Venice liberty merchant rush

[Kouvb593kdnuewnd]

As probably we all know Venice can't train settlers so their abillity to expand is limited to warfare and city state purcase with great merchants.

Actually Venice don't get great merchants instead they get a super great merchant I can't remember their name so I just call them Venice merchant.

Venice merchant differ from ordinary merchant in two ways.
Most obviously they can purcase a citystate giveing you the city as a pupet and all its units under your controll.
The second thing is that their trade mission is double as strong as ordinary merchant in both gold and influence gain.

Now to the strategy.

You can get two merchants pretty quickly as Venice, one from getting the tech optics and one from liberty policy collective rule.

We want both of these as soon as posible so I suggest a moument first start while teching maybe even beline to optics.

The point is to use both merchant on trade missions which will get us 1600 gold and 120 influence standard speed which I would put in a merchentile CS because we will need happines.

The gold should be spent on millitary to get a big army, I did a test game on king difficulty in which I had 10 units before turn 40 most of them bought with gold.

The point is that this will overcome Venice expansion problem and destroy alot of opponents allowing you for a easy victory.

However I would want help to develope this strategy and sorry for bad Spelling.

 

[joshua43214]

Should be fine on King for pursuing domination because you can ignore the AI whining about you being a warmonger. Would be interesting to test this on high difficulty to see if you can get away with the rofl stomp that will follow expanding by capturing.

Trying to go for anything other than domination will just be bad strategy. Venice should always go Tradition unless you are looking for something different. Delaying Tradition to take 3 in Liberty is far worse than just waiting around for your 2nd MoV

 

[GoStu]

I'm not sure about this; burning three social policies in Liberty for a free Merchant of Venice sounds subobtimal to me. If you drop three more, you could use the Liberty finisher for a third Merchant of course.

I'm still not sure this is the best idea though. You're committed to Liberty, which in my opinion is really not a great Social Policy tree for Venice. The bonuses from Liberty are most useful to a Wide empire towards the mid-game; not for a 3-4 city empire. The best result I can see is grabbing 3-4 cities off neighbors, and having a fairly large leftover army. The maintenance on those units might be hard to keep up, and assuming you have any surviving neighbors they'll hate your guts forever.

Is this meant to be a multiplayer strategy, to zerg one or two enemies off a small or tiny map?

 

[kaspergm]

Venice should always go Tradition unless you are looking for something different.

I'm still not sure about this. Up to at least Emperor, if you don't play super-competitively at least, Liberty Venice can work perfectly fine. Under normal circumstances, it might not be your best choice, but if you want a domination Venice approach, Liberty Venice should be perfectly viable.

I've played regular Venice games on Emperor and started with Liberty/Commerce and won massively, so it's perfectly doable, at least vs. AI. Can't say if Tradition would have given me an earlier win, but Liberty was not problematic for Venice.

 

[Kouvb593kdnuewnd]

You can maybe clean a continent with this stategy also you can capture CS with your army and maybe later get workshops to ship over insane production to Venice for a wonder spam strategy I guess.

You can bribe the ai with overflow resource which maybe make them like you.

Is really tradition so important now with trade routes and the abillity of liberty to get some extra cities while still allowing Venice to develop maybe is stronger also non of the liberty policies will be complety a waste the 3 great person may be for example a Scientist to help you tech up and so on.

I doubt you for example will get NC much slower with liberty Venice then you otherwise will get because pupets don't count for the limits and then I tested it I could basicly purcased all my toops and used my hamers on other things.

A test on higher difficulty may be good to do.

 

[joshua43214]

sure, you get the NC about the same time, you trade growth for production.

The effect of Liberty is seen with later education, ST, Plastics, etc. There are no long term benefits from Liberty for Venice, the policy tree does not scale for them. The OP's idea is to use the first two MoV's in trade missions to finance an early army. Warfare pays for itself if you keep it up, so you do not want the extra growth or need the extra gold from Tradition. But unless you plan to take over the map, Tradition will always be better because it synergizes with Venice and has long term benefits that scale for the whole game.

 

[cinattra]

You should already be making pretty good gold with double trade routes. I would just MoV a CS near potential trade partners. I could see burning a MoV on a trade mission if you're near one of the Civs that is aggressive early like Monty, but otherwise it does seem like a waste to buy military units. Get on the good side of a militaristic CS and have them feed you military units. It doesn't take many good units to hold off a decent size underpowered army.

Tradition and Venice just go hand in hand. Other trees may work but not as well as tradition.

Wish you would have posted some snapshots or something to help with the visuals.

 

[Kouvb593kdnuewnd]

I don't know how to post Pictures, pls tell me

 

[joncnunn]

Venice doesn't need two super early Merchants of Venice.
It's needs the happiness & growth bonuses from Tradition a lot more.

The city states need time to build their work boats, improve their land tiles, grow, and produce a few military units. And if they have a natural wonder right outside their cultural boundary, time to acquire that as well.
And with the main point of the first couple of puppets being to each send a food cargo ship to Venice; you need time to clear the area from barb ships.

In fact, the normal problem on a high enough difficulty level that Venice has is science; not gold.

 

[Kouvb593kdnuewnd]

But the faster you get the cities under your controll the sooner you can send the cargo ships and the sooner you grove the better your tech gets and more cities can allow you to control more resources, have more pop and happines so thats good to.

Killing of some CS and Civs early on mean they will not become a problem later which is nice too.

 

[joshua43214]

But the faster you get the cities under your controll the sooner you can send the cargo ships and the sooner you grove the better your tech gets and more cities can allow you to control more resources, have more pop and happines so thats good to.

Killing of some CS and Civs early on mean they will not become a problem later which is nice too.

Joncnunn has it right. It seems counter intuitive, but it is better to wait a bit before using a MoV. You are much better off using 310 gold on a worker then 340 gold on a granary, and even on Deity CS's can take forever to get a granary up. The other big point he made is about border growth, you need to let them expand a bit. Get the first one as soon as the granary is up and it has connected it lux, wait a bit for the second so you get some territory and some free units. Rushing a liberty MoV and a Compass MoV is just not going to work unless you have 680 spare gold - which you won't. Tradition is just simply better for Venice.

Lastly, killing off some CS and Civs early on means they won't be a problem, but the rest of the map will dogpile you. Unless you are going full on domination, you will have about as crappy a game as you can get. This was my point about it probably being workable up to King difficulty. I like the idea in general - use early MoV's to buy units and go conquer. It is a creative way to do early domination.

 

[Browd]

I don't know how to post Pictures, pls tell me

When composing a message, click on "Go Advanced". Once you are there, you can click on the paperclip icon on the ribbon bar. Or you can go to "Additional Options" at the bottom of the page and click "Manage Attachments." Choose file to upload and it's pretty clear from that point on.

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[Enrico Swagolo]

Liberty is a good choice...

As an ultra late game tree. By that I mean maxing Commerce, taking what you want from Rationalism, maxing Tradition, taking good patronage policies if needed, taking whatever you want from your Ideology. Then the game is almost over and the MoV will give you insane amounts of money ensuring it's worth it, especially since by that point there's nothing else you can really take because the other policies either won't help, are useless, help in achieving a victory you don't want or just don't fit.

 

[Crafty Bison]

Well there are usually 2 policies to burn after tradition and before rationalism, so using 3 on liberty doesn't seem so horrific if it helps the early start; you'll join up within 15 or so turns to rationalism anyway. It could also be completed later on for the last GM, when the +100 great people generation doesn't hurt so much if you really want as well. However, the one thing it does is slow down completion of rationalism, so it's viable, but has issues.

 

[joncnunn]

Liberty is a good choice...

As an ultra late game tree. By that I mean maxing Commerce, taking what you want from Rationalism, maxing Tradition, taking good patronage policies if needed, taking whatever you want from your Ideology. Then the game is almost over and the MoV will give you insane amounts of money ensuring it's worth it, especially since by that point there's nothing else you can really take because the other policies either won't help, are useless, help in achieving a victory you don't want or just don't fit.

Maxing out Commerce is also a BAD idea for any puppet empire; including Venice; one of these policies will cause your puppets to generate even more GMOV after you no longer want them at the expense of Great Scientists and in addition a second policy within it is useless for Venice (you want all your routes to be cargo ships; not caravans) Exploration has much more to offer; left side if you want more gold from trade ships / right side if you want more happiness. (City states are mostly going to be on the coast and puppets will build those buildings)

Rationalism is what you always want all of (as any civ); if not signing RAs you can delay the RA one to get a better free tech, but science is king in Civ V.

Patronage: If you are actively filling city state quests, the opener and Consulates can still be useful.

Cash is NOT a problem as Venice; especially in late game; your puppets will generate more gold than you can possibly use by then.

 

[GhostSalsa]

Well there are usually 2 policies to burn after tradition and before rationalism

uh, maybe...Commerce??!!!?

Maxing out Commerce is also a BAD idea for any puppet empire; including Venice; one of these policies will cause your puppets to generate even more GMOV after you no longer want them at the expense of Great Scientists and in addition a second policy within it is useless for Venice (you want all your routes to be cargo ships; not caravans) Exploration has much more to offer; left side if you want more gold from trade ships / right side if you want more happiness.
Cash is NOT a problem as Venice; especially in late game; your puppets will generate more gold than you can possibly use by then.

WHAT

Yes finishing Commerce / the caravan policy have no value, but why would you not want 50% MoV production plus double trade mission gold (which is 4x gold for MoV)??? Yes Great Scientists are better than everything but why play Venice just to use the strategy of every other civ? Max out MoVs. Quicker MoV generation improves your ability to expand exactly when you want to.

Puppet MoVs?? If you are staffing market and bank then your MoV output is going to raise the counter so high that puppets aren't going to compete - I don't think I had a single puppet pop an MoV in my game. Later, Rationalism boosts scientist generation, and allows faith buys, so it's very easy for the capital to churn out a lot of both.

Venice's gameplay is based on the MoV. Why would you want to avoid boosting output. Yes, you'll have "plenty of money," but in the mid-game there will always be a few more CS you can benefit from bribing. RAs will give you your science boosts, I wouldn't sacrifice building buys and CS bribes for a few dumb academies.

I agree Exploration has a lot to offer - I think it's obvious that splitting old Commerce into two trees was a nerf to the new Venice civ, since old Commerce was basically based on Venice. I think Commerce is better for unlocking BB and beefing MoVs.

Back to the OP, I think others have addressed that early domination for Venice doesn't make a lot of sense even though that's a cool strategy. Barring a weird Venice domination rush, it's crazy not to take Tradition. You need faith bought Engineers since you only have one city for wonders.

 

[Kouvb593kdnuewnd]

When composing a message, click on "Go Advanced". Once you are there, you can click on the paperclip icon on the ribbon bar. Or you can go to "Additional Options" at the bottom of the page and click "Manage Attachments." Choose file to upload and it's pretty clear from that point on.

Or you can insert a link in your post to an external provider where you have uploaded your image, like Dropbox, Photobucket, Imgur, etc. For those, you can either use the "Insert Link" button on the ribbon bar or manually insert the link using [url]Insert Link[/url] tags.

Thanks for the help

 

[joncnunn]

Puppet MoVs?? If you are staffing market and bank then your MoV output is going to raise the counter so high that puppets aren't going to compete - I don't think I had a single puppet pop an MoV in my game. Later, Rationalism boosts scientist generation, and allows faith buys, so it's very easy for the capital to churn out a lot of both.

In my most recent Venice game: My puppets generated 4 MOVs; (the last two after the game was effectively already won)

This is with my capital filling all specialist slots (other than me firing the merchants from Venice after I was no longer interested in more MOV), Venice having both a Garden and National Epic; none of my puppets being on either rivers or lakes.

 

[GhostSalsa]

In my most recent Venice game: My puppets generated 4 MOVs; (the last two after the game was effectively already won)

This is with my capital filling all specialist slots (other than me firing the merchants from Venice after I was no longer interested in more MOV), Venice having both a Garden and National Epic; none of my puppets being on either rivers or lakes.

Hm - then yes i suppose that would be annoying. I'm sure you're correct that throttling MoVs is more ideal for entering Information Era sooner, ie faster Diplo Victory - but Venice isn't designed for faster victories in general (except of course a tedious frigate dom push). I think it pays off in game experience to maximize MoVs, stick around in the industrial era (where Venice's tech will slow down) for a little conquest of the bad guys to boost score, hopefully liberate an AI civ for their votes because I know I needed that in mine (eating CS's makes getting the final count hard), and finish that way.

 

[reddishrecue]

This strategy can come useful for Venice especially with the representation social policy. However, I don't see citizenship becoming that useful in island maps (since most CSs already have workers when you buy them) unless you are in a land map like pangea or great plains and puppet many cities that need road connections.
As for the liberty rush, it could seem successful because you can make earlier MoVs than with tradition with collective rule. If collective rule also gave an increase in generating MoVs since they cant get much from a 50% settler production increase.