Playing as Venice

Pythakoreas

Chef Tain
Joined
Jul 19, 2013
Messages
486
Location
Canada
I am playing Venice for the first time and I seek your advice. I have dismissed their place as a civilization in the past (for many reasons, for one there's a city-state category nicely dedicated to them) but given their trade bonuses and all I have started a game as Enrico Dandolo.

1. What are the Social Policies I should pick? Picked Liberty and Aesthetics... Can Patronage, Commerce, Exploration help me? Should I pick Rationalism?
2. When should I run the specialist and where? (Guilds, market, workshop)
3. Which wonders would help me?
4. With who should I trade with? CSs? Other civs? I have reserved one caravan (out of 6, now I can have 8) to carry food.
5. When should I puppet other CSs? I had 2 MoV to date (at t150ish) from Optics and Collective Rule, one I used it to puppet, one I used to get influence from Religious CS. I have the religion with the most followers right now...
6. Is there a thread on this forum discussing how to play Venice? Does watching Venice LPs from MadDjinn help me?
7. Which victory should I pursue? I'm thinking of Diplomatic with Treaty Organisation.
8. What do you think of Venice? Are they good?
 
I am playing Venice for the first time and I seek your advice. I have dismissed their place as a civilization in the past (for many reasons, for one there's a city-state category nicely dedicated to them) but given their trade bonuses and all I have started a game as Enrico Dandolo.

1. What are the Social Policies I should pick? Picked Liberty and Aesthetics... Can Patronage, Commerce, Exploration help me? Should I pick Rationalism?
2. When should I run the specialist and where? (Guilds, market, workshop)
3. Which wonders would help me?
4. With who should I trade with? CSs? Other civs? I have reserved one caravan (out of 6, now I can have 8) to carry food.
5. When should I puppet other CSs? I had 2 MoV to date (at t150ish) from Optics and Collective Rule, one I used it to puppet, one I used to get influence from Religious CS. I have the religion with the most followers right now...
6. Is there a thread on this forum discussing how to play Venice? Does watching Venice LPs from MadDjinn help me?
7. Which victory should I pursue? I'm thinking of Diplomatic with Treaty Organisation.
8. What do you think of Venice? Are they good?

Hey there, I have played Venice now about 10 times up to Deity. Venice, Zulu and Shoshone are my new favorite civs with Venice leading the pack.

This advice is for immortal play or lower FYI,
1. Tradition is probably the most powerful pick for Venice. You want a tall if not the tallest city in the game. Use those extra trade routes by feeding Venice food from your puppets. Commerce is a no brainier. Coupled with Big Ben Venice becomes a super power by mid industrial.

2. You want to run merchant specialist till you are at 3 to four cites. So get your market fast and run that specialist. After my fourth city I will switch specialist toward the victory type I am perusing, I.E. artist for culture ect... Does not hurt to get a engineer or two and saving them to power through a couple of key wonders back to back or laying down a manufacturing plant for extra production.

3. I love to beeline the Colossus. The extra trade route just powers Venice even more than it already is. It also makes Venice a even more attractive trade center to your rivals.

4. I usually prioritize science in my route list which means find out who the tech leader is (Assyria, Babylon, Korea). I will have at minimum two routes feeding Venice with food.

5. Best case scenario is a Militant CS close to you that is off shore or blocks your Capitol from a rival. I do not puppet mercantile CS unless I already have the appropriate special luxury. So Militant, Faith, Culture CS are high priorities for a puppet, especially if they have luxury and/or strategics I need. I just love mercantile and maritime as allies not puppets.

6. The MadDj video is good for early game Venice. I usually warmonger heavy in late game as he does. Its easy to do once you have your trade routes established and ideological friends cemented. Diplomatic victory is probably the easiest to win as Venice though.

7. Diplomatic hands down. Conquest is a close second. Believe it or not Venice makes a great late game war monger under the Autocracy tree. With a elite navy you can swipe capitals in a couple of turn all over the world.

8. I think Venice is probably the best Civ now right next to ShoShone. This is all for singe player BTW.
 
Hey there, I have played Venice now about 10 times up to Deity. Venice, Zulu and Shoshone are my new favorite civs with Venice leading the pack.

This advice is for immortal play or lower FYI,
1. Tradition is probably the most powerful pick for Venice. You want a tall if not the tallest city in the game. Use those extra trade routes by feeding Venice food from your puppets. Commerce is a no brainier. Coupled with Big Ben Venice becomes a super power by mid industrial.

2. You want to run merchant specialist till you are at 3 to four cites. So get your market fast and run that specialist. After my fourth city I will switch specialist toward the victory type I am perusing, I.E. artist for culture ect... Does not hurt to get a engineer or two and saving them to power through a couple of key wonders back to back or laying down a manufacturing plant for extra production.

3. I love to beeline the Colossus. The extra trade route just powers Venice even more than it already is. It also makes Venice a even more attractive trade center to your rivals.

4. I usually prioritize science in my route list which means find out who the tech leader is (Assyria, Babylon, Korea). I will have at minimum two routes feeding Venice with food.

5. Best case scenario is a Militant CS close to you that is off shore or blocks your Capitol from a rival. I do not puppet mercantile CS unless I already have the appropriate special luxury. So Militant, Faith, Culture CS are high priorities for a puppet, especially if they have luxury and/or strategics I need. I just love mercantile and maritime as allies not puppets.

6. The MadDj video is good for early game Venice. I usually warmonger heavy in late game as he does. Its easy to do once you have your trade routes established and ideological friends cemented. Diplomatic victory is probably the easiest to win as Venice though.

7. Diplomatic hands down. Conquest is a close second. Believe it or not Venice makes a great late game war monger under the Autocracy tree. With a elite navy you can swipe capitals in a couple of turn all over the world.

8. I think Venice is probably the best Civ now right next to ShoShone. This is all for singe player BTW.

I try to get lots of oil/aluminum so I can just buy 20 bombers when I want to get rid of a civ. it's usually a city a turn with cavalry to take the city:)
 
The problem I found with Venice if you warmonger you will have a harder time with research agreements. OCC on a large land based map gets pretty hard to keep up. My last game I peaked at 33 population. I was able to stay 3rd in science but was absolutely destroyed in every other category. King ai sucks managing gold so I was able to buy world leader votes for <30 gpt from a few Civs and stole a win I had no business winning.
 
The problem I found with Venice if you warmonger you will have a harder time with research agreements. OCC on a large land based map gets pretty hard to keep up. My last game I peaked at 33 population. I was able to stay 3rd in science but was absolutely destroyed in every other category. King ai sucks managing gold so I was able to buy world leader votes for <30 gpt from a few Civs and stole a win I had no business winning.

Hmm... If I make it to industrial with 12 trade routes un-molested my Venice becomes a super power. The hardest part of the game for me is up to Industrial. Especially making sure you have enough culture to fight off the tourism civs like Brazil or England. This is the time when Big Ben, Louvre and other powerful wonders all come online at the same time as archeologist. None of those you can buy, you have to build or use a GE. So the prioritization becomes a real hassle at this time. Granted there were a few games I had with Shaka next door to me which almost destroyed me. It ended up turning Venice into a big war monger than Shaka lol.
 
Hmm... If I make it to industrial with 12 trade routes un-molested my Venice becomes a super power. The hardest part of the game for me is up to Industrial. Especially making sure you have enough culture to fight off the tourism civs like Brazil or England. This is the time when Big Ben, Louvre and other powerful wonders all come online at the same time as archeologist. None of those you can buy, you have to build or use a GE. So the prioritization becomes a real hassle at this time. Granted there were a few games I had with Shaka next door to me which almost destroyed me. It ended up turning Venice into a big war monger than Shaka lol.

My game had a runaway Catherine and Alexander right next to each other. It was a Highlands map and just about every Civ went on a city spam run. Catherine had 16 cities, 10 of which had 10+ population. It's just impossible to touch that size for production. Her army "points" were higher than the rest of the world combined.
 
#1 I would avoid Liberty; getting Merchants of Venice isn't the problem, happiness is. In addition, the 5% science rule seems to apply to puppets.
I would recommend Rationalism when you reach it. Exploration is also a great one for you.

#2 As everybody, you always run all guilds you have. If said city doesn't really have the food, you should add an internal cargo ship food route.
In addition, you still want to run all scientists you can in Venice as soon as you get a University up (especially because you won't be able to force your puppets to.)
Between the time you have a Market and before Universities.
You can take Freedom ideology, and if you do there's a couple of tenents that will make it worth while to run every single specialist you can in Venice.

#4 Don't waste slots on caravans. Run the food imports to Venice in cargo ships just like your other routes. Your likely to eventually want a second food import to Venice and maybe even a third. For external routes, check the trade advisor; you only want a route to a major city state if it's bringing in either science or significant more gold than a city state.

#5 The Optics one is normally used right away. As to that extra free one, can your happiness afford another city that soon?

#6 There are a massive number of threads on Venice already.

#7 Venice is less suitable for Science than most other civs simply because every Merchant of Venice is one fewer academy. But it's great for new culture; your puppets will build the buildings to house new great works. As to Diplomatic, that also works for them.

#8 I found them fun to play.
 
joncnunn has a lot of helpful hints above.

All I'd add to that is that Venice is really about striking a balance between trade-routes: how many running food, how many production, and how many to other civs is key. I find myself using cargo ships to bolster food and production in any new puppets I get for 30 turns, then switching back to either providing those things again to Venice itself, or sending the trade-routes out to other civs.

On the opposite tack of what joncnunn said, a cheese-filled way to win as Venice is to actually go for both free MoVs right away (bee-line optics, go Liberty) while building units. Then, use both MoVs on trade-missions and buy even more units. Then, zerg-rush nearest AI. This can win you the game on smaller maps, and even on the larger maps it is occasionally going to pay off at certain difficulty levels. I say cheese-filled because you really want to cook the settings when you do this and go Duel/Pangea so you can easily take the AI cap. It's not as good already by Small size, and at higher levels, this will actually set you behind generally.

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Edit: Just played a game to show what can happen when you rush for both MoV's and put them both into trade missions. Duel/Emperor/Pangea, no mods or special options (other than combat animations off :) ). I lucked out a little and caught a culture ruin, then got a faith ruin, and went for God Of Craftsmanship for +1 production. Went Mining first, then bee-lined Optics, then back to Archery. Stole a worker and even hard-built one for 2 (3rd is from Liberty) and proceeded to chop units. After using the first MoV, I immediately DoW'ed and began buying an archer every turn to get around the 'too many units' penalty to production. Then used the 2nd MoV. All the way to the left, if you scroll the image, you can see the allied CS's status bar where I spent the MoVs. The game wasn't even close:

Spoiler :


It's pretty cheesy to set-up a victory this way, but it's actually somewhat viable to do this and gain an early couple of puppets even if you play a larger map.
 
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