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]

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.

[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...