Italians

The Italians are a civilization within Knights and Barbarians. This article covers Italy in the game and its history.

Outlines Homecity: Venice

Personality: Doge Erico Dandolo

Bonuses:
 * Merchant Ships generate coin
 * Mercenaries are cheaper for the Italians
 * ships are cheaper for the Italians
 * The Italians start the game with a free Market and Market upgrades are cheaper
 * The Italians receive 1 free peasant  with each Market, and  a fishing boat with each Docks tech

Unique Units


 * Pavise Crossbowmen: replaces Crossbowmen, more powerfull but does not have defensive bonus on walls
 * Stradiot: replaces Ligth Cavalry, slightly more powerfull
 * Merchant Ship: replaces Cog, autogather coin when idle

Royal Guard Units


 * Man-at-Arms (Legionario Veneziano)
 * Knight (Lancia Spezzata)

Tactics The bonuses of the Italians serve to make them truly deserving of their status as The Naval Civilisation, and also make them a very straightforward economic booming civilisation, the idea here being that their economy is second to none, especially in early ages, but this is offset by a lack of military bonuses, which other civilisations do have.

History The Italian civilisation in Knights and Barbarians represents the Most Serene Republic of Venice, arguably the most powerful and influential state in medieval Italy. It played a major part in many wars of the period, was definitely one of the more expansionist powers in Europe, and one of the nations that helped shape history for many centuries after the end of the Middle Ages. A seafaring nation at heart, the Republic of Venice was the dominant naval power in the Adriatic and Aegean seas, and quite possibly in the larger Mediterranean Sea as well. Its naval power could be an enormous asset to Venice's allies, and a thorough pain in the backside for Venice's enemies. This manifested itself most obviously at the Battle of Lepanto, where a combined fleet of many European countries dealt a crushing defeat to the naval ambitions of the Ottoman Empire. In that particular battle, Venice's navy on its own was responsible for more than half of all the vessels fighting on the Holy League side.

This naval superiority was always the obvious goal for the Republic, with the city of Venice, the Italian Home City in K&B, not located on the mainland, but on a group of islands in the Venetian Lagoon. The city, then, was a natural fortress, protected by a great deal of water on all sides. Being isolated from the Italian mainland to more or less of an extent, and eager to differ from their Italian rivals, notably the Republic of Genoa, Venice developed a culture of its own, recognisably Italian but also recognisably different. The Venetian language started to be more and more distant from the other Italian languages in this period, and with Venetian Gothic, an architectural style even developed that was specific to the city of Venice, to be found nowhere else in the world. Being a cultural centre was never an issue for Venice, with much of the city's trade income being spent on patronage of the arts, and trade income Venice always had aplenty, coming from its many colonies in the Balkans and Greece. Venice also welcomed the Crusades as an economic opportunity, and like many Italian states, made enormous amounts of money ferrying crusaders from and to the Holy Land. Venice however, was a bit more thorough in its admiration for the Crusades, as shown by the Italian AI personality in K&B, Doge Enrico Dandolo. He carefully managed to redirect the Fourth Crusade from the Holy Land to the Byzantine Empire, where Constantinople was sacked, and Byzantine power broken to such an extent that the empire never quite recovered. All this, of course, gave Venice even more opportunities to establish colonies in the Aegean, solidifying its position as a major power in the Mediterranean for several hundred more years...

The Republic of Venice continued to exist long after K&B's timeline ended, and it would take until the 18th century before Venetian power started collapsing, until in 1796, the Most Serene Republic was forever brought to an end by the hand of Napoleon Bonaparte.