A guide to Victory! : Milan

[Stubbs]

Milan is by far my favorite faction, they start out dead in the middle of enemies, gold, and christianity. They're special archer unit, genoian crossbowmen make holding your towns effectively and cheap. Milan only starts out with two cities, but by the start of turn 2 I controlled 4 towns and a castle and by turn 4 I controlled 8 cities, towns, and castles. At the start out the game everyone wants to be Milan's friend, this bolds well with taking over cardinal votes and cities and castles. Turn one offer full diplomacy with HRE (they may or may not betray you based on who the side with in late game) and as we'll offer gold for Bologna and Staufen (Castle north of Milan) You can get away with about 5000 gold along with diplomacy in return for these two places. Send your one general from Genoa to florence, during the end turn phase the rebals will come out and attack your general.. lead them away, tire them out, and circle your horses around and take out the missle units with ease, and continue to run the spearmen around and charging them with they are not in formation to take the town and give your general perks and bonuses... From there get full armor tech in milan and the big G, and then all the way up to city watch for crossbow men. Wait until Vience pulls its armies out and take over Vience and establish a fort north of the city too block Vince off from retaking their lands. For Vience, Bologna, and Florence, research mining, farming, and churches too increase the growth of these cities and get in good favor with the pope by training priest from upgraded churches.. Huge catherdrals train Bishops instead of priest I do believe. Offer treaties with france, in return for masievel, moors in return for central africa so you can start getting merchants out in the east for ivory, slaves, and gold. Kill off sciliy by turn 40 and control italy, and pick on Vience once they get excommunicated.. It will happen without their main city. If you wait a few turns before talking trades and treaties out with spain, port, england, and use your coming of age princess to get diplomatic charm under her belt BEFORE she gets a secret lover, and marry her too one of your generals and that general will have alot of children and get perk traits from having and admireable wife. Don't spend too much on men for defending your cities, not going too need alot since they are so close together and your generals will just be running down rebals and fighting off Vience so you won't need much defence, instead just gain more gold. At this point you should be ready for total war!

[the smoking mค็็็็็n]

ive never figured out what causes secret lover,anyone know?
is it her diplo success?

[Stubbs]

No, just a small chance every turn.

[Lucatiel]

Why don't you put the guides in the Guides section instead of flooding the forums?

[Red Bat]

Milan is by far my favorite faction too. But their late-game units are somewhat unimpressive. They have almost no need to make castles, and start in a rather rich area, so they tend to gain a rather large economic advantage. They are also one of very few factions who can easily create a Horse Breeder's guild. Milans overall lack of need to make castles makes them one of the more unique factions to play as, and as such I reccomend everyone try them at least once.

Other than their lack of expansion options at the start in comparison to factions like England and the HRE, as well as their somewhat lacking late-game units (made up for by simply having raw numbers of millitia), they really don't have much in the way of weaknesses and end up feeling almost too easy to play. Sicily is similiar, but Sicily requires castles, has less effective ranged options, and slightly fewer millitia options, but they are also in a great position to expand into Muslim lands.

[Stubbs]

Milan in my mind is the most powerful.. They don't have seasoned warriors like England, France, and the HRE.. But soliders don't win wars.. gold wins wars. Unless your Denmark.. then it's completely opposite... vikings are super cheap come armed to the teeth and will kill a man as soon as look at him.. gotta love vikings.

[Red Bat]

Originally posted by Stubbs:

Milan in my mind is the most powerful.. They don't have seasoned warriors like England, France, and the HRE.. But soliders don't win wars.. gold wins wars. Unless your Denmark.. then it's completely opposite... vikings are super cheap come armed to the teeth and will kill a man as soon as look at him.. gotta love vikings.

I'm not sure about that. If you play the Holy Roman Empire and you do a quick land grab on the rebel settlements, you could end up with far more money early on than Milan can hope for due to Milan's kind of limited expansion options at the start. Milan eventually will close the gap due to their town focus, but that's way later on where you are pretty much already stomping everyone.

[Stubbs]

Milan's expansions are the greatest in the game Azazel.. What is better my friends.. Cities of gold, or rebal villages taken by the HRE? On the first turn, you get bologona from HRE, and their castle to the north.. by the START of turn two, you can have florence as well.. Then on turn 3 I take Vience with ease.. Gonea/Vience/Bologona/Milan/Florence/and the northern mountain all controlled.. and building heavy armourers and great markets with no worry to have to spend gold on soliders.. too take settlements, you need men, you have to pay men to fight, why pay men to fight when your coffers can sieze the day and by the next turn you gained twice as much as you spent on the trade offers before hand. Never doubt the littlest nations, because when they have nothing too lose, they have everything to gain.

[the smoking mค็็็็็n]

i agree,just like to do it with venetions instead,better army to play with and a lttle closer to constantinople,and the like becuase i want them early as well

[Red Bat]

Originally posted by Stubbs:

Milan's expansions are the greatest in the game Azazel.. What is better my friends.. Cities of gold, or rebal villages taken by the HRE? On the first turn, you get bologona from HRE, and their castle to the north.. by the START of turn two, you can have florence as well.. Then on turn 3 I take Vience with ease.. Gonea/Vience/Bologona/Milan/Florence/and the northern mountain all controlled.. and building heavy armourers and great markets with no worry to have to spend gold on soliders.. too take settlements, you need men, you have to pay men to fight, why pay men to fight when your coffers can sieze the day and by the next turn you gained twice as much as you spent on the trade offers before hand. Never doubt the littlest nations, because when they have nothing too lose, they have everything to gain.

I have to strongly disagree with you there. Milan has the absolute worst expansion options in the game after Scotland and England. Other than Florence, they have to rush north to get any rebel villages (which also require some luck to get and hold), or they could take the island territories to the south, which tend to get attacked by Sicily, The Moors, Portugal, Spain, and if you are REALLY unlucky, Venice, Egypt and the Byzantines.

The HRE on the other hand, can easily have 15 regions in 10 turns without even declaring war on anyone, and if they move their armies out of their landlocked regions at that point, and Poland and Denmark don't attack, they can very easily conquer France, Milan, and part of Venice within the next 20 turns. Nothing Milan can do can give them even remotely close to this great a start, even if Milan conquers Venice and Sicily. With luck or maybe some save scumming, Milan could potentially take the entire chain of rebel settlements between France and HRE, but they still can't do it as easily as the HRE can.

[Stubbs]

I can easily take 15 settlements with Milan by turn 10.. and 75% of them will be bought, other 25% generals rush solo and take. People have to realize you have over 200 turns, taking your time is just as acceptable for this game,, Florence/Milan/Geoniva/Vience/Staufen/bologona all at the start of round 3 has a major gold income.. But after I take those places, I stay out of war, I peacefuly buy up my territory and wait for Vience or France to be excommunicated and just roll them over with my massive treasurey o, and upgraded troops since I bum rushed partial plate, and Vience and France get rolled over by my tech.. Lots of way to play this game,