Wow, Venice!

[marceror]

I recently started a Venetian campaign in SS 6.1. I've always loved Venice, but as I played them twice in Vanilla, I've always steered clear of them in Stainless Steel.

One of the things I always loved about them in vanilla is that the campaign is one of the most action packed available. Everyone wants of a piece of Venice in vanilla M2:TW

Well, now playing them in Stainless Steel on H/VH... holy moly! This is a true total war experience. I'm in turn 52ish and I'm at war with 4 VERY agressive enemies: HRE, Byzantanium, Sicily and Egypt. I'm getting attacked EVERY single turn, sometimes as many as 5 settlements in a single turn (one turn I had 1 settlement under siege from the HRE, ERE, Sicily each and TWO settlements under siege from the Fatamids. And they are throwing half to full, to multiple stacks at me every time. My foes are also making regular use of their agents, so sometimes I'm finding that my city doors are wide open at the beginning of the siege, and my troops are scattered. Cool!! And the most devious tactic from HRE was their regular sieges (every single turn) against Nuremburg while it was infested with plague. Every time my army "exited" to fight, and "reentered" the city became reinfected. My population went from around 22,000 to 9,000, LOL.

A little ARR, for those who are interested. The coolest siege yet.
The scariest siege thus far came from ERE at Athens. They came at me with two FULL stacks of very powerful units (lots of dismounted Byz lancers, byzantine infantry, Alamanoi) against a 3/4 stack of mostly peasants, militia, and some crappy mercs (slav levies, balkan archers). Adding insult to injury, the second stack came with lots of siege weapons (2 treb battallions and 1 catapult battallion), so it was truly to be a siege on two fronts of my city. I parked a general and 4 other decent units from my fortress of Mystras next to Athens -- allowing me to have a full stack -- and waited. Long story short, I planned my tactics VERY carefully before the inevitable battle began, and managed to win. The key to success was my 2 cavalry units: 2 powerful generals with lots of chivalry. I sent them into what was a near suicide charge against the enemy siege weapons and managed to neutralize them, allowing me to confine the battle to a single front. But it was a hell of a bloody battle, even still (would have been basically impossible to win on 2 fronts). When you're sending peasant archers against Alamanoi -- because it's all you can spare -- and just hope to god you can break the enemy somewhere else to redirect better suited troops to another part of the wall... this is what I call a heroic victory well deserved!! Good show AI.


End of ARR, continue to closing comments
So I'm not sure if this is just dumb luck, or this is how Venice usually plays out in Stainless Steel, but this is one hell of a crazy campaign. At this point I've basically put all ambitions of expansion to the wayside as I attempt to fight a very costly war on 4 different fronts. Very, very enjoyable stuff!!

[Nightbringer]

ya, im not sure it has to do with venice in particular but from time to time the ai will just do an amazing job in a campaign. my byzantine campaign im playing now is a good example. for the first 50 turns or so i was fighting a slow war against the turks to retake anatolia, i eventually managed but they didnt give me a single break, every time i managed to capture a settlment and move on they would beseige me with a full stack, forcing me to run back and break the seige. then as i was finishing up that war hungary went all out on me, actually capturing a few settlments, including constantinople (about three times actually, it took a while for the city to recover after that). i finally managed to break them when i snuck an army past the front and took their capitol and only real money making city. (i think the only time i have seen an economic attack work against the ai) now im trying to invade italy but every time i manage to capture a few settlments but lose them to stack after stack of militia before i can get reinforcments there. it is one of the best campaigns ive ever had!

[nostradamouse]

Welll... huh... sadly my venice campaign is kind of boring.... Allied with sicily and hungary.
Then I proceeded to get medieval on the byzantine empire. Now that I owned all of greece, Genoa or HRe still have not attacked me even though our relations are very poor. I got bored and set my eyes on Genoa and Milan. So I conquered them easily. Now they are stuck inside Bern. It is their only settlement left.... But eh... like 3 fulls stacks there... kind of makes it difficult. So yea... now it's about 1235, I own all of greece + Albania. I own all the coast from Genoa to Thessalonica(I don't have rome and the rest of sicily though). Sadly, my allies captured constantinople before me, so I am planning on destroying them.

As for egypt, they just keep stupidly attacking iraklion. Yea... even with 2:1 odds, they are really easy to kill.

Perhaps I should stop allying with the pope...

As for the mongols, they are joyously sacking and turning rebel kwarezmid settlements while the TO does the same to the lithuanians and poles! Danes are all over northern europe, Norway does... tadadada.... nothing... England is dead.

Only suprise, the irishs are in Rennes and Caernavon , Scotts in Caen. Frenchs are battling the scotts on the mainland and winning.

Only gripe I have : Damn... 4 turns to train venetian archers?

[Nightbringer]

my experience is that you shouldent ally with people in the beginning turns, for some reason it makes the ai go comparativly passive on me