Keep improving relations.īeginner’s tip: If you skip the earlier war, attack Venice when truce expires using the reconquest CB, you take less AE and Venice doesn’t usually have a lot of nations in their trade league yet. That fort was the difference between me losing a punitive war and just barely holding on. I really suggest going for the second option. It forms a solid defensive fort in the mountains to protect you against punitive war enemies from the north.

Get Waldstätte and Graubünden give Bern to Savoy.

Attack Switzerland and call in Savoy with promise of land.

But if they ally anyone bigger, you really don’t need to fight them right now and you can skip to the next war. Switzerland will typically ally couple of neighboring one province minors, so it won’t be very hard. And rinse and repeat.īeginner’s tip: The Swiss war is mostly optional. Attack your neighbor, grab a province and sit back till the AE is below 10 for all neighboring nations. Prepare to fight 5 or 6 wars to get all provinces.īeginner’s tip: If you don’t want coalitions, you can play passive. Provinces needed- Genoa, Milan, Modena, Verona, Mantua, Firenze, Siena, Roma, Ancona

Invest in becoming papal controller whenever you can.

Start building spy network on Switzerland.

Move your merchant from Genoa to Venice.

Starting improving relations with Austria and France.

Ally Savoy, Mantua and one of either Papal State or Aragon.

The reason is that you can’t have a set strategy for conquest and diplomacy when playing Milan, you will have to improvise a lot depending on alliances and rivalries around you. I intended to write this guide for beginners, but really it’s going to be for beginner-to-intermediate level players. I will divide this guide into Phase I, II and III, with each phase subdivided into conquest and diplomacy and a separate Milan or Italy specific game mechanics section in the end. Main Impediment early game- Aggressive Expansion And you are looking at a world super power from fairly early years. Combine that with the monarch point generation of the Ambrosian republic. Along with that you have two end trade nodes next to you, Venice and Genoa, which means you aren’t really going to have economic problems at any point. Your capital of Milan is also one of the most developed provinces at start and after a few events it becomes a province with the most development.

Milan starts in one of the highest developed area of Northern Italy in game.

The papal state eu4