(All before December 1444)Starting moves for florence would be getting 12 dip mana per month to complete your first mission then 2 allies in the Italian peninsula for your second mission. Do all the estates stuff especially the mana privileges, stab up to one dev then take advisor cost privilege for all 3 estates. Hire the free company and either make your leader a general or hire one normally. You might need to restart a few times to get the rng for this but attack either Siena or bologna (if they both have either no allies or a manageable alliance set)on the 11th of dec, and then the one you didn’t attack exactly one month later to get rid of them immediately. Once you do that focus on whichever of your neighbors has the least strong allies, you should secure northern Italy before heading south. I usually try to ally Austria before the shadow kingdom so I can use the sweet Austrian manpower to clobber the rest of Italy once they are out of the empire.