Italian Campaign

[Tribesman]

I started a new campaign , Italy/early/hard , took Naples and Sicily , then Serbia(rebels) and Greece . Now the Byzantines attack every turn with huge stacks . Is it worth holding onto the Balkans or should I wait until I can Crusade ?

[Mysterium]

I'd suggest you let it go, and wait for crusades. You may also want to tech up to Italian Infantry, as well, since in Early some stiff defensive troops really help against the Byz. They're tough customers in Early.

I like to leave the Hungarians between the Byz. and myself, and just concentrate on trading. After a few crusades to the Holy Land, I find that more often that not I'm attacking the Byz from Edessa or Tripoli instead of their western border.

[katank]

I would have not moved onto greece although I would have sacked serbia.

Now your best bet after getting into a war with the byz is to hire up a merc army and try to storm your way to constantinople.

Let them take both greece and serbia if they want, you can always get them back later. Taking Const. will also give you a nice 2 star bonus to boost a general (likely tankerville) to fight the hardcore byz heirs.

Const. is also their centralized production province and they can't access things like ships or byz inf. so by taking it, you will get a very highly developed and rich province but also cripple them.

Did you sink all da Sicilian ships yet? Now that you can hopefully cripple the byz, you'll be sure to be the dominant naval force in the med.

mercs will help greatly so use them. But don't neglect to guard your provinces well in case the HRE, hungarians, or the pope will want a piece of say Venice.

[Voigtkampf]

As Italian, I take Serbia and make my stand, build ships and organize trade, seeking for the sea domination. As soon as possible I start hitting rebel sea provinces and avoid generally conflict with other factions as long as I think I benefit from it; once I have some serious cash surplus, I go Blitzkrieg against weaker factions that hold rich provinces and eat my way up to the toughest opponents; this way they have a slight chance to build their infrastructure and they at least offer me some resistance.

Now that you are in war with Byz, it is hard to tell whether you should hold your provinces or fall back, but crusades are no magic wand, that is for sure.

[Kulgan]

In most games the byzantines eventually get overthrown by attacks from the catholics and muslims.
That's about the time you should grab their richest provinces, attacking them on your own on early is pretty hard. ( though nothing is impossible against AI )

The sicilians will attack your boats near sicily, they always do it to me.
Strike Sicily and try to not get excommed, if you do then attack the pope too.
If he re-emerges, get him with a bit troops on the papal states, then make peace.
This way you get to keep fairly rich Rome with accomodations and + 1 command for the king of rome

Very nice faction to play with, Italy http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/bigthumb.gif
In SP an army if Italian Infantry , CMAA's and Genoese sailors is really powerfull, good all around army

[Tribesman]

Oh well , I abandoned the Balkans and concentrated on trade . Then one after another the Germans , Hungarians , French and finally the Pope all attacked me , none got excommunicated . So i now hold the Italian peninsular and half of Europe . Trade really brings the florins in .

[katank]

you should have tried taking const. using abundant mercs.
oh well, total war is not bad. it's the name of the game after all.

it would have been better if you just scared the HRE and the Hungarians off with loads and loads of peasants and not have to war against them. It's far more fun if you can actually play the game out for a long time than being forced to make war and quickly reach hated superpower status when you are forced to conquer the whole map (i had to, i swear http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/rolleyes.gif ).

[Tribesman]

I counldn't help it , the stupid German emperor brought all his heirs into battle with him which just left rebels to clear up , the Pope was killed by archers because he wouldn't run away and the French ? well they were just annoying so I pushed them north . I only kept one Hungarian province though and they accepted a ceasefire next turn so I have a buffer and trade . Meanwhile the Byzantines and Egyptians are fighting each other and I trade with both . Now how long till the Pope re emerges ? the Germans are already back but only in Pomerania and Saxony .

[RZST]

in my italian camp after 3 turns i attacked naples and took it from byz, then sued for peace next turn. after that i took on sicilians, you have to be really fast to do this, sake sicily then you will be automatically neutral then just build up from there :) it can go anywhere you want to, byz,n.africa, up europe.

i took n.africa then headed east for the egpytians :) all without touching the europe.