Tuscany strategy
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Tuscany, one of many small countries in Italy. And one of the best in the region. Two very wealthy provinces, good technological progress, many little countries around to conquer. Played well can unite Italy easily and as Italy very easily dominate Europe. A good country for beginners, even better country for veterans tired after another world conquest with burgundian armies. Things are calm here, years are passing quickly, wars are short and easy to win, your enemies can be beaten with one or two sieges, wine is tasty, you can do a lot of sightseeing between your conquests (ever seen David by Michelangelo?). It's a country of genius people (Da Vinci, Machiavelli, Michelangelo...) and certainly one of the most interesting ones to play in this game.
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[edit] Starting position
Bad news first. You are small. You can't support any significant army as you have no manpower for that. That means you are not safe for most of your game. You are surrounded with countries that would like to expand into Italy and if you don't take necessary means at least one or two big players will join the game in your playground. You are a republic, monarchies don't like you, you can't become the Holy Roman Emperor.
Now good news. You are wealthy. Your two provinces produce a lot of cash. In your two provinces you have two (yes, two!) universities. You have great advisors that are able to rise your stability from -3 to +3 during a one year. You are hyper-teching for most of the game due to your wealth. You are a merchant republic and with high stability and right strategy you can dominate european trade.
[edit] Trading
This is key while playing Tuscany. You can double or even triple your yearly and monthly revenues being a good trader. But to be successful you have to plan carefully right from the start. You should aim at having Shrewd Commerce Practice (+10% merchant compete chances) as your first national idea. Then you should go straight for National Trade Policy (+10% trade efficiency). With those two having 5 merchants in each European trade center is not a problem.
Begin sending your merchants over to european trade centers quickly. There is plenty of space at the beginning so they can get in without having to compete with others. Check which center of trade in Europe is the best (17th page of the ledger, usually Lubeck (in Mecklemburg) or Vlaandren (in Burgundy) and send there your starting merchants. Move all your money to researching Goverment Tech and after a year or so (depending on your rate of success in trading, advisors, your Doge's administration skill and such) when level 1 is invented, take Shrewd Commerce Practice National Idea. Now you can safely proceed to placing merchants in the most valuable centres of trade in Europe. Send them in pairs, first one kills foreign merchant, second one jumps into the freed slot. Also, put all your research into Trade Tech. Each level of this improves your revenue by 2% and makes your merchants harder to get rid of by 1%. You want level two of it before you move on to researching level one Production Tech (allowing you to build workshops).
[edit] Fighting
You are surrounded with little and wealthy countries that share your culture (Lombard), this is the good news. The bad news is that you rely on trade a lot and thus you are not allowed to force annex anybody as low reputation will kill all your merchants in a month. You should plan your expansion carefully not to rise your badboy over 3 or 4 points. So don't do anything evil. Force vassalize countries you have conquered although it is very tempting to annex them right on. Don't be greedy. Wait those ten years. Bribe them. Then offer diplomatic annexation. You will earn 1 badboy point per province instead of 6. That's much better.
The problem is you have to move on quickly to conquer certain countries or others will take them and deny you from vassalizing them. One of those countries is Urbino (Ancona). Sicily and Papal States jump on it faster than Castille on Granada. Your first military operation has to be force vassalization of Urbino. If you neglect to do that, somebody else will beat you to it and you will regret as Urbino has huge manpower pool that would increase size of your armies significantly (well, you won't become France but one or two extra units of Latin Knights is a lot at the moment). Don't hesitate a second and attack them without a Casus Belli. You are not China, your stability will be at +3 again faster than you can notice, especially if you have left those two starting advisors.
Having secured Ancona, you have to do another quick move. Just next to you lies another little guy that is a quick target of many. It's called Siena and it has a university. Can you imagine a better situation than adding third university to those two you started with? Three universities mean +15 Goverment Research and also mean you will have those two trading national ideas we discussed before faster than anybody.
To conquer those two countries it is best to use cavalry-only army led by your Doge, even if he is not a good commander. Just make sure you don't send a guy that has 9 Administration skill to war. If you manage to get such a guy, keep him safe at all cost. Anyway, if your Doge has 5 or less of Administration and is not a genius in Diplomacy (6 and less), you want him die and the more he fights the more chances are to have him killed. Cruel? Well, it is better to get rid of an incompetent ruler than to watch this huge and nasty austrian army march through your land...
Now let's get back to our little conquest. You can't assault as you don't have any infantry. You wait till they surrender (takes a year, sometimes even two). Make sure that they are not at war with anybody before you sign a peace deal with them. If they are, wait a month or two occupying their provinces until they sort it out. If you vassalize them while they are at war, their opponents will siege and annex them just after your armies leave.
Now, when both Ancona and Siena are your vassals and are waiting 10 years for diplomatic annexation you can sit down and rest for a while. Send a warning to every single country in Italy, from Venice and Savoy to Sicily and wait for opportunities to join more countries to your vassals pool. That's called farming Casus Belli. Prepare yourself for future wars too. Build up your cavalry army up to the limit. Keep sending your merchants. Forget ships for now. You won't become a naval power any soon so it's a waste of money.
[edit] Universities
Italy is full of those and you can't possibly have too many of them. You start with two. Another one is very close to you, in Siena. Modena has two in their starting provinces. Milan has one in Parma. The Pope has a university in Romagna. Make sure those provinces are under your control as soon as you can.
Having them all gives you an unimaginable bonus to your Goverment Tech research. This bonus will put you ahead of the tech race and allow you to have three national ideas while others will have one. This way you can take both national ideas that make your trading profitable and without much delay get Quest for the New World to aid your production income or Military Drill if somebody strong is harassing you too much. This is an advantage that nobody else in the world will have, an advantage that you can build a great empire on.
[edit] Short-term dangers
You don't want an early war with the Papal States so help yourself and beat them to Siena and Ancona not to rise an early conflict over those two. Keep in mind that the Pope is wealthier than you are and can rise a huge mercenary army. You don't have means to counter it yet, so just pretend you are a good christian and would never do anything against His Holiness. At least until you are ready.
You also don't want a conflict with Sicily early on as it is allied to Aragon and your miserable two provinces will be chewed and eaten by them in five minutes. This is simply not your league yet.
You also should avoid crossing Venice and Austria. Leave them where they are, they are usually too busy with themselves to have any resources to spend on you so if you don't do anything silly you should be safe from them.
Don't be afraid of Modena, Milan and Mantua though. Those three can be vassalized quite easily if you have at least a half decent Doge and you listened when we were advising basing your armies on cavalry.
Genoa is a very good country to ally with. You don't have to participate in their stupid wars in Crimea if you don't like, just join the war and don't send any troops there. It is even better for you if they lose their crimean posessions, you won't have to send your troops there while conquering Genoa in the future. Also, crimean countries can't really retaliate in Italy at the moment, so don't worry about any counter attacks on your soil from them. (Which obviously doesn't mean you can disband your cavalry and spend the money on wine and paintings)
What is good in Genoa is that they are as wealthy as Venice but don't run into an early conflict with superpowers like those crazy Venetians do. Also, they have numerous armies (ok, ok, it's not Burgundy or France but relatively, in the region they are quite capable...) and many ships. Comes helpful in your early wars. Just make sure they don't get a province or two in those wars. Could make them too strong to kill later.
If Genoa doesn't like you, you can always start making friends with France or Burgundy. You need an ally that is close enough to be able to help you but also who is far enough not to have any special interest in acquiring provinces in Italy, especially those belonging to you. That's why you should forget about allying with Venice and Austria.
[edit] Long-term dangers
Sooner or later somebody you can't beat will join the game in Italy. Be it Austria, Venice, Aragon ("Sicily informs us that their throne was inherited by the king of Aragon" can make an adult man cry...), France. When that happens you have only one way to go. Make friends with that country and keep uniting little guys that are still left. Then wait for the right moment and betray the big blob when they are busy with somebody of their size. Flood them with mercenary infantry, siege as many provinces as you can at once and when they are tired of those little pesky insect of you, force them to withdraw from Italy. If you choose a good moment they will be more than happy to cede a province or two just to get rid of this little blue annoyance that you present to them.
Another danger you can come to is your Doge being a total loser. A guy with extremely low Administration skill can kill your merchants, make your economy die, stop your scientific progress, make your armies weak and your country sick. The worst thing is there is nothing you can do with that. If he really kills you, you can wage a war, make him a commander of an army and hope he dies during a siege. Or just wait until he dies naturally and somebody better is elected. Be warned that it sometimes takes up to 30 years for the guy to decease. Life is brutal.
[edit] Long-term opportunities
Keep changing your domestic policies towards Free Trade. This means more merchants for now and a lot of colonists in future. After having secured your position in Italy you can take Quest for the New World and colonize a big part of the world. Tuscany is capable of that. Plutocracy and Naval orientation make it little Portugal and trade revenues mean being able to afford many colonies. Just don't kill natives on the islands you are about to colonize. You need all the manpower you can get and those natives you haven't killed will join your population when your colony grows to a city (over 1000 of inhabitants). It is worth wasting a colonist or two to have another cavalry unit in your pool while trying to defend against aragonian invasion, isn't it?
Finally, if you are very successful in your wars in Italy and taking over all the Lombard countries, you can start thinking about becoming Italy.
To achieve that you need provinces:
- Firenze - you start with this one
- Siena - you secured it early, hopefully
- Ancona - another early gain
- 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 lower your prestige. Unite Italy and give Rome back to the old guy. (FIXED IN 1.2!)
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 Tuscany, 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.
