Sicily

[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.