[Help] Guide for Venice?

[Lord of Shadows]

Does anyone knows good strategy for Venice?I always get destroyed by Byzantium or HRE.

[Andytheplatypus]

Work on increasing your population. It is important to expand early before the factions that start out with more territories around you decide to attack. Decide on attacking 1 enemy at a time. Try to get papal states on your side and get enemy faction ex communicated if they are catholic.

Factions that your not at war with send a diplomat and try to ally with them

[flyingcat]

Work on increasing your population. It is important to expand early before the factions that start out with more territories around you decide to attack. Decide on attacking 1 enemy at a time. Try to get papal states on your side and get enemy faction ex communicated if they are catholic.

Factions that your not at war with send a diplomat and try to ally with them

I could add some tips.

Diplomacy:Turns before 10 are the best time to get alliance.Ally with HRE,the Papal States and Sicily.Why those three?
HRE:You don't need to spend much resources on Venice and Ancona.
Papal States:Always useful for a Catholic faction.
Sicily:Extremely important.It could help you to invade Greece as an ally,or assault Ancona/Corinth as an enemy.

When starting the campaign,remember to build an ArcheryRange in Ragusa,which enables you to train the core unit--Pesante Archers.
Exert your western forces to take Zagreb first,then halt at Ragusa.Command your ships to transport your eastern troops to Arta.Then Siege Arta(eastern forces) and Durazzo(western forces) at the same time.
If possible,bring a priest with your troops.If you're not confident about your commanding skill,just wait your enemy sally out and obtain some easy victories,though it might take a longer time.

Now it might be turn 10.
Genoa would (>90%) invade Venice.Train some garrisons,and it's easy to defend the city against militias with your Faction Leader.
Hungary would(>80%) invade your feebly-guarded settlement(if any) after turn 15.To resist their attack,make good use of Pesante Archers and mercenary.
Egypt would(>75%) invade Rhodes with a small band of troops.Train a Mourtatoi and some spear.
Eastern Roman Empire would (>70%) conclude a treaty with you to end the war,you could extort some florins.

If you like farming,just maintain some professional troops and perpetually retrain them when they get extra exp.No difficulty now.Wait for the collapse of HRE(or a crusade against it) to get some more regions.
If you like to attack,then eliminate Hungary first.It would be a long long war,and Hungary is full of Bosnian Archers ,Croat Axemen and Magyars.Pesante Archer is the solution,train,train,and train.When you get more than four band,you could crush any Hungarian force easily without much loss.

[Lord of Shadows]

Thanks.

[Lord of Shadows]

Thanks.Who should I attack after Hungary?

[flyingcat]

Thanks.Who should I attack after Hungary?

Well,I can't foresee that far..It depends on how AI works in your campaign.

In my 4 Venetian Campaigns,I conquered Hungary at about 80/60/25 turn.After that,the game become somewhat boring because nothing could stop my powerful army which consists of Pesante Archers+decent infantry(even mongols could not).Just expand,expand and expand wherever you have forces to attack.

Eliminate Eastern Roman Empire will be the first choice,considering the importance of Constantinople.
Anyway,Pesante Archers are truly dominating,and I've won some heroic victories against mongols by using them.
And in my last Campaign(VH/VH,Gracul ai,BGR IV) I conquered the whole world at about 1350,some turns before the Timurid Invasion.

[Lord of Shadows]

Do the Timurids come in waves like Mongols?

[flyingcat]

@Lord of Dread
Yes,they do come in waves.I could give you a brief info:

Dealing with The Timurids,is far more difficult than killing the Mongols.Their forces consist of Halberd Militia,Dismounted Turhagut,Mongol Elite Horsearchers(two different type),Turhagut(heavy cav),the Great Bombard and invulnerable Elephants.

Elephants,led by Great generals with high dread,could be stopped by almost nothing.Cavalry is useless against HA&elephants,and infantryman trumbles under the rain of arrows.Stakes are impotent against elephants'charge,which make archers exposed without protection.
And by the time of 1370(turn 150),most of your veteran generals have been dead,and those newbies couldn't handle with warfare.

Well,it's a challenge and the exciting point of the game I think...Defeat is disgraceful but also indispensable when the player wants to enjoy the game...
At last I assemble all my gold-exp Pesante Archers and Elite Knights from every corner of the world+some new-trained Halberdiers+bands of Monster Ribault.After the loss of many many legions I annihilated most of the Timurids forces on the plain of Mesopotamia.(Defending settlements is dull..)
Then CTD,and the savegame was broken.

Anyway,Using an infantry-based faction is fun.Hopefully you will enjoy the game

[Lord of Shadows]

I will surely enjoy.Thanks for answering.

[UglySori]

FlyingCat laid out some tips but as I decided to install SS again and am currently power-gaming through a Venetian campaign so I decided to add some of my opinions.

1. You should probably go after ERE (Byzantium) first. For a few reasons - The Pope usually gets irate when you attack fellow Catholics, it doesn't care frankly if you are killing other Christians though. Secondly you usually don't have the army make-up initially to effectively take on Hungarian armies (not enough Pesante or Mourtatoi archers). You can easily defend your border towns if you have a single Pesante/Mourtatoi archer w/ militia xbow/spear support until you have enough to fight on the field vs Hungary. ERE on the other hand are extremely vulnerable to cavalry since their Contoratoi are crap vs charges and Italian states have the easiest spammable heavy cav in Cavalry Militia. ERE generals are extremely hard to kill but everything else is easy to mop up with frontal charges or flanking charges with troops bogged down in melee with your pavise spear militia which are one of the toughest if I recall. You also have access to hard hitting x-bows that should easily cut down their HA in range duels and effective in flanking shots on cavalry tied up with your militia spears.

2. FlyingCat is correct in that Pesante Archers are the lifeblood of your army. They tactically give great options and own most of the Eastern factions/Hungary. I would add that Mourtatoi are equally important as they are pretty much just as good stat-wise, cheaper and far easier to recruit under BGR-V since they are local troop types. This also another reason to knock out ERE first because its worth keeping Arta, Rhodes, Cannakle, Adrianople, and Corinth as castles solely for Mourtatoi production. Meanwhile Pesante Archers remain great units but can only realistically be produced out of 1 or 2 Fortress/Citadels (usually Ragusa/Corinth) given the limitations of BGR-V places on the player.

3. Venice's strength comes from its powerful roster options. It has all access to all the powerful feudal units of the west and later technological advancements. Its professional spear options are on par and Carricco Standards give you access to a pretty good spear unit though small and somewhat sluggish on the campaign map. Its militia options are some of the best in the game - Pavise militia spears have access to good armor upgrades, pavise militia xbows are best militia overall missile unit in the game if I recall, and militia cavalry units which means all units are also easily replenished in almost every part of the world for you. Pesante Archers are one of the best foot bow units in the game along with deployable stakes. Pesante warhammer infantry are very solid late game as they have access to good armor upgrades, armor-piercing have a huge advantage in Real Combat late game vs other heavy infantry (they tend to have alot of armor) and have advantages in upkeep and replenishment as professional troops.

4. Geographically it has easy access to areas of control that will diminish it's roster deficiencies. Kill ERE and you know have enough areas to produce good archers. Kill Hungary and Seljuks and you know can produce horse archers in the form of local Maygyars and Turkish Horse Archers. However I recommend killing Hungary first as Maygyar HA are superior recruitable unit as compared to Turkish HA.

[Lord of Shadows]

Nice.+rep

[Ishan]

This section is a repository of SS guides not a section for asking questions like this. Use the main section for this. Thread moved out to SS main.

[MDCCLXXVI]

Someone likes their peasant archers

[Hidden Sage]

Go west, young gunslinger WEST, not east.

Croatia and Hungary and the HRE can wait. To your immediate left is the economic center of the medieval world, in the city-states of northern Italy. Recruit spies, and train them spying on diplomats and merchants until they're espionage maxes out. Once that's done, infiltrate Bologna. Spies cause unrest penalties in any city they infiltrate. Give it a few turns (especially if the HRE has a small garrison) and Bologna will flip independent, it's people rejecting Imperial rule. Now you can conquer it as an independent territory, without ever declaring war on the HRE.

While waiting for the spies to work, rush after Ancona and Milan (especially Milan, you HAVE to get to this before Genoa). Sign alliances with Sicily, the Pope, and France (likely to be your eastern neighbor and an ally against Genoa). Train garrisons to help you hold Ragusa while your attention is in the west, but otherwise ignore it.

Once you hold Milan and Bologna, get a few army stacks and bum-rush the Genoese at Pisa and Genoa, siege both cities and clear as many of their armies from the field as you can. Fun fact: maintaining a siege does NOT cause a failure of the "pope requests you stop attacking" mission. If you can get the sieges set before that message arrives, maintaining the siege until the garrisons surrender or try to break free (Genoa has to attack you for this, so you won't lose papal favor) will be sufficient to obtain the cities while not earning too much ire.

Corsica is relatively insignificant unless you mean to seriously bid for an empire in western Europe. Once you've kicked the Genoese Republic off the mainland, sign a peace. Take Arles and Switzerland as buffer zones past the Italian borders if France/HRE hasnt already done so (or use the rabble-rousing feature of spies to kick them neutral again for the capture without declaring war [also works for Innsbruck if you want it], but your main objectives are now complete. This entire objective takes me 20-30 turns on vanilla SS, with an extra 10-20 turns on HURB (where Florence, Trieste, Turin and Nice are added to the board, and Milan is an HRE territory instead of independent).

If you take the next few turns to economically develop them, control of the cities of northern Italy will provide a massive revenue stream. From these six regions, you can churn out an endless supply of your two most valuable resources: Money and cavalry militia. As it turns out, Milan is often the LEAST profitable of the vanilla regions once everything is developed, which should say something about your revenue stream at this stage of the game. if you managed to take Innsbruck and/or Switzerland, those castles will provide extra recruiting bases for the pesante archers flyingcat recommends so strongly (with reason).

And once you have this massive recruiting base/revenue pool, it's actually quite plausible to simply overwhelm Hungary (and later, the ERE) with sheer numbers. There's always new recruitable units available, and always money to pay for them with. Just remember to keep a hundred thousand florins or so back to spam mercenaries with for emergencies.

[Strengelicher]

I am not sure whether the OP was asking about the early or late Venetian campaign. It appears most people are talking about late, so... maybe consider this: Use your diplomat first thing to go to Bologna, offer Iraklion and Rhodes in exchange for the city, trade rights and an alliance. You will get Bologna with some nice units in it on top. Immediately move all available troops to Pisa (which is a rebel city IIRC), besiege and take it (otherwise the Pope will have it). Your diplomat moves on to Rome (alliance & trade rights) and Naples (likewise). Do NOT take Zagreb, beacause that will get you into conflict with either Hungary or the HRE (or both) sooner or later. Let one of them take it instead, and both will likely get into war over it. You now have three of the big cities in Northern Italy. Take some time to consolidate. Then either sneak up on Genoa, Milan or Innsbruck (use spies). Fill up your garrison in Ragusa to deter the Byzantines from attacking. You may use cheap units (peasants) for this as well.

[Lord of Shadows]

I am not sure whether the OP was asking about the early or late Venetian campaign.

I meant late, but early is acceptable too.