Napoleon Total War as Russia

[Hamilton321]

Hello I have revisited the Total War series recently and have been playing Napoleon Total War as the Russian Empire. Russia can be both fun and frustrating. Some upsides of playing as Russia are that as Russia you are the empire with the most land area, and with as many regions as Napoleon's France. Russia has the potential to become a very economically advanced nation, able to field a massive army of cheap but adequate troops. For resources Russia has a lot of fur and lumber. Russia is also quite a forgiving faction when it comes to war, if one loses a battle then it is not the end of the world, because of how long it takes to travel from region capital to region capital a defeat will never result in the loss of more than one region, and none of your regions are good enough to cry over. Another thing to remember is that as Russia is that you can always out recruit whoever you are fighting.

Downsides of playing as Russia are that it is difficult to develop your nation to its full economic potential, your troops are not good, your regions are underdeveloped, your empire is vast, making it hard to develop all your regions or concentrate your forces in war. Russia has to deal with rebellions more frequently than other nations especially in conquered regions since they will almost always have a different religion than you. Russia has economic problems early game. I find that I end up raising taxes on the nobility quite high early game as Russia just to get the money necessary to do the recruitment I need for wars against the Ottomans and Swedes and to just do basic economic development.

Important things to do as Russia are to build roads so that your troops can travel across your vast territory to reach the enemy, do little things to keep the lower classes somewhat happy, set aside some money to improve your resources of fur and lumber and develop industry, and make sure that your economic minister is good early on. This will help you to increase tax income and give you some town wealth early game even with your high taxes that kill town wealth. In battle you should remember that your troops are good in melee and in most battles you should at some point charge the enemy.

That's all for my commentary for now. I think next I might compare Russia's cavalry to that of other Napoleon Total War factions.

 

[Lexicus]

IIRC there's nothing wrong with their artillery, right? In my battles in Empire and Napoleon it's artillery that seems to do most of the work.

 

[Hamilton321]

IIRC there's nothing wrong with their artillery, right? In my battles in Empire and Napoleon it's artillery that seems to do most of the work.

Well, the Russian artillery is pretty standard, though one thing you have to consider is that in empire you will spend much time fighting the Ottoman Empire to achieve your win conditions and their artillery is better than yours. In Napoleon there are two things, first Russia has no access to standard howitzers, second you will of course have to fight Napoleon and his best in game artillery, though once you get standardized artillery you can build the engineer school and then you can get the 20-lber unicorns, these are quite good and unique, they are somewhat similar to howitzers, the unicorns have access to explosive shells and canister shot. I looked it up and they are based on real life Russian artillery. There is a link to the Wikipedia article.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Licorne