Merchant of Venice vs Austrian UA

asmartlittleman said:

The Merchant of Venice is a unique Great Merchant replacement. Aside from the normal Great Merchant abilities, the Merchant of Venice can acquire a City-State outright, bringing it under Venetian control as a puppet. The Merchant of Venice is expended when used in this way.
Where does it say you need gold to puppet CS?

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It's not the outright. it's the acquire. And you made a nice catch there. Almost all quotations of it change acquire to purchase or buy; as in "buy a city-state outright". Acquire is the correct term in the screenshot.

the venetian can spend gold but can't set citizen management focus on puppet CS
and venetian must build wonder based on MoV point and gold (just saying)

I find it extremely silly and misleading to say that Austria can "choose" whenever they want to annex a CS and that they can do it at "any time". They can't. They need to be allies with the same city state for 5 turns in a row and if they fall out of favor with that CS, or it gets allied by another civ during this time, any gold they devoted to becoming an ally will be lost and the timer resets.

On the other hand, as we understand it, a MoV can just walk to a neutral CS which is allied to another civ (or perhaps even one that is at war with Venice) and get it outright.

If anything, since you can keep your MoV around for "emergency puppeting" I would say that Venetian ability is much more flexible and usable at will than the Austrian one.

Just for the record, the Austrian UA reads "Can spend gold to annex or puppet a CS that has been your ally for 5 turns" so it is quite clear that MoV ability does not cost gold or they would have said it as expressly as with the Austrian UA.

And speaking of lost opportunity cost of not using the MoV for a trade mission, if I recall correctly, Austrian CS purchase costs about the same as a successful trade mission brings you. So if you compare the two, the gold cost vs. lost opportunity is comparable, but Austria needs to first ally the city and control it for 5 turns, whereas Venice can just do it outright, irrespective of the hostility between them (and now that I think about it, I think they can even do it to a city that is at war with Venice, as otherwise the description would have said so).

Eagle Pursuit said:

It's not the outright. it's the acquire. And you made a nice catch there. Almost all quotations of it change acquire to purchase or buy; as in "buy a city-state outright". Acquire is the correct term in the screenshot.

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I disagree. The "acquire" is in the general "strategy" section, while the "game info" section (ie, what the unit's tootip says) the word is "purchase" - I perused other spots in the 'pedia and nowhere does it say "purchase" when it means something else.

I expect the MoV will require some gold payment in order to "acquire" a CS via it's special ability, especially given the advantage it has over Royal Marriages (puppeting CSs without positive influence levels).

As I postulated in the Venice thread, I think the MoV is most likely there for the sole reason of allowing Venice to not fall too far behind early. This is because the unit lets them 1) get one or two puppets early in the game before any opponents settle cities near enough to be worth puppeting and 2) doesn't force Venice to focus solely on military early (especially if the puppeting of CSs grants all military units). With this in mind I expect the purchase cost to be fairly low, or possibly era-dependent.

I don't think the MoV will be as essential to their strategy as RMs are for Austria; it's the double trade routes that really define Venice imo. Gold from regular trade missions will be more valuable in many circumstances given the unique need for gold that Venice has.

well, you made me think of a question. Do you get the units from a CS when acquiring it? Again, I dont have G&K, how does Austria do it?
Also, can you acquire a CS that is at war with you?

Konsti said:

well, you made me think of a question. Do you get the units from a CS when acquiring it? Again, I dont have G&K, how does Austria do it?
Also, can you acquire a CS that is at war with you?

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1. Unknown, possibly.
2. Austria does get the units, and the CS becomes fully integrated into their empire - they can't even be liberated!
3. Unknown, possibly.

We are missing quite a few details regarding this mechanic, hopefully Firaxis will "reveal" the last two civs soon so we can get more info.