Early game fail - story time spin off

[redwings1340]

This post is inspired by Jatta Pake's post/story about a recent game he played with the Ottomans, but substituting a game I just started where I've encountered some early struggles. Go check it out if you haven't seen it: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=502359

I'm playing as Venice, large map, 22 civs, emperor difficulty, diplo win off. My original plan was to go tradition/commerce and to get a ton of money, but then my scout discovered early that a nearby city state is right next to (2 tiles away) from Mt Sinai. The leaders of Venice became so enticed by the holy mountain that they gave liberty to all Venetians, hoping to get more merchants of venice so that they could spread their newfound religion to the world!

Buying Hanoi

I rushed optics to get the first merchant of Venice to take the holy city, and when I finally did puppet Hanoi, the first problem started to arise. Mt Sinai wasn't currently in Hanoi, and I learned that you can't buy tiles with puppeted city states! To make matters worse, the liberty opener didn't give any culture to Hanoi (glitch? decision by developers?), so Hanoi had absolutely no border growth. I was around 60 gold short of a monument, and my income was in the negative.

Eventually I did manage to get enough income and I bought a monument for Hanoi, but the border growth was still painfully slow. Hanoi was planning on expanding to Mt Sinai in 20 turns, but then as soon as I researched animal husbandry, horses appeared 3 tiles away from the city. The Hanoi leaders and people became greedy at the thought of mounting horses of their own, and changed their border expansion to go towards the horses instead of the holy mountain. I have since sold these horses to India, and none of the profits will be going to Hanoi as punishment for their sins.

Bad decisions
While I didn't have a religion yet, the leaders of venice and hanoi decided to build shrines to the yet inaccessible mount Sinai, and eventually, with the help of a friendly city state who wished to spread the word, the peoples of the cities began worshipping the mountain god in a pantheon. Venice looked at Hanoi's preview screen to check when Mount Sinai would be accesable, and were fooled by a lag and saw their own screen, which would have border growth in 2 turns as opposed to 20. Excited by the mountain, we put all our religious resources in to a +4 faith for all natural wonders, but by the time they realized their error, it was too late, and the people were worshipping the concept of the mountain across the land, and getting no bonuses from the pantheon.

Meanwhile, This screen also made me choose the first piety policy, even though my cities both had shrines. I currently have 3 policies in liberty and the piety opener.

Religion fail
There was nothing I could do but wait for my religion, so in the meantime, I decided to focus on trade routes and income. I built a road between Venice and Hanoi and built cargo ships to improve the food of my empire, and caravans for money and science. I am well behind on science at this point, as Venice does not even have a library. The last religion was taken in around 500 BC, and Mt Sinai finally came in to my empire at 325 BC.

Reasons I'm still hopeful
Despite not having a religion with the first tenant in piety and Mt Sinai, I'm thinking that the BNW features can give me a chance to catch up. As long as I can avoid getting specific early techs, science from trade routes should get me caught up in tech eventually, especially with Venice's double trade route ability. This is why I feel ok with not building a library for now, although I probably will build one very soon.

I managed to get the great lighthouse. Polynesia is in the game, so I doubt I'll be able to found the world congress with my bad tech start, but I should be able to get a pretty good economy that much sooner when I research astronomy.

Brazil, my neighbor, did found a religion, so I can at least get benefits from that eventually using my +12 faith from the holy mountain.

If people are interested I'll update this thread as the game progresses. I think I want to continue building up my faith and my economy, and use trade routes to keep up in tech until the later game. I imagine warfare is going to be pretty scarce until I get a stronger navy, but the last game I played as Venice, the only ally I had by the end of the game was Shaka, so with this condensed map, military exchanges could get interesting.

 

[troublmaker]

That's really .

One time I invested into the piety tree. Little did I realize at the time that every single religion in the world had already been taken.

 

[Jatta Pake]

Sweet! Please continue and keep us updated!

 

[redwings1340]

The Empty Pious
Without a religion, my faith began skyrocketing with no real use. City states were stunned by great Venetian piety, but this faith has led to very few achievements. No great buildings have been constructed and no individual people have had religious inspiration to get them to rise to greatness. The great empty pious civilization, people around the world call it. When you visit Venice and Hanoi, you see a people who are utterly devoted to worshipping Mount Sinai, but whatever it is, nobody does anything useful from it.

Meanwhile, Brazil
The city of Rio De Janeiro has perhaps the best religion in the known world at this point, but despite having the world church founder bonus, Brazil has led a very isolationist religion. 5 tiles to the east of Venice the great brazilian city of Sao Paolo has been a catholic city for perhaps a thousand years, and while Venice has been begging for this religion, no help is coming save through the slow process of trade route pressure from Venice itself.

Happiness Issues
To keep the people inspired and to best serve trade route science gain, the royal crown of Venice has decreed that no secrets in the bottom of the tech tree may be known in the empire. Unfortunately, our spy in Polynesia did uncover the secret of masonry, but the secrets of bronze working and construction are as of yet unknown to our great republic. This makes it difficult to gauge where I am scientifically, as Ghandi can have 7 techs I don't have, while I can have 4 that he doesn't.

Unfortunately the lack of colosseums and AI luxury items on my continent makes it difficult to maintain happiness and growth rate in the empire. I decided to use a merchant of venice to take Melbourne, a hostile mercantile city state as my third city, but as I bought the city, Melbournean agents not loyal to the Venetian crown sabotaged the secret of porcelain, giving me absolutely no new luxury resources, and setting my happiness back at -7 with no way to get it higher than -3. It dipped down to -8 for a time, and while the cities cried for colosseums, the crown pushed for astronomy tech, hoping the solution to our republic's problems lied on the other side of the sea.

Back on track, but with stunted growth
Venice built one trireme early, and Melbourne had two of their own, so as soon as I reached astronomy I was able to build a fleet and go out searching the world for new luxury resources and better city states. In 1210, Venice is still at 14 population, while the capitals of India and Brazil are at 19 and 16 respectively, and this is even with a naval food trade route going to it for half the game. I found two empires across the sea, Korea and Spain, and while they appear to be at war, I was able to buy luxury resources from them. I also gave money to a city state with rare gems, a fantastic shiny thing that isn't found on our continent, and in return they give us their island culture and the gems for us to keep.

Through trade routes with various cities, Venice has 4 catholic followers in a population of 14, but if Brazil refuses to move their religion in to our city, then I need to keep trying to get catholicism in here. War would be difficult without any of the bottom parts of the tech tree, although perhaps it will be necessary eventually if only to take a religious city to spread the religion to myself.

I have started working on the commerce tech tree. I figure the ability to buy improved merchants of venice with faith will become very useful late game, and the +2 happiness to each luxury resource is always an amazing policy.

Current impressions
I appear to have stabilized quite well, despite my religion doing me nothing other than impress a few city states. My economy is doing very well, and if I can buy some cultural city states, I think my culture can get back on track. It is difficult to tell where my science is, but I don't think it is too far behind everyone else. 1/5 of my science is coming from trade routes though, and soon it will probably be more. I am planning on switching to naval trade routes as soon as my bank in Venice is completed, although I should keep some caravans to Brazil to keep the religious pressure on. I have 1859 faith just ready to be spent as soon as I get a religion, which will give me a nice turn as soon as catholicism presumably spreads to Venice.

I am worried about my slow Venetian growth rate though. Even while happy, it is still only netting 3 food a turn, even with 2 fish, pearls, and some cattle and farms. I feel like this isn't a good trend for the late game, and the lack of aqueducts in my empire is a little worrysome.


And yes, there is a royal crown of the republic of Venice. Deal with it.

 

[redwings1340]

Update - Religion troubles, the gods are against us

It seems the gods of Mount Sinai are trying to vex me at every turn. I get a merchant of Venice, and a nearby militaristic city state looks like a nice target to puppet, as it follows the Brazilian god. I figure I may be able to spread religion to Venice peacefully, but one turn before I puppet the city state, the evil Austrians started spreading their own religion to the city state via trade routes! Now the former city state of pop 11 has 2 competing religions in it, with 4 followers each, and Venice remains the empty pious empire.

Taking Sofia has also shot down my happiness back down to the negatives, but I'm reasonably certain I can pay a mercantile city state pretty soon to get me out of this jam. My exploration of the oceans have paid off with a nice cargo ship fueled economy. Trade routes alone are giving me 147 gold per turn and 28 science per turn, and I have more cargo ships incoming.

Despite my best attempt to stay clear of the bottom of the tech tree, my spy brought back construction and engineering against the crown's wishes. This is ok though, because as soon as I research Archaeology, I will need to research these techs anyway. I think I will want to get metal casting and machinery pretty soon too to support Venetian production, and then I may end up founding the world congress after all. I haven't met every other civ yet, but I am pretty close to doing it.

Meanwhile, taking Sofia just gave me 3 crossbowmen, a pikeman, and a warrior. My military advisor claims that everyone still wields an army that can wipe me off the planet though, so I am probably going to disband my older units and keep the crossbowmen. Wars are fun, but there's no reason to do so right now. I don't have enough happiness or a big enough army to take a city, and getting my allies mad at me isn't a great plan.

 

[redwings1340]

For the grace of the god I don't have!
In the year 1390, Sofia finally got a religion, but I'm not sure if it's the religion I want. Austria's Buddism has +10% growth rates and the ability to purchase military units using faith, while Brazil's catholicism has Jesuit education and the ability to purchase mosques. Unfortunately, since I don't have a religion of my own, I can't ask Austria to stop sending missionaries to my lands. The Venetian crown though, has declared that all developed religions not named catholicism must be ignored and scorned. Venice has 6 catholic followers, and I am doubling down on efforts to bring the religion to the city through trade routes.

By the end of this game, I decree that Catholicism will be the world religion, and will be dominant over the evil austrian religion of Buddhism.