The Merchant of Venice needs a limiting factor

[Bas1c]

The only issue I see with Venice's ability is the fact that nobody can liberate the CS once it's been taken. It would be perfectly acceptable if civs who rely on CS allying could simply go and take the CS back and liberate it, I don't understand why the CS status is forever lost on the city. Is there any specific reason why it is better to change CS's to normal cities on buyout, or is it just an oversight?

I would imagine it's to prevent negative diplo hits, If people keep sniping your puppets and liberating them you can't afford to keep converting them back with more MoV so you'll have to start going to war with lot's CS and if other civs ally them or protect, you not only lose a city but piss off half the continent when taking it back.

 

[Calouste]

Having played as veince for two games now. One on prince and the other on emperor. I feel that they don't need limiting with cs buying. Main reason being is they take a happiness hit for each one and these cities build random buildings that cost money, plus it stops them from using the merchant as a means of trade for money and influence. My goal with Venice is to be your friend. I will buy a cs near you but only one depending on the size of your emperor. Resorces for me take a back seat to location to other civ. If I were playing a game with you I'd try to create a positive relationship with you through trading and maybe not targeting a few cs of your choice.

I believe Venice is best played as a merchant who only wants to improve trade relations. Any upsets to that goal will and should be dealt with swift and painful action. I will go as far as paying your closest neighbors to dow against you.

I've played a few games as Venice as well, and whether or not a city state is allied to someone else doesn't carry a lot of weight in the decision of which city state to puppet with a MoV. Mainly it's distance (puppets should pump food back to Venice via a trade route), terrain (Natural Wonder or a resource I don't have) and type (prefer to puppet military and maritime city states, and ally cultural, mercantile and religious).

 

[Ulthwithian]

I just play Diplo and ally with all of them.

Or Warmonger and wipe out all the Civs and use all the CSs to keep me afloat. Pun intended.

 

[Buccaneer]

I am convinced that TC is not reading my posts fully. I have mentioned this 3 times.

Can I please have your response as to why declaring war on Venice, preventing them from taking your allied CS is not acceptable? Its not even after so many turns, you can do it right away as soon as you ally.

That would require (gasp!) to actually build mean looking units and go fight, which some apparently are afraid to do.

 

[GreenThings]

Hey, how about you ragers and ranters play as Venice? If you can't beat em, join em!

PS -> Tell Venice that my Keshiks with March, +1 Range, and Logistics and my Khans say hi!

Sent from my SPH-L710 using Tapatalk 2

 

[Franchize]

Does anyone else think its absolutely ridiculous they can puppet cit-states for free regardless of their influence with the city-state or another civs influence with that city-state? Austria at least needs to be allied with the city-state for 5 turns first. As it stands, Venice just completely nullifies any civ whose ability relies on City-States (Greece, Siam, etc.).

Doesn't matter that you spent all your money allying with that city-state all game, Venice just moved his unit to it and took it over in one turn.

I don't agree with your assessment; there limiting factor is one city that can build units. If you let them get to late game they will be a power house. If the player is smart as well they will be going quite wonder heavy early game allowing you to easily destroy the capital.

 

[budweiser]

I've played a few games as Venice as well, and whether or not a city state is allied to someone else doesn't carry a lot of weight in the decision of which city state to puppet with a MoV. Mainly it's distance (puppets should pump food back to Venice via a trade route), terrain (Natural Wonder or a resource I don't have) and type (prefer to puppet military and maritime city states, and ally cultural, mercantile and religious).

But it should. You want to ally as many CS as you can for votes and take away everyone else's CS so they don't have any votes. You dont want too many CS as puppets. Its much better to puppet the AI caps.

You will see in time.

 

[turingmachine]

Can I please have your response as to why declaring war on Venice, preventing them from taking your allied CS is not acceptable? Its not even after so many turns, you can do it right away as soon as you ally.

I already answered it in other posts if not directly responding to you, but if you want another reason, why should I completely destroy the already fragile diplomacy in the game, take a warmonger hit and have everyone that was friends with Venice hate me, when my civ has done nothing wrong and Venice is being the aggressor?

 

[dashwinner]

Basically from this point on, if I see venice in a game, I know that at some point in time (sooner rather than later, most likely) there is going to be a total war vs them in which one of us (the guy with 1 city, probably) gets killed, and even if you win, you lose because now everybody thinks you're a warmonger. There is literally no winning unless you plan to completely ignore disappearing city states.

Well. If you take Venice out, and leave him one of his newly acquired city-states, I doubt he'll be much of an issue after that.

Also, people seem to be dismissing opportunity costs, and seem to be assuming that all venice AI and players will always play the same way.

-Forfeiting other great persons, especially scientists, is an obvious opportunity cost.
-Going liberty when it seems like tradition would be better suited for Venice is another one.
-You might not get Pisa.
-As stated in this thread, an CS ally might be much more worth it than another puppet.

Now a human player might still be willing to go down that route, but I highly doubt that every single Venice AI will always be a Liberty-path, merchant spammers beelining for Pisa.

This is completely counter intuitive to venice's real-world history (I never heard of "Venice the warlike" in history class), and makes no sense to me as a game mechanic.

May I direct your attention to the sack of Constantinople by our very own Enrico Dandolo?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sack_of_Constantinople

Perhaps a Christian nation attacking the seat of Orthodox Christianity might not be high on the history class list of certain God-fearing countries, but now I'm digressing.

I will agree, however, that CS should be allowed to be liberated. Anyone know why this isn't the case?

 

[MadHaxxor]

I think venice is a very weak civ, I'm not a fan of small empires. If you want to keep your city states safe, then hit venice in the early game. It really shouldn't be too difficult, they only get one city. If that doesn't work with you, then simply send one or 2 units to keep all of your city states at watch and if you see a Merchant of Venice moving in, then take it.

I don't like the civ, personally because the bonus is too similar to Austria's

 

[Calouste]

But it should. You want to ally as many CS as you can for votes and take away everyone else's CS so they don't have any votes. You dont want too many CS as puppets. Its much better to puppet the AI caps.

You will see in time.

I can ally someone else's city state allies with gold, don't specifically need to puppet them to take them away from someone else.

 

[Ulthwithian]

I already answered it in other posts if not directly responding to you, but if you want another reason, why should I completely destroy the already fragile diplomacy in the game, take a warmonger hit and have everyone that was friends with Venice hate me, when my civ has done nothing wrong and Venice is being the aggressor?

Because that is the cost that has been required to protect yourself from Venice's UA.

Rather like 'having to build pikes' is what's required to protect you against powerful mounted UUs like Companion Cavalry.

Again, you are asking for essential immunity from an entire Civilization. There should be a comparable cost.

Since you are more concerned with late-game than early-game, you should strip Venice of its friends before you put up your War Wall.

First, you MUST prioritize gaining control over the World Congress. First thing you should do is embargo Venice. Give ANYTHING you need to in order to accomplish this. While the new diplomacy system is as yet imperfectly understood, it seems clear that having trade routes with other Civs helps your relations. This would imply that embargoing a Civ (in this case, Venice) will hurt their relations, or at least not help them.

Next Congress, Embargo all CSs. Pass these two, and Venice can trade with absolutely no one. You've just neutralized half of their UA (double trade routes), and nerfed the other half (buying in Puppets). (Note: The MoV Acquisition is a part of the unit, not the UA.)

After that, pass the resolution that promotes growth of GWAM, and penalizes growth of GSEM. Oh hey, look, Venice isn't looking too good now, is it?

Basically, there are any number of retaliatory diplomatic tools at your disposal against Venice. In fact, I would argue that they are the weakest Civ in the game to this type of Diplomatic attack.

I will also point out that, if you're going the Diplo route, you should have Patronage, thus unlocking the Forbidden City, and should make a priority to build it.

These are all late game answers to Venetian CS Acquisition. Which of them do you think are inadequate?

 

[IAmOzymandias]

I think I will try the flip side of the coin. I'll fire up BNW and play a VS AI game as Venice. Maybe my opinion will change when i'm on the giving end, but as it stands right now it just seems like an all-around stupid UA. Not one that needs to be tweaked or fixed, but scrapped because it's so obtuse.

I guess, to make my position clear, I don't think that Venice is OP, if anything I think as a whole civ they're actually pretty weak. It's just really poorly thought out. That's why I don't like it. It seems like some guys at Firaxis had this "Great" idea and everybody was like "That's so cool and unique let's put it in the game". . . and then left it in despite the fact that it shoehorns both the person playing venice and the other players into this "kill venice (or at least permawar) or risk losing your ally CS to his 1 turn voodoo magic." In an update based around improved diplomacy, that's a weird idea to impliment.

It's not that i'm afraid of venice, or that I can't handle losing a city state (It happens, whether through war or gold). It's that they can make an irreversible change to the game that can greatly impact the map as a whole with relative ease, and are in fact forced into doing so by the very nature of limitations imposed as what I assume is "balance" by the devs. It's poorly constructed and it should never have made it past testing, in my opinion.

 

[Calouste]

I think venice is a very weak civ, I'm not a fan of small empires. If you want to keep your city states safe, then hit venice in the early game. It really shouldn't be too difficult, they only get one city. If that doesn't work with you, then simply send one or 2 units to keep all of your city states at watch and if you see a Merchant of Venice moving in, then take it.

I don't like the civ, personally because the bonus is too similar to Austria's

The vast majority of Venice's strength is the double trade routes, not the Merchant of Venice.

 

[Calouste]

In fact, I would argue that they are the weakest Civ in the game to this type of Diplomatic attack.

You are aware that you can buy World Congress votes with cash? Cash, which Venice typically is swimming in?

 

[Ekmek]

I think I will try the flip side of the coin. I'll fire up BNW and play a VS AI game as Venice. Maybe my opinion will change when i'm on the giving end, but as it stands right now it just seems like an all-around stupid UA. Not one that needs to be tweaked or fixed, but scrapped because it's so obtuse.

I guess, to make my position clear, I don't think that Venice is OP, if anything I think as a whole civ they're actually pretty weak. It's just really poorly thought out. That's why I don't like it. It seems like some guys at Firaxis had this "Great" idea and everybody was like "That's so cool and unique let's put it in the game". . . and then left it in despite the fact that it shoehorns both the person playing venice and the other players into this "kill venice (or at least permawar) or risk losing your ally CS to his 1 turn voodoo magic." In an update based around improved diplomacy, that's a weird idea to impliment.

if your CS ally is that critical you might be doing something wrong. If its that critical you should conquer them.

 

[Ulthwithian]

You are aware that you can buy World Congress votes with cash? Cash, which Venice typically is swimming in?

But does the Venetian AI do this? In a MP game, this would be an issue, but then you can perma-War Venice.

Even in a not-totally human game, perma-Warring Venice so that they can't take your CSs in order for you to be able to pass the Embargo on them so they can't pay for their votes sounds like a strategy to me.


(To answer your question directly, I was aware at some level, but had not yet seen it in game.)

 

[turingmachine]

Because that is the cost that has been required to protect yourself from Venice's UA.

Rather like 'having to build pikes' is what's required to protect you against powerful mounted UUs like Companion Cavalry.

No, that's not a cost. Building pikes to prepare for mounted, is planning, leaves you with an army/ups your military strength factor, and doesn't hurt your international standing. Having to declare war and take a diplo hit when the other civ is the aggressor is not a cost, its the game punishing you for trying to defend yourself.

Again, you are asking for essential immunity from an entire Civilization. There should be a comparable cost.

Again, I never asked to take away the ability or be immune to it. I asked to add a drawback, like Venice themselves taking a diplo hit for stealing an ally or Venice having to spend some gold to steal an ally. Nothing about that is negating their ability.

But while we are talking about negating abilities, why is it not okay to negate Venice's but it is okay for Venice to negate others (Greece, Siam, etc.)

Since you are more concerned with late-game than early-game, you should strip Venice of its friends before you put up your War Wall.

First, you MUST prioritize gaining control over the World Congress. First thing you should do is embargo Venice. Give ANYTHING you need to in order to accomplish this. While the new diplomacy system is as yet imperfectly understood, it seems clear that having trade routes with other Civs helps your relations. This would imply that embargoing a Civ (in this case, Venice) will hurt their relations, or at least not help them.

Next Congress, Embargo all CSs. Pass these two, and Venice can trade with absolutely no one. You've just neutralized half of their UA (double trade routes), and nerfed the other half (buying in Puppets). (Note: The MoV Acquisition is a part of the unit, not the UA.)

etc.

As if I didn't destroy my diplomatic status by declaring war on Venice and becoming a warmonger like you suggested already? Or maybe it's because I have all those extra votes from city-states lying around, oh wait. As if Venice doesn't have the gold to buy all the votes he wants? Or even that the game's diplomacy system is consistent enough without everyone randomly hating you at some point for some reason to always do this, especially with the first three points I mentioned.

 

[CrazyHeaven]

I've played a few games as Venice as well, and whether or not a city state is allied to someone else doesn't carry a lot of weight in the decision of which city state to puppet with a MoV. Mainly it's distance (puppets should pump food back to Venice via a trade route), terrain (Natural Wonder or a resource I don't have) and type (prefer to puppet military and maritime city states, and ally cultural, mercantile and religious).

I meant MP games. If they don't want a certain or a couple of cs brought we can instead work out other agreements. Veince is a dangerous wc player and that means they like to stay on everyone's good side so they can have a little of everything that could amount to the most of anything. A lot of factors can upset this balance needed to be gained by Venice in the early game.

 

[crazyundead]

city states are in incredibly locations anyway