Help on winning?

[TooPraised]

I am playing my first game of Civ today. The friends I am playing with are very experienced and I want to see if there is a possibility of winning. I am playing as Venice and have about 4,000 gold and another couple of merchants -- so, if history is an indication, they should put me at about 12,000 gold? Maybe more. How can I win from this point? Is there a way to essentially buy my way to victory?

 

[docbud]

I don't play multiple player but I'm sure others will chime in.

But what is the difficulty level? Are your friends are very experienced, does that mean that in your first game you'll be over-your-head difficulty-wise?

What kind of map are you playing? Who are your friends playing as?

 

[sixty4half]

Maybe build a small insurgent group to escort one of your Great Merchant of Venice (GMoV) to a CS near your friends and have it buy the CS as a Puppet for you. Send the other GMoVs to other CSs for Trade Missions. Spend your social policies in the Commerce tree. Buy tons of units from your CS Puppet which you strategically placed next to your "Friends" and eliminate them from the game. You win.

 

[beetle]

Emphasis added:

I am playing my first game of Civ today. The friends I am playing with are very experienced and I want to see if there is a possibility of winning. I am playing as Venice and...

Your friends are evil. Venice is a difficulty civ, especially in MP.

 

[Sarin]

Yeah, it's not a good spot. My advice would be Diplomacy Victory hammer. First, check if DV is enabled and possible (meaning there's enough votes that can be secured to achieve it without help of any human player, because you obviously can't count on that). Check the wiki page for the details and the math behind it. If it is, just lay low. Stockpile your MoV and gold, get some defense, perhaps join a gangbang or two that happen when one player gets too close to victory, and don't buy out any CS. If you can, hold off on getting an ideology until you can see which one is most likely to be elected as world ideology. Same with religion, unless you already found one.

As the World Leader elections begin, you have to time this right. Get your merchants in position, use spies as diplomats to secure votes of AI players, and the last turn before vote, use yor merchants for trade missions to secure alliances with CS and use all your gold to get all CS allied to you and with enough influence left so the other players won't be able to counter that in last turn. Don't be afraid to go overkill and secure more votes than actually necessary.

It's a risk, you have one shot at this, and remember...it's a rush, don't try to creep up by allying many CS sooner. You have to count on not being noticed by other players until it's too late.

 

[docbud]

@beetle: Wow--the OP having to play Venice never entered my mind. You're right--his friends are evil!

 

[Puhi]

As the World Leader elections begin, you have to time this right. Get your merchants in position, use spies as diplomats to secure votes of AI players, and the last turn before vote, use yor merchants for trade missions to secure alliances with CS and use all your gold to get all CS allied to you and with enough influence left so the other players won't be able to counter that in last turn. Don't be afraid to go overkill and secure more votes than actually necessary.

It's a risk, you have one shot at this, and remember...it's a rush, don't try to creep up by allying many CS sooner. You have to count on not being noticed by other players until it's too late.

This is a good strategy to employ one turn before the world leader vote comes up.

You can also, once you have bought every cs to be your ally, declare war on everyone. If you are at war with everyone, they can't buy your cs allies back. Of course, if your math was wrong and you failed to get enough votes, you are at war with the world.

 

[beetle]

You can also, once you have bought every cs to be your ally, declare war on everyone.

Be careful with this, as “merely” having every CS allied is not usually enough to win the early WL votes! I am not good with the math, but you also need Forbidden Parlance, World Ideology, and/or World Religion. If you MP games has AIs in the mix, you can get extra votes by recalling a civ to life. My SP diplo games are always after Globalization -- and you cannot have a diplomat with a civ that you are at war with. So post-Globalization, for Diplo VC you want to be at peace with every civ with which you can place a diplomat.

 

[Sclb]

Pretty sure this game is unwinnable if your friends are as good as you say. There is a reason why Venice is usually banned from MP. Any good player can easily dodge diplo V attempts, it's pretty easy to declare war just before vote so that the globalization don't apply, and in doing so you'll be unable to ally the CS since you can't use MoV on CS at war with you. All this talk assumes you aren't taken out early by rushes, since Venice is pretty easy to rush early.

 

[Sebulous]

Here's a forum post from a while ago that helped me improve my Civ 5 play a lot. I asked a fair few questions and got a lot of great replies.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=547826

Also for multiplayer, the Youtuber FilthyRobot is your man.
Hope I helped

 

[Popedesu]

Well your friends are evil, Venice is the hardest civ for multiplayer, and is a hard civ in single player too. Though yes you can buy your way to victory, buy science buildings, food buildings, and workers, build farms on flat lands, mines on hills, and lumber mills in forest.

Focus military techs, then buy military buildings (barracks, armory, etc.) then buy units. Wait to be attacked, then defend, widdle them down as they keep attacking you, keep in mind they'll build more units, but not as many as you should be taking away. Then, whilst keeping some units around your cities, start the offense, this will either go well as they used all/most of their units on you, or terribly as they used some units on you to make you think they suffered heavy losses, then wreck you when you get to their lands.

I would wait till you have ideology (if you can), then I'd go autocracy and get lightning warfare, landship/tank armies are insane.

 

[Iberian]

Any chance you can send us a screenshot of you land, the demographics, and the scores?