[TW Guide] MTW: The Russians (High)

[Garbarsardar]

Author: Morble
Original Thread: Not Available

MTW: The Russians (High)

The Russians (High)

For the most part, the Russians are not that difficult to play, but you have to be mindful of your treasury to start, and of course, you have to survive the Mongols. At the start of the game, your immediate neighbors are all rebels, and therefore easily beaten in battle by your boyars and halberdiers. However, the Steppe provinces are all rather unruly and almost totally undeveloped.

If you follow the standard sequence of conquest wherein you invade and then heavily garrison the province until its loyalties increase, you will not generate enough profits to hold your fledging empire together. You must avoid being forced to build stacks and stacks of peasants to man your garrisons. Luckily, there is another strategy.

Instead of trying to police each rebellious province, simply set the taxes to very high, and move on to the next province—leaving a 100 to 400 man garrison behind. The conquered province will usually revolt on the next turn. You can then move back in with an army and defeat the peasant revolt. Do not kill the captives during the battles. At the end of the battle you will receive cash for their confiscated lands. Whether you then kill or release them depends on whether you want to increase happiness or dread for your king and governor. Repeat this process as necessary until the province loyalty reaches 100%.

There is a balancing act involved here in that rebellions are proportional to the size of the garrison. Thus, you want to leave a fairly large garrison in order to have a fairly large, but low quality, rebellion. However, the more troops you leave in your garrison, the higher the province loyalty goes, which reduces the chance of a rebellion. As a rule of thumb, I try to leave 300 men as a garrison, and hope for province loyalty of 50% or less. This gives you a 50-50 chance of getting a rebellion of somewhere around 300-900 rebels.

Use caution in the number of provinces below 100% loyalty, though, because there is an annual random global multiplier that the game uses to determine whether there will be a revolt or not. In consequence, some years not even 0% loyalty provinces will revolt, and in other years, every single province below 100% loyalty will spawn a rebellion.

In these rebel battles, strive to avoid direct melee contact until the rebel forces are considerably weakened. In general, this is not difficult to accomplish, because your armies should be made up of primarily boyars and halberdiers, with some archers thrown in. Use your boyars to weaken the opposition with missile fire, but keep them out of melee until your battleline of halberdiers makes contact. Halberdiers are very strong infantry units, especially when set to defend, but they lack a shield and are thus are very weak against missile fire. It behooves you to charge your cav into enemy archer units to rout them before they can come within range of your precious halberdiers. Boyars have a mediocre charge, at best, but their melee skills are very good and more than enough to send archer units running for their mommies.

On your first turn, set taxes to very high and build watchtowers in all of your provinces, even Pereslavyl. Build border forts in all your starting provinces on the next turn, except in Pereslavyl, where you should start a fort. Move your emissary to Muscovy and send your princess south to Poland or Byzantium. Transfer your peasant company to Novgorod. Except for the garrison in Pereslavyl and your single peasant company, move everyone you can into Smolensk on the first turn.

The transfer of the peasants should keep the province loyalty in Novgorod above 100%. You are attacking the rebels in Smolensk blindly, without knowing what is there. However, if you check their bribe cost with your emissary, it is less than 2000 F, so they can’t be very valuable units. When you throw everything from Novgorod and Muscovy at them, they will retreat without a fight and leave you the province.

Now that you have captured Smolensk, you can move everyone, including all but 100 men from Kiev, into Lithuania. Meanwhile, move your peasants and halberds from Muscovy and Novgorod to garrison Smolensk. Your emissary, having been pre-positioned in Muscovy, can now attempt to bribe the boyar-led stack of rebels in Chernigov. Do not be dismayed if the bribe fails.

Controlling Smolensk and Chernigov (or Smolensk and Lithuania) also has the advantage of geographically uniting your holdings, allowing troop transfers and communications across your entire kingdom. Along with the watchtowers and border forts, this has the effect of increasing happiness in all your provinces.

You begin the game with fairly well developed provinces in the north. Note especially the armor guilds in Novgorod and Muscovy. From the start of the game, set Muscovy and Novgorod to building a unit a year of boyars and halberdiers. You will want to maintain this production, if you can, for the entire game. Except for morale increases from religious structures and a single armor upgrade, Russian units don’t get any better than this.

In Kiev, which is considerably less developed, build Slav warriors to start. Develop Pereslavyl to build Steppe cav and Dhruzinas. Since you have the option of building Slav warriors, you will want to avoid building peasants. Slav warriors cost 50 F more than peasants to build, but the Slavs are true light infantry, with a strong charge, albeit poor melee skills. Perhaps most importantly, they are 100 man units, and their morale is 0 (as compared to –2 for peasants).

Slav warriors can perform all the garrison duties of peasants, but they are also able to fight on the battlefield. They fit especially well with Russian armies because the Russians have very strong defense, but generally poor attack skills. Tie up the enemy with your halberds, then charge them from the flank with your Slavs. Even though it costs you 50 F more to produce Slav warriors instead of peasants, their maintenance costs are the same. Thus, over a 50 year period, you get an actual battleworthy unit (as long as you don’t expect your Slavs to fight head-to-head in a melee) for an average of 1 F per year.

Eventually you will probably want to build boats out of Kiev, but it will take a while for you to develop the required structures. In the meantime, build Slav warriors there. By the time you are ready to build boats, you will be able to build Slavs in other provinces.

It is your choice whether you want to build Steppe cav out of Pereslavyl, or develop it further to build Dhruzhina cav (horse breeder and swordsmith). Steppe cav are actually faster and have a better charge. But Dhruzhinas are a surprising 60 men per company, and have good melee skills for a light cav unit. After you have broken the enemy army, Dhruzhinas are the very best at using a spread, loose formation to trawl for routers. Spread out and in loose formation, they can virtually comb the battlefield for capturable enemy—which puts more money in your coffers.

They are also excellent for rushing enemy missiles and peasants during the battle to put these units to rout. Dhruzhinas are not quite fast enough to catch routing enemy cav units, so you should still keep a Steppe cav unit in your army for this purpose and to provide that pinch more shock value when you need a strong cav charge. In fact, Steppe cav have the strongest cav charge available to the Russians (Their charge is still inferior to European heavy cav, though.)

If you have read my other strategy guides, you know that I am a big fan of Steppe Heavy Cav. But SHC is superfluous in the Russian army. There is nothing they can do that your boyars can’t do better.

When you attack Lithuania with everything you have, it is enough to make the rebels retreat without fighting. Now is the time to put your emissary into action. Bribe the besieged rebels. A successful bribe here is, to my mind, very important, because a bribed garrison will leave the castle intact. Lithuania not only has great trade resources, but it is where you will build your boats for the northern trade routes. Keeping the castle intact saves a lot of time and money.

An additional bonus is that the geographical combination of Lithuania and Kiev locks out any expansionist faction from exploiting any rebel provinces in the north. Now only the Byzantines (or Turks, depending on who is ascendant) can capture a northern Steppe province without going to war with you. (And this being High period, you don’t really want to own Khazar anyway, until after the Mongol issue has been settled.)

Capturing Vilnius castle in Lithuania is of such strategic importance that I recommend abandoning the province if you can’t complete the bribe before the castle is about to fall. Throw your entire occupation army into Chernigov and let the rebels recapture the province, then invade Lithuania again, if necessary. You may also have to interrupt your build queues in order to have enough money to pay the increased bribe money demanded after failure(s). Even so, it is still worth doing when you consider that you not only get the Lithuanian cav and ½ crossbows present in Lithuania, but Vilnius castle allows you to shortcut to boatbuilding.

Another advantage to Lithuania is that you can build woodsmen there with a valor add. Woodsmen have the best charge available to you, even better than Slav warriors, and the equal of RKs, but they are also a very frail unit. Woodsmen have no melee skills at all. Basically, they are willing to charge in and give one chop of their axe, then they want to retire and discuss the battle over an ale. If you let your woodsmen get caught in a melee, they will die like flies. On the other hand, woodsmen are dirt cheap at 75 F, so don’t cry too many tears over losing a unit of them. While you are creating a boatbuilder in Lithuania, it is worth the effort to build 5-10 woodsmen companies.

When you move your attack army into Chernigov, the boyars there will retreat to Khazar. The same will happen when you invade Ryazan. Don’t fret about them, though. A strong rebel force in Khazar will likely be the concern of the Byz, the Turks, or the Mongols, not you. Concentrate instead on conquering the rest of the northern provinces.

Livonia is another unruly but valuable province with more Lithuanian cav and a castle. They should also be bribed. Note that if you invade Livonia, the rebels will be forced to battle you because they have no retreat. Unless you are really strapped for cash (and you shouldn’t be at this point), it is better to try to bribe first without invading. If the rebel commander refuses and demands too much money, then invade and try very hard to kill him in battle. Although this destroys a feudal knight unit, his replacement, under siege in Livonia castle, will be much more compliant to your entreaties.

Meanwhile, play the loyalty manipulation game with Ryazan, Chernigov, and Lithuania. Always leave behind 100 men or more, at least until you build a fort in the province, or you will likely get a much bigger rebellion than you wanted. (Even with a fort, if your garrison is less than 100 men you risk an unplanned revolt.) After leaving behind a Slav warriors as a garrison, push your king’s stack around to the various newly-conquered provinces and keep everyone’s taxes high. When you do get a rebellion, move enough fighters in so that you not only quell the revolt, but also bring the loyalty back up over 100%. If loyalties are below 100% when you have your fighting stack present, you might easily get caught in a cycle of annual rebellions that will attrite your army. You will probably have to supplement Lithuania with some Slav warriors during the first years of these actions to prevent this.

Once Smolensk and Chernigov are placated, you can use them as staging grounds for your response armies. Split your main army into two parts; one will work between Lithuania and Livonia, the other will farm the rebellions between Ryazan and Volga-Bulgaria. Volga-Bulgaria has a fort that will have to be assaulted. Possibly you could take time out of your quality builds to make an extra emissary (since your sole diplomat is negotiating in Livonia), but I don’t think it’s worth the effort. Forts usually survive an assault without being destroyed, and the preserving the existing fort in Volga-Bulgaria is not crucial, since it is cheap to re-build.

While you are fomenting rebellions in your own provinces, build a watchtower, fort, and 20% agriculture in each. The watchtower gives you better control over the rebellions, which is worthwhile even though it may reduce the number of turns your province can rebel against you. The fort and agriculture allow you to prepare to build Steppe cav or more advanced units, and also increases your income a little bit. At the same time, continue your boyar, Slav, woodsmen, and halberd builds, and build towards boatbuilding in Kiev and Lithuania. You can ignore building structures for missile foot troops, because Livonia will come with the ability to build arbalesters

The last remnants of barbarian culture will be in Moldavia, Prussia, Crimea, Finland, and Khazar. You want to leave Khazar until the Mongols arrive. Both Moldavia and Prussia have a unit of feudal knights present, but the provinces are unfavorably positioned geographically in that they would be hard to reinforce if attacked. Crimea is sort of an afterthought to your northern conquests. It is a decent province, but not worth going out of the way for, and the horse archer rebels there will not add strength to your army. I usually get the time to bribe or invade Crimea around 1220, after the rest of my position is solidified.

You must conquer Finland, though. If you don’t, the first faction to put a boat in the Baltic Sea will claim the province for themselves and expose your western flank by plunking a big army down in Finland. Even though Finland causes you to go a bit out of your way to conquer it, and is somewhat unruly, and is practically valueless to your economy, you need to attack it and subdue it by 1220.

Of course, when playing Russia in the High period, the big ugly monster hiding over the hill is the Mongol Invasion in 1231. The Golden Horde almost always arrives in Khazar, and often in additional provinces also. Many players are quite fearful of the Mongols, but the Horde is not all that tough—it’s just that there’s so darn many of them when they arrive.

The Mongols have some glaring deficits, and your Russian army is well prepared to take advantage of them. For one thing, they are nearly all mounted units, and very vulnerable to those heavy-duty halberdiers you have been churning out every year. Golden Horde Heavy Cav is superior in all aspects to regular boyars, but your triple armored boyars are about as strong defensively as they are. Ideally, though, you will match up the GHHC against your halberdiers, who will turn them into dog food. GH horse archers are equivalent to Steppe cav in melee and speed, but bring the added dimension of missiles. GH warriors also use bows and have some attack ability, but only poor defense.

So, in battles, seek to engage the Mongols in the woods wherever possible, because their cav loses just as much in the woods as anyone else’s. Mongol HC is impetuous, so you can often use a boyar as bait to get them to chase you into the trees—where your hidden battleline of halberds are waiting to give them a hearty handshake. You can chase the horse archers with your Steppe cav, which by now you should be churning out of at least Pereslavyl. Mongol horse archers are just as fast as your Steppe cav, but you can catch them when they have to run up any small hill or into woods and have to slow down. Once you get the GH heavy cav involved with your battleline, charge the GH warriors with your boyars to get them to rout.

Strategically, the Mongols have a couple of huge defects. For one thing, there aren’t many bridges in the Asian Steppes, so the Horde never developed effective means of crossing them. From Khazar, only Pereslavyl, Crimea, and Volga-Bulgaria have overland routes. The rest force the Mongols to cross a bridge to get to you.

So, around 1225, start assembling your armies in Pereslavyl and Volga-Bulgaria. Most other factions can avoid much of the attack force of the Mongols by simply sending a princess or emissary to gain an alliance. The Russians, however, must bear the brunt of the attack, because you cannot communicate with the Khan in the year he arrives, and he will attack you in the second. I have never been able to get any faction to agree to a ceasefire while they are actually attacking me, and the Mongols are no exception. So, you are going to have to fight the Mongols.

I wish I could tell you a secret method to easily whip the Mongols and get on with the rest of the game. But if such a strategy exists, I haven’t found it. It is possible to bribe the rebels in Khazar before the Mongols arrive, but I don’t feel it is worth the money, which will probably be 5000 F or more. Instead, buy up as many mercs as you can and invade Khazar on the same turn the Mongols invade.

This will put you in a three-way battle, with the rebels defending. It is extremely important that you invade Khazar from Volga-Bulgaria, Pereslavyl, and Crimea only. Otherwise you risk getting a bridge battle, with you and the Mongols starting on the same side of the bridge(s). If this happens, the rebels will simply sit and watch the fight, because the Mongols will attack you before attempting to cross the bridge.

By making sure you use only overland routes into Khazar, you will find yourself on a very flat, but wooded battlefield. Immediately run backwards to grab a treeline. Line your infantry inside the woods, and line your missile troops just in front (you get better kill ratios when firing from the open). String your cav out along one or both flanks of these two battleline. All your cav should have missile capability at the start of the battle.

By assuming an immediate defensive posture, you cede the center of the battlefield to the Mongols. This is fine for you, because the Mongols will rush in, and will start taking missile fire from both you and the rebels. The rebels won’t last long, but they at least provide some soak-off before they are routed off the field.

I usually lose the battle of Khazar—primarily because I am impatient. The Mongols will likely have 7500 troops; you will be doing well to have half that number. This means that the Mongols will have seemingly endless reinforcements. Every time you repulse a wave, another 4 to 8 Mongol units will appear. There can be as many as 10 attack waves, or even more. But the triple armored halberds you have been building can stand up to repeated Mongol assaults, especially if you put them on hold formation and hold position. (This increases their defense but lowers their attack).

The real discipline required here is to hold back from chasing routed units, or pushing your line forward to gain more ground. Halberdiers are too slow to actually catch anybody, and they are quite vulnerable to missile fire—which all of the Mongol troops have. With such a long battle, you will exhaust your halberds too early by marching them around for any reason, and they will start to route after 5 attack waves or so. Just repulse the current wave, give a short chase with some of your boyars, and meanwhile quickly line up your footmen into their two battlelines. Even though you are the attacker in this battle, the Mongols will continually try to attack your units. You must wait for them to come to you if you hope to win this battle.

Set your missiles to skirmish and line them up close enough to the halberds that they can escape a cav charge by running behind the halberds. Once the Mongol HC is occupied with your halberds, you can charge some of your boyars into their rear. Once you get the Mongol attack to rout, stop your footmen and line them up again while you send your boyars on a short chase. Don’t let your boyars go far though, or they too will get exhausted and will not stand up to the next melee wave.

One way to completely eliminate the Mongol threat is to kill the Khan in the Khazar battle. The Khan almost always shows up in Khazar, and he arrives without heirs, which is the other glaring strategic defect for the Mongols. If you kill the Khan, any remaining Mongol troops will go rebel. The rebels generally will not attack, and you can then assault/bribe them during the next few years at a more leisurely pace.

If the Khan is present in the battle, he will be in the initial army, and he will not hold back from charging your line. If the Khan flees, you probably will not be able to catch him with your boyars or footmen. Thus, when the Khan charges your line, it is worth the risk to really swarm him with units, even at the risk of exposing some more of your men, to prevent him from fleeing when routed.

If you win the battle of Khazar, you will need to pile as many troops as possible there, because the remainder of the Mongol army is probably in Georgia. However, the situation is a lot less dire, since you can now use a straight defensive strategy, and Georgia will likely come under attack from the Turks or Byz. If you can maintain an army in Khazar that is more powerful than what is in Armenia or Trebizond, then the Mongols will turn their attentions southward and may even ally with you.

If you lose the battle, but kill the Khan, I think it is easiest to bribe the remainder. Build a royal palace in Finland if you haven’t already, and build an emissary for each stack. Gather all the emissaries together in Khazar, then bribe each stack simultaneously. You won’t get everyone to accept the bribe, but invade with your full forces on the next turn when the rebels change sides and you should capture Khazar easily.

If you lose the first battle of Khazar and the Khan still lives, this is still not a bad thing. In fact, I almost prefer this option because the Mongols arrive with about 30,000 F, and they will pay up to 20,000 F to ransom their Khan.

If the Mongols repulse your attack on Khazar, redistribute your men. In Kiev, Chernigov, and Ryazan, put 2 boyars, 2 halberds, 1 artillery, and 1 attack infantry like woodsmen or Slavs. Any invasion from Khazar will be a bridge battle in these provinces, and this is enough to stop all but the most dedicated Mongol attack.

Your halberds are the key in a bridge battle. You need to actually plug the bridge with a company of halberds. Form your unit so it is only slightly wider than the actual bridge. Then click on the other side of the bridge and stop the unit when it is about 1/3 of the way across. If you stop too soon, your guys will have to fight up an incline instead of on the flat bridge bed. If you stop too late, your halberds will be within arrow range of the Mongols. Now line up your boyars two deep along the banks of the river. Put a halberd (to replace your first halberds if they get depleted or exhausted and unsteady), and a woodsman (for that well timed shock charge to finally send the enemy routing), in the back in reserve. Set your halberds to hold position and hold formation, and make them wait for the Mongol attacks. Put your attack infantry in wedge formation, but do not commit them too early—you want to wait until the guys fighting your halberds are worn down and tired, so the shock of the woodsmen charge will cause a rout.

Also, any sort of artillery is devastating when aimed down the throat of the bridge. Pereslavyl came with an inn already built. Start checking there early and hire any artillery you see. Artillery crews are very cheap to maintain, so buying them early and stocking up will have no noticeable effect on your economy.

There is typically a great disparity between AI artillery crews and yours. The AI crews are seemingly able to knock the hair off a fly at 600 yards. Your guys will often seem to have trouble figuring out what compass direction to point their weapon, never mind actually aiming it at a specific target. Nevertheless, the few shots that actually do land on the bridge will have a tremendous fear effect. Imagine yourself in the Mongols’ place: you are hot, tired, scared of the noise and smell and danger of battle, and fighting for your life besides, when suddenly a huge rock is propelled out of the sky and turns the 4 guys next to you into a pile of raspberry jam, including the “seeds”…you’d want to run away, too.

Even though I dislike organ guns in field battles because of their very short range, they are very, very nasty within that range, so they are a good addition in a bridge battle. But any artillery is good for this purpose, even the otherwise totally useless ballistas, if you can’t get better.

In Crimea, Kiev, and Volga-Bulgaria, you will fight your standard dual-battleline defensive battle against the Horde. The Mongols are a short-term threat. They cannot build structures to retrain or replace their losses, nor can they engage in any sort of diplomatic initiatives. They burst on the scene very strong, but they will inevitably dissipate. So every battle, win or lose, brings you closer to eventual victory. (Of course, you still have to win at least some of the battles.

More importantly, the Khan will usually invade Kiev or Crimea. This allows you to isolate the Khan and collect 20,000 F for capturing him. Retreat to your stronghold, and then counterattack in force the next year. If he is in Kiev, the Khan will usually leave there to invade Lithuania. That is fine with you, if you re-take Kiev, because then any further victory in the west will earn you your ransom. If the Khan goes to Crimea, his armies will almost always invade Kiev, too. Relieve the siege in Kiev and then throw everything into Khazar. This isolates the Khan in Crimea, and again you can get your ransom.

Continue to pump out boyars and halberds from your northern provinces, plus any other regular or merc troops you can afford. The Mongols will often attack Volga-Bulgaria on the same turn you re-invade Khazar. Since you have avoided building anything of much value in this and the other Steppe provinces, you are happy to let the Horde divide its power. Take Khazar, then reclaim Crimea and Volga-Bulgaria.

The Turks and/or Byz have almost certainly been working on the Mongols in Georgia and points south. Once you can secure your claim to Khazar and get one or more ransoms for capturing the Khan, you will be sitting pretty for the rest of the game. Generally the Byz and/or Turks will offer you an alliance when the Mongols arrive. You should accept this offer, because it secures your eastern/southern flank once the Mongols are handled. If possible, capture Georgia from the Mongols to provide a buffer zone for Khazar. That way you can develop Khazar’s rich trade resources in relative security.

I find that the Poles almost always attack Lithuania while I am trying to get ready for the Mongols. This is primarily an annoyance attack. Throw enough men into a counterattack to chase out the Poles with overwhelming force (so that they retreat without battle; this typically requires a 2:1 advantage). Usually the Poles have so unbalanced their holdings in order to attack you that Prussia will go rebel, or the Hungarians or other faction will invade them. Don’t attack Polish Volhynia until after you have taken care of the Horde—or if you must attack it, just strip it of every improvement and abandon it.

Once the Mongols are gone, or at least kicked out of your region, you are in excellent position for the rest of the game. You will have a secure block of territories, and close to the best economy and army of anyone. Now use your ransom gains to build religious buildings and title structures in Novgorod and Muscovy, then build fortresses there to get your best armor upgrade. Build caravels out of Kiev and Lithuania (only build barques when you can’t get anything better). Develop Pereslavyl or Chernigov to build Druzhina, with the other province to build Steppe cav. Finland is already building emissaries, and Livonia should be developed to pump out pavised arbalesters. Build a keep in Ryazan and Volga-Bulgaria, and prepare them to pump out assassins and spies. Make sure you have trading posts in all your coastal provinces, and build advanced trade buildings in Khazar and Lithuania at every opportunity.

Without the ransom money, you will have to do all this slowly, piece by piece, forcing builds in certain provinces by leaving the queues in other provinces empty. With the ransom money, you can do all of this simultaneously and will rocket to high status in the world.

Now is the time to settle the score with those treacherous Poles. As an Orthodox faction, you don’t have to worry about Papal warnings, but you still want to compress your attacks on Catholic factions so that the Pope doesn’t start calling for Crusades against you. In fact, try to ally with the Pope, and He will not authorize anyone to Crusade against you.

Your logical next target after the Poles is either the HRE or the Hungarians. Neither have many ports, so a war with them will not disturb your growing trade income. Check the alliance page to see if either of them is excommunicated. If so, that is your designated target, because you know their armies will be depleted from previous wars, and the Pope will not get angry at you for attacking an excommed Catholic. If neither faction is excommed, I typically just wait and consolidate. With the highest income, I can outstrip everyone else by just sitting quietly, developing my provinces and building my army.

It does not pay to get too fancy with Russian orders of battle. You want your armies to be about 50% cav, 25% missiles, and 25% halberds. For your cav, have a single unit each of Steppe cav and Dhruzinas, and the rest boyars. Russian battles are pretty standard in that you encircle the enemy with missile fire from your arbalest battleline and your boyars. When you run out of missiles, or the enemy closes to contact, use your line of halberds and your boyars as anvil and hammer to utterly smash the opposition.

In general, I try to maintain good relations with the Muslims. This does not always hold, and you should have no qualms against conquering southwards to Antioch and Syria if need be. However, your triple armored troops are totally unsuitable for the desert. They will start out already tired, and will exhaust themselves by simply walking 500 yards, making them very vulnerable to rout from battle. Thus, you want to exert some effort to stay away from fighting in that region with your standard armies.

Usually, staying allied with the Turks/Byz will keep Egypt neutral with you. Conversely, you can ally with Egypt and be neutral with the Turks/Byz. But in the latter case, you will likely be sneak attacked and, after the ensuing war, end up with borders next to Egyptian lands. In MTW, any immediate neighbor will eventually attack you, so this will lead to fighting in the desert.

It is best if you can postpone desert warfare until you can conquer the English. Scottish clansmen and Irish gallowglasses make excellent desert troops. Add in some unarmored missile troops and some light to medium cav (check the inns for appropriate mercs) and you have a good mobile desert force. In fact, the English often have trouble holding Ireland and Scotland, so you may be able to capture these provinces from rebels without having to disrupt your trade with the English.

Once you have arrived in Western Europe, the French and Italians are good major targets. The Italians typically have a lot of sea power, and are aggressive at maintaining their trade monopoly in the Mediterranean. They will likely go to war with you by sinking your ships as you try to expand trade routes into the Med. From your drydocks in Kiev and Lithuania, the Italian ports are the last ones you will connect to, so hitting Italy early will not disrupt your income and will allow you to secure trade in the Med Sea. The French are usually pariahs, with two or more enemies, and are often excommed, so no one will complain much if you attack them.

Do post a decent garrison in Saxony, though. Once there are no rebel lands adjacent to the Danes, the Danish will attack you. The Danish typically only have 2 ports in their kingdom, so destroying them does not harm you much, while adding the provinces of Denmark and the economic powerhouse Sweden can give a boost to your economy.

Once you have naval access, the small factions of Aragon and Sicily can be attacked with impunity, as long as you make your attacks swift and deadly. Invade every one of their provinces on the same turn, and by the time anyone thinks to complain, the faction will be destroyed.

The same naval approach should be used to destroy the Spanish and English. If you had sea access to the Aragonese, you can also invade these two factions from the sea. Pick one as your target, then invade as many of their provinces as you can in a single turn. This is often enough to immediately shatter the faction, even if you do not catch or kill their king.

If instead you get pulled into wars in the Middle East and North Africa, then note that the Almos are usually very vulnerable in Tunisia. Not only is there extra naval access there through the Malta channel, but taking this province will usually split the Almo empire in two, allowing you to capture their king for ransom.

The Egyptians are the faction you want to save until the last, if you can. If events force you there, then keep in mind that Egypt generally uses large quantities of low quality troops in her armies. Try to put together lightly armored armies of your own, as suggested above, and strike at the rich coastal provinces of Egypt, Palestine, Antioch, and Tripoli to devastate their economy and prevent any further troop recruitment or development.

In summation, almost all of the difficulties in the Russian game come at the start, before the year 1251. Begin the game by immediately starting the process of regional unification to create a strong economy and enough income to support further development. Manipulate your populations to foment rebellions, and thereby give yourself an excuse to confiscate more peasant lands for the crown. Relentlessly build boyars and halberds in preparation for the Mongols, and be heedful of the geography of your provinces and borders when they do arrive. You may well lose the first battle of Khazar, but do not be disheartened. Losing the battle may be the best outcome for you, if you can capture the Khan and ransom him. After you have locked up your ownership of everything from Khazar to Lithuania and all points north, use your heavily-armored armies and burgeoning trade income to steamroll over your competitors one by one, and you will soon claim your Russian victory.