Favorite Italian Faction

**Silverheart** · January 19, 2012, 02:24 PM

Due to encouragement in the "Italian states" thread, I´m posting a poll to officially decide which of the Italian factions in vanilla M2TW is the greatest one all in all.
Vote for your favorite, and feel free to motivate your choice!

**VENNONETES** · January 19, 2012, 02:40 PM

Venice, I'm italian (from lombardy) and I love Venice's history. She also has (in med2 vanilla) one of the bests economies and a great army

V.E.

**Latin Knight** · January 19, 2012, 02:56 PM

Milan is instantly off for me, i hate them as enemy AI and playing as them. The Pope, well, i also hate him.

So, it was between Venice and Sicily. I'd have voted for Venice, but then i remembered an awesome campaign i had as Sicily in vanilla. They have great units, with those muslim archers and the Norman cavalry (which, i guess, beats Venetian cavalry), have the same good italian militia and can easily become the masters of the Mediterranean with a good fleet.

Thing is, Venice is kinda straightfoward as the arch-enemy of Byzantium, your conquests will be, for the most part of the game, focused on the Balkans, Byzantine territories and the Italian rivals. Even if you want to focus only on Italy or other region of the world, the Byzantines will attack you relentlessly, you'll inevitably war with them.

I found that Sicily has much more freedom of choice. You can do exactly the same thing you'd do if playing as Venice: go for the Balkans, take Constantinople as Robert Guiscard and Bohemond wanted to do and take all those beautiful islands, Crete and Cyprus. You can choose to conquer all of Africa, destroy Egypt and the Moors and eventually spread to the Holy Land or Iberia, as Sicily features a privileged position on the map. Or you can scrap all of this and focus entirely on the peninsula, beating the other italian states and entering a massive war against the HRE or France.

**Grymloq** · January 19, 2012, 03:04 PM

Venice

**Diamond** · January 19, 2012, 03:39 PM

Sicily! I'm Sicilian

**CavalryCmdr** · January 19, 2012, 05:20 PM

Sicily, it's probably the most 'balanced' faction in vanilla, add in the rediculously over powered Italian militia units.

Milan is out for me because of those cheat Genoese crossbows, they take all the fun out of the game (plaing as them OR fighting the rediculous number the AI recruits.)

**trustno1(2)** · January 19, 2012, 05:36 PM

Milan. I am probably basing this off of the Retrofit mod that allows you to have the Grand Campaign hotseat, and I mostly play that with my neighbors. You can easily take Italy and then attack HRE. Venice starts with too many borders, and Sicily starts out with a less than sufficient economic condition. But all Italian factions have good militia units.

**13lackGu4rd** · January 19, 2012, 06:33 PM

Milan, primarily thanks to their famous no castle dependency. Men at Arms are perfectly equal to Broken Lances, so there's absolutely no reason whatsoever to get any castle troops with Milan. Sure, Genoese Crossbowmen are slightly better than their militia variants, and you get the generic mounted crossbowmen as well, but I do just fine without them. Also Milan's starting position puts you right in between the HRE, France and Venice, 3 of the most powerful factions out there, so it's your choice whether to finish them off early while they're still weak or let them build up and become a challenge.

**SturmChurro** · January 19, 2012, 07:11 PM

Milan.

**wolfbane751** · January 19, 2012, 09:17 PM

milan is so easy to turtle up italy by genoa and milan and venice all those mountain passes just build forts in them to block them off and station some militia and genoese crossbow militia in there and youre set for awhile and i only end up using their militia units like cavalry militia italian spear militia genoese crossbow militia etc...
even though most people hate them (in-game) they are really fun and challenging to play on vh/vh

**Bringer Of Storms** · January 19, 2012, 10:01 PM

Venice.

**Palandiell** · January 20, 2012, 03:16 AM

milan. you only need a castle for some cav units. everything else you got in your city, which is so unique

**Parzival2211** · January 20, 2012, 03:30 AM

Sicily just for the looks of the Norman knights

**SeizeVictus** · January 20, 2012, 05:22 PM

Milian.

Something about Sicily and Venice doesn't appeal to me.

**Silverheart** · January 25, 2012, 06:42 AM

As I have probably said like three times or so in the past week (

) my favorite faction would be Venice.
While the milanese and sicilians have variety in different missile troops (Genoese Crossbowmen, Muslim Archers) and heavy cavalry (Famiglia Ducale, Norman Knights) the venetians have a wider variety what with their more unique units (Venetian Heavy Infantry - only warhammer unit in the game - and the Venetian Archers - among the finest and heaviest archers in the game - and the Stradiots - while not elite, they make a fine complement to heavier cavalry when used properly)

Although the variety in units is only slight, the difference in gameplay is quite different.
The Venetians start in a spread out position across the Balkan and central Mediterranean, meaning that they have at least as much potential for expansion as the other Italian factions (made easier with their superior ships) and have just the same potential to quickly become an economical powerhouse.
The fact that their starting regions are so scattered also makes them more vulnerable (while the Milanese and Sicilians both have relatively unthreatened and well consolidated starting regions), meaning that in a high-difficulty campaign you can expect some challenge if you "forget" to expand quickly and/or make a rush to build up your defenses (

)

**Aymer de Valence** · January 25, 2012, 06:48 AM

Venice! Long live the Republic!

**herne_the _hunter** · January 25, 2012, 11:42 AM

Most of my Sicily games tend to play differrant each time so I would have to go for them rather than Milan or Venice. Converting Palermo to a city and taking another castle to devlop makes their cash flow problems go away. They are not at a disadvantage if using the generic Italian miltia troops/mailed knights/mounted srgts until they get their more powerful Norman Knights and Muslim archer units.