Venetians: Real Bastards
On vh/vh...(with rebels given 999,999 gold, brigands set to 15 (gives more heretics) and 12-20 units in each city, otherwise vanilla). I know this will sound kind of AARish, but its not. I'm seriously surprised.
It would seem that CA got at least one thing right with Campaign Map AI. The Venetians are incredibly bastardly when you have something they want.
Recently, in a Sicily game, I went and took Durazzo. I guess that Venice must have not appreciated having the adriatic closed off because a turn later, they began blockading my ports. Well. This forced me to up the ante by attacking with my fleet to drive them off.
A couple interesting things happened then. I was given a mission to blockade Crete, while at the same time they marched on Durazzo. However, I kept not being able to get to Crete because of Venetian fleets in the way, and the Venetian stack rebelled against itself and decided to pillage my countryside instead!
Then they began to try and flood my city of Naples with spies and drive up unrest. However, I responded to this by training a couple spies of my own and in a short while, several Venetian spies were hung. The amusing thing about this is that my King (an unremarkable fellow) actually got a cool trait from it 'Counter Spy'.
Amusingly, I allied the Holy Roman Empire, and the turn later, Venice allied the Byzantium Empire.
Now three things happened at once:
1) Suddenly, the Pope called a Crusade, which both myself and the Venetians joined (and noone else). So for the next 4-5 turns, our Crusading armies would be eyeing each other on the way to the Holy Land. Eventually, my commander decided to ditch his infantry and recruit some Armenian/Turkopole mercenaries to /zoom/ to Antioch, picking up Armenian Archers and Crusader Spearmen once there, so the Venetians were left about a turn behind.
2) Venice began to blockade all my ports after seriously mutilating my fleet. A fleet I couldn't get to a harbor to retrain. However, I couldn't attack the fleets without risking excommunication! I was warned specifically by the Pope.
3) To combat this, I began training and sending a diplomat to bribe the Pope. Yet almost teeth-grindingly frustratingly, the Venetians bribed three diplomats in a row before they ever got an audience with him!
Eventually, the Papal ban wore off and I managed to get a severely depleted fleet back into harbor. In the meanwhile, my crusading army had managed to battle its way down the coast to Jerusalem. The Venetians could only watch while I besieged the ramparts. Well. The Papal Ban ended the turn that I took Jerusalem, which left me with a bloodsoaked crusading force staring out at Venice's 20 stack, almost identical horde. Except that while I had Armenians and Turkopoles, the Venetians had Slav Levies and Balkan Archers! Which is why they took longer to get there, tho we left at the same time. So we had a great fight, two full stacks vs each other. We each had a few religious fanatics too , and crusader spearmen. About the only way we differed, and what won it for me, was that I had more knights. I actually managed to line up and send home six units of eighty knights (bodyguard, mailed, crusader) into his battle line and inflicted horrific damage. Anyhow. Great battle, but ended in capturing both his family members. Which were promptly executed.
I guess the Venetians didn't like having the Doge's sons executed, because suddenly I had three assassins (that I could see with my spies) repeatedly attempting to knife my King. He racked up like a half dozen hilarious traits that sent his personal security THROUGH THE ROOF. He then began to build his own assassins who managed to eliminate the venetian assassins with one or two losses. Several assassins and a spy began to work up the peninsula, assassinating Venetian diplomats, merchants, clerics, etc. Eventually, I got a look at his Doge...
And his Doge was almost the mirror image of mine. Both were Merciless with dread and an adultress. And it was sort've like looking through the mirror. I realized my Sicilians were not neccessarily the good guys here. No more than the Venetians were. The only difference really was that he had a spymaster and I had a master of assassins advisor. Talk about a rivalry! He had a thieves guild and I had an assassins guild. Sort've like ninja vs geisha, eh?
In any case. I was about done for the night when I decided to get an expedition together to go for Sardinia. The expenses of maintaining the Holy Lands was actually a drain on my coffers and I needed another source of income.
I left two peasant archers garrisoning my Durazzo castle and sailed off. Only to have an idiot Venetian diplomat (probably one of mine at that!) walk in and bribe the castle away from me!
So I had to sail alllll the way back and begin besieging it, and that's when I decided to call it quits for the night.
This Venetian AI was absolutely murderous, bastardly and just downright mean. I've never seen it before. Has anyone else?
EDIT: Oh, and as an unrelated aside, I was surprised to see my ally, the HRE, actually vote for my pope in an election. I was so sure I'd lose, /I/ voted for someone else. If I'd voted for myself, I would've won! =(
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. It's a shame such equals can't be friends.
) they still had children btw. I was planning to attack denmark soon and milan is usually the strongest italian faction so i was hoping to force a brawl with all of us there as well. However venice decided to do something else and wam balognia is attacked. But no worries, I not only was able to defend the city properly because of my planning durring turn one, but i sacked venice and grinded up most of her children in a slaughter fest all the way through to greece. 
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