How do you play as Venice on high difficulty?

[Lord Yanaek]

Well, everything in the title, or is it not?

I'm not talking about stuuupiiid Diplo Victory where you just spam trade routes with every CS and wait for influence to rise with Freedom ideology. I'm talking about any other victory, on Immortal or Deity where i have some issues currently.

1. Territory. With no Settlers, you can hardly prevent AIs from settling near your cap, and even with tradition, monument, quick amphis and culture from religion, i can only prevent them from taking my ring 3 tiles by quickly using the gold i get in early trades to buy those tiles, slowing down city developpment considerably (i would rather use those gold to buy a water mill and a workshop for instance, or a Caravansary rather than build it). Now, playing a commercial civ, i don't really want to constantly be warring with my neighbours, and i can't 1T nuke a city like i could in true OCC either. This can make grabbing strategic ressources and/or a third lux much harder. Do you just live with it, or do you DoW AIs that come with a settler near you to capture it before they actually settle? To make things worse, you can have DoF with those AIs, unless you never DoF a neighbour.
2. Expansion : Venice can actually expand by taking over CSs, but when would you do it. Do you beeline Optics to get a second city quickly, or do you delay it to let the CS grow on it's own, and take a big city, along with free troops with your MoV? CSs won't grow their borders very quick either, so their territory will often be small, even if you let them grow, however, being puppets, they won't have much growth after you take them, even with th free Monuments from traditions. By the time they can actually get their borders growing, an AI will most often have settled nearby and took most of their 2nd ring tiles. Also, is it worth going 3 SPs down the Liberty tree to get a second MoV, or is it worth going in the Commerce tree for more MoV, but at the cost of less GS?

 

[joshua43214]

Do not share you embassies till around T75 or so. I have found that if I sell/trade embassies before that I become a lodestone for AI expansion. The AI seems to stop their early expansion around T65.

Most folks recommend getting optics asap if a CS is within trade route distance. I always wait til they have some nice units and boats so I can happily ignore astronomy for a longer time and use the CS's boats to explore. By that time they should have build something that a great work can be tossed into so you get some border growth.

I never take liberty with Venice, I just plow Commerce

 

[Resipsa]

I delay optics and get writing and then beelining the colossus. CS grow much better before you puppet them. You can reach tech parity with spies and lucrative trade routes later on. Every CS you puppet should be sending a trade route of food to the capital. I've actually gotten a CV on Deity with Venice. Tradition, Open Exploration and go until renaissance, rationalism and freedom.

 

[chazzycat]

I like the Colossus too. Amazing wonder for Venice. I've gotten it on deity so it's doable. Probably goes without saying, but you should definitely be sending food trade routes from your puppets to Venice ASAP. With colossus sailing & AH that's six trade routes...two internal and four external. Your economy should be a powerhouse from the early goings.

 

[Tich]

I don't really understand the point of asking this question on the strategy forums if you then qualify it as "but you can't use a diplo victory." The best way to play Venice on Deity (and by a significant margin at that) is to pursue it as your VC. Your ludicrous gold generation means that you can rush-buy tech buildings in all of your cities and since you can feed sea trade routes to your Cap your science output is usually pretty damn high. If you can ever get a mountain as Venice, well, you're set. The problem with going SV is that it's almost never going to happen as quickly as a DV will. You'll churn out at least a couple of MoVs and that will stifle your overall GS generation. It's easier to bulb your way to Globilization than to bulb your way to Particle Physics and Nanotechnology when you're missing 2 or more GSes. You'll always have gold for RAs so you should have as many RAs as you do friends and as long as you finish Rat and get Porcelain Tower then you shouldn't have much difficulty finishing the top half of the tech tree. Just rush buy Labs after you bulb Plastics with Oxford (have it finish as soon as Replaceable Parts finishes) and work any specialist slots that you haven't filled yet. I do mean ANY. Bulb your GSes 8 turns later and that + your RAs should just about do it to hit Globilization. As long as you've bought most/all of the CSes and have diplomats in everyone's cap (gotta have these online prior to the vote) then your victory is virtually assured.

1. There's nothing that you can do really. I personally believe that the whole embassy thing is a conspiracy thing and beyond that you'll just have to suck it up and buy tiles if someone forwards settles on you. There's a lot of luck in civ and so if you spawn next to a Deity AI you just have to accept the fact that he's going to take all of that beautiful dirt that could have been. You should be opening Tradition anyways which means that border expansion is relatively quick.

2. There's no compelling reason to delay Optics for too long. Getting the 2nd and possibly third luxury techs is meaningless if you don't even have cities to grow. Furthermore, a second city means more population which means more science. Waiting for it to grow big and tall means not getting the science output from it for a long time. It's easy to say "steal it all back" but like, hate to it break to you guys, sometimes your spy actually dies on his first attempt. What then? If it hasn't happened to you multiple times then you're either really lucky or you just don't play much civ lol. I think that going Optics into Philosophy for a quick NC is basically required as Venice because your science output is always shoddy early on so you need to do everything in your power to shore that weakness up.

 

[Lord Yanaek]

Do not share you embassies till around T75 or so

OK, i try to avoid early embassies, but i still often share (never sell) between T50-60, when i already have settled 2 more cities (or when i'm about to). Maybe i must delay them even more then.

I delay optics and get writing and then beelining the colossus.

For what it's worth, i consider Colossus similar to Petra on high level, you might get it or not, but there is little you can do to ensure grabing it. If some military AI (they tend to beeline Iron Working) has a coastal city, it will get Colossus before you could even have the tech. Denmark is the worst, if he's in a game, Colossus is gone

I don't really understand the point of asking this question on the strategy forums if you then qualify it as "but you can't use a diplo victory." The best way to play Venice on Deity (and by a significant margin at that) is to pursue it as your VC.

Well, maybe cause i like to try different things and i think there must be non-optimal strategies that are good because they are fun. This is still the "strategy" forum, not the "most optimal only strategies for fastest victory time" forum. Also, i added this line so that nobody would waste their time explaining what was obvious. Thanks anyway for trying to put me back on the righteous path of optimal gameplay
I'm slightly ironic, but i mean no offense so please don't take it badly.

1. There's nothing that you can do really. I personally believe that the whole embassy thing is a conspiracy thing and beyond that you'll just have to suck it up and buy tiles if someone forwards settles on you.

OK. i'll be more careful about embassies. Do i need those for DoF (and thus RAs) or not? Can't remember whether i've had DoF without embassies or not.

2. There's no compelling reason to delay Optics for too long. Getting the 2nd and possibly third luxury techs is meaningless if you don't even have cities to grow. Furthermore, a second city means more population which means more science.

Well, that's probably something i've done badly. I started almost like OCC, only considering annnexing big CSs, but i was missing early food route to the capital, and that probably didn't help. My science was OK thanks to plenty international trade routes, but production was an issue. I guess an early Writing Guild would have helped for borders, and i would probably have built it faster with a bigger city and more people to allocate as specialists. BTW, do you have any idea when a CS will often have a granary. I would hat to buy a Cargo Ship in a newly acquired CS just to realize i have to buy a granary too.

 

[Keirador]

Map types super matter for Venice. Are you playing on Pangaea? It seems like a lot of players consider Pan the "default" or the only legitimate map-type, but just like every map, it advantages some Civs and disadvantages others. Archipelago really is basically a buff for the human player, ESPECIALLY if you're Venice, but playing Continents, Fractal, or a few other non-Pangaea map-types, I've never had a problem with the AI forward-settling me aggressively. If you're just looking to solve Problem #1 to have a fun game, just change your map type.

I mostly agree with Tich on no reason not to rush Optics, with one exception. I actually have had reasonably good odds getting the Colossus on Immortal and Deity as Venice if I beeline it. On Archipelago there are too many AIs that will go for it since nearly everyone has a coast start, but on Continents its doable. (Denmark will always nab it first, though, true). I go for it if Venice has high enough production. On my first Venice game I took God of the Sea with something like 8 sea resources in my first two rings, and those tiles allowed me to grow big and tall and still nab the Colossus. It was stellar.

As far as VC, Culture is probably second-easiest after diplo, but it really helps to fight a short, decisive early war to puppet several cities. Venice runs into the problem of quickly running out of slots for Great Works, so carving out a little empire for yourself is important so you can buy Museums later. You don't want to risk a war with a close neighbor later in the game, since even a weak neighbor will ravage your trade routes.

Dom is also more doable than it seems a lot of people assume, you just have to work in reverse. Instead of a normal warpath, where you eat your neighbors and work outward, Venice has to start with the players who can't destroy the trade routes. Once your neighbors/trade partners are the only players left, you should be in a position where you don't need external trade routes no more.

 

[Khaim]

Tich: Diplomatic victory is by far the easiest, for any civ. Except for a few civs with high cs-affinity (e.g. Alex), the AI will happily let you ally all the city-states. It's just not challenging to win a DV; all you need to do is survive and maybe build up a little gold.

Personally I have DV turned off, so I actually have to work for a win.

 

[Tich]

OK. i'll be more careful about embassies. Do i need those for DoF (and thus RAs) or not? Can't remember whether i've had DoF without embassies or not.

Yes you need them. I've always sold mine and I don't see the problem with doing so.

Well, that's probably something i've done badly. I started almost like OCC, only considering annnexing big CSs, but i was missing early food route to the capital, and that probably didn't help. My science was OK thanks to plenty international trade routes, but production was an issue. I guess an early Writing Guild would have helped for borders, and i would probably have built it faster with a bigger city and more people to allocate as specialists. BTW, do you have any idea when a CS will often have a granary. I would hat to buy a Cargo Ship in a newly acquired CS just to realize i have to buy a granary too.

No idea on the turn time with respect to CS Granaries. They do beeline it if they have deer or whatever in their borders. That's the only indication that you can use though. I've seen it as early as turn 20 on Deity.

Production is a crap-shoot as Venice since your Cap is coastal and coastal cities tend to have no production. You basically have to buy everything that matters. Easier said than done in the ultra-early stages of the game though. It gets easier eventually but I mean like you either have Mining luxuries or hills or something or you don't. It's all luck heh.

Tich: Diplomatic victory is by far the easiest, for any civ. Except for a few civs with high cs-affinity (e.g. Alex), the AI will happily let you ally all the city-states. It's just not challenging to win a DV; all you need to do is survive and maybe build up a little gold.

Personally I have DV turned off, so I actually have to work for a win.

Are you a Deity player?

 

[glory7]

For deity, by the time you get optics and send GM the CS will have everything you need, including granary and a worker with improved tiles. You can check whether it got a granary by checkin the yield of the tiles.

if you can find a coastal CS that can send food cargo ship, you are all set. Whether you have such CS(s) or not should be known fairly early with your early scouting. Just take that city (around pop 5-6) with your optics GM. Just beeline optics if needed.

Make sure you got the lux tech that is related to the lux that CS has. For example, you need calendar if it has cotton. You usually need this to avoid going to negative happiness. Delay acquiring CS if taking it over would result in unhappiness. Usually improving one of your lux near cap is sufficient.

Make sure that you got your cargo ship ready when you take CS. move it to CS right away and start sending food to your cap. Now you can just grow and play as usual. You can use lots of science caravan/cargo ships to catch sci early.

If you cannot find a coastal one, now it is more difficult as you only get 3-4 food with food caravan instead of 7-8 with a cargo ship. However, it is still doable.

I recommend you to start practicing with the case when you can get early coastal "expo" - in fact, there is a previous DC with Venice (very nice map). You can check what other deity players did and compare them with your own experience to improve.

 

[Buccaneer]

DV is worthwhile at Deity even without Greece in the game? It seems fairly ludicrous at Immortal (probably without Greece), as in you can be very tiny, weak and last in demographics and still win DV. What makes DV worthwhile at Deity? The fact you have to battle for votes or that you have to win before your opponents win other ways?

 

[Tich]

DV is worthwhile at Deity even without Greece in the game? It seems fairly ludicrous at Immortal (probably without Greece), as in you can be very tiny, weak and last in demographics and still win DV. What makes DV worthwhile at Deity? The fact you have to battle for votes or that you have to win before your opponents win other ways?

The AI has a billion gold and they tend to spam coups on Deity. This makes getting every CS as an ally somewhat difficult. I find that it's less consistent than a SV, especially if there is a Greece or Siam in the game. What usually happens to me is that some random Rome or whatever coups 2-3 cities per turn every few turns and they rarely fail since they can pump gold to CS and whatnot. You also can't win those culture/faith/etc. quests since you can't match Deity AI output. I dunno, I haven't found DV to be significantly more powerful and consistent than SV. Even when I sell all of my cities get every CS ally and DOW the world 2 turns before the vote happens I end up getting mass coup'd IMMEDIATELY and lose like 4-5 CSes. If I don't DOW the world they either get coup'd or bought back instantly. I don't know how other people consistently win DVs in ~240 turns while seemingly never having to deal with those issues. Maybe I'm unlucky or do something wrong but I don't see how everyone gets past deep Deoty pockets and mass coup d'etat spam.

 

[EEE_BOY]

Optics-->mining-->lux tech-->Philosophy

Free monument (to save gpt as early coin may be trouble)-->half unhappiness

scout-->scout-->shine-->granary-->trireme (if cargo needs protection)-->cargo

Forget about early wonder and focus on getting all national wonders up

Assign merchant specialist when market is up, second MoV should establish a further trading post to send cargos to distant civs. cargos are the best diplomatic modifier, so expect to have multiple DoF to trade cash and accelerate everything by purchasing once Big Ben and Mercantilism are ready.

 

[Resipsa]

At Op Regarding the collosus, I've seen it go super early with Denmark too but it's worth the risk you are basically getting a free trade route and a hanging garden

 

[Keirador]

The AI has a billion gold and they tend to spam coups on Deity. This makes getting every CS as an ally somewhat difficult. I find that it's less consistent than a SV, especially if there is a Greece or Siam in the game. What usually happens to me is that some random Rome or whatever coups 2-3 cities per turn every few turns and they rarely fail since they can pump gold to CS and whatnot. You also can't win those culture/faith/etc. quests since you can't match Deity AI output. I dunno, I haven't found DV to be significantly more powerful and consistent than SV. Even when I sell all of my cities get every CS ally and DOW the world 2 turns before the vote happens I end up getting mass coup'd IMMEDIATELY and lose like 4-5 CSes. If I don't DOW the world they either get coup'd or bought back instantly. I don't know how other people consistently win DVs in ~240 turns while seemingly never having to deal with those issues. Maybe I'm unlucky or do something wrong but I don't see how everyone gets past deep Deoty pockets and mass coup d'etat spam.

Hmm. Do other Deity players have this problem? It's interesting you bring it up, because in a "rank the Civs" thread I noted that Austria would be great except in practice I find that at Deity the AI never, ever allows me to keep a CS allied long enough to Diplomatically Marry it into my empire. As soon as I ally, they either coup, destroy the City-State, or buy it off me. I was told that this was just me.

Conversely, I've never had the AI fight so hard to keep CS allies when going for a Diplo victory as you're describing. In particular, even at Deity I don't get many coups, and some coups do fail. My sample size isn't huge here because I normally play with DV turned off, as I find it unfun and unfulfilling, so feedback from other Deity players would be nice.

 

[Resipsa]

It happens in diety to me a minority of times but when it happens it just gets so annoying and it makes an impression similar to when I attempt Coups with 85% success rate and half the time my agent dies.

 

[casualplayer]

Venice is a 3 Scout/2 Scout & Trireme minimum civ. If you have problems with AI settling in close to your cap, park a Scout on the likely settlement spot or dance with their Settler until they get discouraged.

With Venice I have found I move my initial Settler more than just about any other civ, sometimes 4-5 Turns. Your cap is so important that if you plop him down on "good enough" dirt it makes for a miserable game. Coastal Mountainside is the goal. Snuggled up to a future CS buddy is also good. I like to find a good Mausoleum spot because I almost always gun for that Wonder and the early GM points. I should try getting Colossus; that's a good idea.

Since I can buy things in my CS buddies I really like trying for the Faith purchase Religion options also. Venice's Happiness rollercoasters when you suddenly add a 10 pop city to the empire so being able to immediately drop a Pagoda and a Coliseum in your new friend helps a bunch. Jesuit Education is pretty darn good for Venice.

I tend to downplay producing military and just "acquire" forces from military minded CSs. They usually provide ample units for defense and are usually making CB quicker than I am anyway. There's always some CS out there that has a unit parked on every tile.

Not a fast player and not yet consistent on Deity, so take it with a grain of salt.

 

[Txurce]

I went for a SV on Immortal/Hemispheres, with a strategy of growing even faster than anyone proposed. I launched on t313, which is my Venetian best playing with these settings.

I started on a good location: marble, 2 copper, river, sea, low hammers. My neighbors were Japan, Aztecs, Mongols. Japan expanded fast all game long, and split up the coast for my planned CS expansion. Still, I wound up with Venice Plus four CS along the long NE coast. My city sizes were 39, 28, 25, 23, and 16 (plus a size-12 end-war pickup). I rarely build cities this big, let alone Venetian puppets. What I did, apart taking Swords into Plowshares as my second Follower, is to send out food caravans from my puppets as well as from Venice. The cap has enough routes available to do this and still bring in plenty of gold.

Stone Quarries (and Borobodur) led me to eventually become the dominant religion on the continent, whcih agvem e additional gold from Tithes.

Size also helped me build more Wonders than I usually do: Mausoleum, Colossus, Oracle, Borobodur, and later, PT, SoL, Hubble, and Eiffel.

I would have grown bigger, but a combination of Order being dominant (to my Freedom), Austria marrying CS, and Greece controlling a lot of other CS for a long time, kept my happiness borderline for the entire game.

Policies were full Tradition and Rat, Consulates, and Freedom.

By the mid-late game I was #1 in science, and finished with 1100bpt. My pop was a close runner-up to Austria, and thanks to CS deals, so was my military. This allowed me to war late with advanced units and rake in even more gold.

All in all, a really heavy focus on cargo-delivered food paid off in a Venice I barely recognized.

 

[joshua43214]

I went for a SV on Immortal/Hemispheres, with a strategy of growing even faster than anyone proposed. I launched on t313, which is my Venetian best playing with these settings.

I started on a good location: marble, 2 copper, river, sea, low hammers. My neighbors were Japan, Aztecs, Mongols. Japan expanded fast all game long, and split up the coast for my planned CS expansion. Still, I wound up with Venice Plus four CS along the long NE coast. My city sizes were 39, 28, 25, 23, and 16 (plus a size-12 end-war pickup). I rarely build cities this big, let alone Venetian puppets. What I did, apart taking Swords into Plowshares as my second Follower, is to send out food caravans from my puppets as well as from Venice. The cap has enough routes available to do this and still bring in plenty of gold.

Stone Quarries (and Borobodur) led me to eventually become the dominant religion on the continent, whcih agvem e additional gold from Tithes.

Size also helped me build more Wonders than I usually do: Mausoleum, Colossus, Oracle, Borobodur, and later, PT, SoL, Hubble, and Eiffel.

I would have grown bigger, but a combination of Order being dominant (to my Freedom), Austria marrying CS, and Greece controlling a lot of other CS for a long time, kept my happiness borderline for the entire game.

Policies were full Tradition and Rat, Consulates, and Freedom.

By the mid-late game I was #1 in science, and finished with 1100bpt. My pop was a close runner-up to Austria, and thanks to CS deals, so was my military. This allowed me to war late with advanced units and rake in even more gold.

All in all, a really heavy focus on cargo-delivered food paid off in a Venice I barely recognized.

Well done!
I would work a bit harder, you should be able to shave at least 25 turns off that with Venice. I just finished 2 OCC games, both settled inland, and won SV's in 303 and 317 playing the Inca, and I abstained from the world leader vote in the 303 game at T287 because DV's are for children. I had pops of 53 and 51 in the games. With Venice, you should be able to break 60 pop by T300 painlessly on a map like that. Just because you have a food ship, does not mean you can ignore focusing the cap on growth. It pays huge dividends in the long run.

Still a good win. Having Greece and Austria in the game often makes taking patronage a waste since you will struggle getting enough CS's allied to make the CS science thing useless. My 317 game had me next to Shaka, with Venice, Siam, Oda, Attila, and Hiawatha, and Monty all in the game. Spent the entire thing waiting for a carpet of Impi's that never arrived lol.

 

[Buccaneer]

I went for a SV on Immortal/Hemispheres, with a strategy of growing even faster than anyone proposed. I launched on t313, which is my Venetian best playing with these settings.

I started on a good location: marble, 2 copper, river, sea, low hammers. My neighbors were Japan, Aztecs, Mongols. Japan expanded fast all game long, and split up the coast for my planned CS expansion. Still, I wound up with Venice Plus four CS along the long NE coast. My city sizes were 39, 28, 25, 23, and 16 (plus a size-12 end-war pickup). I rarely build cities this big, let alone Venetian puppets. What I did, apart taking Swords into Plowshares as my second Follower, is to send out food caravans from my puppets as well as from Venice. The cap has enough routes available to do this and still bring in plenty of gold.

Stone Quarries (and Borobodur) led me to eventually become the dominant religion on the continent, whcih agvem e additional gold from Tithes.

Size also helped me build more Wonders than I usually do: Mausoleum, Colossus, Oracle, Borobodur, and later, PT, SoL, Hubble, and Eiffel.

I would have grown bigger, but a combination of Order being dominant (to my Freedom), Austria marrying CS, and Greece controlling a lot of other CS for a long time, kept my happiness borderline for the entire game.

Policies were full Tradition and Rat, Consulates, and Freedom.

By the mid-late game I was #1 in science, and finished with 1100bpt. My pop was a close runner-up to Austria, and thanks to CS deals, so was my military. This allowed me to war late with advanced units and rake in even more gold.

All in all, a really heavy focus on cargo-delivered food paid off in a Venice I barely recognized.

Very nicely done, Txurce. I did those exact policies in my Immortal Ethiopia SV game. And my wonders list was Pyramids, Hagia, Borobudur, Machu, Pisa->PT, SoL, Eiffel, Apollo, Hubble. I probably went a bit too far on Tourism - just to be safe. But I was glad for the Faith investment (maintained around 92-100 fpt) even though I had only my capital with my religion - bought lots of GS with faith.