Venice Faction Guide: Medieval 2 Total War

[@rasplez9889]

Because Venice is a deep red and located on the Italian peninsula, I LOVE reconquering Italy and recreating the Roman empire, at least in spirit. It's just so nice being able to start from scratch and build an empire again but in a more "meaty" period in history (at least in my opinion. It depends if you prefer high middle ages or classical Rome). And the Republic theme lends pretty well to the fantasy.

[@CodOpsZombies]

RAsplez 98 maybe that’s what they were going for in the 4th crusade ;)

[@Lycurgus1982]

It wasn't a republic. It was an oligarchy for most of it's days.

[@rasplez9889]

@@Lycurgus1982 well, it could have been classed as a republic back in its day. Keep in mind this was 2,000 years ago, and our values have changed dramatically since then in different cultures. What we call a democracy today, might be very different in the next 2,000 years. But yes, our description of an oligarchy fits more in line to the government of the Roman Republic as we know it. In fact, even in recent history and the late-medieval and Renaissance era, a lot of so-called "republics" were still aristocratic in nature, with noble families being nominated for succession much like the Roman senate. And like an elective monarchy, these dynasties would sometimes be repeatedly elected to allow a smooth transition of power. These governments are republican in name only, not actual practice. In reality, they function more like an elective monarchy.

[@f10nn02]

@@rasplez9889 Think he's talking about Venice

[@curtiswong7280]

The thing is, Venice was actually a successor state of Rome in a way - it was founded by Romans who sought protection in the lagoon the city now resides in.

[@alotofthings22]

Couple of comments: - Venetian Heavy Infantry are absolute tanks, and they're one of the top 3 infantry units in the game (along with Spain and Portugal's Conquistadores and the Moors' Christian Guard). Their armour and shield allow them to form a relatively solid line, but you're better off having them charge their opponent, rather than absorbing a charge. - Men-at-arms and Broken Lances are solid and cheap, but they have low morale when compared to Feudal or Chivalric knights, which makes them weaker in prolonged combat with units they don't vastly outclass. The same applies to Venetian Heavy Infantry. To counter this, you want to either finish their engagements as soon as possible with effective flanking and/or use hammer and anvil strategies. Other alternatives are keeping a general nearby to rally them (simple enough, though the general could be used elsewhere) or bringing a Carroccio Standard with you (amazing spearmen, great boni. The downside is that it'll slow your armies down by a lot, as it's considered to be a piece or artillery). The Standard is nonetheless suggested, as Venice's reliance on militia units and non-knightly infantry makes morale a glaring weakness of theirs. - Stradiots are far, far better than their stats suggest. They're very lightly armoured, but their mounts are stupidly fast and they wield both lances and maces (good charge + armour penetration), making them superb at flanking and dealing with the more heavily armoured archers and crossbowmen of the later periods (e.g. Genoese Crossbowmen, Dismounted Dvors and Aventuriers). - Pavise Crossbowmen Militia aren't quite up there with their Genoese analogues, but their shields and armour still allow them to beat any archer/unshielded crossbow unit in a missile fight. They are also competent light infantry, so they're excellent when defending walls and useful when assaulting them (I wouldn't pit them against knights, but they'll make mincemeat out of peasant archers and spear militia). - The other Italian states are *_NOT_* your allies. The Pope can be handled as usual, by building churches, training priests, participating in crusades and through regular diplomacy. Milan, however, is famously treacherous: no matter how good your relationship with them is, they are bound to betray you sooner or later, so keep an eye on them and act accordingly. Sicily sometimes occupy themselves with North Africa, so they may leave you alone early on, but in my experience, they have a tendency to ally with either the Holy Roman Empire or the Byzantine Empire (or both), which leads them to attack you when you're occupied elsewhere.

[@Darkdaej]

Venice is pretty much my go-to faction. Armoured Sergeants when I need to hold ground, Venetian Heavy Infantry for an offensive push. Men-at-arms, mounted or not are pointless. Feudal knights, which you get earlier, have better stats and cost the same amount in upkeep. If you're strapped for cash and about to have a town attacked you might choose them, but might as well build the spears to blunt the inevitable mass charge of crossbowmen through the gates (against the ridiculously dumb AI)

[@volodymyrboitchouk]

I'd add that they get access to arquebusiers and musketeers. Musketeers crush all other ranged units in missile engagements, including genesee crosbowmen. Venice also gets pike militia which are good for holding ground and defending against cav. Strafiots also tend to win strait fights with technically higher tier cavalry. So an army of musketeers and Venetian heavy infantry with pike militia to defend the front from cavalry charges (the relatively low defense of Venetian heavy infantry makes them vulnerable to cavalry charges) and stradiots on the flanks and a standard of venice to anchor the line is one of the most powerful end game armies.

[@cigarpringles1890]

Milan declared war on me in my campaign recently on turn 20 and a crusade is called on cairo

[@Vinilupus]

👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼

[@nicolasbouchard6331]

Milan, Sicily, hongaria and the byzantine all attacked me at the same time and conquered 7 towns I like 3 turns leaving me poor and stranded in Greece

[@dman1988]

My personal strategy is to buy Bologna from HRE on turn one. You can offer them alliance, map, trade rights and around 3500 gold. You’ll get 5 units of OP mercenary crossbow men with whom Milan could be easily defeated on turn 3. Get alliance with the Pope as well on turn 2 before attacking Milan so you can easily avoid excommunication. After defeating Milan you can decide which way to go first Sicily or Byzantines If you choose Sicily try to conquer Ajaccio region and give this island to the Pope, you’ll increase your influence on crusades and Sicily will attack the Pope in 99% of cases. So you can easily defeat them without fear of being excommunicated. After Sicily you can go for Constantinople to create Latin Empire and starting to unite former Roman Empire. Venice campaign is the most interesting of all imo cause you use 100% of the game mechanics instead of many other factions.

[@bananajoe4494]

Ragusa is a modern day dubrovnik in croatia and comical fact at one point of history ragusa was the biggest trade power because they never went to war.

[@lugotorix6173]

Banana Joe Haha I've even been to Dubrovnik twice so I really should've realised it was Ragusa. Good fact though!

[@TalkAboutFightClub]

In my playthroughs, the Italian city-state factions were the easiest to build a steamroller with because of their militia units. You can convert every settlement into a city for economic benefits and then get cheap armored spear militia, long-ranged armored crossbowmen (which do armor-piercing damage) and militia cavalry, which are not great heavy cavalry but are among the cheapest and lowest upkeep in the game. As either Milan or Venice, once you control the northern Italian peninsula you can have a dense core of cities (Milan, Genoa, Venice, Florence, Bologna) that can essentially churn out a full stack every turn, and has the economic output to allow you to do so. Because of this, and good late-game naval units and fun gunpowder units (monster ribault anyone?) these were easily my favorite factions. It *could* be seen as historically inaccurate to essentially turn the capitals of the Italian Renaissance into the Zerg, but if you're winning, who cares!

[@cashchristian5413]

TalkAboutFightClub This is a solid strategy, thanks for sharing this. 👍

[@Darkdaej]

I do that early on, mostly by necessity given your only castle town (Ragusa) is too far away to be effective. By the time I've got Cagliary and Accajio I just use them and a couple ships to ferry troops. Or I take Bern/Innsbruck to blunt the HRE's teeth. Anyway by the time I'm a hundred turns in, I've got the papacy under control with a majority in the College so anyone who pisses me off ends up excommunicated. Crusades are an awesome weapon to use against your Excommunicated neighbors. Especially since your crusading army(ies) charges no upkeep. You can effectively use it for a few turns to build up your towns with the extra cash and the other factions declaring war on your aggressor will ruin them (at least economically) for a while. Being excommunicated for a long time will spawn mass numbers of heretics in their lands too, potentially making them lose settlements to rebel uprisings. In my current game, Sicily has been permanently excommunicated for over 300 turns (I play on a 1 turn=1year basis) and while they used to be a strong power owning lower everything East of Naples and south of Zaragoza. Rebels tore them up to Lisbon, Timbuktu and Tunis without anyone ever attacking them directly.

[@EricTheActor805]

This was always my strategy as well

[@thekaiser3815]

I use the same tactics. I also use the skiltrums to make sand banks to slow enemy change and the artillery and light chivalry and crossbow just kill

[@krvproductions6642]

I'm trying to rebuild the Roman Empire as Venice lol. Just a few tips: 1: I allied myself with Hungary very early in the game (like the first 6 rounds or something) they make great allies as they can act as a buffer between you and the Mongols or other northern factions. Not to mention that they were exceptionally loyal to me, so much so that when Budapest came under siege by the HRE I actually bothered to send two armies to reinforce the Hungarians, the Fools never stood a chance against us. 2: conquer as much of the Mediterranean as you possibly can! Venice can thrive off of trade and at least in my experience makes funding large armies relatively easy. Also the island Ajjacio (probably spelled that wrong) and the one under are also great trade assets. (Watch out for Milan tho) 3: Eradicate the Byzantines. Unless you plan on establishing friendly terms with them I'd recommend recruiting an army and using Venice's naval prowess to land them. I'd recommend this pretty early on So they don't have time to expand or make friends. 4: Venice has a great navy. Upgrade your naval units as quickly as you can. Doing so will make defense of holdouts like Iraklion and Rhodes that much easier, not to mention Venice's convenient location means your navy can land troops almost anywhere.

[@alessandrobenvenuti6551]

Venice has the best Navy Historically. A big, bad enemy army is useless if your mighty navy sinks them before they can even land on your soil.

[@lochurquhart1499]

Stradiots are actually broken in game as due to a bug they're the most powerful cavalry unit Eg. Not dying to pikes in a Headon charge.

[@Austin-sw3mf]

I'm sure someone already mentioned it, but you can actually recruit the base Italian Militia from your walls after the palisade ones, no town watch building required. This is pretty fantastic. They're not amazing troops, but they're head and shoulders above the town militia, spear militia, and levy spearmen the non-Italian European factions can recruit, and on par with the sergeant spearmen most other European factions can recruit, only being weaker in their lack of bonus vs cav and inability to form a schiltron. They're still good for getting decent early game armies up cheaply, so you can swarm the rebel settlements before your enemies have the chance to. Obviously rush the building for Italian Spear Militia, bc they're only slightly worse than Armored Sergeants with 1 less defense, but 80 florins cheaper to recruit, and 30 florins lower upkeep, and actually the same upkeep as regular Italian Militia, though a bit more expensive to recruit. They're also able to be recruited WAY earlier, so you don't have to worry about hiring mercenary spearmen to get a beefier front line.

[@EricTheActor805]

I agree with taking Zagreb, Durazzo and Rhodes as soon as possible, but why not try and take Florence, Ajaccio on the island of Corsica and Cagliari on the island of Sardinia, which will make you a Mediterranean naval superpower Florence will give you access to Sardinia and Corsica, which will give you access to Tunis, which will give you access to Timbuktu

[@earvindinoso7689]

Yeah, see, Milan LIKES to get Ajaccio, and Sicily wants Cagliari bad. You better just eliminate Milan fast when it's trying to grab land as they tend to leave little garrison in their cities. You'd be better off leaving Sicily alone and let them deal with the Moors.

[@omicroneridani7456]

One can but concur, doubtlessly. This strategy, though, tends to attract the bellicose attention of pretty much everyone who's got access to the Mediterranean, so this plan shouldn't be undertaken without adequate preparation.

[@DefeatedRoyalist]

Once I secure northern Italy as Venice I usually like to try and recreate historical armies via mercenaries. I like to follow the composition of the late 15th century Venetian alliance against invading France in particular their strategic victory/tactical failure against the French at Fornovo:) X1 General center rear X1 broken lance with General in rear X2 Stratioti cavalry on one flank X2 militia cavalry opposite flank stratioti X1 condotori cav as reserve X2 pike militia center (stack and lock them together for great results) X3 spear militia placed at center 1 either side of pikes arrayed in blocks, 1 rear X2 pike mercenary (same plan as pike militia) X1 Venetian infantry in reserve center X1 Arquebus arrayed as skirmishers X1 hand gun also skirmishers X1 crossbow Pavise last skirmisher X2 artillery (mix of your choice the less uniform the better, although field arty is more of a post Fornovo addition) Ideally you would want to have some form of archaic checker board formed with each block. Or go with the 3 armies approach. Also have your cav closer to your skirmishers for quick support. This is a semi accurate composition that I had a lot of fun with:) the more mercenaries the better!

[@xannymanny9754]

Small thing, you’ve got the high and late periods mixed up the high period is the in between of the early and late periods, best example of this is that armored swordsmen are high period while the arquebusiers are late period, but you get the swordsmen way before the gunmen

[@arnijulian6241]

Crossbowmen of Venice & Milan were famous for fighting in ''snow'' in the alps to the west, north & east that surround the Po valley. The advantage of a crossbow unlike a bow is once loaded it is ready to volley which in uneven natural fortress like terrain works to great effect. A bow unlike a crossbow requires the chest as in muscle & breath to notch then release being tiring enough in optimal conditions much less in multiple feet of snow sapping your stamina not to mention strength. Javelin & crossbows are far more suited to highly mountainous terrain not found in England or France with flat plains & marshland for the most part. The mountainous Iberian region rarely used archers in the grand scheme favouring light cavalry for the most part. A nation generally fights to it's environment with the exception of France using heavy cavalry in marshes of damn places as they wanted to emulate the Burgundians, Polish & select states of the HRE. Personally I am not found of cavalry though if they are to be used I say you go all or few for the Mongolians had around 4 horses to each light archer & heavy lancer. England in contrast had only 10% of it's forces be mounted for scouting & messaging if that. England had heavy cavalry on the Island but was not abundant & not practical to take to continental Europe hence why Britain relied heavily on pikes, bills, spear & most of all the long bow in conjunction with cannons when they became a thing as you can put them in a gun ports by cutting a few holes above the water line in a sea vessel. Britain was made for piracy hence the 1st permanent navy was formed from pirates in the 1500's mainly from Cornwall, Bristol & London. I consider Mongolia & England a great historical comparison of how an infantry or in contrast all cavalry army is done. For all the strengths & mobility of cavalry take them off the plains of mainly eastern Europe-northern Asia they become a burden rather then a advantage.

[@Lycurgus1982]

Venice seems like the most well rounded faction in this game. At least that has been my experience.

[@infiniteqwerty7623]

Frey Jepson its my fav faction cz you can move around quickly because their navy is excellent

[@ishlazz1307]

Yup, but almost every neighbors faction wanted to declare war toward Venice 😂

[@ambrosiogiovanni6952]

They're basically the "Rome" of the game. Solid heavy infantry that is really efficient and versitile on the battlefield, with good reliable cavalry as support and decent missile troops.

[@armandom.s.1844]

I think is a broken faction given the lack of real disadvantages. Venice should not have access to feudal knights in order to balance its strenght.

[@jaystrickland4151]

Stradiots are the best Calvary in the game if you micro correctly. The fast moving lets them charge and disengage. Many multiplayer players wont play if your bring strats.

[@rjbonacolta]

I usually go straight for milan, and make an alliance with the pope

[@birdofgrey6542]

This is the easiest way to win. Holding Northern Italy makes you the #1 faction right off the bat

[@ajaxtelamonian5134]

Probably one of my favourite campaigns.

[@theowulfanxiesen134]

There is one excellent use for peasants in Rome total war but I don’t know how well it works in medieval: wherever you disband peasants, they add to that regions population, which means you can shuffle around peasants and affect the economy, regional growth, religious preferences, and even overload a bunch of your peasants into an economy that can’t support it and cause civil disorder

[@wxj5640]

actually dismounted men at arms sucks, I was playing as Milan and they collapse quickly against dismounted feudal knights since they have lower morale, the stats looks promising but not on battlefield All the Italian faction heavily rely on their spear militia, and their Flag buff from the wagon

[@LinardsZ]

at turn 20 you should have pavise corssbows

[@earvindinoso7689]

You can actually get them after 3 turns by building the city watch first in Venice. Them xbowmen are great general killers and snipers.

[@alessandrobenvenuti6551]

I love playing as the Venicians even more than the Heilige Romanishe Reich (Holy Roman Empire). Probably because I live near Venice itself. There could be a conflict of Intrests but still... Venezia regina dei mari

[@Admiralofthedeeps]

I immediately allied with the other Italian states and HRE and Poland then attacked Hungary and wiped them out before they became too strong. I've now driven the Byzantines out of europe and taken constantinople and that will be the extent of my Eastern expansion for now. Its a good position for Venice to be in early game I think.

[@deanceliku2313]

great video!!!!! keep up the good work 😊😊😊😊😊

[@lugotorix6173]

dean çeliku Thank you! Glad you're enjoying the videos

[@omicroneridani7456]

The Doge wannabees (in other words, those who select Venice 😀) need to brace themselves and get ready for a complicated, demanding and very open campaign. I always find it quite arduous to make ends meet for the first century of play, keeping an eye on the frayed borders the Most Serene Republic has and the necessary troops to keep them sufficiently protected. As any Venician player knows, it's just a matter of time before he ends up slugging it out with the Milanese and Byzantines; not to mention the Imperial bully boys, who tend to swarm down with the foolish idea of besieging no less than Venice itself. However, one of the most fascinating and complex factions, to me. Good video, of course, but that's the standard!

[@KIM-JONG-UN-84]

Show us who would win rome units or medieval units

[@EricTheActor805]

Please do Napoleonic Total War

[@elvenatheart982]

Ah memories I remember playing this game in Highschool I had ni idea how to win battles so I always used auto resolve😂😂😂

[@Healthy_Kawk]

Spending like 20 seconds on stradiots that are literally best unit in entire game. Cool

[@daveotoole2k7]

High period is mid game not late late period it’s early high and then late

[@KIM-JONG-UN-84]

How many times have i heard you say peasants are bad and i dont use Fog of war to cheat 😂😂😂 i can hear the anger each time u repeat urself lol

[@lugotorix6173]

hahahaha I've said it MANY TIMES

[@slayer19978]

why did they chose not to allow naval battles u can only resolve it

[@pauldodds9646]

They hadnt come up with them yet

[@randomguy2023]

@ Paul Dodds they actually had, but threw out the idea because the engine couldn’t handle it.

[@bluecat2186]

He doesn't know that high is after early lmao What is he doing here making guides if he doesn't know such basics

[@lugotorix6173]

Blue Cat When did I say high was before early?

[@kevinbrown6286]

3 minutes in and it’s over 50 lip smacks like why do that

[@sharkyjeff]

the lowest effort video i’ve ever seen

[@kevinbrown6286]

You do way too much lip smacking it’s nasty

[@kevinbrown6286]

So disgusting

[@AntonioTripodi17]

What?

[@kevinbrown6286]

@@AntonioTripodi17 the guy is constantly lip smacking the entire video it’s fuckin gross what do u mean what

[@randomguy2023]

Is something wrong?

[@kevinbrown6286]

U don’t hear the constant lip smacking by it’s gross

[@ileriduzeytarih7138]

British accent's general feature