Venice

that basically sums it up. to me, their amount of gimmick is untenable in the CPP- seems impossible to keep close with vanillas intent in this evolving mod
Someone proposed that a simple buff that would make Venice viable would be to spawn a combat unit near Venice respective to their era and trade type everytime a cargo ship or caravan is killed.

It basically makes sure that Venice is promised their trade unit keeps on trading in multiplayer because preventing them to trade gives them a stronger military.
 
Someone proposed that a simple buff that would make Venice viable would be to spawn a combat unit near Venice respective to their era and trade type everytime a cargo ship or caravan is killed.

It basically makes sure that Venice is promised their trade unit keeps on trading in multiplayer because preventing them to trade gives them a stronger military.

Sounds really exploitable.
Also I really don't care much about multiplayer, I'm going for a single-player solution.
 
Venice's UA is not for everyone. I personally don't enjoy it (as I like to settle cities where I please), however Venice is almost always in the top 3 AI players in any game they're included in. Double trade routes is an insanely powerful element of their UA, especially since so much more depends on TRs than in vanilla.

That said, I'm always open to ideas. The UA is definitely unique, so I'm hesitant to change the 'no settlers' element.

I've considered simply making puppet cities place 'invested' items immediately into the build queue, so as to avoid the 'not building invested stuff' problem, though I haven't heard as many complaints about this lately as in the past.

The Doge's Palace is great. No spies wrecking your super capital is quite strong.

G
 
Venice's UA is not for everyone. I personally don't enjoy it (as I like to settle cities where I please), however Venice is almost always in the top 3 AI players in any game they're included in. Double trade routes is an insanely powerful element of their UA, especially since so much more depends on TRs than in vanilla.
I agree, AI Venice seems to be doing fine in my games as well. But the AI is weird, and is usually able to buy the cities close to them, which makes their territory way easier to defend.
The traderoute ability is insanely powerful, that is absolutely correct, in fact it is probably overpowered. However, it really isn't useful when all your neighbors are constantly at war with you, you're just not able to run traderoutes at that point.

That said, I'm always open to ideas. The UA is definitely unique, so I'm hesitant to change the 'no settlers' element.
That's what I'm struggling with as well, the civ is extremely unique, which is cool, but just because something is unique doesn't necessarily mean that it is useful. I have some ideas that I'll try to bring up later.

I've considered simply making puppet cities place 'invested' items immediately into the build queue, so as to avoid the 'not building invested stuff' problem, though I haven't heard as many complaints about this lately as in the past.
Gold is just so damn scarce early-game that I didn't have a chance to try it out :D. When I finally had some gold going I spent all of it on buying soldiers to defend my capital.

The Doge's Palace is great. No spies wrecking your super capital is quite strong.
You keep saying that :D
 
If I were to do something to help Venice, I would give them a way to have a monopoly. In history Venice had a monopoly on their distinctive glasswares. Other places made glass, but Venice's glass was a market unto itself.

Perhaps allow them to have the monopoly benefits for whatever luxuries they have in their capital after they research Guilds.
 
With Venice, I have had my best success ignoring the Merchant of Venice buying city-states. I use them only for diplomatic missions. 200 influence, a pile of gold, and WLtKD for 20 turns is pretty great. I hit up my closest city-state, and pay special attention to quests and protecting them. My early trade routes are pretty much always with surrounding city-states. Gold gets rolling FAST. I prioritize money and trade routes over everything for the first fifty turns.

I still have issues with monopolies and national wonders. I'd suggest special rules to these for Venice. Allow them to count a portion of trade partners', city-state allies', or DoF civs' population and resources towards National Wonders and Monopolies. If possible, add this ability into the Palace, cementing the importance of the home city because it's the only place you'll be able to build National Wonders or the initial Corporation wonder.

IMO, as it stands now, Venice is at the mercy of map generation more so than anyone else. Do you have Atilla and Genghis as neighbors? Better reroll. Without a peaceful-ish neighbor, who I can conquer a capital from around Physics, I have not been successful with Venice. That's asking a lot from RNG.
 
We could give Venice a replacement UB that is auto-built in all new cities after the capital (circumventing the puppet production issue) and doubles luxury resources around the city specifically for monopoly purposes. Can do something else, of course, but that might make the RNG less brutal.

G
 
We could give Venice a replacement UB that is auto-built in all new cities after the capital (circumventing the puppet production issue) and doubles luxury resources around the city specifically for monopoly purposes. Can do something else, of course, but that might make the RNG less brutal.

G

Sounds like a good start. Would having an instant-built city wall be too powerful? Maybe give it a discount to culture tile acquisition and a discount for purchasing naval units in the puppet.
 
Sounds like a good start. Would having an instant-built city wall be too powerful? Maybe give it a discount to culture tile acquisition and a discount for purchasing naval units in the puppet.

Babylon already has a UB wall. Also, there's no room for more UA elements, so such thing would be shunted onto the UB (and would need to be balanced against the value of doubled lux resources).

G
 
One of the things that really annoys me about Venice is the fact that both their UU and their UB feels boring and/or bad.

The UU feels like an extension of the UA. Without the UA the UU makes absolutely no sense, without the UU the UA is unplayable.
The UU does exactly one thing, it buys city-states, other than that there is nothing special about it. Your towns are the same, your trade-missions are the same. This just isn't a very interesting unit.

The UB pretty much just gives you a better start, giving you the ability to go for early wonders. After the early game the building just isn't very much fun, this is a side-effect of the UB being pre-built, meaning it can't be very powerful. This also feels like something you needed to not get rushed down early on as you can't get extra cities for extra soldier production with the UA.



Anyways, suggesting a minor overhaul of the UA that I feel are going to improve the gameplay, both in singleplayer and in multiplayer. This is not a complete idea and it would need to be adjusted and reworked, it is just something to show my vision of venice.


UA:
  • Cities without a Palace can't be annexed, cities founded by you or conquered start out puppeted.
  • You can buy/invest in puppets.
  • Puppets you control produces an extra x% yields and an extra Y Yields

The idea is that you're able to settle cities, but you still can't control them. This gives you the ability to control monopolies, this gives you an area that you can actually defend while still running a puppet-empire.
Yes the whole Venice idea of having a spread out coastal empire is gone, because spread out just means impossible to defend.
Anyways, the tradeoff for not being able to control your cities is that your cities produce a lot more yields, both a percentual and a static bonus.
The static bonus is so that your puppets will actually get going early on, getting some infrastructure up so that they don't get run over.
The percentual bonus is to counteract the puppet penalties.
These two combined will help you get some gold going (as the trade-route bonus is scrapped) to invest in soldiers (or buildings, but with the puppets having bonuses, that would be as necessary).

The UU and the UB could kinda stay the same way, but I would suggest working on the alternative abilities of the MoV, as they just aren't very special.
 
'Always puppets' for a UA is preferable to the current model, yep, but I don't think the puppet cities need more yields, especially since you'll have double TRs that you can use to speed them along. The MoV, if not your primary mode of CS conquest, is fine, as it'll make it so that you can grab a few nice CSs near your empire without bloodshed. We could trash the MoV UU and UA component and go back to the great galleass, as another UU sea unit would be nice.

So it'd end up being:

UA: "Receive double the normal number of Trade Routes. Cities other than your capital cannot be annexed, but Investments are 15% more effective and you can purchase Units in any owned City." Simple, and we'd need to replace Babylon's ability with something more fitting, but it works.

UB: Banco del Piazza del Rialto (or something along those lines) - we don't have a UB bank anymore, and the Venetians were quite famous for their banking (if we consider Venice to encompass all of Italy, 'Medici Bank' would be fine as well) - bonus could include a big buff to TRs and event tourism, to make Venice a viable Culture or Diplo player. We can also have it unlock earlier to allow Venice to ramp up a bit mid-game.

UU: Great Galleass – bring this back as a powerful ranged ship, let Venice go on a bit of a conquering spree if it needs to in the first 200 turns.
 
'Always puppets' for a UA is preferable to the current model, yep, but I don't think the puppet cities need more yields, especially since you'll have double TRs that you can use to speed them along. The MoV, if not your primary mode of CS conquest, is fine, as it'll make it so that you can grab a few nice CSs near your empire without bloodshed. We could trash the MoV UU and UA component and go back to the great galleass, as another UU sea unit would be nice.

So it'd end up being:

UA: "Receive double the normal number of Trade Routes. Cities other than your capital cannot be annexed, and Investments are 15% more effective." Simple, and we'd need to replace Babylon's ability with something more fitting, but it works.
One of my goals was to remove the double trade-routes as they just get way too powerful with all the CPP changes. The idea behind the yields was to make up for that, making you earn your economy from your cities instead.

UB: Banco del Piazza del Rialto (or something along those lines) - we don't have a UB bank anymore, and the Venetians were quite famous for their banking (if we consider Venice to encompass all of Italy, 'Medici Bank' would be fine as well) - bonus could include a big buff to TRs and event tourism, to make Venice a viable Culture or Diplo player. We can also have it unlock earlier to allow Venice to ramp up a bit mid-game.
Could work. Banks come on-line really late (yes I'm aware you suggested placing them earlier) which may make Venice's early-game a living hell, with the limited unit-production of a puppet-empire.
One could also do something interesting with the Palace-replacement, making it weaker early on but stronger for every puppet in the empire. There are honestly a whole pile of things that could be done with the palace, even if I'm not a fan of a palace replacement as a core idea.

UU: Great Galleass – bring this back as a powerful ranged ship, let Venice go on a bit of a conquering spree if it needs to in the first 200 turns.
I really like the Great Galleas, I think the buffed MoV could work as well, but honestly either of them is fine.
 
Some good ideas here, but I'm afraid I can't make up my mind about any of them yet. Tbh, I'd probably be slightly upset if MOV was to go, but it wouldn't make sense having both MOV and settlers (if I understood correctly, that's what we're leaning towards here).

One thing to consider: Venice is the only major civ that can possess its own glass, jewellery and porcelain. Perhaps we could create monopolies associated with these resources kind of like Indonesia has monopolies for theirs?

Edit: btw, MOV's trade mission actually is unique compared to the regular one: it creates influence with the CS aside from gold and WLTKD like it used to do in vanilla. MOV is a 2-in-1 a Great Merchant and a Great Diplomat.
 
One of my goals was to remove the double trade-routes as they just get way too powerful with all the CPP changes. The idea behind the yields was to make up for that, making you earn your economy from your cities instead.


Could work. Banks come on-line really late (yes I'm aware you suggested placing them earlier) which may make Venice's early-game a living hell, with the limited unit-production of a puppet-empire.
One could also do something interesting with the Palace-replacement, making it weaker early on but stronger for every puppet in the empire. There are honestly a whole pile of things that could be done with the palace, even if I'm not a fan of a palace replacement as a core idea.


I really like the Great Galleas, I think the buffed MoV could work as well, but honestly either of them is fine.

Well, we could scale it, so it becomes 50% more TRs instead of 100%. I like the function, as it really opens up the trade game in terms of playstyle. I'd also rather not add any more functions than I have to, and all the code for that UA already exists (so it'd just be a factor of tweaking a few things.

Aside from Carthage's UB, no one seems to like unique National Wonders. That's fine, I guess, but that means we should probably replace the Venetian one (unless you think the combo of new UA + UU is enough to make up for the prebuilt UB).

G
 
Some good ideas here, but I'm afraid I can't make up my mind about any of them yet. Tbh, I'd probably be slightly upset if MOV was to go, but it wouldn't make sense having both MOV and settlers (if I understood correctly, that's what we're leaning towards here).
There are some benefit to having both of them, being able to snipe specific city-states that are blocking you is a decent enough bonus. Give it a pimped up custom-house and a pimped up trade-mission and it could work.

One thing to consider: Venice is the major only civ that can possess its own glass, jewelerry and porcelain. Perhaps we could create monopolies associated with these resources kind of like Indonesia has monopolies for theirs?
I guess they could provide a monopoly bonus as well, there is no reason not to?

Edit: btw, MOV's trade mission actually is unique compared to the regular one: it creates influence with the CS beside gold and WLTKD like it used to do in vanilla. MOV is a 2-in1 a Great Merchant and a Great Diplomat.
I did not know this, guess only the custom-house(Town) is basic then :D
 
One thing to consider: Venice is the major only civ that can possess its own glass, jewellery and porcelain. Perhaps we could create monopolies associated with these resources kind of like Indonesia has monopolies for theirs?

Edit: btw, MOV's trade mission actually is unique compared to the regular one: it creates influence with the CS aside from gold and WLTKD like it used to do in vanilla. MOV is a 2-in-1 a Great Merchant and a Great Diplomat.

I would like to see some kind of monopoly advantage for Venice along those lines.

I'm also partial to the current UA/UU. But I would try other arrangements.
 
Some good ideas here, but I'm afraid I can't make up my mind about any of them yet. Tbh, I'd probably be slightly upset if MOV was to go, but it wouldn't make sense having both MOV and settlers (if I understood correctly, that's what we're leaning towards here).

One thing to consider: Venice is the only major civ that can possess its own glass, jewellery and porcelain. Perhaps we could create monopolies associated with these resources kind of like Indonesia has monopolies for theirs?

Edit: btw, MOV's trade mission actually is unique compared to the regular one: it creates influence with the CS aside from gold and WLTKD like it used to do in vanilla. MOV is a 2-in-1 a Great Merchant and a Great Diplomat.

We could keep both, so we'd simply be replacing the 'cannot build settlers' part with 'all cities are always puppets' and reducing the TR bonus to 50% or thereabouts. That'd be the most basic (i.e. simple) change to Venice, and it might be enough.

Also, I can't recall if those resources are actually 'spawned' on the map, or if they're simply 'valued.' I'll look - things need to be on the map to have monopolies (and I'd have to add them to a corporation or two).

G
 
Well, we could scale it, so it becomes 50% more TRs instead of 100%. I like the function, as it really opens up the trade game in terms of playstyle. I'd also rather not add any more functions than I have to, and all the code for that UA already exists (so it'd just be a factor of tweaking a few things.
I can understand you wanting to do less work, no shame in that. But I'm really not a fan of trade-route increases, static numbers, sure, but percentual feels weird. It would affect the number of franchises it scales of weird things, policies, tenets, wonders. Also 50% would have to either round up or round down, creating problems.

Aside from Carthage's UB, no one seems to like unique National Wonders. That's fine, I guess, but that means we should probably replace the Venetian one (unless you think the combo of new UA + UU is enough to make up for the prebuilt UB).
They can be made interesting, I think the American one is okay, but it just shows up sooo damn late.
 
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