russia is so one dimensional is it not

[alistairpeter]

Can't you just give them a fast age to3? You don't get the 3 vill in age one, but you don't really need it bc your eco catches up pretty quickly. I don't see what would hold them back from trickle, 700 wood, 700 gold. Maybe get a tp like other ff civs. Train musks in transition and get vet musks once aged, and send 2 falcs. I've lost to this kind of thing before, it feels similar to when france does it.

They have a fast age 3. The problem is that they can't semi-ff cause they don't get a 5 vills shipments, they can't ff because they don't have enough eco early on. In both case they need to upgrade their stelets and their musks (and need a lot of pop to spam shipments), and they don't have the eco for that in the early game.

Good point, sorry I don't really play much russia. I didn't consider that they don't have shadow tech skirms like most other euro civs

[dansil92]

Russia has fortress options but they're fairly all in builds, minimal followup, and poor scaling on their units initially. Once boyars is in, scout cav, more than 35 vills, absolutely russia is happy to jump up for falcs, vet strel+ strel combat, vet cossacks with cav combat, all sorts of goodies, but you can't really just straight ff with your... 17 vills max