A David vs. Goliath Story
At the moment I'm playing as the Holy Roman Empire, and despite a short war with the Papacy that lead to my Cardinal being elected Pope (and thus, an end to the war before I could take my Campaign Objective of Rome), I've nurtured relatively amiable relations with the Pope and for that reason have yet to carry out my plans of waging a blitzkrieg against France, Spain and England in the West. I'm surrounded by allies, which lets me work with some level of impunity in the Middle East (where I captured Antioch in a Crusade and am working on expanding my power base southwards towards Jerusalem, when I raise the men necessary to place myself on a border with the Fatimid Empire in Egypt).
I was moving my Italian armies south (one lead by the Emperor Heinrich himself and another by his adopted son) to launch a blitzkrieg against Sicily, with the hopes of capturing both Palermo and Naples before the Pope had a chance to protest, when from out of nowhere Venice sent an army to the poorly-defended city of Vienna and laid siege. Even though I'd resigned myself to losing Austria I sent a lager army from Prague south in a desperate attempt to defend but by the time the army arrived at Vienna, the Venetian army had backed off and dissapeared into the night.
Since their rather rash declaration of war, the above example has been par for the course: I pulled both my southbound armies up in a hurry to join the war against Venice as my army from Prague lay siege to Zagreb. Every Venetian army I have engaged on the path to Venice, no matter whether they are two units, half a stack, or a full stack, has chosen to retreat rather than stand and fight - the only time I've fought Venice on the field is when I've actually bothered to chase them down. As of writing I've laid siege to Venice itself and as soon as I get back on the game will storm the walls and make a frickin' terrible example out of those bastards for daring to stand up to the might of the Reich.
Has anyone else had a similarly strange experience, where a faction will declare war only to then run like crazy as soon as you bother to give a defense? Funnily enough I've known Venice to do this in other campaigns as well, to start a war only to retreat as soon as I made a move to counteract them.
I guess I should be thankful; when I've wiped Venice off the map I'll be sharing a border with the Byzantine Empire, and after I obliterate THEM I'll have unified the Roman Empire once again. All in all this campaign looks like it's about to get very interesting
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Originally Posted by Rex_Romanorum
But I hate being surround by only allies because if you are and you need to move troops and you pass on your allies lands without having military access your relationship with them will go down and then it can degenerate if done to often.
