Quote Originally Posted by G^2 View Post
Venices has a great unit roaster. Italian Spear Militia are awsome, Venetian Archers are also a great choice, (I think there is an armor upgrade bug though) along with Venetian Heavy Infantry. If you upgrade ISM to partial plate, they are perhaps the most powerful spear unit in the early game.
Again, I'm just digging into M2TW still ...but from everything I have seen so far, Venice's roster looks to be arguably the most underrated roster in the game.

It's not just the infantry either...as there are unit rosters that have more powerful heavies than Venice. It's the quality of their combined arms. They have the best artillery against units (France has the best against buildings as far as Catholic factions go...just by stats) and they are capable of fielding every major catholic faction gunpowder unit.

Further, their troop availability (due to their high quality militia) is such that you should never be lacking manpower, and regularly outnumbering any opponent. Sure, they can spam lower quality units but as you said- italian spear militia. That's quality spam.

Venice also has a great Navy apparently, and of course- starts with control of an eastern med island..ideal for so many reasons.

I'm about 99 percent sure at this point that campaign 1 for me will be with Venice. From that campaign, I'll learn all I need to about the other factions on the map.

At first glance already though, I have a feeling that my worst case scenario would be dealing with a French/Milanese coalition. If those two factions are allied against me, that turns into a major war.