Venice overpowered against AI?

[CrazyHeaven]

Let me start off by saying my game was on Prince. I am in no way an expert at this game and haven't ever won a game on king. Venice was a completely different experience for me. I had a really bad start in tundra with a small amount of resources surrounding my capital. Nobody near by to trade with until we could travel across ocean so we spent most of the start of our game researching to be able to cross the ocean. It cost us a religion, great library and a lot of early start stuff the AI enjoyed. The next challenge was getting our merchant to the city states without them being destroyed by barbs which lead to all resources going into a strong navy. The final challenge we encountered was the happiness hit we took when we took a city state was huge enough to cause revolts forcing us again to refocus efforts.

After all above was done the power of Venice began to shine when we took over City States all through the map to established more profitable trade routes and in essence became an unstoppable force that was a little boring to play. No one DoW against me, or anything close to it. We had line of sight from CS puppets into just about everyone's capital with a navy units sitting right outside protecting our trade routes and a few traveling around to discover everything and ally with any and all city states which started the voting. The game lost all of it's challenge. I could steam roll the AI if I wanted or beat them to a science victory, sell them blue genes or vote for myself as the world leader.

Not going to call it to easy yet. Figured I'll skip king and try the next step up from king with Venice to see if the AI would offer up a bit more of a challenge. Might change the map type to as a feel our current map to heavily favored Venice's playing style. I can't even imagine what would have happen if we had a better start.

Things I wish were different: Previous trade routes would be the first one I see when I open up to pick one so I don't have to go searching for it. Other than that the ability to buy archaeologist or have puppets create them would be nice as Venice had to focus on wonders for the majority of the game. Leaving a screenshot here of my game, haven't won yet but we are about to. I've never been so far ahead of the AI that it felt silly to keep going since vanilla Civ 5 going for a dominance victory.

 

[Adamshifnal]

I have to agree with you dude! I have played Venice a few times, and I literally just scooped up all the religious and science wonders early. Had my Religion give me +2 gold for each city with my religion, Increased range of pressure for my Religion, increased overall preasure etc.

By the time I got to the 3rd era (forgot the name ) I had around 10 wonders.....which is stupid and thats coming from someone who's boosted wonders as Egypt!!!

This is how my Venice looked like. Shamefully I didn't give a screenshot of after my victory (All of the main land where Venice was was completely taken over by me in the end!)

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=178932122

 

[EK834]

Did you play Venice on Archipelagoes?

It's a bad map to play Venice on, especially a huge map. It's way overpowered on it, the AI isn't so good at oversea conquest and the absence of proximity limits massively wars before the late eras.

If you have had a great start, with a few trade partners reachable before Astronomy, your advance over the AI would have been even worse. As it is you were also lucky: it looks like many other Civs were isolated until Astronomy, and while you had a less than optimal start the AI also was slowed down by the geography, and several Civs need room to expand their Empire to offer the human any challenge, and they suck against the human on Archipelagoes (Attila, Assryria and co. are totally wasted on that map type). By the time you stopped being isolated you had kept yourself afloat in beakers and growth or even seriously got ahead, and now your economic advantages were enough to simply run away once and for all. If you pick conditions in which you can play without having any army or navy until you want to, or you can buy whatever you wish, where there's nothing to interfere with your production of growth and science buildings, NW and WW (like neighbors to defend against when you're trying to find periods to build up cargo ships and start making money, with barbarian ships to pillage your TR and force you to build a navy to destroy them), it's no surprise it was a tedious start that later turned into a ride in the park.

Venice requires a good understanding of the game mechanics to make much of, but it is a very powerful Civ in the hands of any experienced Tall player (a bit too much to play on your normal level in many games).

For a much more interesting game try playing it on maps where you'll share a landmass with a few neighbors that will offer early competition for the goody huts, and with agression. You'll get a decent or better coastal start no matter what. King/Venice should then offer a challenge to a Prince player (especially post patch as the AI techs quite better). You'll have a bit of catching up to do, to defend against aggression and will see many early Wonders escape you. If you really want to play it on Archipelagoes, Emperor is a better choice but it will still be easy if you don't spawn with a neighbor.

By the way: you should probably have puppeted Kyzyl and used it to grow Venice once you realized you wouldn't have external trade routes up before Astronomy.

 

[kamikazees]

Venice is a very powerful civ in the hands of the player although it appears you played it very well too. Your science is very high, especially considering there is very little food in you capitol area. When played by the AI, Venice usually just gets rolled.