Venetian colonial army

I started a different thread on this before I had the army list. Now that I've got it, I'm wondering about how to put something together for these guys.

The Stradiots upgraded to 4VBU units look cool. It seems to me there are a couple of ways to put together an army with these guys:
- max out the condottiere with some skirmishers screens and use the rest of the points to fill out the army with stradiots
- take the minimums of condottiere and stradiots and fill out the rest with the various foot missile troops (crossbowmen, archers) and a couple of skirmishers.

How would you go about putting together an army with these guys?

It the army is Colonial prior to 1500 it probably doesn't have maxed out Condottiere. More likely to be maxed out T crossbowmen

Jim

Sort of played this army (actually it was just the regular Venetian) against Italian Wars French. Anyway, no pikes, 3 x T shot, 2x FL guys, 3 xCP Elmeti,  2x CL stradiots, 2x CL xbow. maybe 1xSk.

Formed a line of shot with FL interleaved in the center, 2 CP and 2 stradiots and 1 CL xbow on the right, one CP and CL on the left.

French had 2 large FP pike, one Swiss, one Landesknects, both with skirmishers, 2 CP gendarmes, and 1 CP 'archers' and some mtd Arquebusiers. And an artillery piece that got screened pretty quickly.

The French Pike came on in the center, and I used the shot to inflict hits on the pike, and used one FL to run off his skirmish shot and doppelsoldner but ended up fighting the Swiss pike. The FL kept losing the melees but kept throwing a 1 on their Cohesion. So they stood around for way too long. The other Landesknecht pike got whittled down by lots of hits and then tried to take on the other FL in broken ground. Those pikes got destroyed.

The cav fights were hit and miss. The stradiots got driven off by the mtd arquebusiers, and the Venetian gendarmes killed the French 'archers' but another unit was routed by the French Gendarmes--initial clash and then 2 follow ups. French didn't even get worn. Embarrassing.

Buy some fortifications for the shot. The FL surprised me with their usefulness. If you got lots of stradiots, mass them on a flank and throw them as far forward as you can to get in your opponents rear.