First Venice Deity t124: Is this game winnable?

[cmdrcool]

Civ: Venice
Difficulty: Deity
Size: Normal (8 players)
Map: Continents

Map overview

Spoiler :

City view

Spoiler :

Tech tree

Spoiler :

Save game: http://episoftware.nl/QuickSave.Civ5Save

So its my first serious Deity playthrough and I thought I got a pretty decent start. 3x Horses near my capital for extra production and culture through pantheon. Able to get some important wonders and not the worst civs as neighbours. Currently working all useful tiles in my city and any new pop is going as specialist (gold > culture > science >>> engineer)

Discovered Dido, Atilla and Maria on my Island so far and have taken 2 nearby CS with GMoV.

Atilla is in a war with Maria and the vastly stronger Dido and is losing badly. I was thinking of moving in on him and taking his city but I can't seem to get much further than the current turn.

If I move on Atilla, I either lose half my army right before Dido snipes the city away, or I lag behind too much in tech and/or units and get overrun by the other 2.

It also doesn't help that Dido plopped Saguntum right on top of my road, severing the connection to Vatican City. About 5-10 turns later she does the same on the other side on the road towards Wittenberg. This makes it very hard to build a front to fight Dido, since I am completely surrounded and leaving my CS isolated to be captured by her easily.

Can any more veteran players give me some advice on how to get further? Did I screw up already and should I restart, or is this salvageable? What should I focus on right now? I still have some important (national) wonders to build as you can see, or should I got full army right now? With only 2 iron, is it worth it to push for longswords? Or should I continue Chivalry to make use of my 12 (!) horses?

 

[poxpower]

Well I'm far from the best but what if you just team up against Dido with Attila? He will like you and they might flip his city back and forth, effectively destroying it.
If she's at war with him, most of her units are likely to be near his cities so you can pick off stragglers with your crossbowmen and slowly destroy her military while you level up your guys. Once they get logistics and +1 range you just need a couple knights to destroy Dido's entire empire.

You could wait for her to make that second city near you as well so that way all the space would be filled and you won't get a stupid city there from Attila or Maria later, because it's 100% certain they will settle those spots.

 

[cmdrcool]

Thanks for the reply! Ill try that. However, I will be afraid that my cities are too spread out and her army too big that I will lose at least Vatican City.

'Most pointiest sticks' rank her top at 5000, while I had 300 or something like that It's gonna be rough!

However, I do think attacking Dido first is better, since I wont have to risk losing my only 2 Iron in Wittenberg.

 

[yung.carl.jung]

Just a few things I noticed while flipping through the screenshots:

Growth in your capital is abysmal. Use internal food trade routes on the capital from both your cities.

Improve those plains, I would work 2F1H tiles over 3H mines all day.

Before you DOW Dido make sure to use all of your gold per turn to bribe her into multiple wars, then DOW her the same turn to get it all back.

You don't even have to attack, just fortify your melee units and wait until she comes to you, then pick off her units and then you attack.

 

[danaphanous]

14 pop isn't that bad for T124, but it might could've been higher given you don't need to stop for settlers with Venice. How early did you get workers? That makes a big difference. But yeah you definitely need to accelerate it with food cargo ships. With Venice your capital is your ONLY good city you want it to be the best city in the world.

You are Venice, you have great cashflow, use it to bribe and secure city states and usually that is a good path to victory on Deity. That's clever yung, I don't use my gold like that before DOWing, it feels wrong lol. I have a weird system of honor rules I usually operate by, but I should probably learn these things if I want to ever be competitive on the GOTM. xD

 

[Sclb]

Some would say using gpt/lux/gold on AI and DoW on same turn is an exploit, but I use it all the time too, kind of like worker stealing. If you actually have DoF with AI, you can trade for all their gold and DoW too.

 

[cmdrcool]

Just a few things I noticed while flipping through the screenshots:

Growth in your capital is abysmal. Use internal food trade routes on the capital from both your cities.

Improve those plains, I would work 2F1H tiles over 3H mines all day.

Alright, that is definitely different than my current strategy! I will go back to ~t100 autosave and focus more on growth.

My puppet CS also send 1 food, 1 hammer trade route into capital. I will change this to 2 food.

I am mostly going of MadDjinn's Deity Venice LP series, and I noticed he was working very select premium tiles in his capital, as opposed to just farming everything. I guess I took home the wrong lesson from that.

Any other advise on unit composition? Got a lot of XBows I can hopefully put to good use and who will stay relevant for a long while until I get Gattlings. The lack of Iron (only 2) is a problem, but maybe I can put those 12 horses to good use? Tech up to iron-less muskets (and fall behind further in tech) or rush Cavalry and build 12 horses? Wittenberg CS gave me a lot of Pikemen but they seem to die quickly to anything. I am still not fully clear on the rock-paper-scissor game of unit comps. Or if all else fails I can always mass trebuchets. That could be good

 

[jasonf]

I am mostly going of MadDjinn's Deity Venice LP series, and I noticed he was working very select premium tiles in his capital, as opposed to just farming everything. I guess I took home the wrong lesson from that.

it depends. Dont blindly do what the good players do. ask your self why.

you wanna be growing like mad at all times. things like cows horses salt etc are premium tiles because they allow you to grow while giving you decent production. luxury resources not so much unless you really need the gold asap for a specific reason or you cant grow cause of happiness.

Dont work too many hills if any, there are very few times when you wanna be in full production mode. NC, key wonder, settler production or a tough war mostly.

Remember every citizen costs 2 food to maintain. also with tradition capital population = gold.

 

[DrCron]

First Deity playthrough? Then play Venice to win as Venice instead of as any other CIV. You are playing basically a normal game. For example, you built the circus maximus, which you should never build with Venice. You should NEVER have any happiness issues with Venice, so you should never build any happiness buildings.

Also, since you are Venice, you might as well get the OCC. It's better to have more CS in the game anyway, to get more votes for the diplomatic victory (again, if it's your first Deity game with them, I wouldn't try anything else). Maria is a pain for this, so you probably want to bribe other CIVs against her and keep her weak.

You shouldn't have machinery, you should have b-lined Education earlier. You will have tons of gold so you want research agreements ASAP. And you shouldn't have an army. Keep all other CIVs fighting each other (that's what your gold is for) and play your game 100% peaceful.

Winning Deity with Venice is extremely easy, as long as you play AS VENICE, which you don't seem to be doing right now. This is how it's done:


Link to video.