Venice Challenge!

[HughFran]

I've always been intrigued by Venice but never played as them until now. The extra trade routes they get are really handy for generating income but the one city rule can be tough. I decided that I was going to give them a go on a tiny map (continents) on Immortal with all victory conditions enabled. My plan was to go full culture and get City States onboard for a possible Diplomatic Victory.

Typical luck, I spawned next to Greece who are renouned for expansion and allying with CSs and they beat me to Forbidden Palace. So after unlocking the Patronage and seeing Greece build FP, I abandoned Patronage and opened Aesthetics. I've built quite a few Culture and Growth based wonders which is what I wanted and used MoV to get two neighbouring CSs which had good resources and a lot of units.

The problem is, Greece is literally all around me on the continent we are on (which is small in size) and they've already DoW'd me twice which I have fended off. I've fell behind in the game score as everybody else's score is over 1000 and somehow I am still sitting at 850 even though I've got all of the NWs and all the science/culture buildings I need.

It's still pretty early in the game where I have a chance to catch up but I was wondering if any Venice veterans had any tips for getting ahead of the others? Has anybody won with Venice on Immortal and if so, how did you manage to star on par with the other Civs when they all had four or five cities?

 

[Kriogen]

When I play Venice:
- go Liberty. To get 1 MoV as replacement for settler and 1 GS as Liberty finisher (you need all the science you can get). 1 Mov comes from tech
- if want to puppet 1 city as soon as possible. But it has to be costal city. Militaristic or religious CS if possible. No need to rush buying 1 CS.
- send food cargo ships back to Venice ASAP. Many ships. You want Venice to go sky high.
- 2nd pupet is from other major civs. Capitols are the best.
- keep costal cities. Sell the rest for profit
- so only 1 CS gone because of Mov. Extra MoV are for money.
- you can't buy land tiles in puppets. Tradition opener is not a bad idea (even better if you can build HG). Generals can grab land. Good idea to have a war or two (capitols better then CS as puppets!)

More:
- left side patronage is a good idea. Maybe even a must. Puppets don't give full science I think. So extra beakers from CSs are more then wellcome.
- kill Alex (and that ramkamham dude) on sight. Or atleast bribe others to do it for you.
- don't sit on your gold. Buy some stuff in your puppets. And bribe. Bribe alot. I think thats what Enrico did in RL.

About you game: Kill Alex, get he's Forbidden Palace. Get Athens as a puppet. Burn or sell the rest.

 

[Sclb]

That is correct, you don't want too many CS bought with MoV, it's better to just conquer capitals for additional cities, due to CS having poorer land. Avoid puppeting Mercantile or cultural CS, but you can take others.
I agree that left side patronage is good idea, so don't abandon it. On the other hand, don't bother with Aesthetics unless you're really going for CV, and even if you do CV, you shouldn't take Aesthetics until very late in game. You need all the science you can get since science is the limiting factor for Venice, more so than other civs due to stupid puppet governors. You really want to use your gold to buy CS as allies if possible. Kill any civ that compete with CS.

 

[sunbeam]

Angkor Wat doesn't seem to be very popular as a wonder with most folks here, but it is invaluable for Venice.

A puppeted city state's borders just don't expand like a normal cities, no matter how many cultural buildings you put in.

When you are in the late game and you need coal or oil or something, and it tantalizes you as to whether the city state's borders will pop to include that... well it pays off.

Colossus is the other wonder that helps. Petra too if for some reason you qualify. Great Lighthouse is also something I find useful because Venice is just going to navy up, no matter what and it has great merchant points.

Like someone said here, don't puppet too many states. I usually do two, so I can send two food ships to Venice early on. Hopefully a nearby city state has iron, if it wasn't in my initial city site's resource ring.

Later I only puppet to get closer to someone if I need to take military action against a civ, or to get coal/oil/aluminum.

But every city state you puppet reduces the potential to get city state votes in the world congress.

 

[Sclb]

I don't think Angkor Wat is ever worth it. There are better wonders to build at that point in game. If you really needed a resource, the puppet governor will prioritize it as long as you discovered the tech. The default algorithm is only extremely bad for claiming tiles like hills so it will be bad if something is behind hills or oceans etc.

 

[zxcvbob]

I just finished a Venice emperor-level game. I think I bought 2 CS's the whole game, the rest of my cities were conquered AI cities. I was going for a warmonger-y culture victory (I had all the CS allies, but diplo and science victory were disabled) but I realized it was going to take too long to overcome America's culture so I switched to domination. The game took more turns than usual (400-something on a standard sized map) but the game moved along quickly because only one city to manage.

Tradition, Patronage opener to unlock Forbidden Palace, Commerce, Rationalism, Freedom(6), finish Patronage, Exploration, then started on the right side of Liberty. I probably could have shaved quite a few turns off by buying a lot more units. (as soon as a conquered city comes out of resistance, buy all the XP buildings an airport, a bomb shelter, and 10 more planes -- I only did that once, but I had plenty of oil and aluminum so I should have done it a lot more) I had over 100000 gold in the bank, was making over 800 GPT even with the Standing Army Tax that I forced, happiness was about 100, and I had extra great merchants just standing around.

To get puppet cities to expand their borders, I put great works in their culture buildings. (they still expand pretty slowly but it helps a lot) Or just conquer the AI city next to it that has huge borders already.

Going to try Venice at immortal level next.

 

[zxcvbob]

Diplomatic victory at immortal! I think that's my first victory at immortal on a random map (I've won scenarios at immortal, and I think I won a GotM at immortal but not sure) It was pretty straightforward but tougher than I expected. It was a weird map with a lot of inland seas, which worked against me (no cargo ships feeding my capitol, and some of the CS's were too far away for trade routes even w/ Refrigeration and Combustion) I finally bought a distant CS so I could send cargo ships from it to reach the outliers. The final world leader vote still cost me about 5000 gold to snatch the remaining CS votes.

I was in a friendly cold war for most of the game with my neighbor Morocco. William was my other neighbor, with the largest military but also going for a diplo victory with Gunboat Diplomacy (and it was working; GD never works for me even when I have the largest military.) I funded a couple of wars but never participated in any.

 

[Cicerosaurus]

I played as Venice for the first time some months ago and thought it was pretty much day at the beach stuff. However the advice I got from Browd was to use all the trade routes to generate teriffic amounts of gold and buy a lot of things. (as opposed to building them).

 

[raider980]

Game of the Month is Venice this month as an FYI. It's my first time playing them.