I'm guessing Venice doesn't do too well....

.... in the Tourism Dept.

Venice can puppet several cities over the course of the game, but the puppets can't be told what to build. That leaves Venice to build ALL of the Wonders, ALL of the Caravans, ALL of the Cargo Ships, as well as everything that makes the city profitable and functional. ONE ... item.... at.... a.... time. About all Venice has going for it are twice as many Trade routes and a shot at having a HUGE population. (Which would require making pretty nearly all of the townspeople farmers. Specialists get filled by leftovers, unless you're willing to accept a slower growth rate.) Ah, but once you've got that HUGE population...

But Tourism is a challenge for Venice. You need Great Works of Art, and lots of them. Somewhere in that single production line, you have to squeeze room for the Writers' Guild, the Artists' Guild, and the Musicians' Guild. And then once built, each of those takes two Specialists that are NOT growing Food or Producing hammers. As far as I can see, the key to being successful at Tourism is to successfully building the Wonders that house the Great Works of Art. And the key to building those is to research key techs that enable the building of those Wonders. That requires all of the Research buildings like Libraries and Universities and Research Labs, etc. And those require more Specialists, and lots of them. You might assign the necessary personnel, but good luck getting the puppets to spare people for Science, when there's more important things to do, like make money, or Faith, or Culture. (Depending on what the CS's focus had been.)

So, Venice has to do nearly all of the heavy lifting. The puppets _will_ build Libraries and Universities -- as long as there isn't something else in their focus interest area waiting to be built. But once built, don't count on the Specialist staffing.

So, Venice is low on Science, slow on Wonder building, and has a pronounced lack of space for Great Works housing. That sort of suggests that Venice will NOT be winning the Tourism Regatta very often. Possible to hold the lead for awhile, but that lack of space well be a telling point at the Finish Line I think.

You say that they have to build things one item at a time, but then the extra gold they're raking in through trade routes allows them to purchase more things, freeing up production time for wonders. Compare this to France, which has to build those wonders in Paris without the benefit of extra gold to purchase all their other buildings.

The puppets can purchase those science buildings as well, and with all that extra gold from double trade routes that shouldn't be a problem.

I've won on CV as high as immortal with Venice. The puppets can send food trade routes to Venice for growth. Extra trade routes can mean extra science from trading partners, and science requires less beakers as you're only one city.

And you can basically spend your entire time building wonders, and buy all your usually buildings, cargo ships, etc.

I think you are missing 3 very important points about the game in general

1. Your capitol always does all the heavy lifting in a tradition game (CV is almost always best played with tradition) - it produces the lions share of science, culture, hammers, population, etc.

2. Your citizens should all be farmers. If you are not working every last scrap of food in your cap, your cap is too small. Hammers and specialists should not interfere with growth

3. Culture victory is not all about getting a ton of great works. Culture victory is about getting selected wonders (2 or 3 of them), getting to Internet as fast as possible (Venice does this just fine), then to Radar, then doing concert tours.

Not only can Venice grow capitols bigger more easily than any other civ, you have the spare TR's to send hammers back to the cap to get those wonders. While I would not consider Venice a top tier civ for CV, they are certainly better than some "culturally oriented" civs like Japan.

Can I send 2 TRs from my city A to my city B? I mean A sends to B a cargo ship with food and another with production. Is it possible or A can send only food or only production?

Thanks

Santa Maria said:

Can I send 2 TRs from my city A to my city B? I mean A sends to B a cargo ship with food and another with production. Is it possible or A can send only food or only production?

Thanks

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no. a city can only send one internal TR to a specific target

I tend to pay cash for my trade units as soon as i have the tech and the cash.

Send food back to your puppets and they will work specialists.

Yeah...I think the various responses to the OP have captured my views....

I have had no trouble winning cultural victories as Venice at the Emperor level.....and I usually can do quite well with things like the World Games...not always a "slam-dunk", but typically I don't have too much trouble.

The key, of course, is the gold flow.....Venice focusses on building wonders and much of its infastructure gets bought.... You need to buy several CSs, though how many in a particular game is situational......and then you can speed things along with them by buying some of their infastructure.....

I think Venice is a fun civ....and I think to some extent it might even be a bit OP in the hands of a human player. The AI Venice seems a bit clumsy.......e.g. leaving the GMV sitting around interminably on the edge of a CS, just waiting for some "unscrupulous" human player to come along and "deep-six" him...

My big problem with Venice in an Emperor game has been getting that first built GMoV. I got to the Optics-awarded GMoV reasonably quick, but building a GMoV was a killer. The goal would be initially 600 GM points, but at 590, the price jumped by several hundred. Then when I was just a few points away, it jumped again. I didn't get that first built GMoV until just before the Industrial Era started. That's a llloooonnnngggg time to be trying to make it with only two cities.

As with practically every other post-BNW game I've played, I've found the key to controlling the game is in the CS Alliances. It probably biases the game heavily by having 41 CSs in play, but I figure that the AI civs have as just a great access to CS Alliances as I do, so is it my fault that I've managed to keep ALL of the Culture and Religious CSs as my Allies? (That's where Venice's cashflow is quite helpful.) So, it's pretty obvious that I'm the game leader -- but #2 in the Civ ranking chart, out of 10 civs -- but I'm doing it in what is apparently a non-standard way for most Venice players.

For the tourism part, you could make a great person farm with trade routes from your puppet cities to your capital to make great people. Building national wonders is a lot easier than it is when having another civilization, too.

The puppets can send food trade routes to Venice for growth.

difioretin said:

The puppets can send food trade routes to Venice for growth.

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Exactly. Once you have more than one puppet city sending in food trade routes into Venice, you'll make your capital a lot more suitable for a great person farm.

CaptainPatch said:

My big problem with Venice in an Emperor game has been getting that first built GMoV. I got to the Optics-awarded GMoV reasonably quick, but building a GMoV was a killer. The goal would be initially 600 GM points, but at 590, the price jumped by several hundred. Then when I was just a few points away, it jumped again. I didn't get that first built GMoV until just before the Industrial Era started.

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Your great person cost for Engineers, Scientists and Merchants all go up together whenever any one of those is born. Letting the game slot your specialists for you will never give you what you want. For Venice you would want to fill the merchant slots in your capital 100% starting when you build Market. Later you might decide to slot Scientists, too - if you've got a garden and Leaning Tower then you'll still generate plenty of both, especially with Entrepreneurship - but you can empty competing slots right before a MOV pops if you want. Watch the gauges and concentrate your specialist types. Luckily puppets will usually only work merchants anyway.

GhostSalsa said:

Your great person cost for Engineers, Scientists and Merchants all go up together whenever any one of those is born.

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That was pretty much what was driving up the price I'm sure. There's several buildings that Engineer points, some with Engineer slots. I was racing to complete some necessary Wonders, so I made the mistake of plugging in some Engineers to get the Production boost, plus Gt Engineers to flash-build some other necessary Wonders. In contrast to all of the other Specialist buildings, each of which that provide a berth or two -- Workshop, Windmill, University, etc. -- in the early game there's only ONE Wonder that provides ONE GM point, and there's the Marketplace with ONE Merchant slot. The game makes it waaaaaayyyyyy too easy to get Gt Engineers and Scientists, but damn few Merchants. Which makes it grossly unfair to jack up GM prices just because you got a GE or GS. Different disciplines, and one should NOT affect the other. (Do Gt Prophets also jack up all of the other Great People as well?)

CaptainPatch said:

In contrast to all of the other Specialist buildings, each of which that provide a berth or two -- Workshop, Windmill, University, etc. -- in the early game there's only ONE Wonder that provides ONE GM point, and there's the Marketplace with ONE Merchant slot. The game makes it waaaaaayyyyyy too easy to get Gt Engineers and Scientists, but damn few Merchants. Which makes it grossly unfair to jack up GM prices just because you got a GE or GS. Different disciplines, and one should NOT affect the other. (Do Gt Prophets also jack up all of the other Great People as well?)

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Bank and Stock Exchange provide 3 more slots for merchants. There's three GM point wonders if you have Mauseleum - I think it's still in the DLC? but a versatile wonder, very worth it, especially for Venice since great people is obviously your focus. And Entrepreneurship is what you really want, that multiplies your GM generation. No, prophets don't share the counter with eng/sci/merch.

Obviously your free to play Venice like classic OCC and focus on wonders all game long, but Venice is a lot stronger if it sticks with popping merchants and setting up those multiple food trade routes to capital for the first half of the game.

GPros don't affect the cost of other great people. They are only acquired with faith points or by special mechanisms (Long Count, Liberty finisher, etc.). Even purchasing them with faith points post-Renaissance doesn't increase the faith or GP point cost of other great people.