If your opponent starts pillaging your trade routes just go with what I call the One World Army strategy. This is also good for when your opponents start trying to conquer your Allies to reduce your WC votes.
With Freedom's Teir 2 tenant Arsenal of Democracy you get 20 rep per unit gifted to a CS as well as 15% production when building Units. With Commerce you can purchase items at 25% discount. You can then buy Landsnecks at 130 gold. If you build Big Ben you get a further discount dropping the price to 90g. So:
90g = 20 Rep
or
1000g = 120 Rep (on a really good day, if you haven't gifted to them before and they are asking for a handout)
So for the same price of Max Rep (1000g) which can range from 70rep to 120rep, you can instead get 220 rep spread across multiple CSs or stacked through multiple gifts.
This is also supplemented by building a massive amount of Artillery in Venice. Under the right conditions you can build a new Artillery every 2 turns. So, every 3 turns you mass purchase Landsnekts and gain 20 rep with every City State on the map.
It's slower to get going but if you start earlier you'll have better results than the 1000G gifts.
This strat does work better when you can BUILD units in multiple cities, but it's a good alternate strat for Venice if they start pillaging your 16 trade routes.
As an added bonus, you can use the Foreign Legions for a quick 120 Rep (20 spread across 6 CSs) which also gives you an immediate discount on 6 of your other units. Meaning more money for Unit purchase/Gold Gifts.
