The Merchant of Venice needs a limiting factor

[turingmachine]

My point, of which I am 100% positive, is that you don't need ANY UNITS to stop them. A simple declaration of war makes your allied CS be at war with them too and a MoV can not take a CS it is at war with. Diplo is locked.

That is what I mean by blocking by war, not all of this surrounding it with units nonsense.

Edit: I confirmed it. I can not do a trade or take a CS I am at war with. If you care about your long time allies, declare war on Venice, no need to even attack. They literally can't take the CS.

You seem to be completely unable to read any responses to your posts, as you keep repeating yourself "declare war". Everyone knows you can declare war, to which, every time, we've responded that being forced to declare war gives you a serious worldwide diplo hit, you get labeled as a warmonger, anyone who was friends with Venice and also neutral to positive with you now hates you. The game is actively punishing you for trying to defend (being forced to declare war even when you weren't the aggressor and having to suffer the diplo hit), meanwhile Venice can engage in an aggressive act with no penalty.

And, I wasn't even responding to you when I mentioned the surround the city-state with civilian units thing. Someone else suggested that as a reasonable non-war defense earlier, which is inane, as having to build and maintain 18-24 units just for a peaceful defense against a single unit is anything but reasonable.

 

[Eunomiac]

The MoV is hard to defend against whether it uses the puppeting or its normal trade mission. In the middle game, the MoV gives 60 influence and 1000 gold, which you can gift to the city state for another 70-80 influence. Most other civs don't have 2000 gold lying around to counter that.

Again, though, the point is a bit narrower. "Hard" to defend against would be very okay by me: I'd argue that Venice's inability to settle new cities easily warrants it having THE most powerful unique ability in the game. "Hard" to defend against, even "extremely hard" (and beyond), would be part and parcel with that.

However, there's a massive gulf between "extremely hard" and "impossible". An infinite gulf, in fact, depending on how you do your math. And it's on this distinction that the OP is making his point, I think. Even if defending against the MoV required an embedded spy and several thousand gold, at least there'd be some "stop and think" risk to the Venice player, some room for human opponents to bluff, and some room for the defender to plan ahead and strategize a defense.

City States are already fickle beasts, requiring a lot of care, resources and attention---often, at least in my experience, verging on game-long tedium. There should be some security that such an investment won't be completely annihilated in a single turn on what could very well be Venice's whim.

I expect there will be some tweaks to the MoV, if only to mitigate the rage-quit frustration the current MoV can so easily inflict.

Edit: Heck, why not make the MoV's ability depend on a trade route between Venice and the target City State? Trade Routes are already a focus for Venice, and the ability to disrupt them would make defending against the MoV buy-out a possibility.

 

[Buccaneer]

Declaring war on a civ that has no friends and no one likes will not give you a "worldwide warmonger" hit (assuming you are not in DoF). Learn more about diplomacy modifiers and warfare before making false statements.

 

[headcase]

Perhaps anyone with positive influence should gain gold proportional to how much influence they had when the CS was bought out. That would take off a little of the sting and (somewhat) make sense.

Also, it may be reasonable for Venice to pay a little gold depending upon how much under 60 influence they are (0 gold if at 60 or above), and on the era.

A more elaborate approach could be for them to still be treated like the CS they always were for all other civs in the game; both Venice and the allies of the CS get the resources in the city.

 

[turingmachine]

Declaring war on a civ that has no friends and no one likes will not give you a "worldwide warmonger" hit (assuming you are not in DoF). Learn more about diplomacy modifiers and warfare before making false statements.

Who says no one likes Venice or that it has no friends? It's completely unreasonable to assume Venice will always have absolutely no positive diplo modifiers with other civs. Maybe you should learn that. What, do you think Venice was in a bubble all game?

 

[Buccaneer]

It was an example of a real situation that can happen in the game. Such situation is a great time to declare with almost no consequences.

 

[turingmachine]

It was an example of a real situation that can happen in the game. Such situation is a great time to declare with almost no consequences.

Yes, because an ability should be balanced on the assumption you will always start right next to Venice and be able to declare war before they meet anyone else, instead of on the other side of the earth.

 

[Yzman]

You seem to be completely unable to read any responses to your posts, as you keep repeating yourself "declare war". Everyone knows you can declare war, to which, every time, we've responded that being forced to declare war gives you a serious worldwide diplo hit, you get labeled as a warmonger. The game is actively punishing you for trying to defend (being forced to declare war even when you weren't the aggressor and having to suffer the diplo hit), meanwhile Venice can engage in an aggressive act with no penalty.

And, I wasn't even responding to you when I mentioned the surround the city-state with civilian units. Someone else suggested that as a reasonable non war defense earlier, which is inane, as having to build and maintain 18-24 units just for a peaceful defense is not reasonable.

No I have read the responses. But people have pointed out other things in game that force you to choose to do something you don't want to or something that is not optimal and you just say "not that's different". You are the guy that plays a certain way and when something hinders that, it must be broken. I have shown it isn't any different because it is not locking you out of anything. No victory conditions are deprived to you. Hell, no playstyles are deprived to you. If you can't stop Venice from taking 20 CS, that is your fault. You are playing wrong.

Look at it this way. There are some people on this board that don't use City States in their game at all. They would say Venice sucks and is horribly underpowered.

Austria is still BY FAR easier to get every CS on the map under your control. So what if I have to spend a little money? Venice I literally am limited to the amount of Great merchants I can get. And even then, It's usually not beneficial to actually take those CS since you lose valuable benefits.

Your whole topic you make it sound like Venice can take any CS at will and its simply not true. Play as them and do it. You will probably get 3 easily...after that it takes a lot of work and that is with the AI not trying to stop you. If you have an aggressive AI or another human, forget it. Venice is far more powerful because of their double trade routes, of which I would have so much money that you aren't gonna stay allied to that CS anyway.

I had over 20,000 gold in my Venice game and was allied to every CS except for the 2 that I bought. If you would have only allowed me to buy CS that I was allied to, assuming I wanted to, I would have easily outbid you anyway.

 

[headcase]

There's also a bit of a "too bad" factor. Bad things happen, the game isn't always fair (much more fair than real life, that's for sure). Now if Venice is actually OP, that's a case to consider, but as far as "they hurt my strategy and there was nothing I could do about it", that's just how it goes, and every Civ has had numerous instances of this. If your civ doesn't have a CS UA, focus less on CSs, if they do have a CS UA, do everything you can against Venice.

Not saying everyone has to like this though, I'm more of a role-player but I can sympathize that some don't like this element of "luck" (given that it is often impossible to predict which CS Venice will take next). Being able to limit the random civs available to AI without mods would help with problems like this, rather than changing Venice's game entirely (unless it's demonstrably OP in multiplayer).

 

[Calouste]

No I have read the responses. But people have pointed out other things in game that force you to choose to do something you don't want to or something that is not optimal and you just say "not that's different". You are the guy that plays a certain way and when something hinders that, it must be broken. I have shown it isn't any different because it is not locking you out of anything. No victory conditions are deprived to you. Hell, no playstyles are deprived to you. If you can't stop Venice from taking 20 CS, that is your fault. You are playing wrong.

Look at it this way. There are some people on this board that don't use City States in their game at all. They would say Venice sucks and is horribly underpowered.

Austria is still BY FAR easier to get every CS on the map under your control. So what if I have to spend a little money? Venice I literally am limited to the amount of Great merchants I can get. And even then, It's usually not beneficial to actually take those CS since you lose valuable benefits.

Your whole topic you make it sound like Venice can take any CS at will and its simply not true. Play as them and do it. You will probably get 3 easily...after that it takes a lot of work and that is with the AI not trying to stop you. If you have an aggressive AI or another human, forget it. Venice is far more powerful because of their double trade routes, of which I would have so much money that you aren't gonna stay allied to that CS anyway.

I had over 20,000 gold in my Venice game and was allied to every CS except for the 2 that I bought. If you would have only allowed me to buy CS that I was allied to, assuming I wanted to, I would have easily outbid you anyway.

The main problem with puppeting city states as Venice is that it is quite possible to ally them all, and every city state you have puppeted means a lost vote in the World Congress after the Renaissance.

 

[Mrdarklight]

I can see how frustrating it could be playing as, say, Greece and losing CS to Venice. However remember that Venice is essentially crippled. They have to expend a Great Person just to found a city. That is in itself a huge disadvantage, and they don't even get full control over the city.

 

[Yzman]

The main problem with puppeting city states as Venice is that it is quite possible to ally them all, and every city state you have puppeted means a lost vote in the World Congress after the Renaissance.

That was my point. As Venice I only puppeted two CS to get my civ up and running. After that I just allied myself to a diplo victory. Its not beneficial to puppet them all.

 

[MadDjinn]

The main problem with puppeting city states as Venice is that it is quite possible to ally them all, and every city state you have puppeted means a lost vote in the World Congress after the Renaissance.

That was my point. As Venice I only puppeted two CS to get my civ up and running. After that I just allied myself to a diplo victory. Its not beneficial to puppet them all.

Technically that actually doesn't matter.

When a CS is removed from the game (even by non Venice/Austria Civs) the votes of those CSs are subtracted from the required amount to win. So if all CSs are removed/taken over, the amount of votes needed is trimmed down to the point of just being the total of the major civs left in the game. This is partly why it's important to get World Religion, World Ideology and the Forbidden Palace (and preferably win the last WC head vote).

 

[Calouste]

Technically that actually doesn't matter.

When a CS is removed from the game (even by non Venice/Austria Civs) the votes of those CSs are subtracted from the required amount to win. So if all CSs are removed/taken over, the amount of votes needed is trimmed down to the point of just being the total of the major civs left in the game. This is partly why it's important to get World Religion, World Ideology and the Forbidden Palace (and preferably win the last WC head vote).

It does matter. If you have allied all the city states and puppeted none, you would have say (made up numbers) 20 out of 39 votes. If you puppeted two city states and allied all the others, you would have 18 out of 37 votes, i.e. you no longer win. And as you rightly point out, you want to win the World Religion, World Ideology and Congress Host for the bonus votes, and extra city states help with that.

Not of course that this would stop me from puppeting a city state with Mt. Fuji, the GBR or a Faith mountain within its borders with the Optics MoV, but there are trade-offs to be made.

 

[ImperialChaos]

For all of those who hate the MoV's:

 

[MadDjinn]

It does matter. If you have allied all the city states and puppeted none, you would have say (made up numbers) 20 out of 39 votes. If you puppeted two city states and allied all the others, you would have 18 out of 37 votes, i.e. you no longer win. And as you rightly point out, you want to win the World Religion, World Ideology and Congress Host for the bonus votes, and extra city states help with that.

Not of course that this would stop me from puppeting a city state with Mt. Fuji, the GBR or a Faith mountain within its borders with the Optics MoV, but there are trade-offs to be made.

in this case, scale actually matters. CS votes at the end are worth more than 1 vote. So going from 20->18 votes and 39->37 votes, sure you can consider that not great. But since CSs are worth more, it matters more. Ofc, the OP isn't talking about 1-2 CSs being removed, but a lot of them. Ie, at 2 votes per CS, and you have 10 allies, if you remove them all from the game, the total votes for VC go from 37->17. That's a much easier number to achieve via vote buying and the above WC votes.

 

[Spiri2al]

For all of those who hate the MoV's:

care to start a thread: 101 ways to deny a MoV

 

[Jonny_Monroe]

Personally, I would change the MoV ability entirely to something like:

Permanently raises your resting point with this city state by +50.

That way with a defence declaration and/or patronage/religion bonuses, you default to allied with that city state. However, another civ investing in relations with them can still push you off it, if they're willing to make that investment. This way you also retain the option to trade with the CS and buy back into allied (if you get pushed off it) with them for world congress votes.

 

[BShaftoe]

Personally, I would change the MoV ability entirely to something like:

Permanently raises your resting point with this city state by +50.

That way with a defence declaration and/or patronage/religion bonuses, you default to allied with that city state. However, another civ investing in relations with them can still push you off it, if they're willing to make that investment. This way you also retain the option to trade with the CS and buy back into allied (if you get pushed off it) with them for world congress votes.

Then it will be too close to being a typical OCC match. I still like the idea of being able to liberate a MoV-purchased CS.

 

[Morthis]

Personally, I would change the MoV ability entirely to something like:

Permanently raises your resting point with this city state by +50.

That way with a defence declaration and/or patronage/religion bonuses, you default to allied with that city state. However, another civ investing in relations with them can still push you off it, if they're willing to make that investment. This way you also retain the option to trade with the CS and buy back into allied (if you get pushed off it) with them for world congress votes.

From my experience with Venice so far, this would pretty much destroy the Civ. I've played a few games as Venice, and what really makes it work is the fact that you can send food/hammers to your capital from your puppets (which is a huge boost to your city, I ended my last game with something like 40 pop in Venice), and the fact that taking a CS will give you some early units to avoid those turn 50-75 dows for having no army.