anyone experience with Venice??

[louigi]

i've had a very fun and interesting but very challenging experience

I started a campaign with Venice yesterday and everything was going fine, especially economically, i didn't know where to throw that money haha. conquered 4 rebel settlements by turn 15. Spent the next few turns buiding up my cities and turned ancona into a town. spent some money on getting an alliance and improving relations with the HRE. Also managed to seduce a german general WITH germanic blood with one of my venetian princesses. then around turn 30 i think pisa attacks me, they got excommunicated so i prepared to go full on against pisa. took pisa pretty easily, few turns later i take genova. Pisa has 3 regions left but I see with my spy that they have still many units in the field around firenze .

Then suddenly serbia attacks my capital venice with a big stack. I manage to break their siege by sending my doge that's in bologna with an army with many merceneries and elite units from my castle Verona. the thing is i can't move forces from pisa all the time because there's a plague there. And then even worse.. the Eastern Romans land near ancone with a small but deadly force. they succeed in taking the settlement (). then next turn I attack a pisan army that's besieging genova. but to no avail because next turn they siege it again and the turn after i couldn't break it anymore, i lacked soldier there. so Pisa takes Genova as well. so i lost 2 settlements in 2-3 turns hahah i'm doomed


anyway this was very interesting and fun. there were multiple ways I could've handled all these situations.

I wonder if there's someone that had the same experience with venice? waging war against pisa that keeps on producing armies and also being attacked by both serbia and the ERE?

[Sllhouette]

i haven't played any italian states yet. but this sounds spot on SSHIP, your fortunes change wildly each year. you could be on the brink of death, in 3 years you could be on top of the world. don't be too comfortable when things are going good, play like you're about to die. only advice i have is try to get more spies? sucks that agents are tied to number of cities. full serbian army showing up on your doorstep means there was a lack of spy intel.

you need to focus on either beating Pisa or fending off the ERE. how are your papal relations? i'm sure the ERE attacking christians puts them at odds with the pope. maybe you can focus on Pisa, give up on Ancona for now, and get a crusade on Ancona. even if Ancona isn't the target city, you can still set up a crusade army and hit Ancona to take it back

[louigi]

yes, it was going all well untill serbia and ERE decided to expand into my republic. yes indideed I didn't have spies there at the border in the east with serbia .I just didn't expect it from them because I just got trade rights with them. What do you mean ERE at odds with the pope? the ERE is orthodox so the pope doesn't care about them, they can do what they want right? and my papal relations are too bad to call a crusade.. but yes ancona is not my priority right now.

[Jurand of Cracow]

You know, @louigi, that I'm collecting reports on the playthroughts here, right?
You may find something there.
cheers
JoC

[Sllhouette]

louigi, i figured if ERE is attacking christians, it would bother the pope. have you noticed when crusades get called, sometimes it'll be an orthodox city, most of the time it'll be islam? but i don't think the papal states is directly at war with the crusade target before calling it. so i think the pope can target ERE for a crusade, even if they're not at war with each other, because the pope doesn't like them. i'm GUESSING