Venice, science and culture

So Venice is strong diplomatic, but don't they have an issue when it comes to science? They don't have all that much land and cities to generate it. And culture, with only one city, and with a focus on sea and trade, it's hard to get those wonders in.

Totally agree, I played a game with Venice and sometime during the classical era you really start to feel the lack of science. To top it off you can't control when/if the puppets make libraries.

With culture it's at least somewhat possible to get with religions and stuff the puppets build but still really hard.

I had the same problem when I tried to play Venice (I quit around the industrial era). I just couldn't figure out what way to win with them aside from domination. It just seems like their setup works against every other type of VC

Diplomatic - they get rid of all the votes when they puppet city state
Cultural - Probably the next easiest with them, but culture takes a ton of wonder production to make it a viable victory condition and I just really can't see how they can churn out wonders with only one city
Science - They can't really generate a lot of science with only one city

So really the only strategy I could see was them using their massive amounts of gold to build up an army and take over everything. Maybe I'm just missing the way to make the other conditions work with them though

But you can buy what buildings you want in puppets as Venice. Won't that help with your lack of certain buildings?

By way of metric, in MadDjinn's deity Venice game, he has 50 bpt at turn 113. That's low but not for OCC+ (though puppets do help a lot).

I had 970bpt with Venice at t342 (standard speed) when I won via diplomacy on Emperor even though I was aiming for a science victory. I used Venice's considerable gold advantage to quick-buy educational buildings in my capital and two other puppet cities once I researched the relevant tech. I also signed a number of research agreements throughout the game. All of this resulted in me taking the tech lead from industrial era and on. Also, I was the only one who finished Apollo and had the freedom policy to purchase rocket parts for gold around t320 or so. 970bpt is nothing to sniff at, but I usually finish a typical science game below t300 in G&K.

Once you get Mercantilism and Big Ben it's pretty easy to go around and buy all the science buildings.

high gold value can fix a lot of their problems. Trade routes bleed in a bit of extra science, insane gold income means you can RA all the time, puppets help with science (and with venice's income you can buy your puppets all the schools they want).

MoV double gold from trade missions, combined with the new commerce tree double gold from trade missions, results in a LOT of gold when running a trade mission. Normally enough to buy several buildings for puppets.

I play on Immortal with two other human players, the AI isn't very cooperative, so I can't get in a lot of deals, much less a declaration of friendship. Is there a way to make the AI a bit more open to you on that difficulty?

I started my first game as Venice... randomly chosen. I was a bit behind in science at first, but I took all the population growth buffs that I could. My city is now at 25 or so pop with two puppets, and I'm starting to crank out science. I think the key with Venice, is just make that city a monster.

As Venice you should use your trade routes to your advantage.

Have a few puppets send them food and hammers to your capital, send the remaining ships to the cities that will give you most beakers.

You should be fine with that.

I am going to post a screen shot here of my first complete game. A diplo win. I was number 1 in science. Since the 'military genius' was in play, I wasn't number 1 in culture.

Notes:

Emperor
3 CS acquired through MoV
1 capital captured, see the warships, those were great gallealas
No other wars
All the other CS were my allies with 150-2000 influence
Partial Tradtion/Patronage/Full Commerce/Partial Rationalism/Freedom
MoV were giving 4000 at the end. I must have burned 5 or 6.

I think the important thing for Venice is to grab 2-3 city states as the game progresses. This allows them to use some of their trade routes to send food or hammers between the cities, granting a significant advantage while still maintaining a strong income from the remaining external trade routes.

The first city state can be grabbed via the Merchant from Optics, so thats no problem. The second merchant can either be grabbed via Leaning Tower or an early market specialist. Everything past that does either require more specialists or an early maxed out commerce SP tree.

Lets say you have 3 cities during the rennaisance: With 6 internal naval trade rounds you can send 8-20 to each of these cities, allowing you to fill all specialist slots while still using 4+ external routes to make some decent money. After that you can use rationalism to get another +2 science per specialist and freedom to reduce specialist food requirements even further. I think my last game ended with a size 54 capital that had all specialist slots filled + all tiles worked + 2 unassigned citizen.

So, yeah, if you stay too small you will fall behind. But with some well planned city state buyouts you can catch up again pretty quickly.

Get the +2 per Specialist SP, use some of your surplus trade routes to funnel food into Venice, get the half and half specialists policy from freedom.

budweiser said:

I am going to post a screen shot here of my first complete game. A diplo win. I was number 1 in science. Since the 'military genius' was in play, I wasn't number 1 in culture.

Click to expand...

I see that your only conquest was historically accurate. Good job!

First game on king in BNW with venice currently number 2 in science. Run away Shoshone is 1. Went Tradition and managed to get pop over 20 very fast, grabbed NC early and GLighthouse and Colossus and got an early costal CS puppet. Then focused on getting my trade routes up. I also grabbed the goddess Of the sea pantheon. I very quickly realised I could focus on wonders and stuff I can't buy and just buy everything else. This meant I had all guilds and national wonders very fast. It quickly became Apparent I was actually going to be best off going culture victory. Currently dominating the culture scene.

With the buying power of venice I can't see any reason why you can't get some very highly culture and science if you want. I've just entered modern era and have I've 500gpt without a golden age.

I find you can easily stockpile gold for when you pop the next key tech and the mass buy all the buildings you unlock. Ie turn 1 after hitting education bam Unis in all cities.

Killlbray said:

I see that your only conquest was historically accurate. Good job!

Click to expand...

It also gave me The Great Betrayal because he caught me off guard with a great prophet.

budweiser said:

I am going to post a screen shot here of my first complete game. A diplo win. I was number 1 in science. Since the 'military genius' was in play, I wasn't number 1 in culture.

Notes:

Emperor
3 CS acquired through MoV
1 capital captured, see the warships, those were great gallealas
No other wars
All the other CS were my allies with 150-2000 influence
Partial Tradtion/Patronage/Full Commerce/Partial Rationalism/Freedom
MoV were giving 4000 at the end. I must have burned 5 or 6.

Click to expand...

I actually picked Liberty because I thought there was no way to get the MoV's fast enough without the two free ones from the tree. What didn't you pick in Tradition?

Oligarchy and Aristocrats.

The 'free' MoV at optics is enough to get you started, terrain depending. Then, you can just generate them normally via GPP.

You definitely want at least one puppet early as soon as you can leverage it properly. After that I focused on allies instead because early happiness is crucial. You cant afford to spend early growth turns in unhappiness.

It's looking to me like on high difficulty levels that Vinice is designed to abuse the science leakage from trade routes with double.
Basically if there's any civs ahead of you in technology, you should have as many routes with them as possible (as opposed to routes with those behind in techs)