Playing SS4 Kievan Rus, Need Unit Advice

[King_Sulieman_YHWH]

Hello my wonderful M2TW friends and wonderful forum,

I am currently playing a pretty frikkin awesome Kievan Rus game, because they are descendants of the eastern scandinavian vikings who made their way through the various rivers of Russia and Ukraine into the Black Sea. And I am a good portion Swedish, so I wanted to go with the family for once.

Anyways. I'm up to year 1150-something. I have conquered eastward all the way to Ashkelon and also have a province in Turkey (Trebizond). Im currently muscling in on the Hungarians and wiping them out, to consolidate a border with my Orthodox allies, the Byzantines. I'm also allied with the Orthodox People of Novgorod. So far the Orthodox factions are owning! Normally they get stomped.

Byzantine was fighting Turkey and Hungary, so I relieved their western front by going in on Hungary, So Byzantium can put a hurting on Turks, and then I'll assist them eventually with that as I plan on moving in to Mosul and Baghdad . My goal for this game is to have the Orthodox factions occupy the entire middle east and asia minor, as well as the caspian sea area, wipe out the Islamic factions there, and have the Catholics crusade against us Orthodox who will have the Holy Land. Should be awesome..

Anyway. The best troops I can make right now are:

Berdiche Militia
Heavy Horse Archers
Crossbow Militia
Kazakhs
Slavic Javelinmen
and all the starting stuff.

i'm trying to get better missile infantry, and better cavalry. what types of units should i be aiming to aquire and how would I go about doing that?

PS - I've got an assassins Guild in Kiev and used my maxed out assassin to kill the King & Prince of Hungary, lol. And the Kings daughter too.

[T-wester]

i'm trying to get better missile infantry, and better cavalry. what types of units should i be aiming to aquire and how would I go about doing that?
.

my advice would be to get Varangian Spearmen and Varangian archers from castles or fortresses as a main force and Kazaks(later cosak gunners) to flank maby a heavy inf fx Dism. Druzhina

PS - I've got an assassins Guild in Kiev and used my maxed out assassin to kill the King & Prince of Hungary, lol. And the Kings daughter too.

being evil ehh

[Druzhina]

The Rus are good if you use 'em well. Recruit LOTS of missile cavalry and heavy cavalry. Keep some Boyar sons too (cheap but efficient skirmishers). Recruit lots of Berdiche axemen (since they're cheap) and use them as shock troops, however use Dismounted Boyar sons as defensive infantry. A general tactic is weaken them with Kazaks/Cossak Cavalry/Boyar sons/Dvor- a.k.a missile cavalry attacks then hit 'em hard with Druzhina/Tsar's Guard. Meanwhile keep dismounted Dvor to blast 'em with powerful archery attacks. Oh, and make use of their spearmen too for defense against strong cavalry.

[Kalos]

Moved to Stainless Steel Subforum.