Genoa strategy
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[edit] Introduction
Genoa is one of very interesting nations to play. It starts small in size but it already has its own center of trade (Liguria) and two colonies in Crimea.
What is great in Genoa is how easy it can become a colonial superpower. It is set up for that purpose right from the beginning as it is very naval oriented and set towards plutocracy and decentralisation. This makes her a country that is earning a lot from its overseas possessions, a sort of italian Portugal.
Your biggest problem throughout the game will be your high Mercantilism. You need to move your slider towards Free Trade whenever you are allowed to do so.
[edit] Trading
You may seem wealthy at first glance but you could use additional cash before you venture away from Europe and start building colonies. Don't be fooled by your five stars in your economical rating. Three of them you got only because you own Liguria. Remove those and you're somewhere at the european average.
To strengthen your budget and boost your research you have to focus on becoming a trading nation right from the beginning. Get your first National Idea as quickly as possible and choose Shrewd Commerce Practices. Also do your best to get advisors that add to the number of merchants you are allowed to send per year and to your Trade tech research. If there are none, take a statesman or an artist for Goverment research or stability investment, both are same good.
Having an edge in Trade tech and Shrewd Practices allows you to try to have 5 merchants in each known center of trade. Go to the 17th page of the ledger, choose the one that's wealthiest, get to 5 merchants there and move to the next one until you have them all.
Read trading strategies for more info on how to build up and keep your dominance in the trade.
[edit] Italy
As a trading nation you can't really afford any bigger bloodshed. Your reputation going too low (10 BB and more) can seriously hurt your trade. So try not to do anything evil and every time you wage and win a war, don't take any land but vassalize your enemy instead. The improve your relations for 10 years and take the guy diplomatically.
Focus your land acquisitions on provinces with the Lombard culture. This is your state culture too so you get full taxes and a lot of other bonuses.
Also, check where there are built universities in Italy (it's full of them, there's a little building shown on the map, closest one is in Parma) and try to get as many of those as quickly as you can. Having them all makes you the most advanced country in the matter of Goverment research.
You have to know that countries in Italy fight each other a lot. That makes it easy to unite them under one rule as their conflicts are a great source of casi belli. Proclaim a guarantee to each of the countries in Italy or warn them all. Doesn't matter. Every time somebody starts a war you are allowed to attack him for just -1 Stability.
Countries that are attacked early are Urbino (attacked by pretty much everybody during the first year, especially Tuscany and the Pope) and Siena which often gets into a war for Urbino or is a target of those who were beaten to Urbino. If you proclaim guarantees to those two, you will get your first casus belli during first few months of the game.
Remember, don't get greedy, don't take any land in the peace deal. Take money (50 ducats = 3 units of cavalry) and vassalize your opponents.
You will get half of their income. Use that income and 50 ducats you got from them in the peace deal to improve your mutual relations through gifts. After 10 years, provided your relations with them are over 190, you will be able to propose a diplomatic annexation to them, which will make them an integral part of your country and also will cost you only 1 badboy point per province instead of two. Quite a lot if you remember that going above 10 means bye bye to your trade incomes for 10 or so years.
Also, base your armies only on cavalry, you don't have that much of manpower to spend it foolishly on weak infantry. If your king doesn't have 6 or more administration skill, use him as your general even if he's not that skilled in military.
[edit] Navy
This is your wooden wall. Half of your core land is an island. You have two colonies you need to protect against greedy Crimea. You also need to be able to drop your cavalry whereever they are needed to secure your business.
You have quite huge navy at the beginning and a decent admiral to lead them, this is the good news. There is also bad news. They are all galleys which means they are not even half as powerful as they might seem at first glance. Second bad news is that you don't have a single transport and you will need those soon if you want to intervene in Urbino or Siena. So start building at least one very early and try to have around 4 - to be able to move your stack of 4000 of cavalry where it's needed.
Your high Plutocracy allows you to build your ships cheaply so don't neglect building up in this area regularly.
[edit] Big guys
There are three countries that might be interested to expand into Italy. The most dangerous of them is Austria that has short march to your land and wages an early war against Venice. You should avoid fighting Austria at least until you unite Savoy, Milan, Modena, Tuscany, Siena, Urbino and Romanga under your rule. If you're lucky you will manage to do that in your first 50 years of playing. Then you will have enough manpower and money to afford a war against Austria, choose the moment you attack well though. When they are busy with a major war against Poland, Ottomans, Hungary this is your occasion to take any Lombard land they might have from Venice and Mantua and also snap a gold producing province or two, if you are really a good commander.
Second country that might come in force, although doesn't do that very early, is France. They have a core province in Lombard (Milan capital) and are known for their italian ambitions. What I can advice here is that whatever you have lost to France is lost forever. You are not able to match their manpower, their generals are unbeatable and their armies very experienced and improved with Military Drill National Idea. So just wait, maybe the province will rebel from them one day and join you...
Third country that would like to join the game in your playground is Aragon. They are allied with Sicily right from the beginning and are the main reason why you shouldn't match with Sicily.
What you have to know about Aragon, especially if you haven't played them, is that they have the strongest navy in the Mediterranean and a very good starting admiral. So if you cross them your ships will be sunk and your provinces taken one by one. Avoid any wars with them and pray they didn't inherit Sicily. As far as Sicily is concerned, you don't have to worry much, it is not the land you need to unite Italy, it is also not that wealthy. There are no universities down there until they build themselves a few also. Their manpower would make you a serious opponent to Austria, but you can't get them until they are protected by Aragon.
[edit] Colonization
Like it was written at the beginning, Genoa is a naval nation and such nations can earn a lot through colonization.
The only thing that holds them back in Europe is their low value of Free Trade, but you were working on that right from the beginning to improve your trade efficiency so it should be not that much of a problem when you get your an opportunity to choose your second national idea. This one should be Quest for the New World.
Where to go you will ask. The world is so vast... and you can in fact go anywhere you want. Just remember that you have weak land forces and strong navy. So the best place you could go to is an archipelago that is very easy to defend with your navy as enemy troops can't operate around the place when their fleet was sunk in the ocean.
So the advice here is to colonize the Carribean archipelago, especially those little islands called Antilles. Of course you can go anywhere you wish, South America has a lot of gold for you, North America has great base tax and population growth rates. The easiest choice though is Carribean, it is worth doing just to see enemy armies stuck on your little islands with no place to retreat, surrounded by your navy and waiting for your overwhelming cavalry transport to kill them instantly.
[edit] Unification of Italy
This chapter was copied from Tuscany strategy guide and it applies to any country which has Lombard as its main culture.
To achieve that you need provinces:
* Firenze - capital of Tuscany * Siena - you secured it early, hopefully * Ancona - another early gain (often called Urbino) * Roma - the Pope has this one and won't give it away easily
In 1.1 there is a bug making it impossible to hold Rome for long as the Pope keeps spamming you with messages to give him his city back which lowers your prestige. Unite Italy and give Rome back to the old guy or delete the event file from your events/ folder and restart your game.
Also, you can't be at war (as it's hard to unite a country while it is occupied by enemies...) and your primary culture has to be Lombard (make sure you play Genoa, not Sicily).
The event will fire more quickly if you control each of:
* Pisa * Modena * Romagna * Ferrara * Mantua * Verona * Abbruzzi * Parma * Lombardia * Liguria
And if you have a Bureaucracy National Idea. High Decentralization can help here too and you have it from the beginning so make sure you don't change that till you are Italy.
The event itself will (obviously) change you into Italy, give you some prestige, a missionary and will raise base tax in one of your provinces by 1 ducat. If you decline the event, you will get the opposite.
[edit] Republic
You start as a republic and this is a sort of a disadvantage. You can't form Royal Marriages and you can't vassalize countries diplomatically. You also can't become the Holy Roman Emperor that would make your wars MUCH easier. Anyway, being a republic has some advantage. Of course merchant republic with it's 50% cheaper merchants is nothing worth dying for. But from a Merchant Republic, at level 11 of Goverment tech, you can switch straight to Administrative Republic that improves your Trade Efficiency by 5% and thus gives you a lot of additional cash because trading is your main source of incomes for most of the game.
[edit] Conversion
You have two Sunni provinces in the Crimea that you want to become Christian as soon as possible to get rid of a nasty penalty they have for not being of your religion.
Also, you want to stay very tolerant towards Muslim and towards Orthodox if you happen to border any such countries. Before you start colonizing, you have to improve your tolerance towards Pagan - it improves your colonists chance in the Pagan land.
