Sicily often receives much more experienced naval commanders than other factions, and is like a strangler vine if left alive in your proximity.
I think I'm more of a turtle type, but I agree the Sicilians can be very annoying on the seas. I'm debating when I might break their holds on Greece and Constantinople, and then attempt to cripple most of their ship building ports. I have continued with the 2nd campaign at the moment and am up around 1175 and my cash is up around 60k I think now. The HRE attacked me at Milan and paid a bit of a price (they are the only ones at war with me now, the French agreed to a cease fire). The only thing I'm doing now is getting some cav units ready as I don't have as many as I would like in some provinces.

I have also been busy increasing my farms and teching up with more armor, etc so my troops will be better prepared for when I make a move on the Sicilians. And I am in the process of readying more provinces for ship building so that my fleet will be much larger. Denmark and Freisland now have that capability, as well as when I don't need to pump out so soldiers every turn, I have Genoa, Tuscany and Venice (which gets a bonus for its ships by the way) also sometimes contributing. I do probably need to get a few more places ready for xbow and arbalester production, as currently Venice is the only one, though I have a few years for that yet.

I would suggest that you have not at all been economical in your conquests, and that you are maintaining difficult and unnecessary borders.
Well, yes and no. There are some usual choke points on the MTW map , but having less provinces does generally mean less problems when it comes to defending borders.


Make sure you rule the waves before you create an inter-continental empire!
Ah, yes, the dangers of far away provinces. I do hope to link up eventually, because I really would like to get
Tyrolia and Switzerland, but am not sure I would use pikemen (though I suppose with time and money it's possible to develop them). These provinces tend to be income losers, and thus are difficult to want to take earlier on and less you have plenty of extra men and money. I suppose I could be more ambitious and take some of the provinces farther west that you have mentioned (some of the coastal ones are nice for trade, and a few of the French ones are good farming areas) to eventually link up my provinces.

I was excommunicated and the monarch dropped from 7 to 2-3 influence.
Generally being excommed is a bad thing, not only for loyalty ratings in provinces, but also because all the Christian nations will now attack you, so unless you're fairly big and have a lot of troops to hold you over and you have enough to go and knock off the pope (though assassins can sometimes help for that too), your empire may come unhinged.

Thanks for the suggestions,

GA