The Venetian Diaries #2 - Mercenaries Save The Day

I would have chosen to play as a less diverse faction than Venice - the Italians are proving to be real difficult, especially since over the course of the first 20 turns that this series of the diary will be infatuated with, I have come across certain hindrances which sort of opposed to the strategies I formulated in the previous series. You see, MTWII, or any Total War game for that matter, is not particularly random, like an MMORPG, since after a considerable amount of time you feel that game's flow is perceptible and uninteresting, and , being limited to Europe and some part of Asia, you're certainly never enthralled by a sense of randomness that RPG games can conjure so easily. It's just so easily to get lost and find obscure things in games like Skyrim or Knight Online, and in a game like this it's quite easy to get bored because the gameplay is based on logical thinking and using available information more than anything. Nevertheless, I will try to make these diaries as fun and vexing as I can, adding fictional stories here and there to invigorate and brighten the tactical, political and economic development of an empire, (well, no yet, but soon to be) so bear with me here. Sometimes I get entangled in such gruesome situations that I find it hard to rid myself of these sprouting troubles and create a convincing fictional story line based on these rather serious events. One final note: I usually conduct all battles with the quick-simulator, so there won't be many detailed depictions of bloodshed, I'm afraid. Some of the most epic battles, though, will be transferred to you directly the way it was on the battlefield, so don't be in vane, dear friends.

Summer, 1080 A.D.

I found the faction leader Doge Dominico to be rather lazy man, with little command and chivalry. Not that I haven't commanded him before, but this time, focusing a little more on personal details, I found him to be less shrewd looking than other faction leaders - the Holy Roman Emperor, for example, seems like a truly cunning man, in great contrast to our snobbery Italian ruler. East of Venice, marching along the narrow strip of land that connects Italy to Eastern Europe, we have Councillor Bartolomeno, who has been affixed with a fairly large group soldiers. The Councillor seems suitable enough for battle, a seasoned, yet virile stalwart of the Venetian rule, so ambitious that in fact he seeks to conquer all with his own small army. Ragusa is garrisoned minutely - we have Alessandro Selvo with a handful of archers and spearmen, more keen to stay fixated atop the grand and muscular walls of the castle than actually engaging in battle, like our rather lazy friend Doge, however, as much as he dislikes blood, and all things carnal, he will do whatever he can to provide his country with the best of services, so that Venice may grow into a mighty empire. Last, but not least, Iraklion is inhabited by the less reluctant Christiano Selvo, who is an absolute sucker for the sea and all things Mediterranean. That's probably why he chose to govern Iraklion. Considering his position, he is the most potentially dangerous general out of Venice for the moment being, for is he builds up a force in Crete over time, he will be a great threat to the island of Cyrus and its capital, Nicosia, though failure during brazenly conducted conquest will give birth to egregious results.

My first move is to send our ambitious Councillor over to Zagreb, currently being a village inhabited by a bunch of rebel rabble, hardly more than 400 men. Though, knowing that the battle might not conclude entirely well for me, I spare some florins to hire two Slav mercenaries, who actually prove to be very useful. Zagreb falls rather quickly, though the damnable people (some 600 inhabitants) fail to deliver any funds even when I try to sack the settlement, so I just wipe them off the face of the Earth. I don't they weren't very pleased by my sadistic actions, but shit people, any action is acceptable for the good of the country, right, Machiavelli? Anyway, I am well conscious that Durazzo, the third of the three Adriatic settlements I mentioned before, is under threat by the Byzantine, who have enormous geographic reach thanks to their possession of Sofia, so I quickly start mustering my troops over at Ragusa. I damn the Byzantine for things they had no relation with - for example, the fact that Ragusa is completely susceptible to an invasion, and because, despite being a castle, it can solely train light cavalry and fucking peasants. Yes, I'm aware that it's extremely early in the game, but you have to give me some credit here, peasants are the absolute worst troops you can have in the game, and they're even worse than a dispatched catapult battalion - and trust me, a dispatched catapult battalion is pretty damn weak. Peasants just never seem to be good for anything. They melt away in the slightest heat of battle as if they were a bunch hay sacks being demolished in the convulsive fray, rushing and chanting with their crappy tridents and pitchforks as if they were just an illiterate bunch of villagers trying enforce the strength of a professional Venetian army, (what am I saying - they probably are just like that!)  their purposes unknown. Well at least we get 150 (on the largest scale) men per battalion. That's good enough for now.

Without procrastinating military growth, I decide to to enter and take Durazzo, because it guarantees my naval dominance in the Adriatic Sea, soon after building some farms and roads along my cities, and what do you know? It's the Byzantine Empire. I'm not entirely befuddled, but I still found it surprising that they acted so quickly, (it was something like turn 6) but thankfully the idiots encircled the village with such a tiny force that I could send them spinning back to their damned city Sofia before they have a chance to recuperate in a matter of seconds. And I did. I sent slightly more than half of my troops in alongside our reluctant general Alessandro and it's actually a closer battle than I would have anticipated, but I emerge victorious anyway. I quickly establish a motte and bailey, but later on I decide to morph the wooden castle back into a village, then to a town. I need money, and money comes best from cities. At first I tax them heavily, but when the people grow tired of my avaricious desires they decide go all mad so I have to impose lighter taxes on them. People always seems to be trouble. Thus, my punitive and greedy desires go to waste. Strangely enough, after I take Durazzo, some Byzantine general decides to besiege the whole settlement (garrisoned by a bunch of peasants, spearmen, archers and a general's unit) completely on his own, without any aid whatsoever, and I'm actually shocked that our chance of victory is marginally higher than a draw. Nonetheless, I win and the frightened bastard is sent spurring back to his homeland. I'm safe.

My financial situation isn't good at all, despite all the taxes imposed. Army upkeep constantly drains your florins. I build a Merchant's Wharf at Venice which I believe is fairly beneficial to my economic cause, and I expand the farms built on Venice and Iraklion. Many trade requests come pouring in by turn 5, as I expected, and I am only positively predisposed to accept all these generous offers with fervent grins and smirks. My merchant, some guy by the name of Tusco Delogu, is a standard man of trade at best, and with the best resources in Venice's vicinity being textiles (14 florins per turn), I send him over there to set up trade links. Meanwhile, Hungary takes me very much by surprise and decides to ambush me! Not quite an ambush really, but a  massive siege assault that I thankfully foresee before I actually encounter. I have no aid to be transferred over to Zagreb, the apparent destination of siege, and my troops and tired and reduced to lesser quantities, so I urgently decide to use my general to gather a whole bunch of mercenaries, Slavs and archers, and them re-inhabit Zagreb so that now I have stronger force. When the Hungarians come rushing over, I fend them off, and get a handsome sum of money thanks to the ransom, but I only win by a sword's edge.

My next target is Florence. I've been mustering troops in Venice for some 15 turns now and hopefully, if the Germans don't intervene, I can exterminate the rebel scum in Florence. Its garrison is a small and feeble force by any standards, so I send my army - around 1600 men, solely comprised of spear militia and peasants, sans our lazy faction leader - and to my surprise, the Germans stay confined to Bologna and do not interfere with my military affairs, though I'll confide that they would have probably attempted to attack me if I hadn't sauntered near Bologna for only a short amount of time. Florence falls, and to the victor goes the spoils. I get some 3000 florins from sacking the city, a much needed sum of money, and I promptly start imposing fairly heavy taxes. I build some farmland, some roads and some spears, and stop there. The strategical prestige of having Venice and Florence at the same time in undeniable. Together with the more distant city of Milan, the three form a Bermuda Triangle of some sort, completely engulfing Bologna, which should fall after a succession of forces arriving from all three cities. However, I don not yet possess Milan, and a Milanese conquest must wait, because I fear the Papal States will be soon knocking on my door. At the moment being, I have only 90 florins, having spent these vast sums I earned from sacking the city of various trade-oriented investments, but I regret nothing. I am currently the strongest faction, (yay!) and it's turn 21, and I have a hulking Byzantine army only a days' march away from Durazzo, so, yeah, I'm pretty much screwed. Until next turn, dear friend.

The Venetian Diaries #1 - So It Begins...

Ah, the Venetian Republic. A personal favorite faction of mine, Venice is the articulate, finance driven empire of Northern Italy that will use its financial and naval strength to indoctrinate the areas and factions in its vicinity, and, eventually, Italy and the majority of Europe. Playing as these Italians makes you realize the importance of your economic development in MTWII. Not only that, but the faction boasts of some superior military strength too...

So I started a new game, as these fellows obviously, for the sake of commencing a diary from the very start. The options are as follows;

Difficulty: Medium
Battle Difficulty: Medium
No Battle Time Limit
Campaign Length: Long

Basically your default settings for a standard campaign. Anyhow, first, I feel obliged to provide some information on the Venetian Republic. We start with three cities: (or provinces, or areas, I choose to refer to them as cities for clarity's sake) Venice, our capital, which is very much an island city that can only accessed via the bridge that connects it to the rest of Italy, meaning that so long as you can fend of a single army, you're pretty much impregnable since the bridge only allows the entrance of one army per siege assault. Venice controls the Adriatic Sea like no other city, once you have a sufficiently strong armada and once you have established a prosperous trade route, you'll have wealth and strength pouring into your veins. Second up, we have Ragusa. Strangely enough, the game does not grant us Zagreb from the very start for unknown reasons, despite being adjacent to Venice itself. Either way, Ragusa is situated in the middle of two other cities (Zagreb and Durazzo) across the Eastern European border of the Adriatic, granting a little more safety to your dominance of the Adriatic. Finally, we have our little island city of  Iraklion, which to me is godsend because you can literally set sail and disperse your armies to anywhere from there. Just build up your armies there, enlarge your navy, and there's not much left to do, really. Acquiring Cyprus with a force from Iraklion is a great early start if you do it in the first 20 turns, which will thus enable you to expand your empire towards Jerusalem and Anatolia.

Of course, such rapid expansion will not be able to be of our essence for a rather long period of time, considering the fact that we're confined to Italy at the moment, and completely encompassed by foes. The Holy Romans (Germans, as I will refer to them from now on), who possess the nearby city of Bologna and who pose a great threat to our capital, for one. Although Bologna does not pose enormous threat on its own, its links to the German powerhouse of Innsbruck, and the less proximate Nuremberg and Staufen make conquering it a perilous and debilitating task. So instead, we should keep our relations with the Germans cool until our military force is sufficiently strong to invade Bologna, thus shrewdly eradicating all German existence off the face of Italy. Equally frightening, the Milanese. We are of the same kin with Milan, yet we are face to face, and war could easily erupt out of nowhere. So, we are forced to use diplomacy to prevent conflict from occurring at all costs, because the sheer proximity of the two default Milanese cities make the probability of bloodshed all the more real, and all the more devastating. Here's the golden rule; unless you possess the strength to take both Milanese cities in Italy, do not attack. They are just as confined to Italy as you are and will retaliate promptly. The Milanese have the advantage of spreading towards the southern French border, and gradually towards the Iberian Peninsula, just as we have the potential to expand towards designated destinations I have listed above, so never underestimate them. Speaking with the experience I earned through and extensive and fatiguing Russian conquest - the Milanese are real bitches. When I sent two separate ships loaded with fresh troops - all the way from the Russian capital of Novgorod - and when the second one (which also contained two generals) failed to arrive in Italy due to serious naval rapes, my whole Italian campaign nearly bit the dust. I took Genoa easily enough. Though when I strained to send a third of my war-beaten troops to acquire Milan itself, I blundered terribly, having been squashed by multiple Milanese generals that drained my entire dominance over Northern Italy shortly after a failed siege attempt. I did eventually manage to push the bastards out of Italy entirely, (though still inhabited the nearby pre-French city of Toulouse) but I could not have done so if wasn't for my incessant transfer of troops from Bern and Staufen, and, later on in the war, Innsbruck, which I acquired from the Germans with sheer luck. Translation: Italy is one of the most damnable regions in MTWII, laden with forests suitable for ambush for both sides, and its such a tight strip of land that once you engage, it's going to be very difficult to fully compose yourself. And Milan is there to make things even worse. Our third nemesis is the Papal State, a faction that is actually initially quite tranquil but later on in the game gets tired of being imprisoned between Sicily and us/Germany, and starts building up massive armies to devour both us and the Milanese.

Perhaps not as convincing as the Germans or the Milanese, but still, you need to keep an eye for the Pope if you want to ascertain victory in Italy. Plus, you'll likely get excommunicated by Pope if you start bashing the Papal States too frequently. Our last, and least potentially dangerous adversary in the Byzantine Empire. I don't even regard them as one of Venice's direct opponents, since they choose to clash with Turkey and Hungary more often than anything else, however, do try to invade Durazzo, the nearest of the three Adriatic cities before they do, because no one is more spry and devilish in taking Durazzo in the first 10 turns than these bastards. Be wary of the expansion of Eastern Europe, as their inquisition of cities bordering the Adriatic will form a series of interstices that will eventually burgeon and threaten the existence of Venice.

However, Venice is not renowned for its tactical intelligence and military strength but for its trade, commerce, and success in financial conquest. Iraklion can be initially used to form trade links with the Byzantines, the Turks, Egyptians, Sicilians, and, if you're lucky, with the Hungarians, but the centrality of your capital will make merchants and diplomats cascade in for trade rights from the first couple of turns, that I guarantee. Merchants' Wharves, ports and other structures to be utilized for trade are essential for your growth, so always but a little more weigh on the construction of those particular buildings when you're financially in a rather bad situation. Farming and mining are also viable tools to generate income, but international trade remains as a mandatory field of progression that Venice must absolutely practice with immaculate diligence.

Finally, though you only get to use them very late in the game, the Venetian Heavy Infantry are totally worth owning. Seriously, these mother fuckers are some of the strongest melee fighters in the game, packing a wallop with 16 Attack and 5 Charge Points, and shielding themselves just as well with 16 Defense. Seriously consider upgrading your castles as quickly possible, because once you have these men, you have near-invincible army in the open field and in siege assaults, especially if they're assisted with crossbowmen and cavalry. Thus, I end my brief introduction of the Venetian Republic. Venice is one of the most enjoyable factions to play as, being deliberately assaulted from each and every side for the entire duration of the campaign. Conflict will be aplenty, but you must ensure that you're economy is always better than the opposing factions. I will officially start my diary with #2, so, until then, farewell.