RUS Gold is an incredibly complex AGEOD game, full of little tidbits and comparisons that are difficult to keep in mind. There is also quite a lot of differences with standard RUS, which is the reason why I wanted to write and publish this guide.

The is a ‘Player Notes on Revolution Under Siege (Grand Campaign Strategy Guide’) amazing document and should be the first point of reference for any person that is looking forwards to playing (and mastering) the game,

Another good guide to read is the ‘Who put the stranded Admiral in charge? - Siberian White Short Campaign PBEM’ AAR[forum.paradoxplaza.com], as it gives you some good strategies and a good view of most of the mechanics. The main issue is that it is based on RUS instead of RUS Gold, which again causes certain inaccuracies.

The objective of this guide is to complement the previously mentioned documents through the use of tables, direct comparisons, context-specific information, etc., and deep dive on those areas that are not well explained within the game

The guide will be divided into the following sections:

• Resources & Glossary
  
• Ledgers
  
• Resource Gain Comparison
  
• Unit Building & Unit Skills
  
• General Army Composition
  
• General Navy Composition
  
• Strategic Considerations
  
• Final Thoughts

To specify which faction I will be referring to, I will use the trigrams defined by the game:

• RED: communists
  
• WHI: Western Whites in general
  
• WH2: Komuch within the Eastern Whites
  
• WH3: Eastern Whites in general
  
• WH4: Northwestern Whites within the Western Whites
  
• WH5: Northern Whites swithin the Western Whites
  
• DON: Don Cossacks within the Western Whites

Since this guide is a living document, I will add new trigrams whenever it is needed.

Resources:

• National Morale (NM): directly effects both your general resource production and the cohesion of your units. Having low NM is bad, but NM in general is an important resource to keep above 100, which is impossible later in a campaign. As a general rule, the main thresholds are 80, 100 and 120. Above 120 treat your NM as a disposable resource, between 81 and 119 evaluate whether it is worth it to use it as a resource for a decision, below 80 try to use as little NM as possible.
  
  
• Victory Points (VP): only useful for long term campaigns where there is no possible way to win by crushing your opponents. The main use is when RED loses against Poland and then can only win via VP.
  
  
• Engament Points (EP): the MOST IMPORTANT RESOURCE. The caps are needed. EP will be the one resource you use to make decision and gain other resources. Smart use of your EP is the main way to win the game. Do not store EP. Use them. Nothing is worse than losing a campaign and then realizing you had 100 EP that were not used. To give you a good idea of their use, 8 EP used as regional decision can give a player around 400 rubles, 480 conscripts and 15 war supply. More than enough to build 10 infantry brigades and still have rubles and conscripts left over for replacements. If you have more than 30 EP stored, you ar either not using them correctly or your NM is so low that the only associated EP decisions you can take also reduce your NM.
  
  
• Rubles: used for unit building, reinforcements, and decisions. Rubles are a difficult resource to get because there is no direct way to increase your ruble production except by conquest. Most of your rubles will come from either requisition decisions or printing money
  
  
• Conscripts: used for unit building, reinforcements, and decisions. Conscripts are a more plentiful resource than rubles. RED can get 80 conscripts per turn without doing anything, which is close to a Partial Mobilization decision by WH3. However, most of your conscripts will come from either conscription decision, partial mobilization or recruiting prisoners.
  
  
• War Supply:used for unit building, reinforcements, and decisions. War supply is the only resource whose production can be increased. Building factories that increase your war supply is critical to the game. Requisitions decisions can bring war supply, but most of the war supply will come from the factories that can be built and preexisting factories
  
  
• Railroad Points: a critical resource for supply movement and army movement. Every time you can take the recomplete rail pool decision, take it. You will soon find that you need more railroad point than you can get. Without railroad points, supply will move at most two-three regions per turn.

Glossary:

• Corps: also called armies for RED, but I will use corps during the document for ease of understanding. A corps main use is to increase the CP of the stack. Generally has a few divisions and other units within the stack.
  
  
• Command Points (CP): how difficult it is to command the stack. When the units within the stack sum up more CP than the stack CP max, all units get a malus to their combat strength and speed that can go up to 35%.
  
  
• Division: also called corps for RED, but I will use division during the document for ease of understanding. A division is composed of 1 leader and up to 9 units. The 9 Units can sum up to 32 elements.
  
  
• Element: what units are composed of. Generally, divisions can be composed of up to 32 elements, brigades have between 4 and 8 elements, regiments and other units have 1 to 2 elements.
  
  
• Hits: how much life a specific element has.
  
  
• Replacement Chit: the number below the NATO symbol in the replacement ledger. Each chit is worth a certain amount of hits depending on the type of elements.
  
  
• Stack: composed of many different units. A stack can be independent or part of the chain of command (in which case it is either a corps or a GHQ).
  
  
• Unit: can be composed of one or various elements and represented by one card when you choose a stack. A unit can be a division, a brigade, a regiment, an artillery battery, etc.

There are two general uses for the Ledger:

• Gives you a quick view of all units you are currently building and how long they will take. If you press on one of the units being built, you can also get information about its composition and where it is being built
  
  
• Serves as the ONLY place where you can order replacements for your units to replenish the hits they suffer during combat. As a general rule, make sure to have at least 1 replacement chit per 10 deployed elements (10% rule) on the map (NOT per missing hits). You can see deployed elements by mousing over the NATO symbol in the replacement tabs of each faction (RED, WHI, WH2, etc., represented by flags).

Having more replacement chits will not speed up the replacement of hits for deployed elements. Elements replace at a set rate that varies per region. If you have 57 deployed elements that are all at half strength, having 30 replacement chits will not make them recover to full strength in one turn. The exact percentages are in the manual, but assume between 10% unless in a big city or a depot.

There are three niche strategies for replacements:

• Have only 1-2 replacement chit per element type in your main factions. The idea is to minimize resources spent on replacements unless needed due to a casualty-heavy battle. Chits recruited on a specific turn can be used to replace losses that same turn (if a battle in the Late August turn caused 400 hits and you buy those replacements on the Early September turn, the units will have recovered hits by Late September). There are no delays in replacement usage. This strategy is useful for the WHI player due to the resource scarcity during 1918 and the first half of 1919, and the need to split replacements between WHI, WH4, WH5, and DON. The WH3 player has a bigger resource base and only needs to worry about WH2 and WH3.
  
  
• Buy only when needed for allied nations. The main example of this strategy is Great Britain and the Baltic. They will face RED units and should suffer the majority of combat losses, but their involvement in the war is for a specific time. Leverage them during that time by using them for main pushes, but don’t overspend on them.
  
  
• Buy no replacements for nations that should not fight. As WHI or WH3, there is no need to buy American or French replacements because the only reason they should be facing combat is if you are in an extremely bad position. Concentrate on your main WHI, WH2, WH3, WH4, WH5, and DON units.

If you are interested, below is the number of hits by type of element. This is generally not needed, as the 10% rule is a good enough benchmark to use. The numbers are the following:

• Infantry, militia, and cavalry: 20 hits per replacement chit
  
  
• Light infantry: 15 hits per replacement chit
  
  
• Tanks, artillery, armoured cars: 8 hits per replacement chit
  
  
• Supply trains: 6 hits per replacement chit
  
  
• Engineers: 4 hits per replacement chit
  
  
• Aircraft: 12 hits per replacement chit

Mobilization decisions are key to your victory. They deal mostly with ensuring you have a proper supply of conscripts and ensuring your stacks can be well organized and perform well on the field of battle. As such, the decisions are:

• Partial Mobilization: gives you a quick boost in conscripts for the cost of -8 EP, -1 NM, and -30 rubles. The number of conscripts varies by faction and NM, with thresholds at 80/100/120 NM. RED receives 550/700/800 Conscripts, 150/180/200 conscripts, and WH3 80/100/150 conscripts.
  
  The deep dive into this decision is made in the section titled ‘Resource Gain Comparison’. However, in a general sense, RED should take this decision over any other decision that gives conscripts, while WHI and WH3 should take them as a last resort when EP is abundant, the need for conscripts is urgent, and the NM of the player is getting close or below your comfortable threshold.
  
  
• Recruit Prisoners: gives you 50 conscripts at the cost of -1 EP, -5000 prisoners, and -30 unit cohesion to 20 different units. It is essential to note that this refers to units, not elements or stacks.
  
  From a conscript recruitment perspective, this option is not cost-effective at all unless you are low on NM, rubles, and EP at the same time. In almost all cases, you will never need to make this decision over the other conscript resource decisions.
  
  
• (RED) Reform the Red Air Force: gives you one new air unit, one new balloon unit, and air and balloon replacements, at the cost of -3 EP, -15 war supply, -30 rubles, and -20 conscripts.
  
  Reforming the Red Air Force has some niche strategies that are very useful for your war. While it is true that the Air Force will not win you the war, the units provided have some good bonuses apart from just being Air units.
  
  First and foremost, both the air unit and the balloon unit have the ‘Artillery Support’ skill, which increases artillery power by 20% when under attack. This is critical in many situations, from small engagements to big pitched battles and sieges. If you have no more Transmission Company units, then an air or balloon unit is a good substitute to get this ability.
  
  Secondly, air units and balloon units have a huge stockpile of supplies and ammo. While they do not provide the 10% combat bonus of supply wagons, they are a good replacement for trains from a supply perspective if you do not have the resources or time to build your trains.
  
  Thirdly, they are a good potential way to do recon on enemy stacks without worrying about having your scouts get annihilated by the enemy.
  
  Lastly, they provide command points to the stacks where they are located. Ironic, considering that with the amount of Politikoms that RED can build, they will rarely need more CP.
  
  
• (RED) Call Workers into the Army: gives you +1 NM, +5 Cheka, +10 VOKhR, +10 Politikom, + 3 Inf. Brigades to build for the cost of -10 EP and -35 VP.
  
  One of the most important decisions for RED. ‘Call Workers’ is a critical decision that you will want to take all 10 times it is allowed in-game. At the beginning, you will be taking the decisions for the Cheka, VOKhR and Politikom units, as each stack needs at least 1 of either Cheka and VOKhR and 1 Politikom. Later in the game, this decision is more cost-effective than the ‘Industrialization’ decisions from an EP-based perspective.
  
  Without a proper use of ‘Call Workers’, RED will not be able to win the war. It will probably be good to take ‘Call Workers’ at least 3-4 times to ensure a steady supply of Chekas, VOKhR, and Politikoms. Those 3 to 4 times should be more than enough to help you through 1918 and 1919. Of course, this depends on how you make your divisions.
  
  
• Establish GHQs at ‘xxx’: establish a new GHQ for the cost of -7 EP and one leader who will get stuck with the position. The decision is slightly bugged. You need to make the same decision twice in a row to establish the GHQ. Please note that the cost is not paid twice; it is only paid when the decision is finally activated.

There are a few important decisions you can take in this ledger and it is good to review it every once in a while:

• Hold ‘x’ at any Cost: for 100 rubles and 80 war supply, the decision gives you 8 horse artillery units and 4 supply units in the mentioned city, so you can build 1 fortified line building and 1 depot. You do not need to use the units for this purpose and can be used for other purposes. The decision also creates 3 fortress infantry units, 2 stationary artillery units, 1 engineer, 1 balloon unit, and 1 store unit within the city, entrenched up to level 8.
  
  On a pure resource basis, this decision builds a ton of units for very little cost. The added costs of the created units if recruited individually would be 418 rubles, 174 conscripts and 162 war supply. If you take away the store unit, then the cost would be 258 rubles, 118 conscripts and 82 war supply, divided in 88/24/32 of movable units and 170/94/50 of locked units.
  
  This decision is the most cost effective way to garrison a specific city and ensure it will hold against strong odds. RED should take it for Petrograd and Moscow sometime before July 1919 to prepare for the strong White offensives that will come. WHI should take it as soon as his forces are moving north in order to protect his capital in case of an attack by RED.
  
  
• Move Capital: at the future cost of 10 EP, it moves your capital to the mentioned city and allows for the future use of ‘Hold ‘x’ at any Cost’ in this new city. You cannot move the capital if you have already used ‘Hold ‘x’ at any Cost’.
  
  
• Land Reform/Propaganda: gives you 4 NM in exchange for 35 rubles and 5 EP. Good if you need a quick boost in NM and are swimming in EP and rubles.
  
  
• Care for the People: exchanges 20 EP for 20 VP. Only use if there are literally no other uses for your EP.
  
  
• (WHI/WH3) Unite the Whites: try to always take this decision as the WHI/WH3 player. Unites both factions at the cost of 5 EP and gives the following:
  
  • Opportunity to recognize the independencies of the other potential white-aligned factions to bring more troops against RED
    
  • Receive 1 EP, 2 VP, and 3 war supply per turn
    
  • Allow 6 reform regional decisions to increase loyalty
  
  
• (RED) Delay anti-cossack policies: try to always take this decision as the RED player. At the cost of 15 EP, it gives you extra Cossack brigades in the mentioned cities and eliminates the Don Cossack revolt that happens in Early 1919.

Each faction has specific diplomatic decisions that can be taken. These vary from game to game, and you may find that some decisions make more sense in one game and some make more sense in another game.

• (WHI) White Fleet in the Baltic Sea: for 5 EP moves the White Fleet to the Baltic Sea. Completely unnecessary, as the British Fleet in the Baltic Sea already outnumbers anything RED can field. It is far better to keep the White Fleet in the Black Sea and use it to ferry troops and bombard coastal positions.
  
  
• (WHI/WH3) Recognize Independences: at the cost of 10 EP and 50 VP, it opens up the possibility to ally with the other factions and bring them into the war. Not recognizing the independence has a 35% chance of costing 2 NM per turn., but gives 15 VP per turn
  
  
• (WHI) Alliance with ‘X’: at the cost of 10 to 15 EP, 100 to 200 VP, and 80 to 100 rubles, brings ‘X’ into the war.
  
  
• (RED) Sign Alliance with the Ukrainian Anarchists!: as RED, you pay 10 EP to ally with the Anarchist and then pay 5 EP and 5 VP per turn if you took the option ‘Bolshevik Dictatorship’ at the beginning of the game and have more than 50 elements between the Ekaterinoslav and Taurida regions. You should only take this decision if you see WHI is advancing north without first attacking the Anarchist base in Huliaipole. As soon as you have control of the Anarchist troops, treat them like you would Baltic or British troops. Few replacements and use them aggressively to harass and damage WHI troops. At some point you will want to break the alliance with the Anarchists and you want them as weak as possible at that point.
  
  
• (RED) Crush the Ukrainian Anarchists: only available as RED if you are a ‘Bolshevik Dictatorship’. You lose 10 NM, get 60 VP, and no longer have to pay 5 EP and 5 VP. Use this decision once you’ve exhausted Anarchists forces and are ready to start advancing upon WHI bases.
  
  
• (RED) World Revolution in ’X’!: starts a war with the specified faction. RED gets 30 EP and 150 VP at the start at the cost of 2 NM, but then gets a 35% chance to lose 1 NM every time the capital(s) of the engaged countries are not occupied. RED also loses 1 EP and 3 or 5 VP each turn they do not take the World Revolution decision if the conditions mentioned are met. Take into consideration the potential strength of the new forces that will get involved:
  
  • The Baltics can bring forth around 1000 combat strength, with the potential to train their militias and increase to around 1500.
    
  • The Caucasus can bring forth around 1000, with the potential to train their militias and increase to around 1500.
    
  • The Fins can bring forth around 2000 combat strength with a potential of 2500.
    
  • The Romanians bring forth around 1000 combat strength and this decision also unlocks 1500 French combat strength.
  
  
• (RED) Peace in the ‘X’!: signs peace in with the factions of the specifiied theatre. You lose 100 VP if ‘Bolshevik Dictatorship’ and 200 VP not ‘Bolshevik Dictatorship’. The main use of this decision is to take out of combat the forces of the Baltic States, Finland, Poland, Romania, or the Caucasus. Use this decision to ensure you can overwhelm WHI or WH3 in other theatres.

I will add more decisions as soon as I discover them (and discover their impact upon gameplay).

- In Progress -

There are 5 different regional decisions available, with one decision only available for WHI/WH3 and one decision only available for RED. Each decision takes 3 turns to be implemented, so you need to plan how to use them.

Make sure to check this ledger every single turn to ensure you are using all the decisions you can potentially use. You can set different decisions by pressing multiple times on the specified area in the map. You cannot set multiple decisions on a same area at the same time.

The decisions are:

• Repression:for 1 EP and 2 NM you raise your loyalty in the specified region. Very important to use it to make sure your loyalty stays above 60% so you can later use Requisition and Conscription
  
  
• Requisition: for 1 EP and some loyalty, you raise 100 rubles and 3 war supply modified by the size of the region. This is one of the two main ways to get rubles for your faction and, as will be shown in the Resource Gain Comparison section, more cost-effective than ‘Raise More Money’.
  
  
• Conscription: for 1 EP, 1 NM and some loyalty, you raise 120 conscript modified by the size of the region. This is one of the main ways to get more conscripts for your faction and, as will be shown in the Resource Gain Comparison section, can be more cost-effective than other measures depending on your EP and NM.
  
  
• (RED) Subversion: for 2 EP you raise your loyalty in an enemy region. It is good to match this decision on the regions that WHI and WH3 have less loyalty, pr the regions where they are using Requisition and Conscription.
  
  
• (WHI/WH3) Reforms: only available for WH3 while Samara is being held, and WHI once the decision ‘Unite the Whites’ is taken. At the cost of 2 EP you get a raise in your loyalty in the specified region.

Depending on your faction you can have a certain number of decisions being run each turn. For example: WH3 being able to run 4 Requisition and 4 Conscription decisions per turn, WHI not being able to run any Reforms decisions at the beginning of the Grand Campaign, RED only having 2 Subversion decision if they are a Bolshevik Dictatorship, etc.

As a general rule, Decisions are extremely strong. You want to be running as many decisions as possible every single turn, especially Requisition and Conscription. The only moment when it makes no sense to run these decisions is if you are stockpiling EP to build a factory, build a tankadrome, call the workers, form a GHQ, etc. However, you should not be stockpiling above 15 EP, as that is the max any other decision in the other ledgers can cost.

F1 Strategic Atlas

I do not use this Ledger. Its purpose is to give you a quick view of all your stacks, with the capacity to sort and filter however you want and by sub-faction.

I much rather prefer to use the keyboard keys ‘E’ and ‘R’ to cycle through all my unblocked stacks, ‘T’ and ‘Y’ to cycle through my naval stacks, ‘space’ to put them in sentry status (so they do not appear again when you cycle) for one turn or ‘S’ to put them in sentry status permanently.

The above method gives me a good enough view of all the stacks I have that are useful and movable. I then use specific cities (normally with a GHQ) or cluster of cities as training camps (and reserves) that I then go through before ending my turn, moving fully trained units to wherever they are needed and creating new divisions as needed.

F8 Strategic Atlas:

I do not use this Ledger. Its purpose is to give you a quick view of the distribution of your stacks around the map. In other words, it’s the bottom left minimap but zoomed. Apply the same strategy that was used for F1 Strategic Atlas.

F9 Objectives and Scores:

This Ledger gives you some critical game information and some non-critical but good-to-know information:

Critical: considered critical because this is the only place in-game you can get this information:

• National Morale of other factions. Important to know how your opponents/ally are doing.
  
  
• Victory Points of other factions. Not that important. Ending a match by victory points is not as fun as actually accomplishing the objectives needed to win
  
  
• Relative Combat Power of other factions. Very important as it is key to have a good idea of how strong any potential attack may be. As the RED player, you never want the sum of WHI and WH3 combat power to exceed 100, as it means you are weaker than both of them together. As the WHI or WH3, it helps contextualize how much stronger you are than the other white faction (for the drive to Moscow) and how strong the RED player is.
  
  
• Lost Men of all factions: gives you a good idea of how many replacements the enemy has had to use to reinforce his currently standing armies, and therefore how many fewer units he has recruited.The average infantry regiment is 1000 men and costs 5 rubles and 7 conscripts. 100,000 losses may mean the enemy has had to spend 500 rubles and 700 conscripts just on replacements. This number may be bigger or smaller depending on the compositions of enemy units

Non-Critical: considered non-critical because there are other, more contextually important places where you can get this information:

• Objective cities
  
• Current capital
  
• Own national morale
  
• Own engagement points
  
• Own victory points

F10 Scenario Background

Self-explanatory. The document gives a background on the scenario and can give a glimpse into some critical future campaign information, but in general you will never open this ledger

As part of the guide, I want to give a quick overview on how to gain the three main resources (rubles, conscripts and war suppy) and what the main methods to get it so they can be more easily compared and help the player make a better choice.

Rubles


For raising rubles, you can easily see that Requisition is far more useful than Raise More Money for all factions. The player should only use Raise More Money during the first turns (when the first round of Requisition decisions has yet to finish) or when a big battle is about to take place, rubles reserve is at 0, and you do need a quick injection of rubles to pay for reinforcements. All factions should be running around 2-3 Requisition decisions per turn as a minimum.

Conscripts


For raising conscripts, the decision is far more complicated. In the same way as with rubles, Partial Mobilization should be used in the first few turns before the first round of Conscription finishes. However, once those first few rounds are done, the strategy changes depending on the player. There are also multiple numbers because the number of conscripts raised varies by NM.

RED gets quite a good amount of conscripts, and at any point above 100 NM RED does not need Conscription decisions, allowing them to maintain high NM while still getting about the same that the 6 Conscription decisions would give. Therefore, RED should hold off on using Conscription and then use Partial Mobilization to take full advantage of the decision.

WHI gets far fewer conscripts from Partial Mobilization, but also needs NM to keep the pressure on RED. Therefore, once the first few turns pass, it is a balancing act between Conscription and Partial Mobilization. Generally, WHI should have 1-2 Conscription decisions running constantly, giving a healthy dose of conscripts while at the same time ensuring NM stays high, and keeping some other areas open for Requisition decisions.

WH3 gets the least conscripts from Partial Mobilization. Except for the first turn, WH3 should be only using Conscription, as even 1 Conscription decision provides more conscripts than Partial Mobilization. WH3 should have 2-3 Conscription decisions running constantly, giving a healthy dose of conscripts while at the same time ensuring NM stays high, and keeping some other areas open for Requisition decisions.

In general, Recruit More Prisoners depends on the situation. Do you need to keep NM up? Then Recruit More Prisoners is worth it (as long as you do not expect a battle that exact turn). The main issue of Recruit More Prisoners it the potential hit to one of your main armies on the same turn a battle takes place, turning a victory into a defeat.

War Supply


War supply is the most difficult resource to raise. Requisition raises for too little war supply, but at the beginning of the game, for WHI and WH3, it is the only way to raise War Supply. Once Industrialization options are open, it is critical to execute all the low EP Industrialization in ‘X’ options as they will be your main source of war supply.

It is important to note that Industrialization in ‘X’ also gives more brigades and regiments for recruitment. In my personal opinion, the best way to distribute your EP, rubles, and war supply is to alternate between Industrialization and building units. Once you have used up your cheap Industrialization option, ensure you have recruited all available Brigades and most of your regiments before using Industrialization again. This allows the player to keep up their armed forces, optimize their resources, and ensure a steady increase in war supply and new brigades and regiments.

Just to remind the reader, we shall use the brigade, detachment and regiment terminology specified in the glossary. And remember that to build units you have to press on the turret above the mini-map and then drag the selected unit to the region that appears in green.

Maximizing the production of units (along with the accompanying industrialization to get more units) is critical to your victory as a player. Too much industrialization and you will find yourself being unable to use your resources because the enemy has taken your territory and pressed you too hard. Too many units and you will find yourself outproduced by your enemy. Therefore, there are three things I beg you to consider:

• Industrialization takes time, about 90 days to be exact. This means you can treat any industrialization option as a unit that you are building with a 90 day build time. If you only industrialize when you have no units left in your unit pool, then that will be 6 turns without building new units.
  
  
• You always want to build your bigger units first. Build brigades before detachments, and detachments before regiments.
  
  
• Conscript infantry and cavalry take the same amount of time to build as non-conscript units, and twice as long as militia.

With these three points in mind, we can build a somewhat easy flow to understand our unit building priority (without taking into account Industrialization). This would look something akin to:

• Infantry Brigades
  
• Cavalry Brigades
  
• Support units to fill in large divisions
  
• Detachments (if you have them)
  
• Elite regiments
  
• Regular regiments
  
• Militia
  
• Conscript regiments.

Now, why am I putting Militia above conscript regiments? The answer is quite simple. You can build 2 militia elements for 2 rubles and 10 conscripts, taking 15-20 days to build. You can build 2 conscript infantry elements for 8 rubles and 14 conscripts and take 30+ days to build. This means that by the time your 2 conscript infantry elements have finished building, your 2 militia elements probably already spent 1 turn with a Training Officer or GHQ and have now become 2 conscript infantry elements. For 25% of the rubles cost and 70% of the conscripts cost I’ve gained the exact same combat value in the same amount of time by building militia. This is even more noticeable with WH4 and WH5, as their militia upgrades directly to regular infantry instead of conscript infantry.

If we now add industrialization into the mix (and remembering the subdivision of option made in the previous section), then the priority order could be:

• Industrialization V.1
  
• Infantry Brigades
  
• Cavalry Brigades
  
• Critical support units (Medics, engineers, transmissions companies, armored cars, and tachankas)
  
• Industrialization V.2
  
• Detachments (if you have them)
  
• Elite regiments
  
• Other support units (trains, supply, artillery, and ships)
  
• Regular regiments
  
• Militia
  
• Industrialization V.3
  
• Conscript regiments

The main reason why I’ve added the industrialization options where they are is due to the EP cost of some of the options. You want to use your EP to maximize rubles and conscripts so you can recruit your units. Once all the big units are recruited then you can minimize EP usage for regional decisions and store for a big industrialization push. But you do want to make sure to use at least your last industrialization options before going for your conscript regiments, so you can always be recruiting small units while your factories are being built.

If you want to take a more practical example, then I shall use the WHI player. Note that this is just a recommendation and not a maxim:

• Build all infantry, cavalry and don cossacks brigades in the south with their support units (and some units for WH4 and WH5 to challenge RED in those regions, about 2-3 small divisions to keep the enemy occupied).
  
  
• Send the order to build the Ekaterinodar and Rostov factories (and the Taganrog Tankadrome).
  
  
• Keep building the don cossack detachments, your southern cossack regular regiments and the militias and elite infantry for your northern armies, along with support units.
  
  
• Once the factories are built, go back to building all the new brigades you have.
  
  
• Then build detachments, regular regiments, militias, and some cavalry/artillery to fill in divisions.
  
• Then build the Sevastopol factory.
  
  
• Build your conscript regiments to pad out your armies.
  
  
• Rinse and repeat (and take Tzaritsyn for an extra factory in the process).

One final recommendation when building units is to make sure you have a plan in mind. Are you going to use the unit in a division? Then build all the components of the division at the same time to simplify and ease your workload.

Lastly, and VERY IMPORTANT, make sure to have at least one unit with the 'Military Police' trait in wherever you are training units. The desertion event can hit your in-training units, setting back their build time by 20%. It can also hit the same unit multiple times. That means that for something like Cavalry, if it gets hit continuously in a row, then instead of advancing 15 days it would only advance 5 days. That means instead of takin 4 turns to build it could take 12 turns.

We’ve spoken about building units, but not their abilities. RUS Gold is different from other AGEOD games in that some units have critical abilities that are needed in all stacks, and in some cases some units have abilities that only influence the element itself. I’ll use three tables to showcase each of the three different levels of unit abilities and what units have the abilities needed.

Have an effect on the Stack:


As we can see, it is critical for every stack to have at least 1 Military Police unit. Constant desertions will annihilate your units. On a secondary level, RED stacks must have at least one Political Unit to make sure you can move your stacks every turn.

Since most divisions will need to operate independently at some point, it is recommended that all divisions have a Military Police unit in them to ensure independent command. The same is not true for Political Units, since they contribute nothing to fighting and therefore should be kept out of divisions.

Have an effect on the Unit (division-level):


Each of these abilities are very important for any division that can have them. Concentrate on ensuring your biggest divisions have access to as many of these abilities as possible. Of all of them, the most critical is Fire Support, since it will allow your units to fire first if the enemy does not have the same ability. It may be even worth it to include tachankas into infantry divisions if there are not enough armored cards/tanks to go around.

Have an effect only on the Element:


And here are perhaps the least impressive of all skills. Disruptor is especially needed whenever you are assaulting a fortified line because trench levels can make such an assault a nightmare.

Meanwhile, stacking Insurrection-Fighter units in one division (like a pure Cossack Cavalry division) can give you a very effective division for hunting and killing Green rebels and partisans.

When dealing with the AGEOD engine, there are a few key considerations that must be taken into account when making a land stack with its constituent units (whether those units are divisions, brigades, detachments, regiments, etc.):

• Bigger divisions fare better in the AGE system. Therefore, your divisions should always be as big as possible. Due to how the system works, it is better to have one 28-element division than two 14-element divisions or three 9-element divisions. The way any combat would resolve is that the stack with the three division would almost certainly win the battle thanks to cohesion. Still, one of the divisions would have its constituent elements annihilated, which leaves the stack far weaker for a subsequent fight than if all the hits had been distributed along 28 elements. The only caveat against this is when frontage is limited due to terrain, weather, skills, and offensive/defensive ratings.
  
  
• Skills can have an effect on either an element, a unit, or a stack level. Unit level also refers to any division they are included. Combine with the first point to ensure the key skills target as many elements as possible.
  
  
• One supply unit improves the combat capability of the whole stack by 10%.
  
  
• Unless there is no other choice, do not mix elements that perform well in a specific terrain with elements that don’t. It is better to have 6 light infantry elements in the same division than 3 infantry and 3 light infantry elements.
  
  
• Have at least 1 non-light artillery element in every infantry division, as that will allow it to entrench to level 4 instead of staying at level 3. The combat power difference between the levels is quite noticeable.
  
  
• Aim to have at least one element with the ‘Military Police’ skill in each division, so that they can be detached from a corps and operate independently if needed.
  
  
• Have around 3 line elements for every 1 artillery element. Infantry, militia, and cavalry count as line elements.

Once we understand these maxims, we can see that any good divisional composition is key to ensuring your stacks are as effective as possible. You never want to have regiment or detachment sized units within a stack, unless they are support units.

Once we know this, we can start creating four general, small standard divisional templates that can apply to all factions:

• Small Infantry Division: composed of 1 leader, 6 regiment-sized infantry units, 1 regiment-sized cavalry unit, and 2 artillery units. Total of 9 elements.
  
  Ensure that 1 of the artillery units is not light.
  
  Ensure that at least 1 of the cavalry or infantry units have ‘Military Police’ if RED, WHI, WH3, or DON, to reduce desertions in case the division needs to operate independently.
  
  1 of the 6 infantry units can be a specialized or elite infantry if available.
  
  All 6 infantry units can be light infantry elements, in which case the unit performs best in bad terrain.
  
  
• Cossack Infantry Division: same composition as above, but all 6 infantry regiments and the cavalry regiment are theater-specific. This is done to ensure that theater-specific units (which are normally Cossacks) do not get mixed with standard units that can go beyond theater limitations.
  
  A good idea for WHI is to create his Cossack Infantry Divisions and then keep them as garrisons in Armavir, Astrakhan, Rostov, Taganrog, and Tzaritsyn once they are conquered. Same with WH3 and Ekaterinburg, Ufa, and Orenburg.
  
  
• Small Cavalry Division: composed of 1 leader, 1 tachanka, 6 regiment-sized cavalry units (or 7 if you have no more tachankas), and 2 horse artillery units. The tachanka will provide both +1 initiative bonus and +25% cavalry combat bonus thanks to its innate skills.
  
  
• Cossack Cavalry Division: same composition as above, using only Cossack Cavalry regiments. Very useful for dealing with Green rebellions thanks to the Insurrection-Fighting Skill.

Some bigger templates that can be used by some factions are:

• Infantry Division: 1 leader, 1 regiment-sized cavalry unit, 4 detachment-sized infantry units (trained militia up to at least conscripts), 1 ‘Military Police’ unit (or more trained militia), and 3 artillery units. Total of 13-14 elements.
  
  
• (DON) Cavalry Division: 1 leader, 1 tachanka, 5 detachment-sized cavalry units, 3 horse artillery units. Total of 14 elements. Extremely useful for dealing with Green rebellions thanks to the Insurrection-Fighting Skill.

As you can see, up to this point, I have not used brigades in any of the presented templates. The main reason is that brigade composition and sizes are quite varied, so it is up to the player to mix and match brigades, detachments, and regiments while keeping in mind the first key point. Nevertheless, I will provide two WHI/WH3 templates, one DON template, and two RED templates:

• (WHI/WH2/WH3) Large Infantry Division: 1 leader, 1 elite infantry regiment-sized unit (Strong Morale and Military Police), 1 cavalry regiment-sized unit, 1 armored car (or tank) unit, 4 brigade-sized infantry units, 2 artillery units (as heavy as possible).
  
  It is not worth adding another brigade because it would take away from potential artillery usage and overburden the division with far too many line elements. Remember that frontage is limited. What can be changed is the regiment-sized cavalry unit for an extra regiment-sized infantry unit.
  
  
• (WHI/WH3) Large Cavalry Division: 1 leader, 1 tachanka, 0-1 ‘Military Police’ regiment, 4-5 brigade-sized cavalry units, 3 regiment-sized cavalry units, 0-1 horse artillery unit.
  
  
• (DON) Large Mixed Division: 1 leader, 1 armored car unit, 5 brigade-sized mixed units, 2 detachment-sized mixed units, 1 horse artillery unit. Total of 28 elements.
  
  I don’t include tachankas because I expect this division to be led by a general who already has the cavalry support skill.
  
  
• (RED) Large Infantry Division: 1 leader, 1 armored car unit, 1 regiment-sized elite infantry unit, 4 brigade-sized infantry units, 0-1 brigade-sized light infantry unit, 2-3 artillery units. Total of 28-32 elements.
  
  
• (RED) Large Cavalry Division: 1 leader, 1 brigade-sized cavalry unit with tachanka element, 4 brigade-sized cavalry units, 3 regiment-sized cavalry units and 1 horse artillery.

With these templates and the general explanation for building up your stacks, you should be ready to face any potential opponent in a PBEM. Just remember that the big templates are more guidelines than maxims to follow, as a way of finding the biggest possible division while still keeping a good line to support ratios.

However, take into account there can be many more division compositions in-game. The Baltics come to mind, as they have an overabundance of infantry but little in artillery and cavalry.

First, let’s get something out of the way. The Navy will not win you the war. Period.

Second, ocean naval forces are as useful as wet toilet paper. They have no use beyond transporting units and some token naval bombardment. The RED Baltic Fleet is useless against the British in the Baltic Sea; the WHI French and English fleet have no competitors in the Baltic Sea, Black Sea, and White Sea; and the Siberians have no ocean navy to speak of. The only potential ocean navy engagement that could occur if you move the WHI Black Sea fleet into the Baltic Sea to face the RED Baltic fleet, which I do not see any reason why any player would do it.

That does not mean they cannot make meaningful contributions to the game. Naval forces can change the ebb and flow of a theater through careful use, but not outright win a theater. Taking this into account, there are three main uses for your naval forces (beyond fighting other naval stacks):

• Building depots in harbor regions: Through the use of 2 river barge units (8 elements), you can quickly build key depots in harbor regions to expand your depot network. These will have the most effect on the southern theater after Ukraine opens up (where depots are almost completely missing). You can also use them to ensure a good supply network follows your forces around the Volga.
  
  
  
• Transporting troops: All players must understand the importance of transporting troops through rivers. It frees up your rail network for other strategic purposes. Troop transport is critical to every single strategy in-game. Further usage of transport will be mentioned in the Strategic Considerations section
  
  
• Blocking land movement: as mentioned in the manual, you can block land movement by using 4 elements of combat naval units (mostly represented by 1 unit of gunboats). Two particular use cases of this function are blocking the Imperial Gold Train from leaving Kazan (to ease its capture) or blocking the WHI Caucasus forces from moving into Ukraine.

Therefore, there are a few typical ways of organizing your naval stacks:

• 2-unit river barge stacks, whose sole purpose is to build depots
  
  
• Land forces blocking stacks composed of 1 gunboat unit (4 elements) and 1 barge or transport unit for supply purposes.
  
  
• Transport stacks, composed of as many transport units as necessary and escorting naval units, normally gunboats. You need escorts because if your transport stacks are captured by an enemy navy while transporting units, all your land forces within the transports will be automatically destroyed. You don’t use barges for transport because they are too slow to be efficient.
  
  
• Battle stacks, using fluvial destroyers, torpedo boats, as many gunboats as you can spare, and some transport units for supply purposes. You don’t use barges for transport because they are too slow to be efficient.

You can also combine your battle stacks with your transport stacks if needed, which is particularly useful when transporting troops on the Volga River. It will be on the Volga River where most of the naval fighting will happen, with some minor skirmishes in the Don, Donets, and Dnieper.

More specific strategies can be found within the Strategic Consideration section.