terminus467
Chieftain
- Joined
- Apr 4, 2011
- Messages
- 26
Let me preface by saying that I checked to see if someone else had addressed this on the forums, or elsewhere, and found nothing. So if it has been addressed, I apologize.
Now, here's where I come from. Before Venice came out I more or less only played Rome (certainly on Multiplayer) and sometimes played Arabia. Venice filled a mercantile city-state-shaped hole in my heart.
Moving on: The idea of Venice being conducive to a wide build has been dismissed pretty much out of hand, and for good reason: They can't make settlers and what cities they do get beyond Venice they can't micromanage. After playing Venice a LOT since it came out, I would like to try to counter this notion and see what feedback I get.
Now, why doesn't everyone just build infinite cities every game? Because no matter who you play as, the game has built-in diminishing returns on cities. The biggest one is happiness, but it's in research and social policy purchasing also. What determines whether a civ should go wide or tall is based on the extent of these diminishing returns: At what point, for that civilization, does it become unprofitable to build city X+1? Civilizations for whom the scaling of marginal costs is important (those going for cultural victory, perhaps) will favor tall builds.
I would argue that Venice's Unique Ability and Unique Great Person actually reduce the amount by which their marginal benefit decreases per X new cities. First I'm going to break down their Unique Ability into its component parts, leaving out the part about not being able to build settlers/annex because I won't need to refer back to that:
1: MoV's can puppet city-states for free, instantaneously.
2: You can purchase units and buildings in puppeted cities.
3: You receive 2x trade routes.
So here's my argument: Part of the diminishing returns on founding new cities, particularly as the game goes on, is that when you found them they have only one population, are not developed at all, are only seven hexes in size, and are defenseless barring a defense you provide. You have to go out of your way to locate luxury and strategic resources.
This is nothing new. This has been the norm since forever. But Venice turns that on its head and presents an alternative. When you "settle" as Venice you get a city whose population is scaled to the game's duration (so in the mid-game their population will be anywhere between five and ten), that has buildings, that comes with its own military, that has guaranteed luxury and strategic resources (some or all of which may be improved already), that has a worker, and whose borders have already been expanded.
In a world where all other things were equal, you would obviously choose to settle cities in the latter fashion. But the way this plays out strategy-wise is that it effectively extends the time period for Venice in which it is profitable to "settle". If I'm Rome in the Mid-Game I'm probably not settling new cities. Venice has less of a reason not to. Now, I have no idea if this is necessarily enough to make wide strategies better than tall strategies, but it would be reasonable to say that at the very least, this aspect of Venice's ability makes wide strategies more viable because it reduces the penalty for settling later in the game.
Venice's ability to purchase in puppeted cities plays into my thinking as well.
What is gold? What can you use it for in the game? Other than paying for upkeep and thereby keeping you from going negative and losing research. What can it get you? Well, it can get you units and buildings. So it's essentially just production that can't be used for certain units or buildings (wonders) and that expenses slightly less efficiently than production. Because a city could produce a worker, for instance, in much less time than it would take to produce the gold requisite to buy a worker. At least in the early and mid game.
So at first glance, gold is just less efficient production. I would argue that the cost in efficiency is made up for with convenience and flexibility. You get convenience because gold can be spent anywhere. So if I have a city on the other side of the map, I can produce five hundred gold in Venice, but spend it in my other city. You get flexibility because, unlike with production, with gold you don't have to specify what it's for when you make it. And gold can be saved. So if you don't plan on going on a conquering spree, you don't have to build a large army. You can just save your gold and allocate Venice's production to other things (such as things that get you more gold) and, if you get attacked, buy an army in a matter of turns.
It sounds impractical, but I can't tell you how many times I've turned back armies in Multiplayer as Venice just by buying units at whatever city is being attacked. It's actually wonderful because instead of spreading my resources out and paying upkeep when I don't have to, I expend them where I need them when they are needed.
Venice essentially just has to treat gold as production and it can, in my experience, perform just fine at wide strategies, with subtle variations. Not being able to manage your cities is a penalty, of course, but I believe it is made up for by the fact that any city you settle is already going to be pretty decent when you settle it. For the whole game.
And it just so happens that Venice is pretty bomb at making money. It gets double trade routes (and automatically starts in a good trading position) and trade routes are an incredibly efficient way of making money.
Sorry if my ramblings made no sense. Thoughts?
Now, here's where I come from. Before Venice came out I more or less only played Rome (certainly on Multiplayer) and sometimes played Arabia. Venice filled a mercantile city-state-shaped hole in my heart.
Moving on: The idea of Venice being conducive to a wide build has been dismissed pretty much out of hand, and for good reason: They can't make settlers and what cities they do get beyond Venice they can't micromanage. After playing Venice a LOT since it came out, I would like to try to counter this notion and see what feedback I get.
Now, why doesn't everyone just build infinite cities every game? Because no matter who you play as, the game has built-in diminishing returns on cities. The biggest one is happiness, but it's in research and social policy purchasing also. What determines whether a civ should go wide or tall is based on the extent of these diminishing returns: At what point, for that civilization, does it become unprofitable to build city X+1? Civilizations for whom the scaling of marginal costs is important (those going for cultural victory, perhaps) will favor tall builds.
I would argue that Venice's Unique Ability and Unique Great Person actually reduce the amount by which their marginal benefit decreases per X new cities. First I'm going to break down their Unique Ability into its component parts, leaving out the part about not being able to build settlers/annex because I won't need to refer back to that:
1: MoV's can puppet city-states for free, instantaneously.
2: You can purchase units and buildings in puppeted cities.
3: You receive 2x trade routes.
So here's my argument: Part of the diminishing returns on founding new cities, particularly as the game goes on, is that when you found them they have only one population, are not developed at all, are only seven hexes in size, and are defenseless barring a defense you provide. You have to go out of your way to locate luxury and strategic resources.
This is nothing new. This has been the norm since forever. But Venice turns that on its head and presents an alternative. When you "settle" as Venice you get a city whose population is scaled to the game's duration (so in the mid-game their population will be anywhere between five and ten), that has buildings, that comes with its own military, that has guaranteed luxury and strategic resources (some or all of which may be improved already), that has a worker, and whose borders have already been expanded.
In a world where all other things were equal, you would obviously choose to settle cities in the latter fashion. But the way this plays out strategy-wise is that it effectively extends the time period for Venice in which it is profitable to "settle". If I'm Rome in the Mid-Game I'm probably not settling new cities. Venice has less of a reason not to. Now, I have no idea if this is necessarily enough to make wide strategies better than tall strategies, but it would be reasonable to say that at the very least, this aspect of Venice's ability makes wide strategies more viable because it reduces the penalty for settling later in the game.
Venice's ability to purchase in puppeted cities plays into my thinking as well.
What is gold? What can you use it for in the game? Other than paying for upkeep and thereby keeping you from going negative and losing research. What can it get you? Well, it can get you units and buildings. So it's essentially just production that can't be used for certain units or buildings (wonders) and that expenses slightly less efficiently than production. Because a city could produce a worker, for instance, in much less time than it would take to produce the gold requisite to buy a worker. At least in the early and mid game.
So at first glance, gold is just less efficient production. I would argue that the cost in efficiency is made up for with convenience and flexibility. You get convenience because gold can be spent anywhere. So if I have a city on the other side of the map, I can produce five hundred gold in Venice, but spend it in my other city. You get flexibility because, unlike with production, with gold you don't have to specify what it's for when you make it. And gold can be saved. So if you don't plan on going on a conquering spree, you don't have to build a large army. You can just save your gold and allocate Venice's production to other things (such as things that get you more gold) and, if you get attacked, buy an army in a matter of turns.
It sounds impractical, but I can't tell you how many times I've turned back armies in Multiplayer as Venice just by buying units at whatever city is being attacked. It's actually wonderful because instead of spreading my resources out and paying upkeep when I don't have to, I expend them where I need them when they are needed.
Venice essentially just has to treat gold as production and it can, in my experience, perform just fine at wide strategies, with subtle variations. Not being able to manage your cities is a penalty, of course, but I believe it is made up for by the fact that any city you settle is already going to be pretty decent when you settle it. For the whole game.
And it just so happens that Venice is pretty bomb at making money. It gets double trade routes (and automatically starts in a good trading position) and trade routes are an incredibly efficient way of making money.
Sorry if my ramblings made no sense. Thoughts?
