Is Venice the mysterious 'Pro'-Civ? Is it designed as OCC-variant?

Well, at least I always thought that puppets would be available. That's why I did name the thread OCC-variant. My main point was that only the capital would be able to build things. And this came true...

The ability to purchase things in puppets is very interesting, though!

 

The ability to purchase things, to me, makes the ability. Otherwise, it would be quite terrible, imo.

 

Indeed. Everything but Wonders and Archaeologists can be bought. And Venice will have the double trade routes to pay for it.

 

You can't buy archaeologists?

One thing that is a priority for Venice is the tenet for purchasing spaceship parts if you're going for a Space Race victory.

 

To bad nobody will trade with Venice.

 

International Trade Routes do not require consent.

 

Really, source? Even if that's true I'll just declare war so Venice doesn't get all that gold to purchase units. After all there is only a average around 6 players in a game a to trade with, 2 will die to war or quit + add in the fact Venice has to expand by declaring war or relying on being close to a lot of city states (average is 8/12 in my games) it is forced in a situation where trade won't benefit. Of course you can play tall with one city but your science will be crap since this game is unbalanced towards any small empires.

 

As long as Venice doesn't pose a threat to me (which I don't expect), I would try to keep good relations with them. I can always benefit from their trade routes too. But if they don't trade with me then I just pillage their trade routes, if that brings some gold thats even better, otherwise they won't have much income and cripple anyway.

 

We've watched several videos. Have any of them come up with a message asking if you can send a caravan or cargo ship to their city? And you can get trade routes in the ancient era, but you can't get open borders until the Medieval Era. Do you propose only trading with city-states and your own cities until then?

And why would you allow anyone to send their caravans to your land anyway? I would never permit anyone else's trade units in my land if I could help it. That way they don't leach science and send religion to me. It's hardly worth the puny amount of gold you get from being a trade destination. Since both those things are possible, one must assume that you don't have control over incoming trade, only your own outgoing trade.

Additionally, Venice can "Purchase" science buildings in the puppets. And they can get science leach via trade routes, which they have twice as many of, if they are behind. So I don't think they will have too much of a deficit in science.

 

Leaching science works independently of where the trade route originates, and also, the science generated is based on the number of techs that one civ knows but the other civ doesn't. So it actually works to your advantage if you are beelining, because the other civ will know a number of techs that you don't, and you get science for those, even though you are ahead in overall science (and of course they will get science for the number of techs you have beelined but they haven't).

The East India Company National Wonder gives 4 gold per incoming trade route, so that's hardly puny. Religious pressure via trade routes I don't see as much of a problem for Venice. You will have more trade routes than anybody else so you can balance the pressure with some internal trade routes if needed. Venice will also be your Holy City and have the Grand Temple, so you will exert quite a bit of pressure.

Also, trade route yields are assigned to the city, not to the empire, so it is possible (although I haven't seen confirmation of that yet) that the usual building, wonder and SP multipliers will multiply your trade route yield.

 

this thread can be closed now.

 

Guessing you are talking about multiplayer... In singleplayer you are really just hurting yourself. I personally wouldn't play in Multiplayer with players that are just going to meta the hell out of the game and go for random Dows across the map just to break a trade route.

Venice has more trade routes, but every civ has trade routes. It's like saying "I won't DOF Sweden". You really only hurt yourself and the player is just going to go offer the bonus of having a trade route to someone else.


That said. I'm more concerned about the AI being able to play OCC competently. I'd hate for it to be a Civ that basically gives me a free win every time because I got all the extra space to expand. Especially on Deity, since a huge chunk of the current bonus is the free settler they get.