Would Venice be suitable for a domination victory?

I don't have the game yet but I've been wondering this for a while now. Venice only has one city that is capable of making units, but with the extra gold from trade routes, it is able to field a larger military than most other civilizations in the game (except for the Zulu and others alike, of course).

So what do you guys think? Would Venice make a good military super power or is it easily susceptible to attack and conquer from other civilizations instead of the other way around?

Once the gold start flowing in, you can destroy everyone by buying a huge army.

I think it depends a lot on who your neighbors are. I started a game with Venice and my continent neighbors were Zulu and Denmark. It wasn't necessarily difficult to keep pace with them as far as the number of military units, but because my empire was so fractured and spread out, it was possible for them to hit me at my most vulnerable points. Shuffling units around where I needed them proved to be an exceptional test of military maneuvering. I don't think it's impossible to utterly destroy people as Venice, but I think there are a few conditions that have to be met in order for Venice to have a good chance at domination victory.

I'm playing as Venice right now, going for a domination victory on a Continents map. At first, it was difficult to keep up with my neighbor's military (especially Songhai), but I found out that trade routes help bolster your religious pressure in other nations. Using my trade network, I was able to convert my entire continent to Protestantism ad become Friendly with everyone. After that, I manipulated the nations on my continent to attack each other, and I sent in small military forces to steal nearby cities that were already weakened for me. Now I rule half the continent, and I am raking in so much money that my military is large enough to have a global presence. I just conquered myself a colony in the new world, and I'm starting to dominate all the civs, one by one.

In conclusion, a domination victory for Venice is very possible. You have to go about it a bit differently, but it is definitely interesting. Highly recommended.

It is certainly possible - Venice has money to fund wars. Maps with big ocean(s) is easier for Venice, coastal cities are easy targets and you anyway need strong navy. Buy units in puppets, build fast units in Venice - Venice will have Heroic Epic.

The piecemeal empire you get from city states is rather hard to defend, but if you can win a couple early wars, you can trade the city states to their neighbors and retain something more contiguous. You will have a small number of heroic epic units for a long time. Try for big ben & combine it with the purchase discount policy & autocracy if you can, then you'll be all set for a massive modern era campaign. Otherwise, it's really cut out to be a diplo-focused civ.