ESOCommunity

Russians come like zombie waves. The thing is i can hold them with vils etc. but i cant age because of pressure and at some point they get better eco in late colonial.

Huss semi, then spam dragoons. Blunderbuss might be needed.

4cdb > 700w > 700c > 5 goons

Should i raid his TC or defend with hussar?

Raid

You only need a few hussars to raid, not all 5-10. Raid with two and keep the rest near your base to stop cossacks from roaming freely in your base and threaten his army with a potential MM pop. If he knows you have no hussars in your base he won't be afraid of your MM. You must have 10/10 herding when you are getting rushed, though. If you are playing on a shit map without hunts you are possibly better off playing colonial, although you should theoretically lose that too.

The typicall build is 4cdb/700w(/8bows)/700g
Where you start huss, make a batch of bows with the 700w, eventually send 8 bows if you had not enough to defend ans then age up.
Once aged up I disagree with what gendarme said, you need some goon but not that much : try to have like 5 or 10 goons and as many cuirs as possible. The 2 falcs are crucial aswell : if the russian guy is age 2, je shouldn't be able to kill them. That's why you need a lot of cuirs with goons behind.

The important part will be to defend un colonial, never overcommit out if your base and use cdb to block/kill musk. You can raid a bit aswell with huss.

Strelets are the only threat to your goons (ruskets vs veteran goons? ez.), and they can neither poke nor siege, and strelets that do not fight are wasted population. I don't think you need bows against Russia, but against RE India you probably do.

I think the only times it is worth going cuirs right away is when your opponent is blindly making skirms and you can get a good initial trade in fortress (e.g. 5 cuirs vs 13 gurkha) to get the upper hand in the upcoming skirmishes. @Diarouga likes spamming cuirs vs China IIRC so I'm interested in what he has to say.

i like to play age 2 for abit and timing then age up when u get a good trade which is almost certainly going to happen

Sometimes i like to do 5 huss semi with 4cdb 700c (huss just here to raid) to age really fast then 5 goons 2 falcs. This way you age when russia doesn't have such a scary mass and can hold easily with 5 goons 5 huss mm and cdb
Tho the problem of this build is that you don't have a racks and you need 4-5 cdb on wood for houses

Lecastete wrote:Sometimes i like to do 5 huss semi with 4cdb 700c (huss just here to raid) to age really fast then 5 goons 2 falcs. This way you age when russia doesn't have such a scary mass and can hold easily with 5 goons 5 huss mm and cdb
Tho the problem of this build is that you don't have a racks and you need 4-5 cdb on wood for houses

good idea
The problem isn't 700w or rax but if he siege your 2 homes down how to send 2 cannon ?

Kazamkikaz wrote:

Lecastete wrote:Sometimes i like to do 5 huss semi with 4cdb 700c (huss just here to raid) to age really fast then 5 goons 2 falcs. This way you age when russia doesn't have such a scary mass and can hold easily with 5 goons 5 huss mm and cdb
Tho the problem of this build is that you don't have a racks and you need 4-5 cdb on wood for houses

good idea
The problem isn't 700w or rax but if he siege your 2 homes down how to send 2 cannon ?

You can afford to trade a bit of wood and build houses in the back of your base

try to handle age2, and then full cui

Gendarme wrote:Strelets are the only threat to your goons (ruskets vs veteran goons? ez.), and they can neither poke nor siege, and strelets that do not fight are wasted population. I don't think you need bows against Russia, but against RE India you probably do.

I think the only times it is worth going cuirs right away is when your opponent is blindly making skirms and you can get a good initial trade in fortress (e.g. 5 cuirs vs 13 gurkha) to get the upper hand in the upcoming skirmishes. @Diarouga likes spamming cuirs vs China IIRC so I'm interested in what he has to say.

No. Cuirs trade good vs any age 2 russian unit and especially they destroy inf+block cav while goon won't protect your falc vs a big cossack mass. It's funny that YOU underestimate cuirs^^

Cuirs are pretty bad when you have a huge army size disadvantage. Boyared cossacks are pretty damn strong. Make goons, man. Fuck those ugly ass falcs anyway. If he wants to sacrifice 15 cossacks to kill my two falcs he is more than welcome.

Basically start goon like against any musk/cav timing. Cuirs are cool vs russia but obviously they're not gonna be good vs musk/coss, especially when you just aged and don't have a lot of them. Add a few skirms if your goons can't deal with his rusket mass, and as soon as you feel safe enough, add cuir and ship falcs

some record game of this mu
I hope it helped you

https://www.sendspace.com/filegroup/sXX ... sIRsDI%2Bx

I like to musk semi in this MU (4cdb/700c)
Most of the time the russian guy is going to start with a musk/coss attack, which is easy to hold with some musks, and by the time he adds some strels, you'll be aging up and you're in a great spot (add some skirms, a stable, make some goons and timing with the 2 falcs).

If your opponent knows you're doing that, he might start strel, which is annoying but still fine.
Cdb do very well against strels so you'll hold although it will delay your semi ff. On the other hand, making strels slows him too as he will have to delay or skip his market/tp.

Cuirs are viable and you'll need them later but imo they're not too good against cossacks with boyards, so you should get 10 goons first and then add cuirs for body block.

I'm not a big fan of hand cav in general because you don't have a lot of micro/def potential. For instance, you can hold 15musks/10 coss with cdb+mm+8 goons without losing goons while the same hold with 5 cuirs would cost you all your cav.
Likewise, if you start huss vs Russia, I feel like you'll waste your huss+mm to hold because you need to commit, while musks hold easily.

Never done a musk semi with 700c first. Sounds interesting.

Gendarme wrote:Cuirs are pretty bad when you have a huge army size disadvantage. Boyared cossacks are pretty damn strong. Make goons, man. Fuck those ugly ass falcs anyway. If he wants to sacrifice 15 cossacks to kill my two falcs he is more than welcome.

i still want see that 13 cuirassier BO FF you told me LOL

If you can do a 13v or even 12v age up, things become much easier. A 5 hussar semi, or age 2 musk hussar spam can handle this.

Standard 14v age up is a bit slow in this MU. You may start musk and add hussar later, or build a stable in a strange place, send 3 hussar first and raid him.
You can hardly train 5 hussar with 5 cossacks raiding your vills. So 3 hussar start is not bad then. With 7-8 hussars (and 6 minutemen sometimes) you can give him a big surprise, killing his first batch of units, or raid him hard (while he can't prevent you with 5 cossacks).

Sounds somewhat extraordinary to not be able to train 5 hussars first batch.

Gendarme wrote:Sounds somewhat extraordinary to not be able to train 5 hussars first batch.

Depends on the start and the treasures. If you have shitty treasures and you don't build a market in age 1 (which means you get less resources in), you might struggle to get 5 huss out while getting raided by 5 coss

with a tp in transition it's almost granted u don't get 5 out.

5 cucksacks are faster anyway than hussar batch so musk start is probably better. Strelets dont do any damage vs cdb

strel + coss do. The reason why start cav vs russia is because of the all in rush. With rax start you just get raped