Milan (M2TW Faction)
Milan are an italian faction that begin with Milan itself and Genoa under its controal. These homelands are surrounded by mountains to the north and west and the medataranian sea to the south, making it relativly secure from suprise attacked by the more powerful Holy Roman Empire to the north or French Kingdom to the west. Its weakness then, is the other Itallian 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 northan Itallian 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 Scily from invading from the south, meaning that, thanks to the richness of the northan itallian 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 alot) is to push into France early on, due to the factions relative weakness when compaired to early Milan.
As with other itallian 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; Geonease 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 alot 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, Milanease battle stratergy will be conventional, and focussed on defensive battles, with geonease crossbowmen, artillery or musketeers skirmishing in front of a line of Itallian 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 stratergy, factions with heavier infantry such as dismounted gothic knights (avalible in most mods) or Janisarry Heavy infantry can also cause lots of damage against this, as, unlike Venice, Milan lacks any real unit that can defeat them in melee.
