Sicily

[Cheetah]

early

[Cheetah]

high

[Cheetah]

late

[katank]

early Sicily

start.

towers in both provinces and then border forts.

queue UM in Sicily and move a barque into malta channel.

next turn, move king and spear to Sicily, leave peasant to guard malta.

at same time, move barque from malta back to straits of Sicily.

next turn, invade Naples with the two spears, two UM, and king's RKs.

use RKs to ride down the naptha and hold the spears in very deep formations against the byz inf.

flank with UM and your king should make it back in time to hit the byzinf in the rear with heavy charge which shoudl rout him.

the byz will ransom them and due to no contact, autoceasefire.

at the same time, an Italian galley woudl have moved into Straits of Sicily which you sink.

then get towers, border fort, fort, and inn in Naples.

build spearmakes and bowyer in Sicily while pumping out dromons after initial 2 UMs.

after you sank that Italian ship, move to Tyrrhenian with a barque and quickly invade Sardinia with your army and then corner Tankerville on Corsica.

be sure to kill him as he would be your biggest pain.

buy mercs in Naples and send them to Sicily so they can be shipped to hit Tuscany.

this is where the Italians get their UMs, their only military production.

they will only build galleys in Venice.

land in Tuscany and then hit Venice through Tuscany.

quickly hitting Genoa and Milan simultaneously which don't have forts the next year would be enough to dodge excomm.

have your fleets avoid their galleys as you don't have to fight them.

you can eliminate them as a faction and then their ships are gone.

now the Italians are gone and you are in an extremely strong position.

reinforce your lands to maintian loyalty and make sure Popesta doesn't get ideas on your lands and neither do the HRE or Huns.

build up to ships on all islands and Sicily as well pump UM from Tuscany, get Genoese sailors from Genoa and spears in Milan and swords from Sicily.

rushing the pope in Rome is also a good idea and then beat him into a castle in papal states and starve him until he's almost dead.

then, evac the papal states and he should be at peace with you and no longer pose a threat.

Rome is also a nice castle.

Now go for Crusading.

build navy until it fills the seas and sell your wares from Venice, Naples, Sicily far and wide.

farming isn't a bad idea either.

The almos will likely take a licking from the SPanish and usually has a civil war.

therefore, it's easy to bribe Tunisia to satisfy the homeland GA often without losing the almos as ally and trade partner.

Also, you get nice desert force with which to war on the Eggy.

I will sometimes also rush the Byz islands and make sure I own all the islands for ultimate naval power but I often just let it slide.

[Kristaps]

I feel that eliminating Italy in a GA game from the start takes away the flavor of playing a small nation like Sicily. In a GA game, I stick to the GA goals. With some surgical but strategic land acquisitions.

Here is my favored plan for Sicily (EARLY, GA, HARD):

1. I grab Naples ASAP (it's one of your GA goals anyways) -in year 2 to be more exact. I'd use just the king and the spears to achieve this task. I'd pump out another UM from Sicily in turn one. So with the initial UM + peasants (which I move to Sicily) you have some force to quell a likely rebellion in Malta (you won't be able to move your king from Naples in time since there is no harbor there and your ships do not extend that far).

A side note: I actually try to encourage rebellions in an early game by maxing out taxes and going for a fort in Malta straight away rather than a guard tower: my reasoning - rebellions bring in money. And my units gain valor.

2. Being a good Christian in a GA game - I do not destroy the Italian fleet :) I just let them be (actually, I help Italians at times if I am allied with them: helps raise my king's influence and, hopefully, if they survived until the Late - they would amuse me by sending some of their gothic knights with weapon upgrades from Tuscany to test my troops).

3. For some time, I go on defensive. Build cheap UM/Archer/Spear army to defend Naples if you ever have to: build ships wherever you can.

3. I build up Malta straight for a church then a chapter house and a crusade: then up to a castle and a monastery which gives me inquisitors to raise the zeal.

My favorite method with catholic zeal nowadays is the following I use 5 inquisitors to burn a dedicated heretic peasant unit in a province. If inquisitors are busy they forget to burn the populace - hence, the zeal goes steadily up. Your cost: one peasant a year (after some time, inquies become quite good at burning their targets).

I do not build any armor upgrades in Malta since this is my dedicated crusade (desert) province. As a matter of fact: I avoid armor upgrades for a good fifty years also in Sicily. Since this is your most advanced (for now) province -- you can pump out numerous desert fighters (unarmored feudal sergeants, mounted sergeants, lots of archers, UMs. I stopped using MS in the desert since they appear to tire as fast as feudal men at arms in the heat) from Sicily. I rather build armor upgrades in Naples which I use on my garrison there.

Note that two of the Crusader provinces: Antioch and Edessa rarely have a battle in the desert. Therefore, you can use armored armies there. I'd stick with the unarmored bunch for Palestine and Tripoli though.

4. Hit Tunisia with a crusade as soon as you can: Tunisia is one of your homeland goals and a quick crusade will help your king's tailing influence. As an additional bonus: it is likely you will have fun in Tunisia... The province is right in the way of Spanish expansion and they will want it... It still makes me feel like ditching work and going home play another game with thousands of armored spaniards attacking my Tunisian force (composed exclusively of feudal sergeants, 6-8 archer units, mounted sergeants and an occasional UM - all with no armor upgrades):)

5. After Tunisia: Crusade, Crusade, Crusade. I would start with Antioch since this is the richest of the Crusader target provinces and work my way down, capping it off with Palestine. Note, that due to some bug: the king's influence fluctuates back and forth between full 9 influence and no influence after he has won any of the crusades... I have not observed this happen in a TD game though.

6. After Crusades, do whatever you like :) I prefer to sit back (draw your king's family tree), observe and provoke the AI to test my strength :) (sending some of the inquies trained on peasants after your neighbors generals seems to annoy the AI a lot...). In my last GA game (with Sicilians), it is now the beginning of the Late with a few highly developed factions around. It is nice to see the AI fully developed for a change (they have fortresses all over the map: the spaniards built a fortress even in the Early).

Enjoy ;)

[katank]

that's interesting.

I normally prefer a rush and I like going after the Italians as they like to hit my shipping and I believe that war with them earlier is better than later.

taking their provinces also raise influence and wealth of the empire as well as another shipyard so you can readily outproduce the byz early on.

also, genoese sailors aren't bad units for the desert either and are better than vanilla archers.

[Oleander Ardens]

I usually too blitz and race to Venice and Genoa, as you get influence, wealth and a good units, especially if you conquer Switzerland..

But I recently find that way simply too easy and I have started to build up small empires taking only few lands and following the GA rules.

Defending on Expert against a rich and wealthy enemy makes fun...

[Kristaps]

Quote[/b] (katank @ May 18 2004,21:32)]that's interesting.

I normally prefer a rush and I like going after the Italians as they like to hit my shipping and I believe that war with them earlier is better than later.

taking their provinces also raise influence and wealth of the empire as well as another shipyard so you can readily outproduce the byz early on.

also, genoese sailors aren't bad units for the desert either and are better than vanilla archers.

my notes were for pure GA play. lately, i find it to be more exciting trying to defeat any enemies (AI) with mediocre armies rather than trying to dominate the AI wealth/territory wise from the very beginning. the result of the approach, i outlined, was that by the Late: most of the AI provinces were highly developed (up to fortress level) and their armies were not that bad at all.

all in all it was a fun game. especially, since, in order to keep up with GA points, the Sicilins had to grab land in the Late (they do not get any homelands and only 1 point for every 5 conquered provinces: makes it hard to keep up with factions like Hungarians who get 1 point for every province grabbed). well, katank might ask why not grab those lands in Early right away rather than wait until the Late: eeee, it would make it too easy ;)

cheers,



p.s. for TD games, I actually prefer a rush. just I never stop the wave (to consolidate and build up). I find it more in the spirit of the game: forces me to use the basic period units. My armies become pretty similar to the ones AI throws at me making for a more balanced game.

[katank]

actually I find sustained rush boring.

I like your idea of GA turtle and then late period land grab.

Sicilians not having homelands in late always seemed like a problem.

my usual solutions is to raid AI homelands to balance it.

[Oleander Ardens]

All nice tips:

Yesterday started a special GA game with Sicily with the rules: no non GA-conquest, no crippling of enemy navys but birbing allowed...

I now possess 1156 all the East till Kiev, Wolyhnia and Prussia;
Consty and Norway, Naples and Tunesia are now mine...

A muli loaden with gold can climb every wall is my motto and it works nicely..

I gain +12000 per turn even if I`m at war with Spain, the Turks, the Byz and the Almos

The seas are mine and Antioch will fall soon

[katank]

muli with gold? I like it.

BTW, how did you get east to kiev, volhynia, and prussia without non GA conquests?

is it just continual bribes of HRE civil war rebels and normal rebels or something?

[Oleander Ardens]

How I get all of it?

I was Bribing, bribing and bribing. BTW I meant the regions east of Prussia, Poland and Kiev.. although now I posses also Bohemia, Carpatia and Austria thanks to the Hungarian downfall and the HRE civil wars after failed crusades...

[peacedude]

Since syria is right next to all the crusader provences you could always train the 5 valor assaisin thing there and just eliminate the factions with better ga goals in late

[Zain]

I don't like playing as the Sicilians, even though their family line can be molded to be awesome. Once I had an entire reign of 9* Heirs for 3 generations!!!

-ZainDustin

[Maloncanth]

Sicilians are actually by far my favourite faction that I've played so far. They're tons of fun I find and the reasons are fourfold.

1) Very low defense requirements. No one can really hit you early on.
2) Massively rich, mostly by trading from Sicily and/or Naples.
3) Tons of opening time due to #1.
4) Tremendously flexible.

Here's my Sicily opening on Hard, GA.

In the opening turn, build a watch tower in each province and move an opening barque into the Maltese channel. On turn two, leave a hundred men in Malta and move your king and the mismatched spears to Sicily and leave a hundred peasants. With a decent governor, the combination of the garrison and the tower will crest Malta just above 100% on Very High. There is no need even to build a border fort though by all means, build one, it's only 200 florins and as we'll discover, you have tons of time and tons of money. Thereafter, if you have autoset taxes on (usually command line my taxes to 105% or 110% loyalty) there's no need to worry about Malta besides to keep buildings in the queue. I'd build towards a shipwright, sneaking 20% and 40% farms in along the way.

Assuming you start in Early, no one but the Italians stand a chance of hitting you early, and they almost certainly won't, unless things go really wrong for the Germans (which presumeably lowers Italian defence requirements enough for them to contemplate hitting you). The Byzantines are extremely weak in Naples and the province actually stands a reasonable chance of going rebel near the start. At Hard and above, the UM that spawn will overwhelm the small garrison there. If that happens, that's a great boon since you can nail it without getting into conflict with Constantinople's fleet. If not, that's fine, you don't need to rush it and if you want to rush it you can do it easily. The Byz will take ages before building a fort there. Or a port. And longer to get their shipping lanes out that far. Likewise, Malta will be untouchable for a while to everyone, including yourself since your opening boats won't be there long.

In fact, I've found in the majority of games, the Sicilian player is not obligated to build anything except tons and tons of boats and tons and tons of economic upgrades out of Sicily for like two decades. Go ahead and throw the florins for 80% farms. The earlier you do it, the more it earns you in the long run. If you arrange the boats and get a trading post started turn 2 (after the tower), you can get trading money from the ports near Genoa flowing into your coffers by turn 4. If you're fortunate enough to start with an acumen 3 or 4 guy, you can be generating thousands from Sicily alone. Just build nothing but ships and take every advantage of the Sicilians' ability to totally skimp on defense in the first decades. I usually aim to get the Ligurean Sea, then around to the Adriatic as both these areas have lots of ports. Best of all, often only the one in Naples will be Byzantine, in case you know, Naples doesn't go rebel and you have to take it the hard way by the time the GA points from it start mattering. After that, I usually get a ship back into the Malta Channel, then down to the coast of Tunisia, (which will soon become important.)

Early on, all you need is enough troops around to discourage the Byz from hitting you. In most cases, you'll soon be up to 61 or more royal knights on top of your 200 spears: far more than enough and it will be a while before the Byzantines are building anything in Naples. Which means initially, you don't need to build a ground army at all. If you do need defence, I don't know why you'd bother with spears. Even if the Byz start kicking ass, they have far better places to send their horse to and it's not like spearmen stand a chance in hell of stopping kitties. I imagine UM would serve you better against Byzfantry but again, this will almost certainly not be necessary until you feel like taking Naples, which you can do anytime before the Byzantines get strong there. Once you grab Naples, the only land border you have is the Pope, who has very little aggression.

The one other thing you do need is naval superiority. First against the Byzantines in the central med and later (duh) against everyone everywhere. In most cases, arranging your opening barques near Naples will be enough as they hold up very well against galleys in my experience. (And you don't care if they're in the area, just so long as you are too, to prevent them from reinforcing Naples). I don't enjoy going to war with the Byzantines though, since it potentially screws up later possibilities, the major one of which is shipping into the Black Sea to grab Khazar. I love Khazar.

Sicily's job is really to make money and you can make a lot of money off Sicily so long as you stay at peace with the Italians. One thing to exploit is that the Italians tend to build most of the ports in the opening turns. Since you're selling to each port, this is very good for you, so long as you remain at peace with the Doge. Sicily's position makes it perfect for generating money off those early ports in the central med. Malta on the other hand, with fewer economic upgrades to worry about, should just hit 80% farming, and then start building towards knights. Not that you can build Hospital knights, but you can always use knights, and they being the most complex of units to tech up to, starting early will help. By contrast, Sicily and Naples build simpler units - Sarges, Arrows, MAA.

Unless things go wrong, the Sicilian king will find his coffers full as Sicily becomes the richest province in the world, and his options limitless if he's playing GA. Sicily gets tons of points just for homelands which initially are just Sicily itself, and Malta. After some turns of generating tons of cash off Sicily with minimal military upkeep to worry about, you can do any number of things so long as you bear in mind that you A) need Tunisia and Naples and B) need a crusade to Palestine.

A rebel Naples is awesome for Sicily. With proper development, Naples itself is very wealthy. I usually just bribe whoever holds the place to simplify things. If it does involve war with the Byzantines, I'd try suing for peace immediately. If denied, I'd sink the Byzantine fleet, invade Constaninople, and hold it down profitably and THEN try to sue for peace again and again. Either way, Naples IMO, should be the first target.

You also need Tunisia and I find the early 12th century a perfect time to do it. Spain and Almohad have generally had time to beat the crap out of each other by then and the Tunisia garrison is often skimpy. Just sweep in from the sea and wash up at Morocco. Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia are fairly wealthy provinces and easy to defend. If built up, Sicily will be the richest guys in Europe, holding just these six provinces.

When that's done, all you need to do to get ahead in points is the highly valuable Palestine crusade. So go ahead, raise an army - and you can afford a lavishly equipped one now - and teleport it over to palestine on your rowboats.

[Empirate]

I'm playing a Sicilian campaign right now (VI, hard, GA), using your advice: I just took Naples and after that, did nothing much except for massive economic, and, to this end, shipbuilding. After I had established a network of fleets in every sea, I just put every heir I got into Naples and that was that. I was making around 9000 florins in profit in the end (the end being my war with the French, more on that later). I also trained bishops, later cardinals, and sent them out to convert the world, and also to keep tabs on the potential opposition. Absolutely nobody wanted to go to war with me. The Byzantine auto-ceasefired, as we had no contact after I had taken Naples. I never realized how awesome Naples could be as a trading province, easily making 3000 fl per turn with a good governor. It was quite overshadowed by Sicily itself, though, which at one point (when no coastal rebel provinces remained) made more than 7300! Both figures with highest farming and trade building and an eight-feather-governor, of course...
With my family multiplying, my standing army soon consisted of around twelve to fourteen regiments of Royal Knights plus the mismatched spearmen you get in the beginning. These I sent on a daring foray into Constantinople, which was rebel, because the Emperor had just died of a disease with no heirs. Unfortunately, I had to withdraw them when I realized I could not hold the province with so few men. Other than this short-lived adventure, I just sat tight and made ridiculous amounts of money. Around 1280, I had a million. Owning just three provinces, I had a million! Nobody ever bothered to get into a war with me, no sinking of fleets, no nothing. I was too insignificant, and too hard to get to, the Pope sitting squat in the way of any potential invading armies. This is actually a huge advantage: You can expand by sea, if you want to, but by land, nobody can easily invade you. Twice, the Germans kicked out the Pope, their large armies sitting on my northern borders, ready to invade, but the Pope returned with large numbers and shoved them back again.
Having a million and slowly running out of building options, I decided to build an army like the world hadn't seen, then invade somewhere challenging. I was (barely) leading in GA points, just by sitting on my homeland provinces like a hen on its egg. The Germans were very powerful for a while, and actually outscored me, but they disintegrated under the onslaught of the most powerful France I have ever seen (when AI-controlled...). Spain had swallowed most everything that had once been Almohad territory, but the Egyptians firmly held them back. A while later, the French began invading Iberia, finally managing to secure all of it, destroying the Spanish in the process. Byzantium had been absurdly huge (reaching up to Moscow and Prussia), but as mentioned, stopped being a faction. Poland picked up the pieces and actually held Constantinople for a short while, before being mostly destroyed by rebels and the opportunistic Hungarians. The Golden Horde had meanwhile conquered everything east of Volhynia and north of Armenia (as they seem bound to do). The French sent several crusades and conquered everything up to Tripoli, where they were stopped by the Turks, the Egyptians and the returned Byzantines. They had wiped out the Germans and so had basically the western half of the map.
I had been building gold-armored Chivalric Knights in Malta, gold-armored Halberdiers in Sicily (plus church, monastery, reliquary, cathedral for their weak morale), and gold-armored Arbalesters in Naples. My plan was: Invade the French somewhere they have large armies, defeat and kill as many men as possible to lower loyalty, basically deliver a shock that sends them into civil war as quickly as possible. My chance came when the Spanish reemerged and fought for their ancient homelands in Iberia. For a few turns, they could establish themselves there, then the French sent in large armies and killed the heirless king in battle. Cordoba went rebel, as well as Portugal and Leon. I quickly moved in and secured Cordoba, while the French took the rest.
My main objective here was to get my unbeatably armies (four stacks all told) into direct contact to a lot of French territory with a lot of French soldiers in it, without winning a naval war of attrition first. Galleys simply can't stand up to Caravels, except in numbers, and I didn't have many more ships than I actually needed to keep a little trade going and my homeland protected.
Despite losing on the high seas at first, my armies made astounding progress in Iberia. The first turn of the war, I took Portugal, Granada and Morocco without a fight. Two turns later (after castle-storming), it was Leon and Castile, again without a fight. The French just kept withdrawing, even when they outnumbered my high-tech armies by two or three to one. The only casualties I had was in sieges, and as the French never just abandoned a province but left as many men as fit in the castle, these mostly lasted one turn, thus costing the French many more troops than me. This was necessary, though, as I couldn't reinforce by sea. It took a while to decimate the French navy, and I only made it with a lot of Byzantine help. Still, on land the pattern kept up: I invaded, French withdrew into castle. Two turns later, my slightly diminished armies would go onward, only to find the French retreating again. By now, my border provinces are Frisonia, Lotharingia, Burgundy, Milan, Provence; Wessex; Tunisia; and of course Naples. All this in less than twenty turns. Despite having almost no trade anymore (I was just barely able to keep open the route from Sicily to the Black Sea), my treasury is coming near 1.3 million fl, and I'm recruiting like crazy. The French even invaded Naples once, and suffered a very narrow defeat. But mostly, they just withdrew.
Lesson learned: Sitting tight is so easy with Sicily, it's laughable. And building a super-army is no fun at all: You don't get to see those guys in action, the enemy always withdraws.

[King Kurt]

For a more exciting Sicilian adventure, try a High start. I am currently in the midst of such a campaign and it is a real rollercoaster. I have lost and regained Sicily and Naples, have had Constantinopole as my capital from about 15 years into the campaign. I have had allies from England to the Horde. There have been 2 or 3 moments when I thought all was going to crash around me, but I have managed to get through it and emerge stronger. This is all detailed in a thread in the MTW Main Hall called "see Naples and die".
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=65937
Currently I am war with the Russians, the English, the Horde, the Spanish - who have just been excommed - the Eggyies and the Hungarians. Also the Pope takes the occasional swipe - but I usually let him have the province to avoid trouble. My Empire dominates the eastern Med from Egypt round to Naples and is begining to stretch up into the Steppes. I am about 4th on the GA stakes but intend to take out those in front of me to climb the ladder. It has been one of the most enjoyable campaigns I have played because there is a constant challenge and air of uncertainty. Often I plan for a course of action, but it then unlocks a whole new set of challenges. So have a read and give it a go - it will not follow your Million florin trade/ super army route I am sure.

[NodachiSam]

Awsome posts guys! I want to try out Sicily again now.

[bamff]

I'll echo Empirate's sentiments - I also heeded the advice of the masters and concentrated on trade and shipbuilding. I also established Malta as my initial crusade base.

Naples fell first, and when the Byz had some "loyalty issues" I pounced on the newly rebellious provinces of Crete and Rhodes. These two, along with Malta, were used for military purposes (and while teching up, I kept pumping ships out of all 5).

I was absolutely amazed at what you can get out of essentially just Sicily and Naples! In the early years, I had Sicily pumping over 9,000 florins per year, and Naples over 5,000!

Crusades soon secured Antioch and Tripoli, and with the Eggies still in a state of shock, I pushed on into Syria, Palestine, Arabia, and Sinai. Palestine became my new crusade base, allowing my to crush the Eggy pocket up in Edessa....lo and behold, now nobody else can get any crusade points! And if you thought I was scoring some florins before, wow! I soon had Antioch contributing well over 8,800 florins per year and Tripoli a further 5,000....

So, flush with cash, and quite happy with the state of the world thus far, I consolidated for a while. Rebellions again opened the door for me to seize Cyprus and Sardinia - and all the while the cash just keeps rolling in.....

I am enjoying Sicily!

[Vladimir]

Be careful if you play the XL mod. Trade income is dramatically reduced and you'll be lucky if you get 4k out of Constantinople! The English navy also tends to dominate the seas and they seize many coastal providences making the menace even worse. I’m playing a continental Burgundy right now and the coming naval war is going to be a real mess. My advice as Sicily is to never ally with them and kill their ships as fast as possible. Auto ceasefires should be easy and you'll maintain your dominance of at LEAST the Mediterranean.

[danfda]

Yes, it seems to me that the Sicillians are very fond of attacking my ships for no good reason. In almost all of my campaigns, I have found them extremely aggressive--not just against me, but against all factions. Especially the pope, but I love to watch them duel it out... I totally agree with Vladimir--when playing a sea-faring nation, eliminate Sicillian ships as soon as you can. Quite often they'll go back to neutral soon thereafter (as long as you don't invade their territory, which I like to do) and you can trade with them.

In my Sicillian campaign, I kicked back and simply built up a huge trade empire. I know, its kind of cheap, but I was making so much money and was in the mood for a campaign that did not involve conquering everything (GA mode, mind you). So all I did was launch crusades to take the holy lands, and sat back. After 1247 I quit, since I was so far ahead in GA points, had so much money I couldn't spend it all, and the only territory I lost was Tunisia (to a huge Almohad reemergence). But it was an enjoyable campaign, and I do recommend them. I also recommend slaughtering them, but that is a different story...

[danfda]

Edited due to double post.

[Empirate]

I think Vladimir was trying to say: When playing Sicily, blow the English navy out of the water as soon as humanly possible. This pertaining mostly to the XL mod, though.
Still, it is a very helpful suggestion to kill Sicilian ships as quickly as you can. They are aggressive like hell - have to be, in order to stand any chance against their better positioned neighbours. You'll rarely see an AI faction just sitting there, building a fortune and teching up. That's mostly because the AI doesn't know how to tech up in any sensible way. So in order to accomplish anything, Sicily usually tries to strike out either against the Pope or against the Byzantines. They fare much better when they try their strength against the Byzzies, though. I frequently had a standoff between Sicily and Hungary in my campaigns, with the Byzantines pushed into the steppes or into Asia Minor, and the Turks not far behind. I also had a lot of games in which Sicily was down to just Malta or totally destroyed by a papal reemergence.

[Vladimir]

You're BOTH right Both faction's navies are their strength, the English usually have better capitol to finance a navy and don't have to rely on galleys.

[danfda]

:-d

[The Darkhorn]

I am currently playing a Sicilian XL campaign from early start. Actually Sicily is in a great position of XL as it does not require a garrison (unless you want to build your governor's stats. Instead it just needs a huge fleet to stop invasions. The land bridge is erased in XL. I actually do not recommend taking out the Italians and/or Genoese. It's true, you risk naval attack, but 2-4 ships per area usually curtails that. Plus you can consolidate a large fleet quickly and crush them if you go to war. And why not, you don't need 'em for trade as long as those green and maroon ships are around blockading! If you don't mess around in Italy, you can use the Pope as a buffer. Just have a small garrison of 5-6 units in Naples (which I DO recommend taking ASAP to boost trade...AND you'll be back at peace with Kittieland due to no contact) and he will likely never mess with you. You can concentrate on other things. The land bridge between Spain and Morocco is no longer there. Algeria, Tunisia, and Moroccon are all profitable in their own way. Send some Crusades and take them. You'll need an army only in Tunisa to defend from the Saracens. You're dominating fleet can protect the coastline of N. Africa from invasion in Algeria and Morocco. Then CRUSADE for points. Have an inquisitor burn a cheap unit in your crusade province to raise zeal. Let the crusade sit there 3-4 turns before you send it. In a high zeal province it will build up to 1,000 or more men just sitting there. Just make sure no other catholic takes it or your Crusade will die sitting there as the land is "now safely in catholic hands." Had a civil war because of that once!

[SithMarauder]

Playing the Sicilians may seem daunting to a some people. Even though you start with only Sicily and Malta, you can quickly build a trading empire across the med. I was lucky enough to have Naples revolt against Byzantine rule, they fielded some nice units so out came the bribe. Malta was built up to produce crusades, Naples troop building and Sicily better ships and merchants.

I didn't want to get into a war with the Byzantines yet, as this would impact my sea trading fleet. So I raised a large merc army along with a crusader army, I had several crusades built to launch after each was successful. I aimed to have at the King trapped between two merc/crusader armies with no where to go and no heirs. No quarter was given to the Alohmads, Egyptians and Turks.

Now it looked as though I was doing well Alohmad, Egyptian & Turkish provinces were ruled by the Sicilians. The odd rebellion here and there was quelled, then all out war with Spanish, Italians and the Byzantines. My ships were sunk, my profits went. Luckily I had a decent treasury, though with the mercs, crusaders and my building & troop training it was been eaten away fast. I had to deal with the Alohmads popping back on the scene as well. With all the wars and my emissaries being bumped off, none of the factions were accepting ceasefires.

I need with a decent strategy with the Sicilians, I'm thinking of taking the islands of Corsica, Sardinia, Rhodes and Crete in my next campaign. Then aiming for Italian and Byzantine provinces with shipbuilding burning them down, sinking their ships and calling a ceasfire then ally with them. Build up my trade empire, build a bigger fleet than anyone else using the islands to churn them out.

[Jxrc]

Playing the Sicilians gives you quite a few options and only the first few steps are "mandatory".

Turn 1: build border forts in both provinces and move one ship near Malta to connect it to Sicily. Build one UM in Sicily.
Turn2: Move you king and one peasant unit to Sicily (leaving the large shield spearmen unit as governor). Build one UM in Sicily.
Turn 3: Attack Naples with your king and you two UM it is quite sufficient to deal with the Biz Infantry and naphta throwers (if a rebellion has taken place in Naples you can probably do the same since, given the small size of the Byz garrison, the amount and quality of rebel troops is often very low). Do not worry about being at war with the Biz since you will most probably get an automatic cease-fire anyway. Start producing galleys in Sicily and aim for a keep and shipbuilder in Malta to do the same. Aim for a keep in Naples to build basic units like MS, FS, FMAA and archers.
Once you have produced enough ship to cover the whole Med, you can start thinking about expanding.
Attacking another catholic faction up north is not very rewarding and can be slow due to the Pope's interference ...
It basically depend on how things are evolving around you.
If the Spaniard have the upper hand in their struggle against the Almo, it's probably a good option to take Tunisia (GA objective), Algeria and Cyr. in order to prevent them getting to the Middle East.
You will usually see that the Biz are at war with the Turks or Egyptian and that after initial setbacks they manage to recover by shipping huge amounts of crap units from the steppes (I guess that with a nine-star general such units are good enough). So if you sink their ship in the Black sea, , you prevent them from doing that and their struggle between can continue on even terms. Having to provinces buildings ships is usually enough to enable you to get rid of the Byz navy so that after a few turn you can easily add Crete, Rhodes and Cyprus to your estate.

It can seem tempting to keep on going and try to grab Constantinople but it puts you right between the Byz and the Turks/Egyptians so that you have a good chance to end up at war with both of them. Leaving the Byz alone as from then is a better option since they will continue their fight and attract more and more Turkish/Egyptian troops. Given that you have plenty of ships why not take advantage of that bloodshed upnorth to start crusading a bit ? You just need to add a sizeable army to you crusade (about one big stack) and its easily done (most of the troops you will face are archers, spearmen and peasants). Once you have made all the possible crusades grab Syria and connect your middle east territory to your north Africa holdings by getting Sinai and Egypt. Once you have done so you have a sizeable kingdom (about 15 provinces), stockpiles of cash and only four provinces you need to defend (Naples, Morocco or Algeria, Antioch, Syria and Edessa).

From there you can easily do whatever you want but usually the best course of action is to get the Iberian Peninsula and conquer Asia Minor so that the number of provinces to defend does not increase (Naples, Navarre or Acquitaine, Aragon or Toulouse, Georgia and Constantinople) and you can safely wait for the Golden Horde if it has not shown up yet.

To finish of everyone should no be a problem. You could even try not to use an army and get rid of everyone using strategic agents (+2 Syrian Assassins for the infidels, Grand inquisitors for the Catholics). While regular inquisitor can only burn non-royal generals, grand inquisitor can easily burn princes as well so that you can easily provoke mass rebellion and bribe everyone of your liking (you've got more money than you can ever spend anyway).

Needless to say that this is a very straightforward summary and that, fortunately, plenty of things can go wrong while trying to implement the suggested scheme ...

Hope it helps,

[Maloncanth]

I need with a decent strategy with the Sicilians, I'm thinking of taking the islands of Corsica, Sardinia, Rhodes and Crete in my next campaign. Then aiming for Italian and Byzantine provinces with shipbuilding burning them down, sinking their ships and calling a ceasfire then ally with them. Build up my trade empire, build a bigger fleet than anyone else using the islands to churn them out.

If you've been working out in muslim territory, then I can only imagine you have territories in North Africa and the Holy Land. In that case, my best recommendation would be for you to defeat the Byzantines in Asia Minor until you have Constantinople. This will knock them out of contention at sea and give you the best shipyards in the world.

[Bugout]

I just want to add one word of warning that I have learned through unpleasant experience. Once you start expanding into Africa or Europe, you need to think carefully about where you place your king. If he is on Sicily or any of the other islands and it gets blockaded you can be looking at rebellions from the drop in loyalty in quite a few of your mainland provinces. So make sure that you have good sized fleets in the sea areas around where your king is so that he can maintain communications with the islands and his continental provinces. Another useful step is to build churches, monasteries and reliquaries in all your provinces (especially the islands) that can potentially be cut off from the king, they help a lot with maintaining loyalty levels without having to have a large army in each province.