Noob's guide to Aoe 3: Russia

With civs, lets start with Russia Practice with computer players until you get the hang of it.

Russia is a really good civ for map control. You get blockhouses for the same amount of wood as an outpost but you're able to train troops (and some artillery with a card) with them while also being able to house 5 pop. I like playing russia in 2 different ways - rushing or aging to 3 and raiding with opri. Russia gets 5 villagers and more food crates than normal. Ideally, split the starting villagers into 2-2-1 and gather three food crates. Send 4 to food and one to finish crates. Build a house soon after since you won't be able to train more villagers after the first batch otherwise.

Then send the wood tickle card and while aging, choose the 400 wood. Build a block house next to a hunt and a mine and try to cover as many trees as possible (very important to control the map's resources with these buildings). Age up with 14 villagers.

While aging, it's good to have some villagers on wood depending on what wood treasures you find. You should have a blockhouse ready before you reach age 2. Right after, build a market and research the food and wood upgrades. Market upgrades should always be completed as soon as possible since they always give an edge against your opponents. Then, send as many unit cards as possible, because it's always quantity over quality with Russia. You then harass his villagers until you're at an advantage economically and win. If you're making strelets, always make sure to send some anti cav since 50 strelets can basically be killed by 5-10 hussars, and if the enemy makes infantry to counter your strelets, upgrade them in the arsenal for x3 upgrades.

With the Opri strategy, you still make the block house but this time you try cover one of the enemy's secondary herds. Send some villagers to gold while aging (ideally 3) and send 3 more after aging. Build a market after aging as well and send food and gold upgrades. Send the 700 gold card right after you age and try to find some gold treasures as well. The problem with this strategy is that it is really hard to recover if you get rushed unless you know what you're doing i.e saving your villagers always and making sure that they always gather something. If you're in luck, your opponent might go for your forward blockhouse and give you some time. It's best to always have a tp with this strategy and have the 11 musk card for fortress. This is a backup card and only send it if you get rushed, since this combined with minutement can repel attackers until you get set up. Else send 1000 wood and build 2 more town centers next to valuable resources. Then, all you need to do is build a stable or 2 and start training opris and harass his villagers. Ideally, you'd also want to send adv arsenal shipment after the 1000 wood shipment and boost Opri's siege attack and put the enemy at a disadvantage in terms of eco.