Hi guys,
recently started playing Imp1 again after a looong time. Glad it's available on GOG!
Running the "Recovery of France 1820" scenario as GB is obviously easy with their plentiful starting resources in all categories.
However, Russia is rated at "Normal" difficulty - how on earth can this be normal diff? These folks are as poor as it gets, even creating an Engineer to source anything is difficult. 1k + 2k for training, 2k for a depot. Meanwhile there's basically no merchant fleet as building a ship takes resources away (but not trading is also not an option), and then there's the starting military that can significantly expand your territory - at the cost of a stalled economy for a decade. One can't do both or there will be starvation and bankruptcy.

Anyone able to share some tricks to get going? Choosing the military route will end the game in the very first election when GB is pitted against some random nobody, and going the economic route will do so in the second or third, when all the GB colonies cast their vote against me.

Ok, kind of hiking this post. I've tried winning this as Russia countless times over the years. Just ended another game by losing the second vote. So if anyone has some good tips I'd also like to hear.

Here are mine:
On Turn 1 build a Clipper.
Don't worry about food and transport in the beginning as training units will decrease demand and free up capacity.

Ports are everything. To make the money sell everything you have, except the 5 starting cannons if you somehow manage.
I think Tula (2 wood, 1 coal) -> Krivoy Rog (2 iron) -> Kharkov (1 coal, 1 grain) are good first moves to get one started. As such one needs to rush an engineer, then a miner and a forester after. Poland is worthless and indefensible. It goes to Austria within the first couple of turns most of the time. Serbia is way too contested but Morocco and North Africa have little contest and export cotton. So that's where I put two consulates.

From there I went for infrastructure in Kiev (port+2x station) for food and wool. I think that was the mistake that cost me the vote. The developer you get from starting with good relations with Poland should probably buy the cotton in Africa leaving your engineer to double down on timber after connecting the remaining coal/iron. And Russia needs tons of paper and wood. If the Ottoman's lack alliances its also good to (at least) take Bucharest, once they build a port there.

Actually won on the next try in the 3rd council vote.

Rushed Forester->Engineer->Miner
Ports as above, except Kiev.
Allied Prussia and declared on Austria pretty early (1st 4 turns I think), saving and later on vassalizing Poland. Still left Serbia for Prussia and diplo vassalized Northern Africa and Morocco for Gems, Cotton and Gold. Eventually took out the Ottoman Empire and protected France via alliance. Challenged Britain for Egypt with the 1st artillery upgrade.

When challenging Britain diplomatically one needs to be able to push several 10k grants per turn to minor nations. Industrializing the forests in western Russia will get you a long way towards earning that money and gives the food to sustain your workers.

At some points early on I had to stop my food transportation completely, turning all 3 to 0 and only buying to satisfy demand, so its good to stock up when you can. Otherwise the Russian workforce is stretched too thin. Make sure to upgrade your lumber mill at least once very early but sell everything else. Once the third port is up and mines are running there are some challenges getting the workforce up and building transport capacity but you can at least generate a decent constant income and snowball from there.

The trick is that Russia has a huge starting army. You might not see it at first, because it's scattered around all their provinces and it's all asleep. But if you wake it up and combine them, you'll have an army that can steamroll any of the other great powers at the start of the game (they hardly have any army to start with). You can just march straight into the capitals of Ottoman, Austria, and Germany without breaking a sweat. Then just use connect them to your rail network (probably by port) and use their resources, don't bother developing Russia much.