Italians

[CaesarAugustus]

With the impending release of mtw2, i thought i should familiarize myself with medieval 1. I started playing the copy that i bought with eras, having sold my unplayed original about a year ago, and have found it to be very fun.

I played through one camapign as the Britons, and won, but that faction doesn't really interest me. What I really wanted to play was the Italians, so i started an Early Italians Campaign. However, they seem to be one of the harder factions to play, as they are squashed between the HRE and Papacy.


I was wondering if there was a sort of basic strategy to follow for the italians. I was planning to attack the papacy, but have heard that is a bad idea, so i am undecided. It also doesnt seem to be a great idea to attack the very powerful HRE. Any suggestion/strategies as to what Early Period Italians are supposed to do?

[ByzantineKnight]

If it is one of the Earlier ages, the HRE is rather weak and prone to rebellion. And with the Pope behind you you won't be attacked there.

There is also the possability of sending your men across to hit islands and Africa on ships.

[Martok]

Hey CaesarAgustus, glad you're enjoying MTW!

I recommend checking out the Italy guide in the MTW Guides section. It's chock full of recommended strategies--most of which I'd only end up repeating anyway.

[wizardrj]

OK, a rough basic guide to Italy in early era.

First of all, there is some luck and timeing issues involved here, so you may have to try to start over once or twice....

1st year build trader in venice, and urban soldiers, in all other areas build 20% farm upgrade, except your 2 islands here you start with towers, followed by salt mines the following years. You have 3 ships use them to form a line from venice to sicily. If you are lucky, you will have 2 to 3 army commanders with 4 accumen featheres, use them in venice, milan, genoa, to increase income.
Use your diplomats/daughters to make alliances (hungary, papacy, HRE, byz, poland, the rest in that order)


In round 2 or 3 you should see rebels revolting in napels and taking over from the byz. by round 3 your trader in venice is finished, I recomend building a church and then a chapter house to enable building crusades. In your other areas go for forts and town guard the next rounds, except genoa, here I go for town guard, then archers then castle upgrade to enable me access to genoese sailors units.

When your first heir comes of age around round 5, send him with 4 or 5 urban units to attack the rebels in naples. They are normally peasants or spearmen and no match for your urban units, especially when you use your heirs cav. to flank them anr run them down from behind.

Now for a tricky play....
use your force in Naples to attack sicily !!
Its important to knock out sicily early in the game, before he gets to many allies, to big a fleet and enough troops in sicily to threathen you.

By attacking sicily this early, you will normally only face one or two units in sicily, normally low quality spearmen. He will normally retreat to his castle and you will get the normal warning from the pope not to attack again, but as the province is already in your hands an attack on the castle is not counted as a new attack so go ahead an clear him out of the castle.

Normally you will loose 2 or 3 allies, attacking sicily, but since you will have no common border with sicily after the attack, the war will be over before it really began, and you are free to restore the lost allies.

Its very important that you capture sicily virtually intact, so you can use its harbour for trade and building ships, with both venice and sicily as trade bastions you won´t be lacking funds for later expansion.

When Venice is ready to build crusades I recomend sending them east to Moldova, Kiev, Khazar, Crimea and those lands. This serves several goals:
1: send your new crusade to HRE and Hungarian lands to drain your neighbours armies
2: Crusades generates troops you normally can´t build
3: Kiev, Khazar and Moldova, can build very nice heavy cav. that will serve you well later on.
4: when you extend your fleets to the black sea, kiev and khazar and Crimea will become great trading provinces
5: From Kiev or Khazar there is access to many small russian provinces the provide great training for comming kings and generals. Attack the provins win the battle, retreat from the provins, rebels appear, attack the rebels, win the battle, retreat again and so on and so on.


By about 1115 you should have a nice little empire, centered on italy, with a nice colony around the black sea.
Around this time the papacy will be eying either venice or tuscany, be ready for an attack.....

The moment he attacks, you must counter attack into Rome from either the sea (sicily, genoa) or through Napels.

DON`t Attack the papal states, leave that provins for the pope to retreat to, the goal is not to kill or destroy the papacy, its to confine it in the papal states with an army so small that he won´t be able to attack again !!!

From here on in you should be able to fend for your self !

[CaesarAugustus]

Thank you for the advice everybody. I'm finding italy so much more fun to play! Your outline works very well wizardrj My empire includes naples and sicily now, and im concentrating on making fleets. I'll also check out the Italy guide. I think ill be fine now

[wizardrj]

Glad to help ;-)

[Ferret]

The italians were always my favourite faction for mtw1, i loved the italian spearmen and ended up having huge armies of only them.

[The Stranger]

I recommend not to conquer the pope because they will always reappear bigger and better and more annoying. Rome isnt that great anyway in MTW.

for glorious achievements
You should build up defences and a strong navy. the navy will allow you to train bigger and better armies and then you can conquer the rich provinces. I suggest you take all the medetaranian islands + constantinople, antioch and portugal.

Conquer the world.

Take naples as soon as the byzantines are kicked out there by rebels. Then make a strong navy and conquer the sicilians. after that you can go all ways, either down south or up north, west or east