WTH Two Sicilies?

Here's the Golden Rule of Victoria 2, as I see it:

If you have two countries with similar political and social conditions (like literacy, liberalism, technology, consciousness, etc.), the one with the larger population is eventually going to have a higher industrial and military score.

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So yes, the Two Sicilies have a decent chance of screwing up Sardinia Piedmont's party because they have more population. This gives you more flexibility in general, and means that when you eventually become a Great Power, you'll have more bite than you would as S-P; a higher score will also help with the influence game a bit. On the other hand, the Redshirt event still might fire for S-P, so a shrewd player will have to pay attention to the peninsula, and will have to antagonize Austria earlier to form their union.

I usually go with SIC for Italian unification because even though SAR has a higher starting literacy, the pop advantage is pretty big and it's more isolated so it can take parts of North Africa with less fear of Austrian or French intervention prior to unification, which gets more goods and soldiers. But yeah, you have to be fairly quick about it to avoid redshirts uniting north italy like InvisibleSandwi said.

This is definitely a problem for historical accuracy's sake. Wasn't Sicily (well, southern Italy) illiterate, non-industrialized rural farmland into the early 20th century? I know many Italian fascists (the Futurists, especially) made part of their platform the industrialization of southern Italy, and hated the South because of how agricultural it was. Sardinia-Piedmont was actually heavily industrialized by the end of the 19th century. There should probably be rebalancing on this question, because I've seen Sicily become a great power far more frequently than Sardinia Piedmont. Unfortunately, I most frequently see Italy never unify (Italy usually becomes a mess of fiefdoms in perpetual revolution, with Sicily eating up the Papal states. I generally see around half of Italy go commie, and the other half go fascist). The few times I see them unify is when I do it for them by conquest and release or sphering.

1. More population - more workers/soldiers- bigger industry/military/overall score.
2. Sphering can be disaster for nation industry without subsidies.
I played one game when Japan was sphered by USA until 1890 due to all factories unprofitable...

Valenhiem said:

This is definitely a problem for historical accuracy's sake. Wasn't Sicily (well, southern Italy) illiterate, non-industrialized rural farmland into the early 20th century? I know many Italian fascists (the Futurists, especially) made part of their platform the industrialization of southern Italy, and hated the South because of how agricultural it was. Sardinia-Piedmont was actually heavily industrialized by the end of the 19th century. There should probably be rebalancing on this question, because I've seen Sicily become a great power far more frequently than Sardinia Piedmont. Unfortunately, I most frequently see Italy never unify (Italy usually becomes a mess of fiefdoms in perpetual revolution, with Sicily eating up the Papal states. I generally see around half of Italy go commie, and the other half go fascist). The few times I see them unify is when I do it for them by conquest and release or sphering.

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The situation of Two Sicilies was complex but can be summarized in: backward country based on large agricultural estates with few very advanced cultural and technological spots (like the University of Neaples or having built the first railroad in the peninsula). The situation worsened a lot after the unification: most of the laws were in favor of the northern people/industries that acted with a conquest-like mindset; in few years the south was spoiled and organized crime rised as a response of the "invasion". Funny fact: still today a popular way of saying in southern italy is "Evil as a piedmontese".

In Victoria 2 you don't got this situation (Southern Italian become accepted culture by default) so Campania and Sicily end by being two of the most productive italian regions because of population; this don't mitigate the fact that the
Italian Unification event (redshirt) is very wacky, it absolutely needs a fix.

opellulo said:

The situation of Two Sicilies was complex but can be summarized in: backward country based on large agricultural estates with few very advanced cultural and technological spots (like the University of Neaples or having built the first railroad in the peninsula). The situation worsened a lot after the unification: most of the laws were in favor of the northern people/industries that acted with a conquest-like mindset; in few years the south was spoiled and organized crime rised as a response of the "invasion". Funny fact: still today a popular way of saying in southern italy is "Evil as a piedmontese".

In Victoria 2 you don't got this situation (Southern Italian become accepted culture by default) so Campania and Sicily end by being two of the most productive italian regions because of population; this don't mitigate the fact that the
Italian Unification event (redshirt) is very wacky, it absolutely needs a fix.

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Actually, after the unification the situation became a little better, if you count that less than 10% of population before unification was litterate (so roughly clergy. bureaucrats and part of aristocracy) and that the inefficient borboun administration never succeded in creating the condition for the industrial "take off" ( just think about the fact that the few industries around Naples were heavily depending from imported capitalists, mainly swiss and british men called from the borboun court) and also there was no banking sector, roads were chronically less developed than in the north-west and railroads after a promising start with the first railroad in Italy never reached a sufficient lenght until the unification. Damn, the borbouns were competent until the french revolution they had a good schooling program but then they simply stagnated.
Damn, go and find some data about GDP procapite and then come back and say that again if you dare! You'll see that from 1861 until 1915 (when government investiments in the south stopped until the '50) southern economie grew a lot, not like north-western or central-north-eastern one but surely grew more than in did in the last 2 centuries before unification.
That said, its true that the piedmontese were arrogant and that brigands were repressed in blood while the best thing to do was redistribute the land.
Now, any opinion is legit, but facts are facts, go and educate yourself.

Beagá said:

For those wanting unification earlier Two Sicilies is a better choice?

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Give a try to the Papal State: it starts inside France SoI, so you can easily conquer SIC thanks to the big blue guys (just try not to get overwhelmed by the sicilians before the french armies land. Sicily can mobilize quite a large army and starts with a strong attack force) and PAP has both North and South italian as accepted cultures, while Piedmont has only North and SIC only South.

My last Papal States game, France absolutely refused to invade Sicily. They joined my war, but did nothing, never moved even one army there and I got owned for my trouble.

If you want to leverage the French alliance, I'd say go after SP first. If you do it before France spheres them they'll agree to attack and they have a land border.

I'm surprised by that France behaviour. In my PAP game it has been the opposite: France was glad to invade Sicily and totally crushed it twice, but was "very unlikely" to join against S-P even if it wasn't in her sphere (thus i left it untouched, then Redshirts overrun a minor and gave me Italy, so i never had to try again).

I've also noticed that in 3.01 France AI conquered quite often Puglia (the eastern Sicily region), in my early HoD games this was like the old Spanish Arabia.