Tips For Playing Venice?

Dactyl

Warlord
Joined
Sep 20, 2010
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Does anyone have some good tips for playing Venice on Immortal level? I'm particularly interested in middle to late game tips. What is the best sort of win to go for with Venice? One problem I keep having is that I am often one of the first civs to choose an ideology. However, none of the other civs ever chooses the same ideology as me, and I end up with a ton of dissatisfaction eating into my happiness. How do you handle this problem?
 
Yup; nothing about the ideology question is specific to Venice.

Short answer is build the darn guilds and run them yourself even when not seeking a cultural victory.

Venice tips:

Build all national wonders. Since you can't annex any city you only need the standard building in Venice to build the national wonder.

Run a few food cargo ships to Venice.

Venice can easily go for any sort of victory.

Going for science: Freedom will allow you to cash buy several parts thanks to all the cargo ship routes you can run as Venice.

Going for culture: Venice speeds thru the policy trees (puppets don't increase acquisition costs) so you'll finish Aesthetics tree / open Exploration (Lourve) / get all tourism increasing policies within your ideology faster.

Going diplomatic: Great Merchant of Venice also provide more influence & cash than a regular one one for trade missions. Also, removing city states from the game by any means (inculding GMOV) will decrease number of votes needed to win. (Oh, did Greece have 200+ influence points with that city state? Not anymore ... )
 
I never go for tourism so my games are always at risk of the late game happiness hit from the wrong ideology. My usual counter to that is allying enough CSs to help pass my ideology in the WC. I'll try to help push it thru with diplomat spies and forbidden palace.

This usually buys me enough time to get first the important ideology policies and then when the WC influence begins to wane I can pick up the more happiness focused policies.
 
@joncnunn, you refer to finishing the Aesthetics tree. I never work the Aesthetics tree. What policy trees do you work and when? I do all of the Tradition tree, then start working the Commerce tree. As soon as the Science becomes available I open it, so I can build the wonder that gives me +50% on research agreements. I then finish the Commerce tree, and then return to the Science tree and finish it. At that point, I'm using all of my culture on my ideology. I don't have any set way of doing things if I get all of the ideology policies, but as I said, I never work the Aesthetics tree.
 
He made that observation under the heading "Going for culture". When you pursue a culture victory, do you not open and complete the Aesthetics social policy tree?
 
@joncnunn, you refer to finishing the Aesthetics tree. I never work the Aesthetics tree. What policy trees do you work and when? I do all of the Tradition tree, then start working the Commerce tree. As soon as the Science becomes available I open it, so I can build the wonder that gives me +50% on research agreements. I then finish the Commerce tree, and then return to the Science tree and finish it. At that point, I'm using all of my culture on my ideology. I don't have any set way of doing things if I get all of the ideology policies, but as I said, I never work the Aesthetics tree.

That is under context of going for Cultural Victory.
Timing works out to Tradition first; then start Aesthetics. (Aesthetics is the most powerful tree for culture victory. It doubles the Louvre's theming bonus from +4 to +8 along with all other theming bonuses.)
Timing of Exploration opener: First industrial policy as the tech opening Louvre is early Industrial.

The rest of your post sounds like you are going for some other kind of victory though.

Left side of Commerce though isn't on my list at all: I have no interest in building caravans and I find I get plenty of GMOV without any policy boosting them further.
 
I have started a Venice/Immortal/Archipelago game and instead of starting a new thread, I would like to ask for advice here.

I am at turn 80 with a size 10 city. I bought a city-state (a militaristic one) but I am not sure why. I am getting +11f in Venice without having a food ship, so I don't need it for that. I did get a trade route going from that city. Will this acquisition pay off?

Between Venice and that city-state, there are only two civs within trade range - the rest are out of range. But even that, I am having a hard time keeping trade routes going (due to plunderings). I'm having to stop and build triremes but even those are fairly weak against barb galleys. Besides, do I even work on more military units and techs to be aggressive against barbs?

At turn 80, I do have 2 trade routes and the Colossus built; science is low (no NC yet) but happiness is really good; and culture is low (7 cpt) and it's taking forever to get the last tradition policy. What do I do now - what am I aiming for? Do I get aggressive on GMoV so I can get trade routes in other parts of the world? After Currency and Philosophy, then what?
 
Buccaneer - Buy the Maritimes. I think you just need to figure out how you want to win this one and go from there. I would still send food to Venice and I would send food back to the puppet as well.
 
you can never have enough food... so every puppet should be sending a food trade route to cap.
if you send food trade routes back to your puppets they are more likely to work your science buildings..

buccaneer there's no reason as venice to not have NC by turn 80..
scratch that...
no "excuse"
 
Send food trade routes back to Venice and watch your population soar!

This one also works great as any other civ as long as your capital plus at least two of your other cities are coastal.
 
For Venice, you want hammers in the capitol. You want wonders galore, and hammers all game long. For this, Tradition is best and you want to grow.

Pantheon: anything with hammers (god king even). Faith based if the capitol dirt is worth it. Get a religion if you can, some faith and some hammers if you can. Tithe is always a solid choice.

National wonders : all of them.

Wonders: the Colossus (and great lighthouse) are very important to try for. Get the extra trade routes from colossus is especially nice. After that, you want all the wonders, but any that give boosts to great people, free great people, Happiness, are probably higher priority. I personally avoid the Theology wonders because I dont play religion hard as venice.

You will want to get a puppet after they have built a granary, not too early. Then you can route food back to the capitol. You should probably feed the capitol until Population level of ~30. Then switch to sending hammers. In the long run, I want three puppets each sending a route back to Venice. You don't *need* more than 3 puppets, but 3 hammer-cargo ships is a lot, and you can build wonders easy that way. I try to make sure I get all the strategic resources I need, and I buy CS puppets accordingly.

I would make sure to build guilds and such because you want to compete at culture/tourism, even when playing for some other VC. You should have more than enough food to run maxed out specialists.

Make sure you have all trade routes up and running asap. Make sure they are protected.

Factories: You should save gold to rush buy three factories on the same turn you get coal.

WC : you want your Ideology passed as world ideology. Make it a priority. Usualy I do this when CS votes start to add up. You should always have most of the CS voting for you. Again, this help win at culture, or avoid loosing :)

Worst case scenario: if you get embargoed. Dont Let That Happen!
 
I forgot one very important trick:

Move some great works into your Puppets!
This will grow their borders faster because of the local culture output from the great work. Faster borders will get you more strategic resources and maybe lux too. Maybe even a Natural wonder.

In the mid game, this is an important step.

You can always move them back to the capitol for a theme bonus. artifacts from archeologists and great to use later on because they are easy to get.

just another reason to go for exploration as venice.
 
Capital is growing - mid-game at 20+ and about 29 net food per turn with 2 puppets. Easily can work all specialists but the limiting factor is land size for the cap and puppets - 15 land hexes in cap and 4-6 in puppets. Seems to be limited for production, arch sites and poor sea tiles. But will win Dip after I read more on what happens - am worried about WC and ideology. In all, interesting game as I have had very little experience with OCC, esp on this map type.
 
I have started a Venice/Immortal/Archipelago game and instead of starting a new thread, I would like to ask for advice here.

I am at turn 80 with a size 10 city. I bought a city-state (a militaristic one) but I am not sure why. I am getting +11f in Venice without having a food ship, so I don't need it for that. I did get a trade route going from that city. Will this acquisition pay off?

You do need that food trade route, trust me. It really is the sole purpose of buying city states. Venice needs to grow massive.

Between Venice and that city-state, there are only two civs within trade range - the rest are out of range. But even that, I am having a hard time keeping trade routes going (due to plunderings). I'm having to stop and build triremes but even those are fairly weak against barb galleys. Besides, do I even work on more military units and techs to be aggressive against barbs?

In that situation, open up Honor. The main benefit is that you get notified when barb camps spawn, which allows you to take them out, or at least control them, before they start spawning ships.

At turn 80, I do have 2 trade routes and the Colossus built; science is low (no NC yet) but happiness is really good; and culture is low (7 cpt) and it's taking forever to get the last tradition policy. What do I do now - what am I aiming for? Do I get aggressive on GMoV so I can get trade routes in other parts of the world? After Currency and Philosophy, then what?

You need Drama & Poetry to get the Writer's Guild up and the National Epic. That will boost your culture significantly. Then get Compass to double the length of your sea Trade Routes, and with all the extra cash start buying cultural city states. And don't forget Engineering, that's another two trade routes.
 
Quick question. The game has been going along nicely with everyone Friends with everyone else. Runaway Iroquois was first to WC and enacted Arts Funding. Now I have pulled well ahead on delegates but should I propose to repeal Arts Funding knowing that it will upset Iroquois?
 
Quick question. The game has been going along nicely with everyone Friends with everyone else. Runaway Iroquois was first to WC and enacted Arts Funding. Now I have pulled well ahead on delegates but should I propose to repeal Arts Funding knowing that it will upset Iroquois?

Why? As Venice you can run as many WAM specialists as everyone else, but your puppets won't run scientist specialists most of the time (although they will run merchants) so repealing Arts Funding will help others more than it does you because they can run specialists in more cities than you can. You could propose something else instead.
 
Thank you, that's what I suspected but wasn't sure if it would make that much of a difference.
 
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