Sicily question

hello everyone, I have yet another bunch of questions, so here goes: I've looked at Sicily's Strengths and Weaknesses info and it said Sicily has a weak late period army, but the thing is, I've made it to the Mongols and I've had no problems with my armies, for example, I've steam rolled Milan, France, Venice and the Holy Roman Empire, and I got powerful allies, such as Denmark, who took Scandinavia, and all lands from Bruges to Stettin (meaning Antwerp, Hamburg, and so on) the English who have Ireland, and Scotland as well as Caen and the settlement in France to the West of Caen (forgot the name :sweatdrop: ) the Spanish who have all of Iberia, the Moorish lands up till Tunis and Tripoli (which I own) and Toulouse, as well as the castle above it (forgot that one too :sweatdrop:) and my lands are the Holy Roman Empire lands, middle France and Marsellie and all of Italy including Sardinia and Corsica. (except Rome) and for now all of us remaining factions (Spain, England, Papal States, Sicily, Denmark, Poland, the Byzantine Empire, Russia, the Turks and Egypt) have all allied against the Mongols. I've fought the Mongols a few times and I've been doing just fine, is it just me or is the info on Sicily nothing but hating on Sicily?

I personally would ignore the info about the factions. Such information as "lacks professional armies" and "weak late period" is easily overcome. It probably means that the Sicilians don't get, say, one or two units that the Milanese, Venetians and Papal States might have access to late game. I find that all factions have access to enough units late game to be powerful.

I guess from the AI's point of view, Sicily is pretty weak. If you played any other faction, you'd notice that Sicily almost never expand. Right above it is Rome which it can't attack, and Bologna that is always very well garrisoned by the faction leader of a very powerful faction, HRE. Florance is taken by pope or Milan. East is blocked by Venice and Byznatines. West islands are way closer to Milan and are taken by them most times. South is an option, but taking Tunis and Tripoli doesn't exactly make or break a faction... well, that's all in AI's point of view.

When a human player controls Sicily, it kicks ass. Islands to the west is easy taking. Pope is right above you, so you can start greasing him early. You're in a position that no one will attack you, so you can call a crusade against Tunis and take all your generals to be grand crusaders. Tunis can start pumping priests who will all become cardinals because of the muslim lands around. You can take all but a couple of generals back to Italy and start attacking the Italian factions (while continously greasing the pope of course). The couple of generals left in Africa can kick the Moors arse and take all of africa and southern Iberian penn... and it's all over from there.

But all this is as trivial as "I can do better than AI" no matter what faction we're talking about and we're just circle jerking. Seriously, every single faction is good and very playable when controlled by a person.

yeah. that's what I thought. as Sicily, the first things I went for were Florence, Ajaccio, and Caligri. they were easy pickings, I then took Tunis and and Tripoli, and Durazzo also fell to me, thus I had a powerful barrier around my capitol, incase anyone tried to attack, which none really did, until I got to expanding into France, I found out Milan steam rolled France into oblivion, they even took Caen from the English, with my only French province being Marsellie I prepared for a long fight, I fought an extremely long series of battles with them but I eventually won out, because my Spanish allies had defeated Portugal and then noticed Milan got excommunicated, so that helped, it brought the HRE, England and Spain into the fray, and they mostly fought the Milanese outside cities and castles, while I completed the crusade, by that time Milan was severely weakened, having lost Milan and Genoa to me their wealthiest cities became mine and they gradually weakened, after that I turned on the HRE, having already taken Bologna I attacked them from the south as my Danish allies did so from the north, I ended up getting a lot of land :D

The factions descriptions are nothing to rely on concerning their strengths or weaknesses. For Portugal it says: "Lacks late period professional armies of France or England".

Portuguese Arquebusiers and Aventuros - how much more professional can it be? USMC?:dizzy2:
And for France, please don't tell me they mean those overestimated and way too expensive Gendarmes. A bunch of veteran Knights of Santiago will kick them off the battlefield.:knight:

i think the descriptions are a bit misleading.

i am currently playing french, and i still don't see the point of Gendermes. it must be a joke. i end up using knight hospitallers as my elite cavalry arms. english knights are actually quite nice - better than the french ones IMHO (since they don't ran off after the first peasants they saw) :sweatdrop:

Another thing, in the descriptions of the Royal Stables it says, they can train the second best cavalry.

Ahem, Lancers or Gothic Knights?
What is the best cavalry then?:inquisitive:

Did they ever play the game before writing the descriptions?

Actually I think the reason Sicily is always weak when the AI handles it has everything to do with the fact that the settlements it obsessively goes after are all either castles or Durazzo. Without any cities except Naples they go broke fast.

A lot of the descriptions are a bit screwy. Sicily for example has as its short game goals destroy Milan and Venice but the description implies you should stay away from them and go either East vs the Byzantines or West to Iberia. I don't know of any historical or semi-historical information to suggest the conquest of Northern Italy as a Norman campaign goal. The rest of the factions seem have goals that make at least some semi-historical or at least logical sense.

Add on top of that the fact that some of the descriptions have wording that doesn't even make sense as a sentence and you start to get the feeling alot of stuff was just sort of thrown in as an afterthought.

To the OP, ignore anything CA wrote, half of it doesn't make sense/is totally inaccurate. You seem to be having fun with Sicily and that's all that matters.

Personally I like the faction, if I switch their short game targets to something more logical. Sicily with its early game Norman Knight/Italian Militia goodness is a great faction to build the Latin Kingdom in Greece or a Crusader Kingdom in the Holy Land. The description does say to take to the sea to expand after all.

I think the worst of the Moors weakness: lacks good late game units or something of that sort. The Christian Guard and dismounted Christian Guard are arguably the two best units in their respective class (heavy cav and heavy infantry) and nobody else has anything similar to Camel Gunners.

~Isabella of Castile~

The descriptions of the factions are a clever trick by CA to convince you to do something silly with that faction. Take a look at the HRE description. Of the initial factions, that is the one my GF decided to try because it said it is an all around good one. She didn't blitz right off the bat. She tried to actually put her empire in good order first. She is not happy with the game anymore because of that experience.

I'm trying to convince her to have another go as either the Danes or Scotland. I'm hoping I can get her to overlook her HRE disappointment.

:wall: :wall: :wall:

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I personally would ignore the info about the factions. Such information as "lacks professional armies" and "weak late period" is easily overcome. It probably means that the Sicilians don't get, say, one or two units that the Milanese, Venetians and Papal States might have access to late game. I find that all factions have access to enough units late game to be powerful.

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makes so much sense, pretty much sums it all up thanx all