Milan strategy
From EU3 Wiki
[edit] Set up:
A good start is critical for hoping to survive in the chaotic Italian renaissance. Your top priority is an army leader, use your monarch as a general, if you are lucky, he will have insane amount of shock damage.
Another matter to solve quickly are advisors. Your absolute top priority is an advisor helping your Trade research. If you can't get one, take a Land one. You can ignore Naval and Goverment too, universities will make up for that. Take a stability guy if nobody useful is there.
Third step: alliances. Your best picks are, in order: Modena, Savoy, Mantua and Urbino. They have monarchies, same religion and cultural group. Start with a royal marriage to increase your chances, and hope for the best. There is some chance that the minor ones will offer you an alliance on their own, saving you a diplomat or two. Secure the others and be happy about it, you'll think about vassalization once you get some prestige (for better chances).
One last note before staring the game for real: at this point you can change policy sliders if/as you wish, but keep in mind that the italian unification trigger will be more probable as your centralization increase, and it takes qite some time to get it to a reasonable value. Being Italy is not a big advantage though over being Milan, other strategy is to go full Free Trade instead of centralizing to aid your trading efforts.
[edit] Early period:
Time to give Venice a teste of your steel... or maybe not. Well, the fact is that there's a 1000/4000/0 with an excellent commander waiting for you in Brescia. Many people think that it's a cakewalk with Milan, those who played early patches. Austria was bound to attack Venice back then when Venice was busy with you. If you're playing 1.3, forget that, Austria will probably head north uniting Germany instead of helping your pityful country. You are on your own here and the odds are strongly against you.
Play it right though and no harm will be made to your lands. Don't unpause the game yet. Do the following: Convert your ruler to a general, join together your two armies and make him lead them. Make them move south to Parma immediately. In Parma start building a cavalry unit. Disband your whole fleet and move your budget slider as far as it's needed for you not to have to take a loan.
Now slowly unpause the game. You will see your King head south and be caught by Venetian stack. He is very likely to win this battle, 9 out of 10 tries he wins. If he doesn't just withdraw him to Parma. And if he does... withdraw him to Parma too. Your new cavalry unit should be finishing to build when he arrives there. Venetians will focus on storming Lombardia. Watch them carefully, they are very likely to make an assault on your walls and fail, they will lose a lot of troops in the process and this is your chance. Be quick, attack them and pray they don't manage to bring reinforcements in time. If you drive their army out of your borders, do not follow. Retake your capital if you need and hide in Parma again for another sneaky attack. Even if they don't assault, their morale and numbers will be dropping down slowly due to attrition. Use that to your advantage and don't rush your attack. Wait till they are weak enough, push them back and hide again. You can make such attacks from Savoy if Venetians manage to push you back from Parma.
After a number of such wins puny Venetians will notice they're hopeless and ask you for white peace. Don't bother asking them for it yourself, they just won't accept and your relations will drop making it even harder in future.
[edit] Rebuilding the country
If you managed to get white peace in the war, you can congratulate yourself, you achieved something AI almost never achieves. Now you have to proceed quickly to rebuilding your country as you don't want to be in such a situation like you was when the game started.
Find the richest trade center on the map. It's Vlaanderen or Lubeck, send your merchants there. If you haven't moved your slider yet, move it towards Free Trade. I hope you hired advisors aiding your trade. Take Shrewd Commerce Practices as your first National Idea and do trade. Invest much in your trade tech. This will provide you with enough money to survive the start.
Disband all your armies except 3 or 4 units of cavalry. If you made your Doge lead them, make him not lead them anymore, he will live longer thanks to that.
Get proper allies quickly. You want to ally with Modena and Savoy and then diplo-annex them. It will double and triple your strength. Keep the alliance with Tuscany though, you need every help you can get.
Be aware that Swiss and Venetians can come for you quickly, and be aware also that there's little you can do to prevent this except having a number of good allies who have their armies close to aid you. Modena and Savoy are perfect for it, Tuscany also can help.
Do trade and try to be peaceful. Pray for Venetians to get busy with Ottomans or Austria. It will happen sooner or later as puny Venetian republic was teasing everybody around them for last few hundreds of years.
Try to unite peacefully monarchies around you. By 1500 you should own at least Modena, Savoy and Mantua. Everything beyond that is an extraordinary achievement. Ally, make a royal marriage, grant and take military access, bribe them and ask to be your vassals, this works.
After first 50 years you should be at least a regional power capable of waging a war against the Pope and the republics on the peninsula. Vassalize them and diplo-annex afterwards.
