones caps except Sully. It was doable if I chose the right strategy even during endgame. After taking Constantinople i needed to send that army to Levant by boat and invade his cap instead getting bogged down in Asia Minor.

Sweden fell only once my North Sea navy broke through Denmark to support the invasion, so a Baltic city is paramout to avoid that slog.

I did not have a Black Sea city either and one would be very useful to clear Byzantine navy.

I just realized i got 5 caps in 17 turns to wrap it up at 4 opposite corners of the map pretty happy with this effort. Cairo was close esecially when i lost my only cannon with 2 turns to go, but suicidal cossack charges took the day. Commanded almost 300 units by end game and stopped building with 5 turns to go.

Victory screen

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Egyptian front

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Levant beachhead, close but so far away without a land force to land there...

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they are stuck cutting their way through Asia Minor

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Swedish front

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Mongol border, lightly defended since for 100 turns

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And finally a initial placement of my core cities

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[Heretiv]

Maxym,
It seems your game went much better than mine!
I did manage to close it out and get the victory, mainly due to points from capturing catholic cities.

How did you cope with unhappiness from all the cities you took?

Also do you start off attacking very carefully to avoid loosing units in the attack?
I if I target their army and not the cities it is very slow (AI production rate).
however if I rock up with a bunch of crossbows/trebuchet/cannon and take the city first, then I loose a number of units - so my army never managed to reach full size I think - only 45 units.

 

[Maxym]

Happy from honor garrison, I think I went tradition with Cathy not sure if I opened liberty for connection bonus, as soon as I hit Industrial I took order opener, then pushed for commerce bonus from lux. Trust me I needed them all, i hate fighting with -33% modifier.

I did a bit of recapture to get city sizes down, sometimes I sold border cities to next target and captured them again just to get the size down, razed some, and capped growth in mine. Bought cathedrals in catholic ones. And allied every mercantile civ I could find.

I do avoid early losses at all cost, I don't mind starting slow, but keeping my vets. Then once I got production going I sacrifice units, but still try to protect veteran ones. Mongols are tricky as they keep healing, but AI has major issues handling Keshiks and they hardly shot at me. I left them a free path to Moscow and they were going for it through a killing alley and I think only three made it.

I always target army first, in this scenario my Cossaks were usually ahead and muskets and cannons capping cities and trying to catch up.