"I never got around to finish my ideas on Rus for Dominions 4. Instead it became the second of the new nations for Dominions 5. Baltic mythology, Latvian in particular, became an inspirational source for the nation." - Illwinter

Rus is a land of harsh winters and short summers inhabited by humans and Chudes, an exalted race of great strength and beauty. The Chudes and the humans have intermingled and neither race dominate the other. The Rusian society is divided into two moieties. The first is composed of hunters and nomads living in the deep forests. They worship the Bear and the Thunder and eat their meat raw. The warriors of the wild moiety are known for their fury and battle prowess. Their most prominent warriors are even able to take the shape of the sacred bear. The other moiety lives in houses of wood and in caves underneath the ground. They cook their meat and practice a new kind of magic. The Chudes of the second moiety call themselves sons and daughters of gods previously unheard of.

Most of the Rusian armies are composed of human infantry, but the elites of the kingdom are mighty Chudes. Yet the humans also field mighty warriors. The axe wielding Bear Warriors are respected and feared even by the warriors of Ulm. The peoples of Rus prefer a cold climate.

Rus has an army that's similar to Ulm's with elite human barbarians, but its Magic is a lot more varied with many strong Air mages. Nothing in Rus is too impressive (despite their costs), but you can take it in a lot of directions. many Summon options, recruit from forests, strong sacreds, and spies.

Rus's "primitive forts" as described on the nation page are actually a bit of a misnomer; Rus gets their own unique fort line, which happens to be made of wood and uses the palisade graphic for both forts. You will be saving 150 and 1 turn to build your Villages to then upgrade to a Fortress. the downside is that wooden forts have worse administration and about half the defenses against sieges. Not a bad trade-off as sieges are more often decided by armies than fortifications, and the ability to get a leg up on fort finishing forts can be more valuable.

Sprite	Unit Name	Special Attributes	Comments
	Scout 25 5 1 +Foreign Rec	Cold Resistance (5) Snow Move Stealthy (60) Mountain Survival Forest Survival	Better than normal at hiding, so that it maintains its niche over the hunter Chieftains
	Rusian Chieftain 40 17 1	Cold Resistance (3) Snow Move	A 60 leadership commander, more effective than indie commanders but requiring fort turns to recruit.
	Rusian Priest 45 2 1	1 Sacred Cold Resistance (3) Snow Move	Standard cheap priest.
	Rusian Wizard 125 2 2 +Foreign Rec Caves	111100% 13 Cold Resistance (3) Snow Move Supply Bonus (10) Adept Researcher (+2)	Rusian Wizards are relatively efficient researchers in a sea of overcosted Rusian mages. Their combat power is somewhat unreliable, however; the highest they may roll in a single path is 2, and only fire and nature magic (not earth!) are available to communions via the astral random. Still, they are enough for light protection buffing and combat magic. They also provide access to Firebirds for the random event memes.
	Son of Heaven 270 5 2 Capital Only	11121100% 13 Sacred Cold Resistance (5) Snow Move Supply Bonus (10)	The highest-level priest available to Rus and a 120 leadership commander, but extremely pricy for that utility. The Son of Heaven's paths are not focused, and the crosspaths are not particularly useful either, rendering it a bit of a niche recruit.
	Daughter of the Sun 285 5 2 Capital Only	2111100% 10% 13 Sacred Cold Resistance (5) Snow Move Supply Bonus (10)	Although sharing the same price issues as the Son of Heaven, the Daughter of the Sun does have 2 and can potentially random 3, giving her much more reliable magic power in combat.
	Perkunu 380 5 4 Capital Only	3121010% 17 Sacred Shock Resistance (20) Cold Resistance (5) Shapechanger: Werebear Snow Move Mountain Survival Forest Survival Recuperation Supply Bonus (20)	Guaranteed 3 for Air Elementals & Thunder Strike, combined with 1 for Communion Mastery to keep cranking out spells, is the main selling point of these mediocre leaders. They transform into Werebears instead of dying (as long as the damage doesn't cut through their Werebear's 45 HP as well), but they'll then stop casting spells and go on a murderous rampage due to their Berserker trait.
	Rusian Chieftain 45 8 1 Foreign Rec only	Cold Resistance (5) Snow Move Stealthy (40) Berserker (+1) Mountain Survival Forest Survival	Can lead small stealthy raiding parties.

The following commanders can only be recruited in forests:

Sprite	Unit Name	Special Attributes	Comments
	Chud Chieftain 90 10 1 Rec Forests only (Foreign or Fort)	Cold Resistance (5) Snow Move Stealthy (40) Berserker (+3) Mountain Survival Forest Survival Ambidextrous (2)	80 leadership outside of forts is good utility, but it comes at a price for the Chud chassis.
	Thunder Priest 235 2 2 Rec Forests only (Foreign or Fort)	2111100% 11 Sacred Cold Resistance (5) Snow Move Mountain Survival Forest Survival Supply Bonus (10) Inept Researcher (-2)	The Thunder Priest provides reliable combat power with 2, but are somewhat expensive. They require both a land and a temple to recruit, so making use of their foreign recruit status can be risky.

One of Rus's selling points is its sheer amount of exclusive summons.

• Summon Simargl Conjure 2, 1 1, ( Simarglx1). Too slow if you're trying to amass a significant flying force, but fine as Patrol chaff.

• Summon Firebird Conjure 3, 11 2, ( Firebirdx1). Mages with the needed paths are not particularly common, but Firebirds are worth spamming for the influx of lucky events in your fort; twenty 2% chances of an extra good event will probably result in a good event at some point. Even if they don't pan out in that way, Firebirds can still be used as Patrollers, Siegers, and ambushers; they'll just be worse at each of those than the Simargl, though their melee Fire attack and their slightly-higher attack density than the Simargl helps with the latter.

• Summon Bears Conjure 3, 11 8, ( Great Bearx7) This summons the good bears, the same sort of bears that Chud Skinshifters turn into: Sacred HP bags with High Strength and Morale.

• Sloth of Bears Conjure 3, 2 8, ( Great Bearx10 + [lv]) This summons regular Great Bears, which have 9% lower HP, 5% lower Strength, and sub-par attack skill. If all you need is Siege Strength, this is the better Bear spell to use, since you get more Strength as a whole; for combat, however, the good bears are superior.

• Contact Sirin Conjure 3, 2 8, ( Sirin) Hard to Summon for Rus. A way to steal Male Commanders. If that doesn't work, giving them Handful of Acorns and some other weapon that can be used in the misc slot like The Pebble Pouch can dispatch a variety of problems. If nothing else, they're a Flying Scout.

• Summon Likho Conjure 4, 1 10, ( Likho) Rus lacks national Death for using her, outside of a Hero. Summon and let her sit in a enemy Provence to cause annoyances.

• Contact Alkonost Conjure 4, 2 15, ( Alkonost) A Flying 3, who can provide +2 morale to a squad of 40. Crossing the Flying utility with the Leadership utility can be tough, given how your only flying troops are Zmeys and Simurgs, but the functions are quite useful on their own.

• Summon Rusalka Conjure 4, 11 16, ( Rusalka) Hard for EA to use. Create more Low-level Death mages and a way to expand underwater. Can kill most things with a Water Lens Summon a Water Elemental and then spam skeletons until the assadination target is dead.

• Send Vodyanoy Conjure 4, 2 20, ( Vodyanoy) only target Sea province. Conjure a Stealthy Water mage underwater. Decent UW combat mage. She won't Be Establishing a foothold underwater by herself and without gems, but she can raid if you had already created a foothold down there. Is A means of fighting a water war if the ocean nations had failed to conquer most of the independents. They are also will climb water magic for you, getting you into Water Queens and Naiads
  

• Send Lady Midday Conjure 5, 11 10, ( Lady Midday) Basically summons a weak Disease Demon. Is Very fragle. Hard for EA to use.

• Summon Zmey Conjure 5, 2 5, ( Zmeyx1). A cool 3-headed Dragon that, unfortunately, breathes AOE-1 fire balls instead of the giant death lasers Fire Drakes exhale. Zmeys are cold-blooded, which may cause some problems if you aren't running a hellbless with 0 or 1.

• Contact Gamayun Conjure 5, 3 25, ( Gamayun) A Flying 222. The Gamayun is pretty nice for Rus to have in the late-game, as it allows the lucky Hero or 2 Perkunu to produce more 2 mages after you get a Starshine Skullcap, who can in-turn produce more 2 mages. It's also a handy support mage, able to Fly or Cloud Trapeze into battles where it can spam Paralyze and Mind Burn. Last-but-not-least, Gamayun have 19 and high Fortune Teller abilities, so they're even useful outside of combat.

• Send Bukavac Conjure 5, 4 5, ( Bukavac) only target Sea province. They are very hard to deal with especially if your having a bunch of Vodyanoy sends several aginst one providence. These are Giant Trampler that will clear out Fishman settlement and many of their armies.

• Contact Beregina Conjure 6, 31 35, ( Beregina) a amphibious Water mage with nature support spells and may to take a decently sized force underwater.

• Contact Cloud Vila Conjure 7, 4 40, ( Cloud Vila) Mountain and borders only. Take a Perkunu and make it a flying true Healer Seducer instead of a Werebear. You could be spending those Air gems on Air Queens while having an easier time summoning Mountain Vilas. During assassinations, a 4 can be overkill for the gems they cost but worthit when the targets are that tough.

• Contact Mountain Vila Conjure 7, 4 40, ( Mountain Vila) Mountain and borders only. Nature Air communioning, True Healer 2 mage comes prepage with a Vine Bow for going off-script. Mix of Fairy Queen and Ivy King, those too expensive to use recklessly. if you only need a generally strong nature mage, an Ivy King is far more resilient for cheaper.

• Contact Leshiy Conjure 8, 6 60, ( Leshiy Leshiy) Forest only. Takes a lot of climbing to get a nature mage that can be potalty 7 while in forests. Only get so someone, not your pretender can hold up Gift of Health or Enchanted Forests. As long as they are fighting in the forest, they are supercombatents getting all the good buffing paths, including asses to Foul Vapors. Gets natural regeneration to stack with spell regeneration and has a second bear shape to greatly boost its durablity.

Your nation primarily favors Air, but you shouldn't forget your capital Mages' Fire and your secondary Nature. How deep you get into a path as Rus depends on how patient you are, and how long the game looks like it's going to go for.

Your Thunder Priests always have 2 and a reasonable amount of them have 3, while 1/30 Perkunus have 4 and can craft both Air Boosters (The Winged Helmet and the Bag of Winds) for 6, and then 7 if you can get a Queen of Elemental Air. You only get one Perkunu for every two turns at most, however, so one-in-thirty is still pretty serious in a perpetually-busy capital (though one of your Heroes has 4). In combat, you get to use Storm with 2 (1 with an 4) alongside Summon Storm Power to turn your 2's into 3's, allowing them to drop heavy Thunder Strikes and Air Elementals on enemy armies.

2 is common among your Mages, and 21 on your Perkunus allows you to Forge the Moonvine Bracelet after Forging the Thistle Mace. +2-boosted Perkunus can Awaken Ivy Kings and then climb to 6 through having the boosted Ivy King Forge the Treelord's Staff; the +3-boosted Ivy King can then cast Contact Leshiy to get a 2124 Mage that can climb up to 7 with all of your Boosters. Since you'll be lacking serviceable Earth for most of the game, consider mixing Fire Resistance with Barkskin and its many upgrades.

The Daughter of the Sun commonly has 3, which is easily boosted to 4 in combat through Phoenix Power. In combat, 4 is enough to neuter opposing Fire Nations with Fire Fend, but can also be used for cheeky offensive plays such as Flaming Arrows, Living Fire, a 4 Fire Storm, and/or a 2 Flame Storm. 1/160 Daughter of the Suns have 4 outside of battle, which allows you to Forge a Flame Helmet and climb to 5, and then 6 if you can get a King of Elemental Fire, but that's rarer than the aforementioned 4 Perkunu.

Astral is strange on Rus, almost-solely serving as a giant weakness for your Perkunus in the face of Astral Nations (thanks to Magic Duel). 1/30 Perkunus have 2, which can then be boosted to 3 with the Starshine Skullcap in order to get a steady stream of 2 Gamayun; your capital has other Mages to recruit, however, so it's probably better to either Empower or consider having Astral on your Pretender – or you can just go all-in on Luck since one of your Heroes has 2.

Earth is even tougher for Rus to climb, but by no means impossible. Though you start out with only 1, and even that is restricted to a quarter of your human Mages, climbing Rus's Nature Ladder nets you the grand prize of one bonafide 2 Mage in forests. These guys are pretty expensive, but you only need one to craft Earth Boots, giving you 3 for the big combat buffs and 2 for your smaller & cheaper Mages to spam smaller-but-still-respected combat buffs. Like with Astral, though, one of your Heroes has 2 – they can't move while they have 2, but they can still Forge Boots.

Water & Death both have interesting Summons for you, but unfortunately you don't start out with either. Aside from your Pretender and Indies, you have two options for Water – you can either finish Rus's Nature Ladder for that 1 Mage and Forge Water Bracelets for 2, conquer an Underwater province with the help of some Water Breathing thingy, and churn out 31 Vodyanoys who can climb to 5 with boosters, and then climb to 7 if you get a Queen of Elemental Water, or you can do that first step with the 3132 Hero instead. As for Death, the Hero is your only native option.

Lots of mages are thunder batteries, use Summon Storm Power when Storm is up and you Thunder Strike.

As you have some good troops buffs like Mass Flight, Fog Warriors and Wooden Warriors.

Some Fire gives some clear spells like Sulfur Haze, and Seven Year Fever could Halt an early game thug rush.

Also having Air and Fire are the paths for archery buffs those that don't synergy if your going Thunderstrike spam.

Your going to get a few astral mages as your recruit. Probably save the communions for important battles for those big spells. a mage can also Cast Power of the Spheres to boost up their magic, but you need to put some reinvigoration items on some so they don't fall asleep for most of the battle.

Should also remember that, despite making water in your recruitable lineup, you have several summonable aquatic water magic, so don't sleep on claiming those untaped resources. Foul Vapors does work underwater. if taken above you also have Cold attacks that synergize with your nation's preference for cold.

Air, Fire, Nature, and Astral do have many defensive self buffs, along with their above-average HP, letting them survive specific scenarios if you script them right.

You get tons of summoning options. Summon sacred bears to boost your chaff production along with blessed Skinshifters. Lots of situational Seducer summons, but the higher-level ones can be overkill in assinations for the gems. Always remembers you have a Flying throne claimer in the form of the Alkonost.

Late game Cloud Vila as a discount air queen and Leshy as super combaten as long as a lot of the fighting is in forests and using a Skinshifter bless.

No national items or discounts.

You are one of the rare nations that can naturally forge Air boosters.

You don't have good national thugs, with the Perkunu, and Son of Heaven doing better than the tipical mage. If your are not summoning generic thug chassis, then your gearing up to make your lighting batteries more surviable.

the national cross paths you have make resistant items and cheap and lightweight thug gear. With astral making items to boost spell resistance/penetration and Elf Bane.

This is probably the most difficult section to get consensus for. Describe how strong the nation is during expansion, the early, mid and late game, and what makes it strong/weak at each of those points. This should give readers an idea of where the weaknesses of a nation lie (if they have not been shown already) and when to take advantage of a nation's strengths.

List some example expansion strategies here. If a strong bless or pretender is required then leave the specifics for the pretender section.

List some example pretender builds. Try to use the following format to keep authorship and pretender design rationale clear.

Deives of the Sun (Awake): F6N7B8 Dom4Tur3Slo3Hea1Gro1Luc3Dra3. Bless: Fire Shield, Regeneration, Blood Vengeance. Turns your recruitable and summonable sacreds into spicy meatballs of pain. Allows you to summon many Firebirds and Zmeys.

Volla of the Bountiful Forest (Awake): W10N7 Dom4Tur3Slo3Hea1Gro0Luc2Mag1. Bless: Quickness, Regeneration. Similar to Deives of the Sun, makes your recruitable and summonable sacreds very dangerous. Provides with Water gem income and Water path access which is otherwise hard to obtain with this nation. Many of the national Water summons become available.

Demilich (imprisoned): E4D10N10 Dom4Tur3Slo3Hea1Gro0Luc3Mag3. Bless: Larger, 10 x Undying, Regeneration. Allows your recruitable and summonable sacreds to hit harder and survive much longer (20 HP from Undying for both forms is 40 extra HP, plus Larger bonus which also improves regeneration). Increased strength from Larger also helps with taking down fortifications. Pretender has Death access, which is rare for this nation.

• Dominions 5 Nation Analysis - EA Rus by Perun (2021)

Nations
Early Ages	Arcoscephale • Ermor • Ulm • Marverni • Sauromatia • T'ien Ch'i • Machaka • Mictlan • Abysia • Caelum • C'tis • Pangaea • Agartha • Tir na n'Og • Fomoria • Vanheim • Helheim • Niefelheim • Rus • Kailasa • Lanka • Yomi • Hinnom • Ur • Berytos • Xibalba • Mekone • Ubar • Atlantis • R'lyeh • Pelagia • Oceania • Therodos
Middle Ages	Arcoscephale • Ermor • Sceleria • Pythium • Man • Eriu • Ulm • Marignon • Mictlan • T'ien Ch'i • Machaka • Agartha • Abysia • Caelum • C'tis • Pangaea • Asphodel • Vanheim • Jotunheim • Vanarus • Bandar Log • Shinuyama • Ashdod • Uruk • Nazca • Xibalba • Phlegra • Phaeacia • Ind • Na'ba • Atlantis • R'lyeh • Pelagia • Oceania • Ys
Late Ages	Arcoscephale • Pythium • Lemuria • Man • Ulm • Marignon • Mictlan • T'ien Ch'i • Jomon • Agartha • Abysia • Caelum • C'tis • Pangaea • Midgård • Utgård • Bogarus • Patala • Gath • Ragha • Xibalba • Phlegra • Vaettiheim • Atlantis • R'lyeh • Erytheia