Venice discussion

I'm always obsessed with theorycraft, and Venice is now officially my favorite civ, so I want to talk about Venice's strategy.

What social policies, wonders, victory conditions, and religious beliefs do you guys recommend? Here's what I've got:

Victory Condition

It'll be hard to win a diplomatic victory after you've removed most of the city-states from the game.

Domination is also out of the question, because Venice is a trade giant. It'll be trading away the resources from its puppeteering shenanigans in addition to establishing foreign trade routes to maximize profit. Declaring war and taking capitals limit how many civs will trade with you.

Science seems to jive with Venice pretty well, but I'd caution that if you're ahead of everyone else in science, you're just going to be leaking free science to all of your competitors through Venice's extra trade routes. Therefore, science victories maybe harder for Venice than other people.

That leaves culture, and you should be able to manipulate your trade routes to give you the best culture-tourism ratios

Social Policies

Exploration is essential. The buffs to the navy will be necessary for defending your extra traderoutes as well as defending your far away puppets. Treasure fleets will also make Venice very rich.

Finishing the commerce tree will not only increase your income, it'll give you another way to purchase your venetian merchants -- with faith.

I honestly don't know whether liberty or tradition would be preferable. If Liberty hasn't changed any, then Collective Rule and Representation will be useless to Venice, but finishing the tree will give it an early merchant. Is that worth wasting two policies? Tradition doesn't mesh with Venice historically or thematically, but the policies are much more beneficial to the built in one-city-challenge. What do you guy's think?

Going for the cultural victory, aesthetics will benefit you greatly.

I also think Fine Arts and Protectionism will benefit Venice more than most civs. Why? You're puppeteering city-states from dawn 'til dusk; most city states have at least one luxury resource. I anticipate Venice being able to maintain a verrrry high happiness.

Religion

For your pantheon, God of the Sea is a relatively safe bet, because you're bound to be on the coast. Depending on what your surroundings look like, the other tile buffing pantheons are equally as viable.

Founder belief: Church Property. End of discussion.

Follower belief: I'm really open to suggestions here.

Enhancer belief: Reliquary perhaps? Depending on how easy it is to purchase these Venetian merchants, you could be getting quite a lot of faith from this belief, which you could then invest into purchasing more merchants if you've finished the commerce tree.

Wonders

Preferably all of them, but I'd prioritize ones that maximize income, culture and happiness in that order.

What do you guys think? Did I miss anything?
 
Love the idea with Venice, want to play with it. Qualifies as outside-the-box, though they are firmly planted in the same hypercube as the other civs.

[Austria]Needs to be re-worked. It can't be multi-continental. They were never colonial nor did they have an international sphere of influence. I would go purchasing of CS's with land adjecent to your it's borders, such that you may only buy when you are touching.

Sounds good, then they could lower the gold cost and possibly even take away the "5 turn wait", balanced out by that restriction, and it would do a good job of differentiating from Venice, who could puppet CSs anywhere, but need a MoV to do it and can't settle normally.
 
Religion

For your pantheon, God of the Sea is a relatively safe bet, because you're bound to be on the coast. Depending on what your surroundings look like, the other tile buffing pantheons are equally as viable.
I'd say tile-dependent pantheons are too chancy when you can't choose your city location. I'd rather pick something generic but strong, like Messenger for extra science or Fertility Rites for faster growth (since you can't assign citizens manually, you need all the growth/food bonuses you can get).

Founder belief: Church Property. End of discussion.
If you're gobbling up intact city states, which almost always have relatively large populations, Tithe is a better bet. Especially since you should have a tall capital, won't be expanding wide militarily, and can benefit from followers in cities that don't have your religion as the majority.

Follower belief: I'm really open to suggestions here.
Feed the World. I predict food shortages due to gold-focused AI governor management. More population gets you more science and hammers. You need all the food you can get. The building beliefs are patently useless unless you can buy with faith as well as gold in Venetian puppets. For a second Follower belief, choose one that gives culture.

Enhancer belief: Reliquary perhaps? Depending on how easy it is to purchase these Venetian merchants, you could be getting quite a lot of faith from this belief, which you could then invest into purchasing more merchants if you've finished the commerce tree.
Maybe. From what I've seen, beliefs that recycle faith rarely do so at a high enough rate to be worthwhile. I think some have suggested using Reliquary with Sweden due to massive Great Person generation; maybe it would work with Venice. I'd rather go with Religious Texts or Itinerant Preachers though, so that more followers in more cities pay me more tithes.
 
Victory Condition

It'll be hard to win a diplomatic victory after you've removed most of the city-states from the game.

Domination is also out of the question, because Venice is a trade giant. It'll be trading away the resources from its puppeteering shenanigans in addition to establishing foreign trade routes to maximize profit. Declaring war and taking capitals limit how many civs will trade with you.

Science seems to jive with Venice pretty well, but I'd caution that if you're ahead of everyone else in science, you're just going to be leaking free science to all of your competitors through Venice's extra trade routes. Therefore, science victories maybe harder for Venice than other people.

That leaves culture, and you should be able to manipulate your trade routes to give you the best culture-tourism ratios

Diplomacy: I disagree. The Merchant of Venice is not as common as Austria Marrying city states. Also it may not always be the best option depending on the map and your neighbors. Perhaps you'd rather just get a ton of money and keep a CS trade route so you can capture another Civ's cities instead.

Domination: Disagree again. I can't perfectly visualize how much you can leverage trade once you're at war, but it will still be possible. Venice Domination victory will be similar to Ethiopian or Assyrian Domination victory in that at a certain point you will exceed the bonus of your Civ. There comes a point as Ethiopia where it no longer matters that you are not getting +20% vs a larger civ. As Assyria there will come a point where it no longer matters that you're not getting a free tech from capping a city. As Venice, it will cease to matter that you're not making optimal use of trade routes because you'll be winning already. As I mentioned a few pages back, you'll have elite units out of your capital and probably grab up CS units when you MoV them in the face. Just one other thing on Domination, all you need is to puppet the capital. And guess who can puppet and hold puppets better than anyone? Not saying other civs can't just annex, but there really isn't a limitation present.

Science: Agreed, but you will definitely be able to buy spaceship parts easily!

Culture: Agreed! Venice will be able to naturally rival Paris if handled correctly in a Cultural Victory which is so cool.
 
VainApocalypse: I think you're focusing WAY too much on the ability of the Merchant of Venice to puppet City-States. The earliest way you can get one is to finish Liberty, a SP tree that you really don't want to go down. After that, I guess beeline Optics. If you do that, though, you're skipping the economy boosters with Markets.

Let me suggest an alternative: Play just like Rome's infinite puppet empire strategy.

First thing, go to Writing, build the Great Library (this assumes Tradition, or going Piety and grabbing the Wonder-builder Pantheon). Then bulb Iron Working with the Great Library.

Why? Well, Swordsmen will be fun to play with (if you have/can get Iron). The other, though, is the Colossus. It's a lot of money, and is (IIRC) one of the earliest ways to start getting Great Merchant points. After that, rush to Guilds (building a Market in the meantime) and if possible build Machu Picchu. Then get Optics, your Galleasses, and build a naval-supported invasion force and take over other Civs.

I think that's a very safe Venetian strategy, at least on difficulty settings where you can 'rush' the Great Library.
 
I'd say tile-dependent pantheons are too chancy when you can't choose your city location. I'd rather pick something generic but strong, like Messenger for extra science or Fertility Rites for faster growth (since you can't assign citizens manually, you need all the growth/food bonuses you can get).

Feed the World. I predict food shortages due to gold-focused AI governor management. More population gets you more science and hammers. You need all the food you can get. The building beliefs are patently useless unless you can buy with faith as well as gold in Venetian puppets. For a second Follower belief, choose one that gives culture.

Maybe. From what I've seen, beliefs that recycle faith rarely do so at a high enough rate to be worthwhile. I think some have suggested using Reliquaries with Sweden due to massive Great Person generation; maybe it would work with Venice. I'd rather go with Religious Texts or Itinerant Preachers though, so that more followers in more cities pay me more tithes.


I love these points. Tile buffing beliefs are my default, because normally I can just pop out another city to grab that silver just outside of my borders, but that's not the case here. Meanwhile, focusing on population both in the pantheon and in the follower beliefs would offset your lack of control over puppets. That's fantastic.
 
I WANT TO SEE ENRICO DANDOLO! (Even though he can't see me.)

Fixed it for you! :p
Seriously though, I doubt we're getting to see much of him in action - I bet next demo will be playing as Venice, and having the Shoshone as another player, much like how it was with Portugal (with The Zulus) and Morocco (with Indonesia).
This means all we are going to get is one screenshot of him - no video, no audio, no nothing... :sad: We are STILL to see anything meaningful of Maria I's and Ahmad al-Mansur's leaderscreens, and the only reason we got to see Casimir's is because he was present in the last demo... :( Hopefully they place Portugal and Morocco in this demo, but Enrico Dandolo will remain a mystery for quite some time...
 
Diplomacy: I disagree. The Merchant of Venice is not as common as Austria Marrying city states. Also it may not always be the best option depending on the map and your neighbors. Perhaps you'd rather just get a ton of money and keep a CS trade route so you can capture another Civ's cities instead.

Good points. For diplomacy, it really depends how you've set up the game: how many city-states are there, how many civs, and how aggressively you've pumped out merchants. There's a lot of wiggle room there.
 
VainApocalypse: I think you're focusing WAY too much on the ability of the Merchant of Venice to puppet City-States. The earliest way you can get one is to finish Liberty, a SP tree that you really don't want to go down. After that, I guess beeline Optics. If you do that, though, you're skipping the economy boosters with Markets.

Let me suggest an alternative: Play just like Rome's infinite puppet empire strategy.

First thing, go to Writing, build the Great Library (this assumes Tradition, or going Piety and grabbing the Wonder-builder Pantheon). Then bulb Iron Working with the Great Library.

Why? Well, Swordsmen will be fun to play with (if you have/can get Iron). The other, though, is the Colossus. It's a lot of money, and is (IIRC) one of the earliest ways to start getting Great Merchant points. After that, rush to Guilds (building a Market in the meantime) and if possible build Machu Picchu. Then get Optics, your Galleasses, and build a naval-supported invasion force and take over other Civs.

I think that's a very safe Venetian strategy, at least on difficulty settings where you can 'rush' the Great Library.

I'm a little confused by this, optics isn't that far in the tech tree, right? it's right after sailing. It comes before guilds and commerce so I don't think it'd be that hard to research it, there's no need to beeline anything, you already have double trade routes.
 
I don't think they will. When a civ reaches the end of its city list, it will randomly chose a city from another civ in the game. In this way, the Huns don't have a special ability, but just a city list only 1 entry long.

The Huns don't have other cities because there were no other Hunnic cities. There were other Venetian cities, so there's no reason not to give them a city-list to account for two Venices in the game.

There is a difference between Venice and Austria. Austria can grab a city-state anytime they have enough cash. Venice has to wait for a MoV to spawn in order to grab a city-state.

I think there's an interesting note that Venice might be able to out-Austria Austria and the Shoshone might be able to out-America America given the end result for both civs.

Damn, so this means everything Maelstrom said was right?

No Sacagawea?

I really wish their unique scout looked like Sacagawea.
 
One more thing about to mention about religion is Venice can exert pressure with many trade routes. But you'll need to be very lucky to found one with one city and no faith bonus...

I'm a little confused by this, optics isn't that far in the tech tree, right? it's right after sailing. It comes before guilds and commerce so I don't think it'd be that hard to research it, there's no need to beeline anything, you already have double trade routes.
Optics is quite expensive tech and early CSs don't have that much buildings in them, you'll want at least university in a CS. (which they will rarely build after puppeted.)
 
I'm a little confused by this, optics isn't that far in the tech tree, right? it's right after sailing. It comes before guilds and commerce so I don't think it'd be that hard to research it, there's no need to beeline anything, you already have double trade routes.

Looking at the tech tree, I have to agree with this. You'll definitely want to get sailing early on for the cargo ship and extra trade routes (talk about economy boosting). Optics comes immediately after sailing whereas guilds is a full era beyond optics.

I'd try to rush The Great Library (if my production is up to it). In the meantime, I'd get to optics and would use the free tech on iron working. I'd build the colossus while I finally made my way up to guilds.
 
You won't want to spam too many Merchants of Venice. City-states will almost certainly make the most secure and reliable trading partners in the game, especially with all that trade gold. Trade routes to City-states will not leak science, spread foreign faith to your city, and avoid the heartlands of other civs.

Grabbing a CS or two will probably be quite useful, but Cs are very useful to have around. Use your trade profits and patronage to build a WC dominating CS empire. I see myself popping a coastal CS or 2 early to set up the internal trade spam that will let Venice be ridiculously powerful. It will give me a city or 2 while I build up my culture game in my cap and let the Ai found my empire for me.


edit. Also for optics remember that the lighthouse now has a production bonus, making it very powerful for a coastal Venice. Add in the power of Compass for Venice, UU, increased trade range and 2 trade routes, and the naval side of the tree will be great. Especially since on any non Pangaea map Astronomy will be vital for those exotic, long intercontinental trade routes.
 
Wouldn't it be annoying if your AI neighbour settled in a suboptimal hex, and you had to choose between sacking the city and having a puppet with poor or lopsided tiles to work.
 
One more thing about to mention about religion is Venice can exert pressure with many trade routes. But you'll need to be very lucky to found one with one city and no faith bonus...

As long as the Celts aren't in the game, I regularly get to 230ish faith with just a temple and a shrine without being dead last.
 
To think of it. Puppets are an amazing feature

1. More Science (and gold) because of the high number of population
2. More HAPPINESS (as Puppets produce less happiness than regular/annexed cities)
3. More Culture (as Culture scales with the number of annexed/regular cities, not puppets)

So in a way, Venice can be VERY dominant. I do will struggle with the idea of only one city challenge all the time though. But if it fails, they can always put the settlers back in for them.
 
I'm always obsessed with theorycraft, and Venice is now officially my favorite civ, so I want to talk about Venice's strategy.

What social policies, wonders, victory conditions, and religious beliefs do you guys recommend? Here's what I've got:

Victory Condition

It'll be hard to win a diplomatic victory after you've removed most of the city-states from the game.

Domination is also out of the question, because Venice is a trade giant. It'll be trading away the resources from its puppeteering shenanigans in addition to establishing foreign trade routes to maximize profit. Declaring war and taking capitals limit how many civs will trade with you.

Science seems to jive with Venice pretty well, but I'd caution that if you're ahead of everyone else in science, you're just going to be leaking free science to all of your competitors through Venice's extra trade routes. Therefore, science victories maybe harder for Venice than other people.

That leaves culture, and you should be able to manipulate your trade routes to give you the best culture-tourism ratios

Social Policies

Exploration is essential. The buffs to the navy will be necessary for defending your extra traderoutes as well as defending your far away puppets. Treasure fleets will also make Venice very rich.

Finishing the commerce tree will not only increase your income, it'll give you another way to purchase your venetian merchants -- with faith.

I honestly don't know whether liberty or tradition would be preferable. If Liberty hasn't changed any, then Collective Rule and Representation will be useless to Venice, but finishing the tree will give it an early merchant. Is that worth wasting two policies? Tradition doesn't mesh with Venice historically or thematically, but the policies are much more beneficial to the built in one-city-challenge. What do you guy's think?

Going for the cultural victory, aesthetics will benefit you greatly.

I also think Fine Arts and Protectionism will benefit Venice more than most civs. Why? You're puppeteering city-states from dawn 'til dusk; most city states have at least one luxury resource. I anticipate Venice being able to maintain a verrrry high happiness.

Religion

For your pantheon, God of the Sea is a relatively safe bet, because you're bound to be on the coast. Depending on what your surroundings look like, the other tile buffing pantheons are equally as viable.

Founder belief: Church Property. End of discussion.

Follower belief: I'm really open to suggestions here.

Enhancer belief: Reliquary perhaps? Depending on how easy it is to purchase these Venetian merchants, you could be getting quite a lot of faith from this belief, which you could then invest into purchasing more merchants if you've finished the commerce tree.

Wonders

Preferably all of them, but I'd prioritize ones that maximize income, culture and happiness in that order.

What do you guys think? Did I miss anything?

Trade peacefully using your many trade routes, go for Optics, finish Liberty, go Commerce/Exploration, take cities by sea.
 
Top Bottom