A VH/VH Venice First Five Turns Strategy Guide

[Jojobobo]

So after trying a vanilla VH/VH campaign with Venice and by turn thirty being at war with France, the HRE, Milan, Sicily, Hungary and the Byzantine Empire as well as being not well liked by the Pope I thought it was time to come up with a better strategy. I ran a search on this forum and found this:

Get rid of Iraklion, it's garbage. Trade it to the HRE for Bologna. Ragusa is also a liability, because of its distance. Trade it away for a Papal alliance or some such. Papal alliances usually last no matter what difficulty.

Plus, with the papacy on your border, you won't have to worry about the eastern half of the map.

That's why I recommend blitzing Zagreb, gifting it and Ragusa to the Papacy, trading Iraklion for Bologna for the HRE, then blitzing Milan, Genoa, and Florence. Once you have taken northern Italy, establish forts at each and every choke point. You should have 3 in the Genoa territory, 2 or 3 in Milan, 2 or 3 in Venice, and 1 or 2 in the Bologna area. This seals you off from outside interference, and allows you time to respond from an invasion across the Alps.

Tribute the Papacy, as they will be your best (and probably only) ally, and keep Sicily at bay. They are your biggest threat, as they control southern Italy and parts of North Africa. Survive. Tech to an amazing late period army, Crusade the mess out of an area, then settle. Wreak as much havoc on Western European nations as possible when they're at war, and just try to out economize them. That's how you win in VH/VH. Have more money. And Northern Italy = Lots o' Money.
That's what I do, at least...

Heavily using Dunecat’s strategy (I don't know if he's still an active member, but thanks for the advice), I adapted my own that covers the first five turns. What this strategy will do is:

• Eliminate Milan and Sicily. Some people say they like the challenge of letting these factions develop - but I don’t!
• Get you early access to VHI, via having a fortress at Palermo within the first 10 turns.
• Making alliances that last, particularly with the HRE, and making the Pope love you.
• Most importantly, giving you a strong starting position, fromwhich you can expand and conquer from as you please.

As a disclaimer, one thing you will need to be able to do is to fight battles competently as you will have one tricky battle at Milan. Without further ado, here’s my First Five Turns Guide:

Turn 1:

• Take Cristiano Selvo and the garrison at Iraklion and get them on the ships neighbouring the island. Destroy all buildings you can at Iraklion for some extra cash, and set the ships destination to drop the troops off at Palermo on Sicily (on my first attempt with Venice, Sicily attacked Iraklion by about turn 9 or so - so it’s worth getting rid of. As an extra point, you can destroy some of the ships to get rid of some upkeep costs in following turns).
• Next take your diplomat outside of Venice and strike up a conversation with Bologna. Agree to an alliance and trade rights as well as exchanging Iraklion for Bologna. The HRE should “barely accept”. (You can buy Bologna from the HRE in the alliance for 3850 florins instead of exchanging it for Iraklion, but by keeping Iraklion you will come to blows with the Byzantine Empire sooner rather than later and also you won’t be able to take your full garrison out of Iraklion either to take Palermo - so the choice is yours). Leave the diplomat where he is.
• Move your ships near Venice next to the third island along the coast of the Ragusa region, leaving them by the coast. Take Alessandro Selvo and the two units of spear milita in Ragusa and stick them on the ships, leaving one unit of peasant archers to garrison Ragusa and keep the peace (might not be necessary, but it never hurts). Destroy all buildings at Ragusa you can, and take your spy on that coast and also set him to board the ships.
• Take Councillor Bartolomeo and take Zagreb. Make as many units whole as possible and leave the weakest to garrison Zagreb to keep the peace, then with the rest of you army make for the same boat you stuck Alessandro on.
• Take four of the five mercenary crossbowmen from Bologna and siege Florence, building a battering ram.
• Take Doge Domenico and a unit of peasant archers and make a fort at the space in the Alps north of Venice. Leave the archers and then set Doge to rendezvous with the mercenary crossbowmen outside of Florence the following turn.
• Recruit a unit each of Italian spear militia and Italian militia at Venice, and build whatever buildings you want to at Bologna and Venice. Take your merchant and go for whatever resource you think is best (the silk outside Constantinople trades for a lot, but it takes a while to reach).

Turn 2:

• Complete your move with Domenico, take Florence, leave as small a garrison as you can there and make for Genoa.
• Recruit a unit of Italian militia at Venice.
• Complete Councillor Bartolomeo and his army’s move from the previous turn, as well as the spy’s, and set ship to dock your army at the western side of the Naples region.
• Move closer to Palmero with your ships containing Cristiano.
• With your diplomat gift the HRE with 250 florins per turn for 200 turns, ensuring their alliance. The fort you created in the first turn should have trapped their army so you will still be able to reach them with your diplomat. If you attempt this in the first turn, they will refuse, saying that they don’t feel comfortable accepting whilst giving nothing in return - which is why you needed to leave your diplomat in place last turn. Ordinarily by turn five Milan and the HRE will have an alliance, and any moves you make against Milan will cause your and the HRE’s alliance to break - making it vitally important to deal with Milan as soon as possible. Sometimes the HRE will refuse your gift again, if so then try again the next turn, if things went okay make for France with your diplomat (or whoever you want).

Turn 3:

• Dock your troops on the western coast of the Naples region, and make for the city.
• Advance further to Genoa with Domenico, recruiting all the mercs you can.
• Take your entire garrison out of Venice and make for Milan, you’ll reach the city but not be able to lay siege yet - so war is held at bay for another turn.
• Move Cristiano closer to Palermo.
• The Papal States should send a diplomat to Bologna during their turn (making the acquisition of Bologna vital). Offer them an alliance, trade rights, Ragusa, Zagreb and exchange military access (you may have to run troops through Rome and they’ll definitely have to run troops through your lands to reach Ragusa and Zagreb). Then gift them 250 florins per turn for 200 turns. This makes the perfect buffer against Hungary, and to some extent with the Byzantine Empire though they usually will send boats to Naples with armies anyway as they seem determined to make war with you for whatever reason.

Turn 4:

• Dock Cristiano at Palermo, and with every army engage the required city. It helps to build two battering rams instead of one where possible on the off-chance one goes up in flames during a siege. Sometimes an army waits outside Naples, if this is the case you can take Naples this turn. You’ll notice that Palermo has one general unit garrisoned only, the rest are laying siege to Tunis.
• Remember to disband the troops you used to garrison Ragusa and Zagreb so you don’t have to pay their upkeep.

Turn 5:

• Conquer. Milan is a tough fight but all the rest are very easy, and you’ll kill off both Milan and Sicily in one fell swoop - giving you the entirety of Apennine Peninsula apart from Rome. If the Pope and asks you to cease hostilities - don’t; your reputation won’t suffer greatly and will bounce back to “outstanding” within a turn or two due to your tribute. I would recommend sending Cristiano with a small force to siege Cagliari in the same turn, and deploy Domenico to start blocking up the Alps with forts.

In the future:

Now you are set up, you can expand where you please. I would recommend starting a crusade against Tunis and taking that in short order (though watch out for the large ex-Sicilian rebel army there - a reason why a crusade is necessary), as well as Tripoli and Ajaccio. Personally, I always like taking northern Africa as you get a lot of money from building a fort next to a resource at Timbuktu and stacking merchants there; I now how about 90000 florins in the bank despite building in every settlement after about 100 turns.

As of 100 turns into my campaign, no one has even attempted to take one of my northern Italian cities due to the forts in the Alps - I keep them garrisoned with about 4 units each but maybe even one is fine as a deterrent. Expect France to start a fight with you by blockading a port - in response to which I demanded a ceasefire and Bern which they had captured from the rebels, and they agreed! The Byzantine Empire will also attack Naples, but if you just bung up your gates with a few units of Italian spear militia in schiltron formation they’ll never get through and you should score a Heroic Victory. HRE have remained loyal - I haven’t even tried to protect Bern properly and they haven’t even so much as sniffed at it despite sending a lot of troops through the area.

General Tips:

You have money, use it. By hiring a diplomat and placing him outside of vulnerable cities, if they fall to another faction you can bribe them back into the fold. I managed this with both Ajaccio when Portugal took it and Tripoli when Egypt did. You can use a few tens of thousands of florins to call a ceasefire when in need. The tactic of gifting 250 florins per turn seems to make alliances stick, if that’s what you’re after. Go crazy.

So I hope this was useful to some people - I guess some like the challenge of being at war with factions upon factions but for me it was too much. As I said previously, kind thanks to Dunecat as many of the ideas were his originally - really taking Sicily at the same time was all I added on top of putting it into a guide! I think Venice is now my new favourite faction; I’ve learnt from experience that Venetian archers, the VHI and stradiots make Venice almost unbeatable in battle. The stradiots are perhaps my favourite unit in the whole game; though they aren’t invincible they do hit hard and their shear mobility is amazing. I had some reservations about the low morale of the VHI, but honestly even without a general or carroccio standard because they hit so hard they usually cause the routing rather than running off themselves. I can’t wait until the gunpowder era so I can start messing around with mortars, monster ribaults and musketeers.

Let me know what you think.

[PrestigeX]

killing off Milan right away is the main agenda for a Venetian General.

Milan has everything that Venice has but in greater supply, and arguably better quality = Geonese Xbows militia / castle variant are better than standard Pavise Xbow militia, and milan can recruit them as if they were "spear militia".

venice has the advantage for a siege defense with troops like Venetian Archers and VHI , behind walls these troops will massacre anything. However, out on the field a huge formation of 8-10 geonese xbows, with endless up-armored Italian Spears and mix and match Heavy Cav ... Milan totally outclasses Venice.
Kill them off before they get a chance!

Keep relations excellent with the pope! - I usually find that the closer geographically your faction is to the pope, the more attention you want to spend on him - tributes and gifts, especially regions you want as a buffer zone.. OR,

my personal fave - Crusade Target!!! Gather a great big army of excellent crusade mercs, level them up by successful crusade + plus the money and default Papal favour, pillage the target for money if desired, then leave the city and head home - gifting the city to the Pope! Let him deal with the couter-attack.