Russia - the most overnerfed civ in the game! Should it be improved?

[alpaca]

Yeah well, beelining even Helicopters come earlier than Cavalry: all you have to do is avoid researching Military Tradition. But in my book, and in the AI's book as well, this tech comes BEFORE Rifling, and not the other way around, because since the AI does not beeline for Riflemen, having Riflemen is quite pointless if compared to having Cuirassiers and West Point, especially since Riflemen against Grenadiers are only slightly better than Musketmen, hence you need those Cuirassiers because the AI is going to research for Military Science & Tradition before Rifling, and that's because it's much faster to do; so unless you want to pretend that you face Grenadiers with Riflemen or with other Grenadiers... Military Tradition should come before.
So yeah, Rifling could come 2 techs earlier, but it could also (and most likely) not. The above point is pointless because it's not a fact but just a possibility.

If you want to go for conquest however, Riflemen are much more interesting than Cuirassiers because Cuirassiers have pretty large problems to beat Pikemen whereas a Rifleman (especially if some are promoted with City Raider) doesn't have problems to beat anything else except other Riflemen or sometimes Oromos.

Beelining to Riflemen is a bit more costly but it's definitely worth it in my opinion.

Just a question about my argument as nobody seemed to react on it: Did anybody actually try using city-raider-promoted Riflemen (well level two or three)? They beat anything inside a city easily really, without the need to bombard before attacking.
Besides, do Cuirassiers ignore walls?

 

[thomson_2001]

just played 1st bts game as russia since Civ 4. Im newly converted SE player and as long as beeline effectively can really use the UB to good use. I love to have lots of scientist specialists to drive my research. so the +2 in all cities is great! combined with statue of liberty, mercantilism and representation is v powerful. i beelined for superconductors early, getting the health and food from biology and electricity on way! very handy

 

[Calder]

When reading that Military Science has been brought back to the Renaissance era in the latest patch, I was hoping to read that cavalry now require Military Science rather than Rifling, but no such luck. Beeling through Gunpowder>Chemistry>Military Science with Military Tradition would have given back a little more life to cavalry. The usefulness of Cossacks vs Cavalry is still substantial (+50% vs Mounted), but the usefulness of cavalry units at the Rifling stage I think is very limited, especially playing on higher levels.

 

[kniteowl]

Besides, do Cuirassiers ignore walls?

They should because they require gunpowder to be built and Musketman require gunpowder and they ignore walls

 

[MrFelony]

curassiers with maybe a bump in power or w/e is not too over powered.

 

[0R4NG3]

Just a question about my argument as nobody seemed to react on it: Did anybody actually try using city-raider-promoted Riflemen (well level two or three)? They beat anything inside a city easily really, without the need to bombard before attacking.
Besides, do Cuirassiers ignore walls?

I tried using city-raider Riflemen and it is VERY effective. Frankly that's one of the reasons why I created this thread.
Yeah, Cuirassiers ignore walls.

When reading that Military Science has been brought back to the Renaissance era in the latest patch, I was hoping to read that cavalry now require Military Science rather than Rifling, but no such luck. Beeling through Gunpowder>Chemistry>Military Science with Military Tradition would have given back a little more life to cavalry. The usefulness of Cossacks vs Cavalry is still substantial (+50% vs Mounted), but the usefulness of cavalry units at the Rifling stage I think is very limited, especially playing on higher levels.

I agree, fixing cavalry would fix cossacks also. Making cavalry require Military science instead of Riflery is an interesting solution, it would definitely make Military science more popular.

 

[seasnake]

I've only played BTS Russia once as Peter. Cossacks were dead useful, as strong as riflemen but even more effective against cannons and cavalry with no grenadier weakness. Admittedly riflemen come sooner, but Cossacks counter more units just as well.
I had a barracks and stable in every city, so they came fairly strong.
But the real advantage, 2 movement. I could settle on a square and pillage without losing turns. Or I could invade twice as fast and skip pillaging. Did a little of both with some success.
Throw in chance for withdrawal, and you have a fairly useful unit. Just bring 3 grenadiers to take care of riflemen and your cossacks will pillage or weaken/destroy everything else. I have no problem with this unit.
To say Russia is the most overnerfed is ridiculous. Peter and Stalin have awesome trait combos, Catherine is okay, start with hunting and mining (scouts rock) and the UB is free scientists, the best specialist in my book.

Personally I'd say Korea is the low guy on the totem pole, followed by America (think Russia's UU is late?). The best civ is probably Babylon, followed by Inca then England.

 

[0R4NG3]

I've only played BTS Russia once as Peter. Cossacks were dead useful, as strong as riflemen but even more effective against cannons and cavalry with no grenadier weakness. Admittedly riflemen come sooner, but Cossacks counter more units just as well.
I had a barracks and stable in every city, so they came fairly strong.
But the real advantage, 2 movement. I could settle on a square and pillage without losing turns. Or I could invade twice as fast and skip pillaging. Did a little of both with some success.
Throw in chance for withdrawal, and you have a fairly useful unit. Just bring 3 grenadiers to take care of riflemen and your cossacks will pillage or weaken/destroy everything else. I have no problem with this unit.
To say Russia is the most overnerfed is ridiculous. Peter and Stalin have awesome trait combos, Catherine is okay, start with hunting and mining (scouts rock) and the UB is free scientists, the best specialist in my book.

Personally I'd say Korea is the low guy on the totem pole, followed by America (think Russia's UU is late?). The best civ is probably Babylon, followed by Inca then England.

The problem is that it is suboptimal to do what you have described. It is much more efficient to go the riflemen route with the later upgrade to infantry, meaning that in most of your games you will not see cossacks, the same way as you won't see russian UB unless you beeline to it. This makes Russia pretty flavorless, which is the problem. I would be happy if I didn't have to research Riflery to build cossacks and if UB came with an earlier tech.

It is not ridiculous to say that Russia is overnerfed, because it had the most nerfs! I didn't say Russia was the weakest, but it is the most nerfed.

UB is of moderate use if beelined, if not you can use "the best specialists in your book" to research future tech.

As I already said my problem with Russia is that it lacks flavor. You compared it to Korea, ok lets see, was there ever a game where you didn't use catapults or didn't build universities? I highly doubt it. And no matter how bad Protective is, and I don't think it is that bad, Financial more than makes up for it. No financial leader is bad!

I will agree with you on America being in a similar situation to Russia, however I will argue that supermarkets are more important than labs, and the +20% wealth is pretty decent. Also supermarkets are cheaper than labs hammerwise, meaning that you can get them up and running faster. The Navy Seals are very specialised, which makes their usefulness vary from game to game, they are pretty good at capturing coastal cities, which can be usefull in preventing AI cultural wins; also they are decent city defenders. But overall not the best UU I agree. However if you make it into the modern age as America you will build them most of the time. The problem with Cossacks is that most of the time it is better to avoid building them altogether.

 

[Larklight]

Incidentally, in a OCC as China, I beat Cathy's cossacks with spearmen (no Iron...)

 

[seasnake]

The problem is that it is suboptimal to do what you have described. It is much more efficient to go the riflemen route with the later upgrade to infantry, meaning that in most of your games you will not see cossacks, the same way as you won't see russian UB unless you beeline to it. This makes Russia pretty flavorless, which is the problem. I would be happy if I didn't have to research Riflery to build cossacks and if UB came with an earlier tech.

I love pillaging wars, I don't find them suboptimal way to play. It's a perfect unit for pillaging, and grenadiers are cheap enough I can have them counter the rifles and the cossacks handle everything else.
Cavalry as a whole got nerfed, but that was the only way to strengthen the age of the musket more. Before muskets were a joke.
I think it could be argued that Russia's flavor is to be a pillaging warfare civ. Go through and take out improvements and pocket gold, you have the perfect unit for doing that. A few promotions and suddenly you have pinch, rifles not so much of an issue anyway. I'm just saying, using Cossacks in this fashion was fun for me and gave me a lot of gold. I just assumed that was the great strength of Russia in that era.

BTW: Think Russia got more nerfed than America? Washington was Fin/Org in the original game, one of the three "forbidden" combos. He rocked the house. Now I think he's exp/cha or something like that, not bad but a big loss from what he was.

PS: Have you ever played with Korea? A more effective catapult does not add any "flavor" to your playing experience. At least Russian UU can kill. Seowon is OK.

PPS: At least you're not Khmer (I know you're not implying you are, this is just a general comment). Man, Ballista Elephants are the ultimate joke, cool looking unit that is hard to build AND has a minor bonus. Minor because you just stack your horses in a different stack behind your beat squad and their bonus is worthless.

 

[lulu135]

Russia should be able to build research labs early (with Radio), but only if they also have Communism and are running state property. The Bolsheviks loved science. This would give Russia time to get benefits from its UB in a historically realistic way.

 

[0R4NG3]

Russia should be able to build research labs early (with Radio), but only if they also have Communism and are running state property. The Bolsheviks loved science. This would give Russia time to get benefits from its UB in a historically realistic way.

That would be great

I love pillaging wars, I don't find them suboptimal way to play. It's a perfect unit for pillaging, and grenadiers are cheap enough I can have them counter the rifles and the cossacks handle everything else.
Cavalry as a whole got nerfed, but that was the only way to strengthen the age of the musket more. Before muskets were a joke.
I think it could be argued that Russia's flavor is to be a pillaging warfare civ. Go through and take out improvements and pocket gold, you have the perfect unit for doing that. A few promotions and suddenly you have pinch, rifles not so much of an issue anyway. I'm just saying, using Cossacks in this fashion was fun for me and gave me a lot of gold. I just assumed that was the great strength of Russia in that era.

BTW: Think Russia got more nerfed than America? Washington was Fin/Org in the original game, one of the three "forbidden" combos. He rocked the house. Now I think he's exp/cha or something like that, not bad but a big loss from what he was.

PS: Have you ever played with Korea? A more effective catapult does not add any "flavor" to your playing experience. At least Russian UU can kill. Seowon is OK.

PPS: At least you're not Khmer (I know you're not implying you are, this is just a general comment). Man, Ballista Elephants are the ultimate joke, cool looking unit that is hard to build AND has a minor bonus. Minor because you just stack your horses in a different stack behind your beat squad and their bonus is worthless.

Pillage wars are a whole different matter, I can imagine cossacks are pretty decent at them. However I almost never pillage at that stage of the game, prefer to capture cities.

Cre/Fin Catherine was also pretty damn decent, now she's Cre/Imp, so yeah bigger nerf than America.

Yes the more effective catapult does add flavour, since you will use it in every game, sure it's not great but at least it's there and it is useful in certain situations, the same applies to a lesser extend to Khmer, obviously if they don't get Ivory they're screwed, and I really think they should change that to make it more useful.

 

[seasnake]

"At least it's there and it is useful in certain situations"

So is the cossack. It is useful in the scenario I described. However, I guess you could argue it's shelf is much shorter so that puts a bummer on the whole thing.

Slightly disagree, feel that Cre/Fin less valuable than Fin/Org. However, to each their own. I also don't hate Imp as much as most people (I like it better than Pro, which is partly why Wang Kong isn't fun for me or, shudder, Sitting Bull).
Oh well. Anyway, if you come up with a fix that 1) makes cavalry more relevant but 2) keeps muskets and rifles strong then let me know. Maybe Military Science, but make MS require rifling? I don't know.

 

[kniteowl]

Well Assuming you make a direct liberalism beeline and pick up nationalism and cavalry require MT and MS.

You still have to research Military tradition (assumes you have music) Gunpowder, Chemistry (assumes you have engineering) and Military Science.

While a rifling beeline would require.. Assumes Liberalism take Printing Press as free tech.

Banking, Replaceable Parts, Gunpowder and Rifling

That sounds about right 4 techs for both beelines except MS now gives you 2 units and also opens up Steel... well if the MT & MS beeline becomes to effective make MS require Printing Press.

Here's a Silly Idea, why not just increase the strength of all Cavalry to 18 and also increase Rifling counter to 50% vs mounted units and keep cavalry at Rifling? Now the difference between Cavalry and Infantry isn't so big and now they last longer.

 

[0R4NG3]

Well Assuming you make a direct liberalism beeline and pick up nationalism and cavalry require MT and MS.

You still have to research Military tradition (assumes you have music) Gunpowder, Chemistry (assumes you have engineering) and Military Science.

While a rifling beeline would require.. Assumes Liberalism take Printing Press as free tech.

Banking, Replaceable Parts, Gunpowder and Rifling

That sounds about right 4 techs for both beelines except MS now gives you 2 units and also opens up Steel... well if the MT & MS beeline becomes to effective make MS require Printing Press.

Here's a Silly Idea, why not just increase the strength of all Cavalry to 18 and also increase Rifling counter to 50% vs mounted units and keep cavalry at Rifling? Now the difference between Cavalry and Infantry isn't so big and now they last longer.

Both solutions sound decent to me. Now how do we get Firaxis to read this?

 

[Figaro]

It always puzzled me that they nerfed the Cossack to hell but left the Praetorian as it was, when it always seemed to me that the Praetorian was MORE unbalanced than the Cossack.

One advantage of Russia is that it's a Civ with 3 leaders, giving you more flexibility assuming that you *would* want the UU/UB. As an interesting but rather irrelevant side-note, Russia is the only Civ with 3 leaders between whom not a single trait is repeated...

England (both Victoria and Elizabeth are Financial)
America (both Lincoln and Washington are Charismatic)
France (Napoleon + De Gaulle are Cha, De Gaulle and Louis Ind)

But with Russia, the same trait never crops up twice (Agg/Ind, Cre/Imp, Phi/Exp). Leader-wise, Russia is very interesting: Cre/Imp is an amazing combo for taking land quickly, and Agg/Ind is a great combo for Domination. Yes, the UU and UB are a bit rubbish, but they're not as bad as the Americans', so perhaps only a minor boost to the Cossack is all that's needed.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

The fact is their UU isn't meant to have an 'main unit' role. They (Cossacks or Cavalry in general) should be used With Rifles to get rid of Cannons [they might need to be given some ability v. trebuchets... but they are meant mostly for Flanking abilities... which mean they survive 60% of their losses. Cossacks make those losses more likely and less deadly.

I could see maybe boosting Cavalry to str 16, but no more as they do get an additional 2 exp.

The real UU to boost is the Balista Elephant as mentioned. First of all is its rarity. Given that, I'd try to make it more special.. give it the ability to do Collateral Damage, and to use Terrain Defense.

 

[Wodan]

Russia should be able to build research labs early (with Radio), but only if they also have Communism and are running state property. The Bolsheviks loved science.

While your suggestion makes historical sense, it would be rotten for gameplay. I would be fine allowing Russia to have earlier research labs, but giving it a restriction like that seems to me to be too much of a limit on player creativity and enjoyment. I can't see how we would need this limit for gameplay balance, so it simply is a nod to history which we don't need.

Wodan

 

[Wodan]

It always puzzled me that they nerfed the Cossack to hell but left the Praetorian as it was, when it always seemed to me that the Praetorian was MORE unbalanced than the Cossack.

The Praetorian comes at a time when there are significant costs to having a large empire, and your options to deal with those costs are limited. In addition, the costs to simply wage a foreign war are exacerbated for the same reason.

Cossacks don't suffer nearly the same restrictions, so they are more susceptible to an abusive situation.

Wodan

 

[0R4NG3]

I should've made a poll, it looks like most people agree on a slight boost to Cossack or Cavalry.

The Praetorian comes at a time when there are significant costs to having a large empire, and your options to deal with those costs are limited. In addition, the costs to simply wage a foreign war are exacerbated for the same reason.

Wodan

You don't have to capture cities... Raize and expand when ready. But yes you're right with the old Cossack you could do both.

While your suggestion makes historical sense, it would be rotten for gameplay. I would be fine allowing Russia to have earlier research labs, but giving it a restriction like that seems to me to be too much of a limit on player creativity and enjoyment. I can't see how we would need this limit for gameplay balance, so it simply is a nod to history which we don't need.

Wodan

<-- Doesn't limit this player's creativity and enjoyment. You do have a point there though, but I don't think it would be too bad, considering that the building would still work under other civics, but can only be built under State Property, a bit like organized religion and missionaries. Also with Radio comes Cristo Redentor, so it becomes even easier.