Best nation to form italy?

[Kathandis]

Depends on how you define best. Ignoring culture shifting since forming Italy is by no means a hard enough thing to do to justify culture shifting which is pretty close to cheating imo.

Easiest would probably be Milan. Great ideas, High development, you start in the hre which means you dont have to wait for shadow kingdom, and your in a nice central position to take the required provinces.

Venice is always an interesting start you start as a merchant republic but the thing I like about them is despite being natural rivals of both Austria and the Ottomans you start in a prime position to neuter both of them early on leading to some interesting games. Genoa can theoretically do the same to the Ottomans albeit with a bit more difficulty considering its harder your a little smaller but you dont have to be arch enemies with Austria so its a bit of a trade off.

Savoy is the historical choice

Naples is in an interesting position but their ideas are meh from what I remember.

Florence is a like Milan but with less development.

Unfortunately you cant form Italy with popeman but if you just want to play in the region their always fun considering the shenanigans you can pull with the reformation and the easy alliances.

Any of the opms would be a challenge but if you really want a challenge go with Urbino their a vassal to the popeman so your going to have a hard time getting people to support your independence aside from what ever medium power they rival and to top it off your not in the Hre so you either have to put a hold on your northern expansion or take a risky move of not taking much land when you win independence and hope no one wars you before you can buddy up to the emperor enough to join the hre.

 

[Yung_Buu]

I'd say Florence, usually works for me <33

 

[holyvigil]

Milan is the quickest. Venice is the best Italian country. And France is one of the best countries for wc.

 

[jdavis86]

Naples is easy last time I tried it, and they're actually quite strong.

Get a start where France has rivalled Aragon, and you basically can declare at game start and get independence and cores back. Eat papal states and venice, then gobble up the rest after Shadow kingdom. Maybe can do it faster with Milan or Florence, but that AE is yucky.

 

[True_Heir_of_Rome]

Naples has great ideas now, and it's easy to get France to support your war and take back your cores+ some provinces.

I actually went a colonization route as I had a hard time expanding at first and the Ottomans wanted my land. I eventually flipped to protestant so I could hold Rome with no malus and buff my military. It was a fun, successful run. I'll probably do it again now that there are +5 advisers, as I really could have used something to dump my money into.

 

[Regaccio]

I like Florence the best. Florence has some nice flavor (including the ever-so-rare 5% chance Florentine Theocracy) and while it's not as difficult as an OPM, it's not as easy as Milan or the Papal State for example. You can form Tuscany in the middle if you want to as well. Tuscan ideas are very nice (RIP interest per annum though), and I like Florence and Tuscany's map colors. Actually I kind of missed the sort of dark purple when I changed to green Italy because it looks somewhat similar to the Ottoman green which is right next door.

Genoa is another interesting choice because you can do things outside of Italy from the start. There's an interesting strategy I heard about once where you deliberately change religion to Sunni as Genoa and basically eat the Ottomans as fast as you can, then come back to Italy later once the Shadow Kingdom fires for seconds.

 

[Woifee]

It's some patches ago for me but I loved to do it with Florence. One of the mus fun games I ever had. Good Ideas i I remember right and you can conquer outside of the HRE early on and avoid AE. Great starting ruler. I avoided forming Tuscany.

I also went protestant because pope already hated me.

 

[iquabakaner]

It's some patches ago for me but I loved to do it with Florence. One of the mus fun games I ever had. Good Ideas i I remember right and you can conquer outside of the HRE early on and avoid AE. Great starting ruler. I avoided forming Tuscany.

I also went protestant because pope already hated me.

The pope pretty much hates you no matter what you do. I went with reformed with my game for that trade and dip rep.

 

[Shatter12]

I went with Milan and found the Ambrosian Republic pretty powerful as you get a +5% to morale and +10% to tax modifier, which makes you quite a decent amount of money and the morale boost can help you out early to mid game when morale can make a difference.
Not sure how Naples got independent though - pretty sure France and some other major powers supported Naples, and Spain just let them go which is pretty rare. Wondering how exactly to take Naples from the, next time if they are still part of a PU and are integrated as well...

 

[rjinswand]

Savoy > Milan > Florence
Granted, I haven't played Venice (who are probably quite easy if you can get into HRE) but I definitely think that Savoy is the easiest, by quite a margin. The only requirement for success is not being rivalled by both France and Burgundy at the same time, with easy access to the often-excommunicated Provence/Florence and Milan/Switzerland who almost never gets any strong allies. You can also just eat Burgundy or France directly together with whichever you didn't ally. Milan is also okay, but are severely limited by being landlocked the way they are; Lucca tends to join a relatively powerful trade league, Genoa nearly always allies Austria in my games and Ferrarra often gets either France, Pope, Austria, Aragon or any combination of these. Florence is definitely much harder than either of the others as being a republic really limits how quickly you can attain valuable alliances and you are very liable to excommunication.

 

[atwix]

Naxos, for the challenge

or Lucky lucca.

but in all honesty, i prefer savoy.

the most interesting are aquilea (protestant theocracy go!) or venice or genoa.

 

[bbqftw]

Any tribal despotism. Only reason to form Italy. Better options eastward otherwise, like Rum/Mughal.

One day they will make Andalusias set available to all...

 

[makaramus]

it may sound revolutionary but for me its venice
Conquer greek at start also consider taking cyprus with dominating navy compared to mamluks when you can. become monarchy after shadow kingdom and slowly conquer milan and papal states and form italy meanwhile you can also conquer bosnia and serbia too as bonus

in my tall game I had da medici dynasty when I became monarchy wich was also ruling france,russia,aragon(wich was almost spain) who accidently/forcefully entered union with me later (Aragon became junior member by itself I forced russia and france )
I conquered entire balkans, north africa,egypt/arabia while france aragon and russia are in my union.
I was reformed religion follower with 2 center of religions in italy wich later converted france too. forced aragon and russia (Irony ) to convert too

also venice got lots of strong events letting you to pick to have permant buffs too. if you are planning to stay catholic you can pick extra papal infulance . if you not then you can pick venice first for tolerance of heretics your province got extra production of glass and you are starting with old but very good ruler

 

[Magnificent Genius]

Oh yes; I completely forgot to mention something about how I formed Italy; and is another way one can go about it if they are willing to restart a few times.

You can start as Savoy; and Royal Marry Milan. Milan seems to never RM anyone of any decent size; so if you; as Savoy; RM Milan; you're usually the one who gets the defensive side in any succession war [And this means Austria comes in since you're in the HRE if someone outside if the rival claimant; and if it's someone inside; it's usually someone totally irelevant like Wutturmberg]

Milan starts with an old ruler. And while an event would USUALLY fire changing Milan into a Republic after their starting ruler dies; this actually only fires if the Milanese ruler has below 75 Legitimacy; or they go into regency. It does NOT fire if they get PU'ed.

Combined with the defensive Alps; a Savoy with a Milan PU is a power that can even push Austria around if they want to [Or Ally Austria and smash France] You can then kill Genoa and move into Italy that way; keeping Milan around until inherited [They have only a few provinces] or you integrate them.

I managed this in I think 7 resets. I mostly did it to see if it's possible. If Milan gets an heir; reset. It worked out; then I went with it and formed Italy and was so large by 1600 I was bored and stopped playing [I'd neutered France already]

I wanna know how to get this to work. In my game, all that is going to happen on Mian's ruler death is "noble of di Savioa assumes throne".

 

[Badesumofu]

I wanna know how to get this to work. In my game, all that is going to happen on Mian's ruler death is "noble of di Savioa assumes throne".

There are some arcane mechanisms that determine whether you get a dynasty swap or a PU/SW on ruler death. Atwix has a thread that details it all. But note the post you quoted mentioned that it took 7 restarts. You'd need a lot to go right to pull this off, but it could make for a strong opening for an mid-size Italian country.

 

[heliostellar]

I prefer to form it with Naples, even though that country contains none of the required provinces. Honestly, it’s more our of border OCD than anything. If you leave Naples to the AI’s own devices then by the time you are ready to absorb it, Sicily, and Sardinia, they will be integral parts of Spain.

Of course it is not a big deal dealing with Spain since they’ll probably be heavily invested in their overseas empire anyway. I just don’t want to make them an enemy most of the time to get to Italy’s “correct” borders.

Also Castile will invariably help you in you Independence War with enthusiasm.

 

[Woifee]

I prefer to form it with Naples, even though that country contains none of the required provinces. Honestly, it’s more our of border OCD than anything. If you leave Naples to the AI’s own devices then by the time you are ready to absorb it, Sicily, and Sardinia, they will be integral parts of Spain.

Of course it is not a big deal dealing with Spain since they’ll probably be heavily invested in their overseas empire anyway. I just don’t want to make them an enemy most of the time to get to Italy’s “correct” borders.

Also Castile will invariably help you in you Independence War with enthusiasm.

Yeah, that's awesome. You take one province, free napels and later feed it with its cores. Then you integrate it.

 

[raikaria]

I wanna know how to get this to work. In my game, all that is going to happen on Mian's ruler death is "noble of di Savioa assumes throne".

There are some arcane mechanisms that determine whether you get a dynasty swap or a PU/SW on ruler death. Atwix has a thread that details it all. But note the post you quoted mentioned that it took 7 restarts. You'd need a lot to go right to pull this off, but it could make for a strong opening for an mid-size Italian country.

The restarts were actually because Milan kept getting heirs. If Milan gets an heir; Milan enters a regency; and thus the Republic fires. [Likewise; Dynastic change -> Low Legit -> Republic]

That said; I just tried it on 1.24 [I did the Savoy->Italy run on 1.23.1] and it does seem that the PU calculations have changed somewhat, since it is indeed giving me the 'Noble ascends' instead of 'Succession War with Wutturmburg'.

If you roll back to 1.23.1 it works. Here's a screenshot of it happening as early as Nov 30th 1444.

And the resultant Italy in the 1650's [I'd probobly be larger if I hadn't waited for Milan to integrate on ruler death]. I kinda gave up the campaign at this point because Western Europe and the Italian peninsular is basically free food with France's state now.

 

[iquabakaner]

The restarts were actually because Milan kept getting heirs. If Milan gets an heir; Milan enters a regency; and thus the Republic fires. [Likewise; Dynastic change -> Low Legit -> Republic]

That said; I just tried it on 1.24 [I did the Savoy->Italy run on 1.23.1] and it does seem that the PU calculations have changed somewhat, since it is indeed giving me the 'Noble ascends' instead of 'Succession War with Wutturmburg'.

If you roll back to 1.23.1 it works. Here's a screenshot of it happening as early as Nov 30th 1444.

And the resultant Italy in the 1650's [I'd probobly be larger if I hadn't waited for Milan to integrate on ruler death]. I kinda gave up the campaign at this point because Western Europe and the Italian peninsular is basically free food with France's state now.

If you read atwix's guide, you would know that noble ascends/PU are pseudo-randomized (determine by unrelated factors like Papal succession). Usually you can get either PU or succession war within several years after the game start, after that it would turn to noble ascend.

Based on my limited observation, it is actually easier to get a Milanese succession war than an instant PU.

 

[holyvigil]

I just finished my Prince of Egypt run. And people who say Florence is better than Milan are so wrong. This was an interesting game for me because Spain Inherited Burgundy and Milan and they also had the Iberian wedding so they had the best game I've ever seen them have so it was fun beating them down.