New Milan Strategy

[Akkaid]

Hey all,

I finally got the swing of things in the game and I want to start a MIlan game. Its taken me a while to figure out each faction, so I figured I would go ahead and ask for advice before I even start.

What are the first cities I should snatch? What makes a good early core army?
I was thinking about using 4-5 Armored Sgts, 5 Gen Xbowmen and 4 milia cav units.

Family maintenace is a big concern of mine. In vanilla, Milan had GREAT military traits from the get go. If anyone knows of an exceptionaly hot princess near by at the start of the game, let me know that too.

I normally reserve Milan as my priest production city and Genoa as my merchant factory. I ally with Venice, France, Sicily and Aragon, leaving the chance for HRE to give me an excuse to sack Bologna.

If any thing should be changed, please give me the scoop. Also, if you can add anything, like when FDs and Broken Lances/MAA become available, let me know. Also, since Im working late at the office for the next two days, I dont have time to test musketeers and monster ribs (my two favorite units), have they changed significantly since vanilla?

Thanks in advance!

 

[delra]

Buy Bologne from HRE for alliance and starting cash, than in this order: Florence, Lyon, Marseille, Bern. Build barracks in Genoa and Milan since the start to get crossbows, them combined with your standard militia is just deadly early stack, if they don't chain route you, you win.

Suplement those militia armies with Joannite heavy cavalry and infantry and you're all set for France, Venice or whoever you wish to take. I resigned from building anything but chapter houses recently. Having those black guys on my walls when besieged is much better than +10% trade income.

Have fun.

 

[Akkaid]

Sound advice. What is joannite calvary and is there a key to getting Chapter Houses?

Any Family Advice?

Also, are Italian Spears completley underwhelming now or can they be a viable alternative to Armored Sgts?

Another, are the Castle Gen Xbows worth the wait/cost, or should I stick with militia?

Getting excited!

 

[Nightbringer]

i would sticdk with the pavise xbowmen, they are really deadly. as to italian spear militia they are still a good unit in the early game, but beware of bwing too reliant on them later on, i made this mistake while playing venice and was actually starting to l,ose a significant amount of territory. they work very well to get you far enough to start getting the much stronger castle units, but when that happens they should become a city garrison and support unit. they are pretty equal to armoured sergents but i would suggest getting sergents for use in you main armies.
i beleive the key to getting chapter houses is being religious and fighting muslims, being next to muslims also helps.

 

[delra]

Family advice? Go on crusades to get good traits and stat bonuses.

Joannites are the black knights available to recruit from St. John's Order chapter houses. Those become available after you send 4 generals on a crusade, you can build them in all cities and they allow you to recruit very good heavy infantry and even better heavy cavalry in all your settlements where you have a chapter house. So instead of waiting for a fortress (1250?) do yourself a favour and build those chapter houses to get incredibly good units early on.

I build them everywhere now. The only worthwhile guild.

 

[Nightbringer]

wow delra, a whole post on milan that didnt mention familga ducale. delra's advise of going on crusades is right, but if you would prefer to be a bit cooler (evil), then you can make lots of assasins and chain kill rebel general. you can also slaughter all the prisoners you capture, and sack soem cities while your at it. this should get you a good ol bunch o dread

 

[delra]

Sacking cities in Europe is counter-productive. You need taxes.

Instead why not go on a boat, land in Moorish, Egyptian or Seljuk lands and plunder there? I once send a stack of Danish elites the Norman path, sacked England, northern France, Spain, Sicily, everything in Africa and finished on Constantinople. Got around half a million from that + razed buildings.

Basically you just land a lot of heavy infantry plus a trebuchet or two, take the city the same turn you landed and sail away before they know what hit them.


Just remember that if you destroy a catholic church, the Pope will hate you.

 

[Nightbringer]

thats what i meant, whenever i go on crusade to holy land and dont want to deal with surviving down their i just run my armies about destroying stuff and trying to let the byzantines take it. eventually they die out but they can usually mess up everything down there before they do.

 

[delra]

I always allow Jerusalem to go rebel or be taken by Fatimids. It really makes your life easier if you always crusade to the same city. And the Pope will always choose Jerusalem over another city for some reason. Maybe if Antioch is Seljuk and Jerusalem rebel, he will go for Antioch first. But this is the only exception.

 

[Nightbringer]

well it is jerusalem, a lot of people want it, and the pope can make all of the christians run off to take it.

 

[Akkaid]

Ok, never knew about the St. John's thing, so I just send 4 Generals on a Crusade and whammo, I can build these all over the place? Sweet. That also fixes the family issue.

Would it be a good idea to exterminate Jerusalem and keep it?

 

[delra]

Well. I send two generals with the crusade. My prince and some random guy to take over if my prince died or whatever. Just in case.

After I have reached and besieged the target city, I pull out all my other generals and armies out of cities they garrison and make them join the crusade. After they are all in it (and hire great crusade mercenaries), I take Jerusalem and everybody gets the points.

Each general on a crusade gives you +25 for a guild in each city, you need 100 points to get it offered. You also sometimes have to turn down Templar chapter house, Templars have better cavalry but also can't recruit any heavy infantry, they have only horsemen and.. this sucks.

Also, keep recruiting black guys after you have built chapter houses. This gives you more and more points and eventually they will offer their HQ to you which gives a nice XP bonus to all recruited knights.

It helps if you border muslim nations and helps even more if you are at war with them. But it's not necessary. Also, Spain and Portugal get Santiago knights instead of Joannites, very good too. And Aragon is able to get their own order, with AP infantry, this ones are awesome. Germans have Teutonic order, very good cavalry and infantry to recruit there. Only orthodox factions don't get anything and have to stick with merchant cavalry... Sad.

Here's some reading: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knights_Hospitaller

 

[Nightbringer]

if you think you can without it sucking up all your resources. i would say just sack it untill you are able to capture ar least three cities in the holy land, unless you and the knights templar are friendly and they arent being killed off horribly, dont rely on their protection though.

 

[delra]

Knights Templar become useful as soon as Mongols come. You don't want Mongols to build an empire in the Middle East. So you prepare your most elite troops (Famiglia Ducale is a must), a few stacks and also ally with the Templars. Next, you follow Mongols and park your stack close to all the Templar cities and armies they are about to attack. When they attack, your army comes as reinforcements. Templar heavy elites of their overpowered roster take the beating and kill half a stack of enemies usually. After that you march in with your fresh and eager army and kill the remnants, especiall any generals they have. Big fun, low losses.

Sometimes I wait until Mongols are out of arrows cause their all arrows are in Templars. This is cruel.

 

[Nightbringer]

well thats why the path of evil is better, no remorse letting those silly templats get shot up. (i have just gotten a very nasty doge in my milan campaign and i think i am haviing a little too much fun killing thousands of people with him and his "noble" crusaders.)

 

[Dagoth Nerevar]

Why, Nightbringer, there's no such thing as too much fun doing that!