Thx for the answer, I think you make some really good points!
I didn't think of really focusing on GSs, I was rather wasting my time going to the lower tree and getting the markets/banks for the GM points.
Btw, I'm more or less a casual player too. I could probably play on Immortal or maybe Deity with Venice, as I find it on Emperor relatively easy in most games. I moved from King where I had become totally overpowered, but my Venice victories of Emperor are now getting easy as well.
What you do is more in the vein of my culture/domination strategy for Venice. One of the downsides of this on Emperor and above is that the AI will often do the same thing, or tech the main line (center) and you lose the benefits of letting it take a 8 or 10 bottom techs lead on you (making you science return from TR huge, sometimes bigger than what you produce until the NC) while yourself focus on the top half and culture/science. Sometimes there's simply no choice, when your luxuries demand bottom tree techs, or when you have a neighbor/location that force you to get walls up or go for longbowmen early. Venice on a hill is important for defense (you save the turns for an early wall, and can usually do with archers a while longer), but Venice next to a mountain for an observatory is usually a good trade-off... I often will risk it, anyway.
The Civ is so powerful there are many ways to play it, though. In my experience unless you start in isolation, which is pretty crippling, then money and happiness with Venice aren't really problems (and in the end you need enough gold to keep the CS allied, to buy all your key buildings and to maintain an army that's enough to defend and deter.. more is often extraneous...). Sooner or later, they will flow in. Sooner is better, but not at the expense of growth. If they can be augmented with bonuses like Wonders all the better, but it's growth and science that matter the most (then production, if it's too low in Venice, you need to buy stuff too much), as you only have one very good city for it, and for all the National Wonders, and to produce units. Early production counts, but I tend to devote what I have to buildings rather than Wonders, which I start getting mostly in Medieval/Renaissance. The biggest challenge with Venice for me is the build order, the rest is much easier. You always have more buildings to build than you can, and alas that includes cargo ships that some times are hard to find a window to produce (and before triremes and the Great Galleases they can be a pain to protect. I find I can't really afford to lose the turns necessary to produce a cargo ship early on, so I might delay them, or use caravans at first, if those TR are long and I can't police my waters. I might compensate by selling everything I can to the AI in the interim, even unique luxuries if it's not a problem. Early Golden Age with Venice suck, IMO. With so few gold on tiles and a focus on growth/production anyway, you don't get much beside the culture/production bonus.).
Also, HG and colossus are nice boosts, but can indeed be avoided.
Quite. HG can be replaced by an additional internal TR, and while more money is always fine, money fast becomes cheap for Venice.
The optimal food/science balance is not always obvious since they are closely related. I see you really go purely science, I was trying to alternate science/food development (in the long run, delayed science in favor of food and gold might even out since they both offer very strong science growth potential).
The two are really linked. I don't neglect food, if I can get two puppets feeding Venice I do (I achieve it by producing a first GM from the GHL, the one from Optics is really "free"), otherwise I get a second worker out and I upgrade all the food tiles that can be, and I don't delay my granary, and Tradition get me my early aqueduct. By the way, if I can I might delay legalism to produce a monument first and get a free Amphitheater instead.
My target is always to reach the optimal size for Venice (all good tiles + all specialists) asap, but I switch to a production focus when I must (to get the NC up, notably and later for some Wonders, and at other times. I try to micromanage my tiles as much as possible).
Maybe it's indeed not the best approach (some calculations would be quite complex, but very useful to see which path is optimal).
I'm not strategic enough either. I don't think my strategy is
quite optimal, but it's working well enough to get Venice SV and CV and even Domination on Emperor. Venice's power let's me play casually on Emperor, which is what I like. I also like Poland for similar reasons. I have fun with other Civs like post-patch Germany, though. But my favorite is Venice, I've dreamed long of getting that Civ in the game!
However, I seldom place academies after scientific theory. This is another balance point, placing academies vs discovering techs, which IMO leans towards the latter past scientific theory (haven't done the calculations though, just an intuitive estimation).
Others have done, and your intuition is right. I try to get my 3 Academies up before Scientific Theory, a fourth is a bonus I rarely manage. It's only then I start focusing more on getting MoV, but the puppets prioritize gold, so they are often the ones who get them for me. Then all the GS I get (I produce many, science work all my specialists, others I get from faith) I store up for the late game, after I got RL in all the puppets, and it can happen that I will grab 2-3-4 late game puppets with MoV to further increase the strength of my science and thus of my stored up GS. My Academies, that artificially boost my Venice population by 24 citizens science-wise (before bonuses that push them to 12 base beakers) really count for this. When I play for a SV, I also make sure to get all the extra GS I can, from faith, from Hubble etc.. At times I grab GE from faith either. If I'm a faith powerhouse (it happens!) I might also grab other GP.
I try to adapt as I go, though. I rarely stick perfectly to any plan. It may well happen I will bulb an early GS for a key tech along the way. If I'm committed to a SV, I pay attention to boost first my tourism and culture to avoid Ideological pressure, as I don't have a choice to go Freedom no matter what (and if I fail, it's one of those situations I will go for a Diplo win). It can be hard with Venice to get three factories up right after Industrialization (it's easy not to have early coal as Venice...) so when it seems to go that way I like to beeline to Radio that I get with Oxford (when there's an opportunity, I build it up to 1 turn left, then wait for that key tech I want) then I pass World Ideology asap.
One thing I don't understand is how can you get the puppets without capturing them?
Do you negotiate it in the peace agreement?
Yes, absolutely. I wage wars of attrition, on defense or offense. You need to be fairly powerful and very friendly with the others to minimize the diplomatic effects. I try to get my neighbor disliked first, if possible (I will risk a Denouncement if the neighbor denounced other Civs or has been denounced by other friends of mine already), and to keep as many others friendly. Then I DoW, focus on killing all the units and I lay siege to a city and bring down its defense. Then in the peace deal I ask for the specific city I want. The AI used to refuse that unless you were really very powerful (offering at best its pitiful out of the way cities), but since BNW it's far more amenable to let go of a huge city it can no longer defend, all the more if it's a city closer to you than to its capital. That city comes a) without losing anything but unique buildings b) without any pop loss and c) without additional warmonger penalty (aside from the very little one you get for the DoW itself). You don't get free units, though, and you musn't accept any city that would drain rather than increase your science.
In my "widest" Venice-science game, I got 7 Wonders, and several Great Works via those wars. First war I got William's city #2, then I was peaceful for good time, letting the "minor penalty" for the DoW wear down (William denounced me, but my relations with everyone were good enough not to suffer from that). In the second one I conquered the capital and got an extra city in the peace deal. Then in a third war also waged later I brought an "ally" (not a declared friend...) in and let him finish off William for me (I just brought down the defenses so it happened...) He became the big black sheep and after the chain denouncement I DoW him and got the two cities he took from William in the peace deal. I was then master of my continent. The rest were puppet CS all over the map, which provided me the most lucrative TR in the world. I had only one near Venice itself, that I got early with the Optics MoV, the rest were all post-Astronomy acquisitions. I took out another capital and a few cities in the very late game, but it wasn't optimal or really that useful. My victory was certain and I decided to have fun with Suleiman who had annoyed me the whole game.
That's another tip: it can be a very good thing to wait to puppet too many CS. You have better chance to have high happiness to support them, and they will have a much higher population and many more units. Best of all, you can send your MoV oversea, which lets you choose the best coastal cities to reach the greatest cities for TR (Morocco's, if it's in the game, notably).
When I play Venice, I also like to take advantage of its wealth to play the WC to the max. When I beeline/use Oxford to get Radio early, I immediately try to get World Ideology passed. I send my diplomats first to the most advanced civs, buying their votes before they take an ideology. Then I purchase as many of the others as I can. I try to be clever: If they ask too much, I look to see if they won't ask much less to vote for or against the second proposal. World Ideology helps a lot when you focus on science, as it gives you some margin not to suffer from pressure/increase your tourism/culture before you do.
I also like to spend to get AI to defeat the proposal of their friends if I don't care either way, and stuff like that. I also bribe for wars a huge deal as Venice.
I am usually fairly peaceful and in appearance friendly, but in truth I am a right bastard that care for little beside profits and Venice's own good (like the real Dandolo...).
Militarily when I can I keep a somewhat sparse early army, essentially defensive. When I'm wealthier, by the time I get x-bows I start increasing it, getting a big-ish navy, and in the late game I usually buy my way to the top three military powers (and I like to get one atomic bomb if I can afford the detour, to get all the others afraid, after which diplo-wise they don't dare anything). I use that army almost strictly as a deterrent, in most games.
Also, I think there is another balance point here, when it comes to the optimal tech growth: after a certain # of puppets, the 5% penalty (IIRC it does apply to puppets) makes them simply not worth it (e.g. if all your cities have the same science output, acquiring a 21st city with the same science output will not give you any advantage when it comes to tech research). Obviously, in most games the capital has much more science than satellite cities, so the # of "useful" puppets becomes much less than 20.. (purely regarding science, obviously it's further less for culture and very good for domination).
Exactly. I've tried to keep it under 10, including CS puppets, and it's more usual that I stick to a more classic 4/very tall strategy. All big cities that produce far more than the 5% penalty. It goes without saying that I might help the best ones to grow further with internal TR if possible, and I buy them all the science buildings asap after I get them.
Anyway, if you get to conquer other civs while having a science lead, the game is pretty much over.
Yup, that's a downside.. this strategy when it works is fairly overpowered, in the sense that Victory is certain long before you reach it, so it can be boring to finish those games.
