How powerful will Venice be?

You have a fair point about the weak link for Venice of trade connections but this is also an obvious weakness to everyone. Therefore it is very obvious to provide extra protection to those trade routes, most likely to the city Venice itself. Therefore you can have so many routes to gain a lot of gold to protect those routes and the puppet states. And therefore they have the Great Galleas. It is quite obvious that Venice carefully needs to protect those routes but TR can also be a weak link for other states. With Venice's ability to puppet CS, they could make far-away outposts and raid other civ's routes.

It's pretty much highly dependable on the situation, Venice could also have CS nearby and so for land-based TR. The only thing you have to worry about is if the AI will be able to use Venice to its full potential.

The civ should have the most money due to the double trade routes. I feel people underestimate that point. More base gold gets multiplied more after all. But that means Venice will be much better on larger maps with more civs than on smaller ones. And profit more from more water tiles on the map.

But what this leads to that the strength of AI Venice for me depends heavily on the buying decisions/flavours brought into the game. The purchase AI is horrible in the base game (hence the huge amount of gold available to the AI), that got fixed first by a mod, then by a official patch, so who knows what it'll be like in BNW primarily and secondarily for Venice.

I honestly think it's too early to tell here. I imagine that it will have been tested enough that it isn't the miserable lump which PrinceofNigeria seems to be making it out as, and at least one of the previewers thought it was a brilliant civ...

My gut feeling is that it will be extremely powerful, but only if played right. Like Byzantium, except even more so since it has active disadvantages if its power isn't employed properly. A large and easily attainable puppet-empire, supported with mass amounts of gold in Venice (which will be more than enough to pay for a little extra protection on the trade routes)...

I actually think it'll be easier for Venice to expand than normal, btw. You have a maniacally powerful capital, and you can acquire already-built-up cities with nothing more than a single Great Merchant... If you're going tall, and normally only have 4-5 cities, then you'll be able to get them pretty quickly and with an already functioning economy in those cities.

I think you're being somewhat illogical, Princeofnigeria. Venice is an extremely odd civ, but without having played it and with most other people defending it, how can you make such a radical dismissal of it?

Merciorum said:

I honestly think it's too early to tell here. I imagine that it will have been tested enough that it isn't the miserable lump which PrinceofNigeria seems to be making it out as, and at least one of the previewers thought it was a brilliant civ...

My gut feeling is that it will be extremely powerful, but only if played right. Like Byzantium, except even more so since it has active disadvantages if its power isn't employed properly. A large and easily attainable puppet-empire, supported with mass amounts of gold in Venice (which will be more than enough to pay for a little extra protection on the trade routes)...

I actually think it'll be easier for Venice to expand than normal, btw. You have a maniacally powerful capital, and you can acquire already-built-up cities with nothing more than a single Great Merchant... If you're going tall, and normally only have 4-5 cities, then you'll be able to get them pretty quickly and with an already functioning economy in those cities.

I think you're being somewhat illogical, Princeofnigeria. Venice is an extremely odd civ, but without having played it and with most other people defending it, how can you make such a radical dismissal of it?

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The problem with making a civ so radically different is that it inherently is hard to balance in accordance with it's playmates. I sincerely hope I'm wrong, and that Venice is a balanced civ, I will happily change my tag to "I was wrong about Venice", if they prove to be as good as you all say it shall be, but I have a bad feeling that "Interesting" will not translate to "Powerful". It is the same mentality that the community holds for Polynesia. I defend them to the death, explain clearly how They can easily overtake their more rigid opponents, and I say and believe that they are perfectly viable in vanilla, G+K, and will be near OP in BNW, but no one agrees, they all see them as weaklings, and the standard complaint is that what they offer is too weak, and the penalties imposed on them (Maoi) make them unusable. As well, I find it hypocritical that I am being a radical for dismissing it without trial, while the rest of you may shower them with praise without proper trial.

Princeofnigeria said:

Yes, but I may have multiple cities with harbors (thus multiple to keep colonies gold coming) that link to my capitol meaning I can afford to have one or two blockaded and still get trade money. Even if my capitol is landlocked I can link my overseas colonies to it with ease, whereas venice shall have but one naval link to it's capitol, and that is the capitol itself.

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Venice can have multiple naval links to its capital, it's just dependent on how many road-feasible cities it has. You're assuming that Venice will never have occasion to build a road or two.

VainApocalypse said:

Venice can have multiple naval links to its capital, it's just dependent on how many road-feasible cities it has. You're assuming that Venice will never have occasion to build a road or two.

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All I'm saying is that when it comes to cities, roads, and improvements, I'd rather rely on the certainty of my idiocy than on the uncertainty of the enemy's intelligence.

Oh, I agree. Making Venice so different doesn't seem to be the smartest decision for gameplay balance. But I think it's crucial to differentiate between the strength of a civ in the hands of an AI and of a human. Polynesai f.e. is often thought of as weak as they seldomly do good as a AI which is more due to their leader flavour than the uniques (a fact which is true for all civs, hence why the Iroquois are often very strong), but Polynesia can be really strong in the hands of a human (and AI as well, it's just not that likely).

Venice may be similar, and it's true we don't know it yet. In the end, it's dependent on how much is around in general and how the double (!!!) trade routes affect this for Venice. I bet they are pretty solid as a AI civ.

Also, AI Venice will not settle useless (tundra or 1-tile-away from coast) cities (since they can't), but overtake good city state sites. They will not have weak cities.

The AI might make a poor showing with Venice, especially if they don't have some early game warfare (I'm thinking that an early game strategy as Venice would be to puppet two cities with MoVs asap and declare war to capture some more puppets just to give a land buffer between you and everyone else), but generally speaking I think that they'll be on the better end of the Civs.

Bakspatel said:

You have a fair point about the weak link for Venice of trade connections but this is also an obvious weakness to everyone. Therefore it is very obvious to provide extra protection to those trade routes, most likely to the city Venice itself. Therefore you can have so many routes to gain a lot of gold to protect those routes and the puppet states.

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I wonder if it's actually worthwhile to defend your trade routes. If it's cheaper to build/buy/have caravan replacements to hand than maintaining a defensive fleet scattered across the world then the potential problem of Venice having to spread itself too thinly would effectively disappear. They'd need to have a stockpile of gold to hand to take the gpt hit but they should easily manage that kind of buffer and they would also need to ensure that the war did not drag on for too long which might be a bigger issue. Perhaps a half-way measure with smaller fleets situated at strategically city-states?

mitsho said:

The civ should have the most money due to the double trade routes. I feel people underestimate that point. More base gold gets multiplied more after all.

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I expect Venice to have more gold than others on account of the bonus trade routes but I am reasonably positive that it has been confirmed that trade route gold is not multiplied by city buildings.

Veneke said:

I wonder if it's actually worthwhile to defend your trade routes. If it's cheaper to build/buy/have caravan replacements to hand than maintaining a defensive fleet scattered across the world then the potential problem of Venice having to spread itself too thinly would effectively disappear. They'd need to have a stockpile of gold to hand to take the gpt hit but they should easily manage that kind of buffer and they would also need to ensure that the war did not drag on for too long which might be a bigger issue. Perhaps a half-way measure with smaller fleets situated at strategically city-states?

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Well I also can't image it to be profitable to have a large navy all along your trading routes, you definitely need to put some good protection at important crossroads. Losing one route shouldn't be an issue but I can imagine losing five in one turn is a big hit.

Bakspatel said:

Well I also can't image it to be profitable to have a large navy all along your trading routes, you definitely need to put some good protection at important crossroads. Losing one route shouldn't be an issue but I can imagine losing five in one turn is a big hit.

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True but only in GPT, which might not even impact you at all really if you're in the positive. It's lost gold but would the loss be more than the cost of a defending unit (probably two, it's pretty easy to kill one unit) for the lifetime of the trade route? This assumes, of course, that the defending units would actually manage to defend the trade route. If they failed then it would be wasted ship maintenance on top of everything else.

However, now that I'm thinking about it, protecting your crossroads or any other strategic position for that matter, seems a little silly. You're paying maintenance anyway so you may as well protect the routes from a surprise barb (or other) pillage. The only way this becomes an issue is if you have quite a number of stretched routes, which Venice will almost certainly have given the number of routes available to it.

Of course, this is all potentially moot. If the AI doesn't go and pillage your trade routes with gusto then one of the potential undermining factors to Venice is a non-issue. If they do go about pillaging them then Venice has to be in a position to reliably defend enough of them so as to not go into negative GPT (which could be difficult with a large navy) and Venice itself (potentially in addition to any puppets). The stakes Venice is playing with, in terms of its trade routes, seems much higher than everyone else - even though the basic consideration is the same, the scale of the problem is much, much greater.

Veneke said:

The AI might make a poor showing with Venice, especially if they don't have some early game warfare (I'm thinking that an early game strategy as Venice would be to puppet two cities with MoVs asap and declare war to capture some more puppets just to give a land buffer between you and everyone else), but generally speaking I think that they'll be on the better end of the Civs.

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This is my thinking as well. Venice's double trade routes is going to be tremendously strong.

I wonder if it's actually worthwhile to defend your trade routes. If it's cheaper to build/buy/have caravan replacements to hand than maintaining a defensive fleet scattered across the world then the potential problem of Venice having to spread itself too thinly would effectively disappear. They'd need to have a stockpile of gold to hand to take the gpt hit but they should easily manage that kind of buffer and they would also need to ensure that the war did not drag on for too long which might be a bigger issue. Perhaps a half-way measure with smaller fleets situated at strategically city-states?

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Good point. Iirc it's been noted that caravans/cargo ships are 75/150 which is trivial fairly early in the game.

I expect Venice to have more gold than others on account of the bonus trade routes but I am reasonably positive that it has been confirmed that trade route gold is not multiplied by city buildings.

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There is some evidence that TR income (any yield, not just gold) is accumulated in the city, and therefore would in fact be multiplied by buildings. (In one of the Indonesia screenshots the tile yields didn't come close to matching the gpt in the city screen.)

Seek said:

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There is some evidence that TR income (any yield, not just gold) is accumulated in the city, and therefore would in fact be multiplied by buildings. (In one of the Indonesia screenshots the tile yields didn't come close to matching the gpt in the city screen.)

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Perhaps I misinterpreted it, but MadDjinn's first BNW video @58:15 and onwards gave me the impression that it calculates gold like it does at present normally and then adds trade route gold on top of that (to prevent situations occurring where the gold from trade route A was used to boost the gold from trade route B. I might have that entirely wrong and but that was what I took from it.

Veneke said:

Perhaps I misinterpreted it, but MadDjinn's first BNW video @58:15 and onwards gave me the impression that it calculates gold like it does at present normally and then adds trade route gold on top of that (to prevent situations occurring where the gold from trade route A was used to boost the gold from trade route B. I might have that entirely wrong and but that was what I took from it.

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My impression was that the TR calculation was based on the city's base gold yield (before multipliers), but I also admit I could be wrong. Additionally, it's unclear at what point the TR income enters the city yield stream, before or after multipliers ... but at least it won't be long until we get the answers to these questions!

In either case, though, mitsho's statement will hold true in my eyes because gold begets gold via purchasing power.

Seek said:

My impression was that the TR calculation was based on the city's base gold yield (before multipliers), but I also admit I could be wrong. Additionally, it's unclear at what point the TR income enters the city yield stream, before or after multipliers ... but at least it won't be long until we get the answers to these questions!

In either case, though, mitsho's statement will hold true in my eyes because gold begets gold via purchasing power.

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Aye, it could work like that too. Soon though, so very soon all our questions will be answered. And yes, I'd expect Venice to have the potential for more gold than pretty much anyone else.

Yes, the gold of the trade route doesn't get multiplied by the buildings, that was my mistake. (Though some special modifiers like the national interest one could theoretically). The connection though does exist. Having Gold buildings grows the base gold of the city which then in turn does influence the trade route gold you get. (But you can't have 5 trade routes to one city up each other's gold income. That is a fairly basic balancing measures so that you can have diverse trade routes).

I'm not sure that just buying trade routes after losing them is the best way to go. If they cost 150 hammers, you do need to get that amount back in before it is pillaged again. That's a few turns by itself just to pay off. So while it won't make sense to have a unit on every tile of the trade route, I'd say it does pay to have a navy/army to deter barbarians from spawning in peace and some more during war.

We'll see

mitsho said:

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I'm not sure that just buying trade routes after losing them is the best way to go. If they cost 150 hammers, you do need to get that amount back in before it is pillaged again. That's a few turns by itself just to pay off. So while it won't make sense to have a unit on every tile of the trade route, I'd say it does pay to have a navy/army to deter barbarians from spawning in peace and some more during war.

We'll see

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Actually, did they ever clarify if any point along the trade route is sufficient for the route to be pillaged or do you have to be on top of or beside or nearby the trade unit you see on the map?

As for the maths I think the two options breaks down something like this (I'm assuming that the risk of pillage remains relatively comparable):

No defenders:
- If pillaged: Lost GPT for each turn that the trade unit was not functional. Cost of rebuilding the trade unit.
- If not pillaged: None

1 (or more) defenders:
- If pillaged: Cost of defender per turn that the trade route is active. Cost of building (potentially rebuilding) defender(s) and trade unit.
- If not pillaged: Cost of defender(s) per turn that the trade route is active.

For the latter option to be worthwhile the maintenance cost of the defending units over the life time of the trade route would have to be less than the total GPT left in the life time of the trade route. The difference (assuming the latter came out ahead) would then have to be offset by the initial cost of the defending unit(s) and any subsequent rebuilding.

Given that trade routes have a fixed duration I suspect that it'll be worthwhile to ensure the defence of a particular trade route for a certain length of time, after which the cost of defending it won't be worthwhile stationing a unit on the trade route line permanently. This, of course, assumes that you do not have a large navy. If you have one and it's just sitting around then there's really no reason not to defend the trade route unless doing so would impact on your ability to defend yourself more generally during wartime (as may potentially be the case with Venice with its increased likelihood of more spread out trade routes).

I certainly intend on defending my trade routes, if for no other reason than I think it makes more sense, but I am kinda curious to know how the math on this will work out. The real thing that I think could throw it off is if the risk of pillage differs wildly between including a defender and not, which in some circumstances it probably will - a trade route through a well-traveled sea versus across a relatively empty ocean will probably have different odds on how likely they'll be pillaged.

Don't forget that there are new buildings (such as the caravanassary and the new market nd) that will affect trade gold. I believe markets were changed so they will as well.

Venice's worst nightmare: Being Shoshone's close neighbour, Shoshone spamming out cities 3 tiles from Venice in all possible directions......

Luckystrike77 said:

Venice's worst nightmare: Being Shoshone's close neighbour, Shoshone spamming out cities 3 tiles from Venice in all possible directions......

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Worst nightmare, or greatest opportunity?

I hope that trade routes are automatically renewed when the 30-turn time limit expires. Having to manually renew 20 trade routes (in the end-game as Venice, just a guess) every 30 turns could get on the nerves plenty fast... And defending said routes smells like another micromanagement nightmare. Depending on the exact mechanic, the +1 sight for ships of the Exploration policy tree may actually prove pretty useful, as well as playing as America.