So here it is the second part of the campaign on Venice with the 3 new mission, starting with the most infamous moment of the story of Venice, the fourth crusade.
After years of submissions and fealty to the ERE, you turn against Constantinople when the occasion presents under the form of an exiled prince, and of a huge crusade army that have a debt with you.
You start by besieging the capital of the bizzantines empire itself. Your crusader allies (franks, teutons, and maybe burgundians and sicilians too) block the city from the mainland, besieging the huge walls, while you with your huge fleet and some allied troops (in the form of frank and teutons paladins) took quarters into the the Galata settlement, the other side of the Golden Horn. You start in imp.
You have a small eco, but a huge fleet and army. Your first objective is to destroy the bizzantines fleet and rase 3 coastal castles (you can boom, but it’s advisable to rush), 2 you can destroy them with CG, but you need to disembark to destroy the third.
Meanwhile, your allies will try to breach the main walls, and keep the defenders busy. Time to time each of them will help you by giving you some cavalry units.
After that, you need to breach the walls and escort the bizzantine prince to palace, where he can be crowned, for that, you need to make your way against the bizzantines army, and the formidable varangian guards (vikings and slavs infantry).
Once the new emperor is on the throne, a ceasefire beghings (the old emperor flee with the imperial treasure). He tribute you some gold, but it’s not nearly what he promised you for having him crowned, so the runs for spoils of war begins. So the ostilities start again, your objective now is to gain what the bizzantines still owe you in the form of relics, trade carts (emperor in a barrel) and relic carts. You need to conquer 10 of those scattered around the city and bring them over to your Galata headquarters. Meanwhile, you need to punish the young emperor by capturing him (he’ll seek refuge in a fortified imperial palace). You also have the option of paying the varangian to have them desert the bizzantines and abandon the city. Once you have 10 artifacts and the emperor once again, you win, and you split what remains of the bizzantine empire with your allies.
After years of rivalry with Genoa, they decided to strike you at the very heart of your reing. After they took the stronghold at Chioggia they locked you inside the lagoon that kept you safe for centuries. So you need to barricades the channels and arm you citizens, while you wait for your fleet to return from the east.
So you start with the whole city of Venice, and the islands of Giudecca and Murano under your control, but you are surrounded by the enemy fleet and any other land territory is occupied by the genoese. You have a huge amount of resources, but few ways to gather more. You don’t have any space for farming, but you can fish. You have small mines of gold and stone, but not nearly enough to bring you to victory, and you don’t have any wood to chop. Also, with the exception of the main island and the Istrian outpost, al other land territories are connected by shallow water, so both ships and land units can move freely.
So after you fought off the first wave of warships, you need to find a way to get more resources. To get gold, you can trade to with a venetian outpost on the Istrian peninsula (where you can also hire FU druzina condos as mercenaries). In order to do that, you need to fight of the blockade of the lagoon a get to open sea and start sending trade cogs (and protect them).
To get wood instead, you need to secure an access to the river to the north, by destroying the enemy ships there. After that, it’ll timely spawn an allied transport ship, that you need to protect until it reaches the safely of your arsenal in the main city (then they tribute you 1000 wood each time).
For stone, you need to buy it, for food, you can fish or use fish traps. You start in castle age and can reach imp.
Lastly, at the edges of the map, there are some relics, and feritorias. The latter are controlled by the genoese, but if you destroy the towers around them, you can take control of them (some have just keeps, other from fire towers and fortified towers that can even kill ECG).
After you re-took some control of your supply lines, you receive reinforcements, in the form of both ships and soldier (stradiots, arbs and BBC). With those and the new units that you are able to train, now the genoese from predators becomes preys. You now have to siege and raze to the ground the stronghold at Chioggia (made by fortified towers, fire towers, castles, feritorias, barracks, ranges, siege workshops and docks, they don’t have an eco, but have DM resorces and feritorias) which is heavily defended. The position of the stronghold is between the lagoon and the open sea, so they can treaten both the wood and gold supply, other than the main city. Since they are Italians in imp, you need to act quickly before they become too strong. Also, when you receive the reinforcements, they get tributed resources and reach imp (they start in castle age like you) to make them even more dangerous. When you are able to destroy completely them you win the mission.
After dominate the Mediterranean for centuries after defeating both the bizzantines and your Italians rivals, a new treat appears at the horizon, the Ottomans. In order to protect you interest, you form the Holy League with the Genoans and the kingdom of Spain, creating one of the biggest fleets that the word has ever seen, but will it be in time to save the venetians island of Cyprus, besieged by the turks.
You start with a small number of units, arbs, HC and condos, with some saboteurs (the heroic unit from the last mongol mission not the petard). You are conducting a daring sorty outside of the walls of the city and behind the enemy lines, you goal is to protect the saboteurs and use them to destroy 5 objectives (gunpowder stocks, siege workshops and grain deposits) killing some enemy guards and avoiding the main army (you can use the condos to snipe the janissarys). After the last objective is destroyed, you are discovered, so you make your way to a trench on the front lines, where you reconnect with another raiding party and you need to kill the BBC that are hammering your fortifications.
After that, the turks counter attack you with cavalry and HC, so you need to laid a trap for them. You can use your faster moving arbs and HC to lure the enemy charge from where you are, to a hill with some trees between the turks camp and the city of Famagusta. Once the enemy are between the 2 patches of trees, from them stradiots charge down hill into the enemy army (between your remaining foot soldiers and the stradiots, you should be able to win but without too many soldiers letf).
After this successful engagement, you retire inside the city, since you still suffered heavy losses. The city is an “almost-square” with the sea on east, and a castle on the south-west angle, with its own walls. On the north-west angle there is fortified tower. 2 FT are also present at the north and south of the coast were the city docks are. Lastly a castle protect the access to the dock, being between the main city square and the docks. You have any kind of building that you may need inside, with some BBC, pike and arbs/HC left in defense of the city. You also have some vills, fishing ships, galeons, fire ships and a galeass. You are in castle age and can get to imp.
There are some segments of the city destroyed and in rubble, there you can mine stone to repair or rebuild your fortifications. You can farm, but you don’t have a lot of space, so it’s better to fish. There are also some wood and gold inside the city, but it’ll run out soon. In order to get more, either you send vills to collect the ones outside the city, or you conduct more sorties, and you destroy several trade workshops behind the enemy camps. Every TW destroy tribute you 500 of each resource. For that you can either change the enemy trenches, or use transport ships to loop around.
So once you take control of the city and you need to last as long as you can, for that you need to avoid that the enemy brings to many units inside the city’s main square. If they do, you have 1 minute to kill them or force them out otherwise you lose. You need to survive for at least 40 minutes this way.
The turks attack in three different way:
- By sea: the easiest attack to repeal, since on sea you have a more decisive advantage. The turks will trying to unload some cavaliers and xbows inside the city, accompanied by galleon and a ECG. This is the only kind of attacks that you can definitely stop by destroying their 2 docks (one north and one south of the city), but it’s also the one that bugs you the less, so you need to weigh if it’s worth the risk of investing too much on this.
- By a massive bombardment: in this case, the turks will start hammering your wall and buildings with their BBC, accompanied by janissarys. In this case you need to sorty out of the city to destroy all the BBC. (Both turks and venetians can use all siege weapons with the exception of trebs, who are blocked for both, to avoid having a turtiling treb war).
- By storming the walls: in this case the attack will start with the turks that’ll send forward some siege rams and petard to destroy your walls and fortifications. You need to quickly kill them, because soon after a wave of janissarys, 2HS and hussars will follow, trying to storm the city and reaching the main square.
When you will have reached your 35th minute of defending the city (so with 5 minutes remaining) all your walls (stone or palizade) will be automatically destroyed, and you won’t be able to build anymore defensive building. This time will also coincide with a massive with an all-in attack, with hussars, janissarys and 2HS.
Again, you’ll need to survive for another 5 minutes. After that you’ll win, but the game won’t stop there, if you want can keep playing and see how far you can go each time. To have the game stop you either have to be utterly destroyed (the main square objective does not work anymore after 40th minute) or you need to resign, symbolizing the surrender of the city after a year long siege.
Despite losing Famagosta and the island of Cyprus, the venetians still managed to buy time for the Holy League fleet to assemble, and to punish the the turks by defeating their fleet at Lepanto, stopping their expansion at least for now.
NOTE: If the venetians would be even added as a civ in the game, they should become the player civ in the historic battle of Lepanto (instead of Spanish). In fact, even if it was an habsburg to have the command, the war was started by the venetians and they brought more than half of the ships to the battle.
Sorry if I edited and post several times the same campaigns posts, I just wanted to have them all grouped together and I didn’t had the time to write all of them together.
The 2 last post are the definitive ones, I removed all older posts.
