Is Patronage really useful for Venice?

I really like Venice. I always start out with the idea of playing some kind of wheeler dealer who takes over the world with money instead of the beakers from Rationalism and research.

But based on what I do when I play, Patronage isn't really that useful for me. At least adopting it is, because Forbidden Palace is a great wonder, useful for a couple of different victory types.

But the benefits from Patronage? I almost never have happiness issues with Venice. I usually buy one or two city states depending on location and my starting area (food), and send cargo ships with food to Venice.

But other than iron, I really don't worry about resources until the late game. Then I buy the city state with a Merchant of Venice to get my oil/aluminum/uranium. So by endgame I usually have a couple of merchants sitting around Venice twiddling their thumbs. And often the game ends without them doing anything.

I really don't bother to ally with any city states till the end game with the World Congress and Leader victory condition. If a militaristic city state has some funky unit I really want, I'll do it before, but often do not.

And in the end things like Treaty Organization get the city states on your side a lot better than doing the Patronage thing (money/units) or quests.

Also it is a pita to fight Greece, and the occasional civ that goes into Patronage, for influence as the game goes along. And if you can get to Industrialization early, you can wipe out all Alexander's hard work in short order with Treaty Organization.

I can see the use, but getting city state allies seems like it would be of more use to civs that can go wide, and need luxuries for happiness.

Usually I go Tradition, then Patronage until I can take Commerce.

Anyone got any thoughts on this matter?

The more CS allies you have at any point in the game, the better. And since Venice can't found cities, Scholasticism can be very handy.

Philanthropy is always nice. More bang for your buck.

Well, the MoV powers regardless of CS status (so long as you are not at war), so more flexibility there than Austria. But if you plan to ally a bunch of CS eventually, and you must since you mention Treaty Organization, why would you not want Consulates? And if you want consulates, it is better sooner than later.

beetle said:

Well, the MoV powers regardless of CS status (so long as you are not at war), so more flexibility there than Austria. But if you plan to ally a bunch of CS eventually, and you must since you mention Treaty Organization, why would you not want Consulates? And if you want consulates, it is better sooner than later.

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The Treaty Organization thing is so powerful that the consulates just don't matter.

Agreed that Consulates is bad.

But Philanthropy is still good lol.

sunbeam said:

So by endgame I usually have a couple of merchants sitting around Venice twiddling their thumbs. And often the game ends without them doing anything.

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Probably the most frequently overlooked advantages of any civ is Venice's trade mission bonus. Most of us think of MoV's as CS stealers, and that is their primary function. However, they do have another advantage, When used for a trade mission, a MoV produces twice as much gold as a standard GM, and with commerce this amount can be further increased. Since commerce also has a policy and a wonder both of which decrease purchase costs across the board, every MoV can be game-changing late game, like purchasing 6 Xcoms from the gold from 1 MoV.

sunbeam said:

Also it is a pita to fight Greece, and the occasional civ that goes into Patronage, for influence as the game goes along. And if you can get to Industrialization early, you can wipe out all Alexander's hard work in short order with Treaty Organization.

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Human Venice is a natural counter to AI Greece. With Greece's slow (or absent) influence degrade combined with his inclination to invest so much into CS influence, he will gain untouchable status regarding his alliances. Other AI do this but not as frequently or deeply as Greece does. But all that investment is wasted by sending a MoV and having the CS become one of your cities.

I agree that Treaty Organization is terrific. I disagree that it makes Consulates irrelevant. TO is 4 influence per turn, so just 5 turns to match the from 20 Consulates. But Consulates is as much as 16 CS and you have maybe 8 Trade Routes for TO (of course, Venice gets double that, but is in less of a position to spare them all). So, assuming aiming for a Diplo VC, Consulates+TO gets you there 10 turns faster than TO on its own. Is that not a pretty good return for an early SP pick?

But that is really just the icing on the CS cake. Between when you get it and when TO comes online, Consulates means that every time you picked up friend or ally status it lasts 20 turns longer than it would otherwise. The CS friendship/ally buffs are quite significant, so even absent pursing a Diplo VC, I would argue that Consulates is one of the strongest SP.

I don't under the scorn for Consulates and love for Philanthropy. Let's sketch out the gold value:

Consulates is like spending 250 gold per CS. It is actually better than that, since the 20 points are sticky, but this is just a back-of-envelope estimate: 16 x 250 = 4000 gold.

Philanthropy is a 25% boost to what you spend on CS. So to match the gold value of Consulates, you would need to invest 16,000 gold on CS over the course of the game. I am sure habits vary, but I hold CS allies in high regard and I think that is about twice as much as I spend on CS per game!

This implies to me that Consulates is about twice as valuable as Philanthropy. Tell me why my math is bad!

Consulate is very good early if you have free SP, possibly from Oracle and you've had extra policy to open Patronage prior to Renaissance. Philanthropy is more useful later when you actually have gold and best use of it is to keep existing alliances. You should use spies to coup to get new alliances.

beetle said:

I agree that Treaty Organization is terrific. I disagree that it makes Consulates irrelevant. TO is 4 influence per turn, so just 5 turns to match the from 20 Consulates. But Consulates is as much as 16 CS and you have maybe 8 Trade Routes for TO (of course, Venice gets double that, but is in less of a position to spare them all). So, assuming aiming for a Diplo VC, Consulates+TO gets you there 10 turns faster than TO on its own. Is that not a pretty good return for an early SP pick?

But that is really just the icing on the CS cake. Between when you get it and when TO comes online, Consulates means that every time you picked up friend or ally status it lasts 20 turns longer than it would otherwise. The CS friendship/ally buffs are quite significant, so even absent pursing a Diplo VC, I would argue that Consulates is one of the strongest SP.

I don't under the scorn for Consulates and love for Philanthropy. Let's sketch out the gold value:

Consulates is like spending 250 gold per CS. It is actually better than that, since the 20 points are sticky, but this is just a back-of-envelope estimate: 16 x 250 = 4000 gold.

Philanthropy is a 25% boost to what you spend on CS. So to match the gold value of Consulates, you would need to invest 16,000 gold on CS over the course of the game. I am sure habits vary, but I hold CS allies in high regard and I think that is about twice as much as I spend on CS per game!

This implies to me that Consulates is about twice as valuable as Philanthropy. Tell me why my math is bad!

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Consulates doesn't give you perma friend status, and the other problem is that consulates is useless if you already have say, 50 influence with a city state (which isn't too hard to do if you've been going around doing CS quests). It benefits you decently if you were at 0 / 5 CS relationship with everyone, but generally speaking the important CS near you should already be around friend status from quests and whatnot by the time consulates becomes an option.

Really, it's one of those things I say looks really nice in theory, but in practice isn't all that strong.

Plus, when a CS is giving bonus influence for gold and you stack it with philanthropy, the effects are just HNNNNG. (1000g for 165 influence oh gawd)

Consulates is actually strong for CS not close to you, and especially on continents. You'll have a much easier time couping/buying influence on those CS. It is difficult to do quests on those because other civs have a huge head start, and you never get easy quests such as building roads to those. Philanthropy is only great past mid game, when you have enough gold to buy influences and to keep existing ones. Early on you should be spending gold to buy tiles, or borrow to buy science buildings. Also if you play on a high enough difficulty, getting the CS next to you to allied isn't that easy, since it's difficult to do quests other than clearing barb camps, but they disappear very quickly on deity.

Apart from the Patronage opener the rest of the tree isn't good for Venice simply because you'll likely puppet some nearby CityStates and you get so many extra trade routes that you can use Treaty Organisation as others have said.

For Venice you are better served taking Commerce down to Mercantalism so you can increase the value of the gold you get from trade routes

Seoul said:

Consulates doesn't give you perma friend status, and the other problem is that consulates is useless if you already have say, 50 influence with a city state (which isn't too hard to do if you've been going around doing CS quests). It benefits you decently if you were at 0 / 5 CS relationship with everyone, but generally speaking the important CS near you should already be around friend status from quests and whatnot by the time consulates becomes an option.

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Yes, if you get Consulates, get it early. Even if it only buffs 12/16 CS -- that is still a great buff. Sure, it will not help immediately with CS that your are friends with at the moment, but do you spend money on them all game long? If not, they drift in and out of friend status for much of the game. So again, it is quite useful.

Really, it's one of those things that might not really seem nice enough in theory, but in practice is very strong.

Plus, when a CS is giving bonus influence for gold and you stack it with philanthropy, the effects are just HNNNNG. (1000g for 165 influence oh gawd)

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Yes, Philanthropy is good too. And has utility no matter when you pick it up. I am just pointing out that, assuming both are early, Consulates is objectively worth more gold.

Redaxe said:

Apart from the Patronage opener the rest of the tree isn't good for Venice simply because you'll likely puppet some nearby CityStates and you get so many extra trade routes that you can use Treaty Organisation as others have said.

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Then why is the Patronage opener good for Venice? I really don’t think it is very coherent to argue that an early tree lacks utility because of a Tier 3 Ideology tenet! What is that, like a 100 turns later?

For Venice you are better served taking Commerce down to Mercantalism so you can increase the value of the gold you get from trade routes

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I completely agree that the Commerce tree is more valuable for Venice than Patronage. But that was not OP’s question!

beetle said:

Then why is the Patronage opener good for Venice? I really don’t think it is very coherent to argue that an early tree lacks utility because of a Tier 3 Ideology tenet! What is that, like a 100 turns later?

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My personal take is the Forbidden Tower. I go into every game, regardless of civ or even how it turns out I want to win, with a thought of building this.

Usually with Venice (at least when I play), I finish Tradition, then have to open another tree before I can take Commerce. So I always take Patronage until Commerce opens up.

With other civs I might burn a policy on it. Venice really wants it for the World Congress votes, and any civ who wants to try for this kind of victory would want it as well.

But the unrest thing is useful for any civ, particularly if you are trying to conquer everything.