dojoboy
Tsalagi
I have to say, Venice is the first civ in the Civilization series that has me wanting to play them again. I generally play through all the civs, then work to win with each on as high a level I can.
Venice Game
- Thread starter dojoboy
- Start date
dojoboy
Tsalagi
Maddjin has a Venice deity game going on his YouTube channel. I've watched the first couple parts.
First time poster. Both are viable, but the edge clearly has to go to Liberty. And it's two MoVs you get from Liberty (one as a replacement for the settler and one GP of your choice at completion). Add to that the free MoV you get from Optics and you have a 4 city empire fairly early on with Liberty, as opposed to 2 with Tradition. You have to be pretty careful on the higher difficulties to make sure the CSes you take have some diverse luxuries though or happiness can be a real issue. Not fun to put down a constant stream of rebels for 50 turns because you couldn't sit on your MoV for a few, trade for decent luxuries, or scout out viable CSes.
Just finished a pretty easy King game with Venice via Diplo, though Culture was in the works about 50 turns down the road. Theming is pretty key with culture (at least it seems to be with Venice), and you want to target the wonders that allow for it. All in all, BNW seems to make Culture much more interesting. You can focus on a few key wonders that allow for theming rather than scattershotting anything that gives +culture. You can wait mid-late game to start ramping up tourism rather than worrying about falling behind on pure culture. So far it seems like Liberty > Exploration > Ascetics > Freedom has been a pretty good path to take for Venice. Patronage is hardly even needed with the massive amounts of gold that come pouring in from the 2x trade routes, but I usually take it anyway.
For Diplo, you can just take 3 or 4 defensible CSes, Ally the rest through pure gifting and have the votes to get World Leader.
All in all, this is an amazing expansion. Civ V is just a fantastic game now.
dojoboy
Tsalagi
I thought about this some more. In this game I started the thread with, there was only me and Askia during the final 20 or so turns. I was 3 votes away from gaining the required votes to when a diplo victory and I had the thought of releasing 2 of my pupated states. This would give me the opportunity to make them allies, which would have been very likely, thus gaining 4 more votes in the WC. The option to release wasn't there, so no go. I'm sure Firaxis considered this and chose not give Venice an option to release puppets. That said, release a puppet nation-state would create an new player in the WC, where as, releasing a puppet CS would offer the +2 WC votes from an allied CS.
Ah, I see, dojoboy; that would have been an exploit. There is an exploit in G&K that I hope Firaxis fixed: Your military unit pillages a hex (you get gold), and your worker fixes it, your military unit pillages a hex (more gold), and your worker fixed it, your...and, you can do this forever...
Regards,
Marc
Regards,
Marc
Mercade
the Counsellor
My startloc with Venice sucked and I was next to Montezuma, so it's been a tough battle to get him under control. However, I noticed two things with Venice UA:
- Venice cannot buy tiles for puppets. If you can buy units and buildings, it makes sense to also be able to buy tiles rather than expand with culture only.
- Venice cannot sell buildings it doesn't want once AI has built what it fancies. When strapped for cash (I know, not supposed to happen with Venice, but still), AI is building stables where I have absolutely no use for them.
I fear that I am going to be the point drag to my teammates for the rest of this game - heck, we are not in the Industrial Era yet. I don't know how the game mechanics are in this expansion where they are like the other Civ games: once you are losing, there is no way for you to catch up. The flip is also true, once you are winning, it is very rare for others to be able to beat you. I call this the slippery slope. This is a general statement, I realize, which doesn't always apply, but still... I can see why folks will keep flipping the board until they get the location that seems advantageous or at least "fair" in their eyes.
Marc
Marc
I Have taken a different view on the use of my merchants of Venice. Basically I just use the city state influence more than the puppet action. My view is at the start of the game I want to keep every city state that is close to me so I can establish gold trade routes with them while the other Civs build up to the coasts. I usually use my first merchant towards getting a culture city state as an ally to boost my culture and use the gold for more trade routs or a worker if I don't have one. The second I will use to puppet a city state but only if I am out of possible trade routs, I will usually find a CS near cities outside my capital's trade range and make a trade hub. After that they all go towards grabbing city states with preferences towards culture and military. While I build up buildings that I need in the city. I might capture a third city across the ocean if I feel I need more for trade routes. I also try to only use naval trade routs and only build boats, while using just the city state units for land defense. I mainly go for diplomacy victory so I just want gold and protection, I get luxury items from ally city states along with my culture while rushing as much science and trade buildings I can get in Venice.
GAGA Extrem
Emperor
- Joined
- Dec 24, 2008
- Messages
- 1,589
The tile thing is quite annoying during the later game, because the city states have quite limited borders and it feels like AGES until they do expand again. :/
That and the lack of canals makes the geographical position of your capital vital. There is nothing more frustrating than finding a single ice tile blocking all naval trade at the northern or southern edge of the map. Ruined two games for me so far...
There must be some other prerequisite that I'm missing. I have seen the icon that you mention in screenshots of other people playing Venice. But ...
Got a second Merchant now. Moved him to the next city state "Antananarivo" which is currently Ally of mine. Again, there is no "Buy city state" icon below the trade mission.
What am I missing?
Thanks
superliminal
Warlord
- Joined
- Jul 11, 2013
- Messages
- 126
I played my first game with Venice and it was unbelievably fun. I found it useful to puppet two city-states early on, and us the rest of the GMs for trade deals. One thing really useful about puppeting the city-states, is it also delivers all their units, improved land, meaning you basically get free well-developed cities for virtually no cost.
The rest of the game I focused on building my commerce. I spawned next to Germany, who were acting awfully aggressive, but by keeping my army up (with purchased units) and spreading my religion to them, I managed to prevent war. The other key, was maximizing trade routes, and maximizing their efficiency with trade route buildings. At certain points I was getting upwards of 300-400 gold per turn. Diplomatic victory would definitely be ideal for Venice, as you have such a gold surplus, that, combined with well-placed spies, you can ally every single city-state and become World Leader by the very first vote.
Make sure all your merchant slots (Markets, Banks, etc) are filled, focus on wonders that give you Great Merchant points, and try to grab anything that gives you a bonus to great person generation (Gardens, Leaning Tower of Pisa, Policies) . Also, because any puppeted city stated are stuck on Gold focus, they will generally put people in the Market, Bank, etc slots, so make sure to buy those for them as soon as you can afford to (also to maximize their gold output).
Thank you, Alexariel.
What does Merchant Slots mean? I guess there is a list of buildings, wonders and Policies that engender the speeding up of a Great Merchant? And, where is such a list/how would I know which of these things go with what great person, such as a Great Merchant? Is it common sense? In other words, anything that garners gold is automatically part of the Great Merchant "slots"?
Regards,
Marc
superliminal
Warlord
- Joined
- Jul 11, 2013
- Messages
- 126
He's referring to merchant specialists, which help produce Great Merchants. Certain wonders will also produce Great Merchant point, and that's located in the description of the wonder.
Also, in regards to spy v. diplomat: I found spies useful to maintaining influence via rigging-elections and coups. Though diplomats are useful as well if you want to try and influence specific World Congress resolutions. They also add to your vote count once you research globalization, but that was a little too late in the tech-tree to be useful for me.
Edit: Also it's helpful as Venice, to bee-line to optics for that free GM.
Enrico Swagolo
Deity
- Joined
- Jun 10, 2013
- Messages
- 2,387
Venice is so fun. I am running away and have sick 300+ gold per turn gain, 10000+ gold (or rather had so much before I rushbought enough units to scare Ramesses so much he gave me his entire 73+ gpt after taking his capital), and with completed commerce MoV gets 3200 gold (on Epic Emperor, could be more/less on other difficulties)/60 influence for regular trade mission, which equals an allied state AND money to create an army (because you have your -25% gold cost since you completed Commerce, and -15% from Big Ben should be on the way).
Oh and Great Rapeasses. They're nuts. Abs-o-lute-ly nuts.
Granted now that I stole Ramsesses' Wonderwhoring Capital, there's going to be no resistance and I'll probably backstab Portugal to get her last capital.
Whoever thought up Venice is a genius. And he's also awesome. Most fun I've ever had in Civ.
Oh and Great Rapeasses. They're nuts. Abs-o-lute-ly nuts.
Granted now that I stole Ramsesses' Wonderwhoring Capital, there's going to be no resistance and I'll probably backstab Portugal to get her last capital.
Whoever thought up Venice is a genius. And he's also awesome. Most fun I've ever had in Civ.
"Slots" refers to anything that lets you assign Specialists. When you're in your city screen look along the right-hand side below Citizen Management and Great People progress, you'll see Specialist Buildings. The game will automatically manage these based on your general Focus, but for Venice its a good idea to manually control these (in the early game I found it was best to fill the Engineer and Merchant slots). When you hover over the little coins/faces you can click them to assign, and see what each specialist is worth (each specialist generates points towards GP generation). I think Markets, Banks and Stock Exchanges might be the only ones that have merchant slots.
"Points" on the other hand are added to your GP progress, but don't require a specialist and come from Wonders. When you start researching a new tech, hover over any of the Wonders and it will say something like "Great Merchant Points: 2". Some of the wonders are Eiffel Tower, CN Tower, Big Ben (a great one because it also reduces purchasing costs which Venice does a lot of), I think theres a few more. The National Epic is also a good one to get early for GP generation (plus getting national wonders is pretty easy as Venice).
"Points" on the other hand are added to your GP progress, but don't require a specialist and come from Wonders. When you start researching a new tech, hover over any of the Wonders and it will say something like "Great Merchant Points: 2". Some of the wonders are Eiffel Tower, CN Tower, Big Ben (a great one because it also reduces purchasing costs which Venice does a lot of), I think theres a few more. The National Epic is also a good one to get early for GP generation (plus getting national wonders is pretty easy as Venice).
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