The fun for playing Sicily, for me at least, is how every game as Sicily is a completely unique, independent experience. With most other factions, there's a similar strategy you always follow to get from Point A to Point B. England is almost always going to consolidate Great Britain first, then march into France. Egypt is almost always going to expand into the Holy Land and react to crusades. Russia is almost always dominating the same corner of the map. You get the picture.
With Sicily, the central location and the relative security of sharing a substantial land border with the Papacy gives you the opportunity to react to in-game developments by going wherever the wind calls you. It's a liberating experience.
I'm on my second Sicily game now, after losing out with Venice. My first Sicily experience involved me purchasing Bologna from HRE, fighting off Venice, going into Durazzo to incite the wrath of the Byzantines, and taking out Constantinople. Sicily was only the second faction in M2TW I actually won the game (on my default setting of H/H) with (England was first.) My first Sicily experience had me expanding in the Byzantine's direction and, generally speaking, in that corner of the map, into places like Sofia and Budapest and Nicaea. The endgame was basically me, the Mongols (who had settled in Russia), France (they dominated the west, where I didn't expand much), and Egypt / the Timurids.
Now my second game as Sicily has...well...it's been nearly the opposite experience.
This time around I tried the buying-off-Bologna trick and it failed. I had no clue why, but I have a strict no-restarts (or reboot from autosaves) policy on my games (I'm a stickler for perfectionism), so when the Princess failed I decided not to bother. With Bologna out of the picture, I decided not to expand into Durazzo. Instead I did some moves similar to posts here -- converted Palmero into a town, took Florence out as soon as possible, got the Pope to commission a crusade into Tunis, took Tunis quickly, then gobbled Corsica and Sardinia. Milan (predictably) declared war, and I responded by taking Genoa. I was going to take Milan proper, too, but I was distracted when the Moors began a siege of my poorly-defended Corsica (!! -- I was surprised they went for Corsica before Sardinia), forcing me to re-prioritize.
I was just about to get ready for a fun trek into Algiers when another crusade was commissioned -- before I thought another crusade could be commissioned. Another faction beat me to the punch and chose Jerusalem. So I decided, let's do an African march with my king from Tunis to Jerusalem, taking every Egyptian and rebel settlement I find along the way!!
...And I was immediately disappointed to learn that Venice took Tripoli (!!) As a sidenote, I allied with both HRE and Venice shortly before Milan declared war; this proved to be a prudent move as I'm pretty sure HRE and Venice will just turn traitor when they feel like it anyway, but right now I have enough enemies to worry about. Strangely, in this game Venice controls its starting settlements and Tripoli (that giant swab of useless african desert between Tunis and Egypt)...and nothing else. No incursions into Byzantium, no push into Hungary. A strange turn of events for Venice.
Anyway, I marched through Venice's Tripoli territory with my king and crusaders, while my cadre of priests were taking the long journey as well (I wanted to convert Alexandria to Christianity as soon as I knocked the stuffing out of the Egyptians.) Weirdly, perhaps my priests' presence and their conversions actually helped my relations with Venice, which only improved to "Perfect" while my Crusaders were marching in their territory.
It took some expensive mercenaries (you won't find too many of the traditional crusading fare in Africa) but I ended up taking Alexandria, Cairo, Gaza, and Jerusalem by turn 35...not bad. Actually, it's the best I've ever done in a crusade, but it's also the earliest I've ever had a crusade reach the Holy Land. (Mind you, I usually don't try for immediate crusades there in my games...maybe I should, as I really caught Egypt off-guard. Now Egypt controls only three settlements -- that southern Egypt one below Cairo that's mostly useless, Acre, and Damascus. Even Antioch is still currently a rebel settlement.) I did the smart thing and allied with the Turks, who now adore me. And I've found unrest comparatively manageable in my eastern settlements, in large part due to sending my cadre of Priests and Cardinals out there. Alexandria is already 70% Christian, Cairo is close to 50% Christian and I purchased two new Priests and a church that's working on Jerusalem too. (Can't care as much about Gaza as it's a castle, so they'll be content regardless.)
So now my Empire is turning into a one entirely reliant on a navy (even if I did wrest Tripoli from Venice, I'd still have to ship generals and units from Sicily / Naples to Egypt by boat...it's too long a journey on foot. Not to mention Corsica and Sardinia and the divide between my northern and southern Italian establishments.) And I haven't even reached turn 50!
Oh, and for the record? I can't even count how many times those Muslim Archers saved me. Muslim Archers saving a Catholic kingdom...ahh, the irony.
It's a completely different experience from my first Sicily game, though, and that's what I'm loving most about it.
Bookmarks