Milan (M2TW Faction)

Milan are an Italian faction that begin with Milan itself and Genoa under its control. These homelands are surrounded by mountains to the north and west and the Mediterranean sea to the south, making it relatively secure from surprise attacked by the more powerful Holy Roman Empire to the north or French Kingdom to the west. Its weakness then, is the other Italian factions, Venice may be a tempting target for early expansion if marching over mountains to attack powerful factions isn't your idea of fun.

With Venice taken, the Eastern approach into your northern Italian heartlands will be just as secure as to the east and north, and, so long as the faction isn't excommunicated, the Papal States should prevent Sicily from invading from the south, meaning that, thanks to the richness of the northern Italian provinces, Milan will grow into a rich, and therefore powerful empire that is both secure from attack and has lots of options for whom it should unleash its armies on. Another option (that the AI seams to take a lot) is to push into France early on, due to the factions relative weakness when compared to early Milan.

As with other Italian factions, these armies are likely to be composed of quality militia units and various castle-trained troops to augment the armies, and fill in roles that the militia cannot perform, Bern, north of Milan, is a good target to produce troops for this purpose. The gunpowder selection includes both musketeers and monster ribuarb's. As a trading faction, ships are of a very high quality.

Unique units include; Genoese crossbowmen, in both militia and castle-trained variants, these are pavaise crossbowmen that can fight in melee if the situation is desperate enough for them to, the men trained in castles are a lot stronger at both shooting and in a melee than the militia trained men. and, Familia Ductile, heavy cavalry that can be trained in cities.

In most cases, Milanese battle strategy will be conventional, and focussed on defensive battles, with genoese crossbowmen, artillery or musketeers skirmishing in front of a line of Italian spear militia, with both dismounted and mounted cavalry on the flanks and a corocodo standard positioned behind the main line of militia. the obvious weakness is horse archers, and even archers can cause a large number of casualties against this strategy, factions with heavier infantry such as dismounted gothic knights (available in most mods) or Janissary Heavy infantry can also cause lots of damage against this, as, unlike Venice, Milan lacks any real unit that can defeat them in melee.