Breaking up Italian Alliances — a little help, please?

[volseraph]

Here's my situation: I'm playing Venice.

I'm allied to France, and Byzantium, Bulgaria, and Syria are vassals. I've successfully wiped the Ottomans off the map. I'd like to push into the Levant, but I'm losing too much trade income in Venice to other Italian states (Ferarra and Milan) to be happy right now, and I want to take one of them (probably Ferarra) out.

The problem: Ferarra is allied to Burgundy, France, and Naples (plus in the empire, so Austria will step in).

Ok, no matter, I can just DoW Naples to get them into the war. But Naples is allied to Castile, Austria, Hungary, and Ferrara (even worse!).

Milan, my other option, is allied to Burgundy, Portugal, and Bavaria, and Burgundy is allied to Castile and Savoy (and has a tendency in other games to proxy its allies in to wars).

How do I break up these alliances enough to squash one of my neighbors? Venice is losing a lot of money here!

 

[gajop]

Firstly I find it surprising that trade matters much when you've grown that big.
If you really want to dominate Italy, it's probably best to DOW some of the other nations, such as Hungary, and have its allies annul treaties.

 

[volseraph]

Firstly I find it surprising that trade matters much when you've grown that big.
If you really want to dominate Italy, it's probably best to DOW some of the other nations, such as Hungary, and have its allies annul treaties.

My aim isn't really to dominate Italy, just to rule trade in Venice, and then expand through the Middle East and control the trade from India.

I'm not losing money, but I'm getting a good 20 gold/mo from trade now. If I took Ferrara out, I could get that up to 30. (I'm also running at about 2x my naval forcelimit, so when I get Naval Ideas it'll help my bookkeeping a lot.)

My most likely next expansion plan is to release Croatia and force Hungary to give it back a pile of cores. Hopefully Naples doesn't pull half of Europe into the resulting war.