Italians are very good on paper. Their tech tree is quite open. Their only problem is a lack of powerspike in transition from mid-feudal to mid-castle in land maps. Its pretty easy to fix them. The cheaper gun power bonus can be removed and pavise can be added as a civ bonus
Foot archers except skirms have +1/+1 armour
The bonus will give Italian player the capability to push out archers who are more tranky and push against infantry archers openings or do a strong archer opening themselves. They will be good against scout rush civs as well like mongols and franks enforcing italians identity as a ranged anit-cavalry civ. Opponent civ skirms can easily counter them due to bonus damage. So the counter-balance system remains in-tact. The gun-power bonus can be switched with “Silk road”. The new imperial age technology will be “Renaissance technologies”.
"Renaissance technologies" - Gunpowder units +1 range
Cost 500 food, 250 gold
Renaissance was a major event which happened in late imperial age and hasn’t been captured well in AOE2 gameplay. It helped the city states catapult ahead of larger empires by becoming qualitatively superior to them. There were lot of innovations on firearms in particular which helped them wither any takeover by larger powers. Italians don’t need discount on gunpowder. They have pretty good archers for that role. What they need is technology similar to ‘siege engineers’ in late game. This will also help them overcome range disadvantage against late game civs like portugese albeit with a costlier composition.
“Renaissance technologies” will not make them a late game powerhouse. But will allow their imp timing advantage to start with a push which does not peter out due to lack of siege engineers. Let me know your opinions.