Venice

[Gazebo]

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.

It's 50% of your total TRs, so you'd essentially get a free one for every 2. Not too complicated, honestly.

They can be made interesting, I think the American one is okay, but it just shows up sooo damn late.

That's modern art for you.

G

 

[Funak]

It's 50% of your total TRs, so you'd essentially get a free one for every 2. Not too complicated, honestly.

So it rounds down? Either way I don't like it scaling with different wonders/policies and so on, it creates a weird priority-thing where your UA gets way more powerful from rushing specific wonders. Yes I'm aware that other civs work that exact same way, but still, I would prefer having less trade-routes available. The bonus-yields on puppets feels like a good compromise, helping them get rolling quicking and letting them provide you with bigger bonuses later on. It also incentivizes conquering, your neighbors for more puppets.

 

[PurpleMentat]

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.

Merchant of Venice trade mission is already better, with CSD. Standard Great Merchant doesn't give Influence. Merchant of Venice gives 200.

 

[Gazebo]

So it rounds down? Either way I don't like it scaling with different wonders/policies and so on, it creates a weird priority-thing where your UA gets way more powerful from rushing specific wonders. Yes I'm aware that other civs work that exact same way, but still, I would prefer having less trade-routes available. The bonus-yields on puppets feels like a good compromise, helping them get rolling quicking and letting them provide you with bigger bonuses later on. It also incentivizes conquering, your neighbors for more puppets.

Yes, but I'm trying not to add any more tables to the DLL, or at least as few as absolutely possible. That's at least two or three tables right there, plus the LUA to make it work. It's just not feasible, not when there are things I know I'll need to do for the AI that could use that space.

50% TR is a good compromise, I think, especially if you can build settlers. That's a fair amount of extra TRs you can use to be more flexible, strategy-wise. If you have yields per puppet, that also scales poorly based on mapsize (Venice would become a wide ICS civ, which is odd).

G

 

[Edaka]

Allowing Venice to buy territory around puppeted cities would be a really nice buff, although it's already looking like quite a lot of buffs if increased investment effectiveness is to stay, so I don't know if that'd be necessary.

I definitely, absolutely would love it if invested buildings would be picked up by puppets immediately as G mentioned, as puppets refusing to build barracks I've invested in for centuries has been the biggest turn-off for me.

 

[Funak]

50% TR is a good compromise, I think, especially if you can build settlers. That's a fair amount of extra TRs you can use to be more flexible, strategy-wise. If you have yields per puppet, that also scales poorly based on mapsize (Venice would become a wide ICS civ, which is odd).

That's odd? I thought that was the go-to strategy since you can't guarantee border-growth . By the way, by yields per puppet I didn't mean exactly what you think, I mostly meant every puppet starts out with +2 hammers/food/culture(the idea is to stop them from getting 'stuck', starting to work merchant/scientist slots or gold-tiles and not being able to grow or produce) maybe and then have e percentual bonus that negates the existing puppet penalty (and maybe adds a minor growthbonus).
The static bonus could be reduced to anything, even just hammers.

 

[Vinipac]

First time poster, long time lurker.

Just wanted to drop an idea inspired by EU4, related to the ease of conquering the civ of Venice (at least in vanilla) and a way to make the city itself not overpowered by turn 0.

In EU4, the city of Venice is an island, and although the enemies can cross it without having boats on your own (it's a strait between Venice and the continent) the strait can be blocked by Venice's navy, and thus the strait doesn't work anymore for their enemies, requiring a naval battle to remove the blockade. The thing is, Venice has a HUGE navy at game start, so even if you are France or Austria, a major power, you can't really take Venice because you either don't have a navy (Austria) or your navy is really week (France).

Back to Civ, I think the city of Venice should have a builiding (be it a new dummy one or the palace, or even a new UB, doesn't matter) that doubles (if not triples) the CS of the city if there isn't an enemy blockade in place (meaning the enemy has naval superiority over the straits).

Related to the subject, I think Venice should have many unique UB's that can be built in the capital over the game, as Venice just build one Granary, Library, Market, etc. in one game.

Things like the Arsenale (multiple tiers?), the Doge's Palace, the guilds/banks, the channels, modern day touristic attractions, etc. would give Venice a lot more flavour in a lot less "cheesy" way (Like the changes to Tradition some time in the past) and make it very powerfull. Perhaps the defensive building an be one of these UB's as well.

Hope you liked my feedback

 

[Atlas627]

I think changing Venice inherently is fine, but I don't want to see it "normalized". I think being able to settle your own cities might be too normalized.

Also note that if you let Venice found cities you need names for them. You could do the same thing the Huns have and steal names, but there are also several cities you could use. Trieste, Verona, Ravenna, etc that are important Italian cities but don't have City States named after them.

 

[Strigvir]

Why not changing the puppets build priority? No amount of bonuses can fix puppets randomly ignoring monuments.
Also, since when Venice can't by tiles in puppets? On some old version I was doing it just fine, so it may be a regression caused by some update (and there were a lot of code-related updates).

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

I think changing Venice inherently is fine, but I don't want to see it "normalized". I think being able to settle your own cities might be too normalized.

Also note that if you let Venice found cities you need names for them. You could do the same thing the Huns have and steal names, but there are also several cities you could use. Trieste, Verona, Ravenna, etc that are important Italian cities but don't have City States named after them.

I tend to agree that Venice's unusual play style is good and I don't want to see it changed just because some players don't like it or don't get it. However, I am open to interesting alternatives that still align with Venice's history as a commercial and maritime oligarchy.

 

[Coilean]

Not sure if it's feasible, but it might be interesting to consider opening up Venice's control of it's puppets in some regards. It certainly seems like dealing with the puppet AI in your cities is one of the more frustrating aspects of playing Venice.

Perhaps do something like allow Venice to manage the production queue and/or select the Governor in its puppets, and maybe even purchase tiles, leaving only the nitty gritty assignment of specs/tiles to the puppet. This seems somewhat thematic as well, in that the puppet decides how to do the actual work, but the overall strategy is guided by Venice itself.

 

[pandasnail]

OK, So I know it isn't a vote or anything, but after lurking awhile I made an account just to try and make an appeal to keep Venice the way it is or at least close.

(I should mention straight ahead I only play on King or Emperor)

Using the Doge Palace to get whatever early wonder I want is fun. Using it to rush an archer army towards a peacemonger capital is fun. Trying to decide on a contiguousish empire or get a CS with a 6 iron farther away is fun. Buying new artillery almost right away straight on the front lines is fun. Setting up a base of operations on the other continent to launch an invasion is fun. Opening up a (well-armed) new front against the chief enemy all of a sudden is fun. Taking Austria's ally is sorta fun. Even taking Alex's ally is kinda fun. I know this isn't like a rational argument, but I'm just trying to say that not every civ needs to function normal to be enjoyable. For normal playing, there are after all forty other choices. I mean, I will never ever play Korea. Defensive Trebuchets? No thank you. But not every civ should appeal to every player imo.

Yes, there are some annoyances. I remember one game the Inca and the Ottomans just wouldn't settle a desert spot with 15 total iron. Maybe they knew death awaited the one who did lol. In my last game Mt Sinai was 5 tiles outside Venice and went unclaimed the entire game. But all that extra gold is worth it and more to me. Just gotta keep enough friends to keep the trade routes going, esp if they can be beaten down two city culturally dominated civs.

I mean, yes, on deity, this probably doesn't work. To get to four five cities early on you need to do some conquering and the deity army I assume is too strong, even the CS. And if Shuffle map gives me islands, I just quit, sailing coming along so much later than trapping. But land maps (80-90 percent) on my difficulty level (and epic or marathon speed, that does matter too, I almost forgot), I don't think anyone is more fun or engrossing.

If I were to change Venice, these are the three things I would want:
1. In general, for all civs, going Tradition-Authority guarantees a Ren level policy. Not super necessary, I just about never have enough culture for this to matter truly. My people are too busy warmongering to write poems lol.
2. Venetian puppet cities can buy tiles, possibly at greater expense.
3. I've only played two Venice games since the tourism change, but I've never seen a Venetian puppet build a guild. I think I read somewhere in this thread, that there's nothing blocking it, but it doesn't seem to happen. If its possible to make a puppet build one, that would be nice.

Well, anyway, thanks for reading my rant. Whatever you do I'll keep playing for sure. I've just about never encountered a more fun computer game than this version of Civ 5. Thanks for making it!

Oh, one more thing, I think it's fun having AI Venice messing up my CS plans when I'm playing someone else. In my current Germany game, Venice ate up Singapore and then right away traded it to my best friend. Annoying, obvi, but in a fun away I think. That's one reason I disagree with the get rid of city trading group, AI Venice is quite good at using it to build themselves a defensible contiguous empire imo.

 

[Funak]

Back to Civ, I think the city of Venice should have a builiding (be it a new dummy one or the palace, or even a new UB, doesn't matter) that doubles (if not triples) the CS of the city if there isn't an enemy blockade in place (meaning the enemy has naval superiority over the straits).

The city of Venice in civ gets a bunch of extra CS from the Doge's Palace, meaning it is usually a lot harder to conquer than normal capitals. Not quite as high as the number you suggested but it makes a difference.

Related to the subject, I think Venice should have many unique UB's that can be built in the capital over the game, as Venice just build one Granary, Library, Market, etc. in one game.

Things like the Arsenale (multiple tiers?), the Doge's Palace, the guilds/banks, the channels, modern day touristic attractions, etc. would give Venice a lot more flavour in a lot less "cheesy" way (Like the changes to Tradition some time in the past) and make it very powerfull. Perhaps the defensive building an be one of these UB's as well.

Interesting, but having access to multiple uniques kinda breaks the core mechanics behind civ.

I think changing Venice inherently is fine, but I don't want to see it "normalized". I think being able to settle your own cities might be too normalized.

Not being able to annex cities should still make Venice feel unique. I agree that this is a pretty big change, but is the current Venice really worth saving? I mean in Vanilla multiplayer Venice means a free re-roll because the civ is unplayable, CPP have only changed the game in a way that makes that worse.

Also note that if you let Venice found cities you need names for them. You could do the same thing the Huns have and steal names, but there are also several cities you could use. Trieste, Verona, Ravenna, etc that are important Italian cities but don't have City States named after them.

Yeah this is a problem, maybe some existing city-states can be replaced and their city names given to Venice? G can probably figure this out, he is an expert after all.

Why not changing the puppets build priority? No amount of bonuses can fix puppets randomly ignoring monuments.

They are building Monuments eventually, they just have a really low priority on them for some reason. City-states however never seems to build monuments or shrines.

Also, since when Venice can't by tiles in puppets? On some old version I was doing it just fine, so it may be a regression caused by some update (and there were a lot of code-related updates).

I don't remember ever being able to do that, but you might be correct I suppose.

I tend to agree that Venice's unusual play style is good and I don't want to see it changed just because some players don't like it or don't get it. However, I am open to interesting alternatives that still align with Venice's history as a commercial and maritime oligarchy.

This is a concern, naturally, some of the unique play-style will be conserved but not all of it.
If you have better suggestions on how to make Venice viable or how to bring out the commercial maritime oligarchyness, please feel free to share them

Not sure if it's feasible, but it might be interesting to consider opening up Venice's control of it's puppets in some regards. It certainly seems like dealing with the puppet AI in your cities is one of the more frustrating aspects of playing Venice.

If you control them, they're not really puppets anymore .
Sure one cop-out way of doing this is just giving you the option to Annex city-states with the MoV instead, but that feels like it breaks the spirit of Venice just as much as allowing them to settle cities.

Perhaps do something like allow Venice to manage the production queue and/or select the Governor in its puppets, and maybe even purchase tiles, leaving only the nitty gritty assignment of specs/tiles to the puppet. This seems somewhat thematic as well, in that the puppet decides how to do the actual work, but the overall strategy is guided by Venice itself.

I don't think control and puppets actually mix that well. Already being able to decide what the puppet builds by investing in buildings feels kinda weird, but I don't know really.

 

[Gazebo]

The more I think about it, the more I'm on the fence about overhauling Venice. For now, we're going to try smaller, more incremental changes to the puppet AI, starting with the change I'm making so that buildings you invest in are added to the city's production queue.

G

 

[Funak]

The more I think about it, the more I'm on the fence about overhauling Venice. For now, we're going to try smaller, more incremental changes to the puppet AI, starting with the change I'm making so that buildings you invest in are added to the city's production queue.

And once again evil triumphs


How about giving Venitian city-state puppets some kind of base-building providing providing yields then? Kinda like they get to keep the palace, but without the tourism-thing?

 

[Gazebo]

Right now, you'll be able to add things to the city queue by investing in them - once on the queue, you can't remove things, but you can rearrange them. Feels fair, and adds a smaller amount of micro for players that want it (and overcomes some of the flaws in the puppet AI).

G

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

And once again evil triumphs

 

[pandasnail]

The more I think about it, the more I'm on the fence about overhauling Venice. For now, we're going to try smaller, more incremental changes to the puppet AI, starting with the change I'm making so that buildings you invest in are added to the city's production queue.

G

Yay!!!!!!

 

[Atlas627]

I'm glad we are trying small first.

Also I'd like to contest that rolling Venice in multiplayer means a restart. I haven't played multiplayer CBP, but when I played multiplayer vanilla rolling Venice was usually a good thing. Here's why: I was much better than my friends, and none of them were very competitive with civ. But they were all very sick of me winning, of me bullying all 7 of them at once, of me getting every wonder and conquering things and being the tech leader.

When I got Venice, it limited me in a way that let us play a different game. They finally believed me when I said I was just trading with them and that I wanted to be friends. We used diplomacy to say "Venice gets these city states and no more, and everyone else can leave Venice alone". We formed coalitions around it (as opposed to the normal "everyone vs me" coalitions). They got to expand at their own pace and I wasn't going to take city spots out from under them.

When one of them got Venice, that person finally got to play a relaxing game without constantly struggling with me to get a single city spot. I got more income from Venice trading with me than from conquering it, so I usually allied with that player, and it was great to let them feel like they had some of my power. One time I eliminated one of the Venetian player's close friends, and the Venetian player beelined to the Great Galeass and built up a huge navy without me noticing. That was the only game I was ever at risk of being eliminated, and it was quite a thrill. One time I decided to take Venice for myself since the Venetian player wasn't trading with me and was taking my CSs, and everyone backed him up because they cared about their trading partner!

Honestly I think civ as a whole is improved in multiplayer, so this may not be an argument for why Venice is playable in multiplayer. But I think it is safe to say that Venice again CHANGES how the game is played, and in multiplayer that's compounded by multiple human minds adapting to that change.

 

[Funak]

I'm glad we are trying small first.

Also I'd like to contest that rolling Venice in multiplayer means a restart. I haven't played multiplayer CBP, but when I played multiplayer vanilla rolling Venice was usually a good thing. Here's why: I was much better than my friends, and none of them were very competitive with civ. But they were all very sick of me winning, of me bullying all 7 of them at once, of me getting every wonder and conquering things and being the tech leader.

When I got Venice, it limited me in a way that let us play a different game. They finally believed me when I said I was just trading with them and that I wanted to be friends. We used diplomacy to say "Venice gets these city states and no more, and everyone else can leave Venice alone". We formed coalitions around it (as opposed to the normal "everyone vs me" coalitions). They got to expand at their own pace and I wasn't going to take city spots out from under them.

When one of them got Venice, that person finally got to play a relaxing game without constantly struggling with me to get a single city spot. I got more income from Venice trading with me than from conquering it, so I usually allied with that player, and it was great to let them feel like they had some of my power. One time I eliminated one of the Venetian player's close friends, and the Venetian player beelined to the Great Galeass and built up a huge navy without me noticing. That was the only game I was ever at risk of being eliminated, and it was quite a thrill. One time I decided to take Venice for myself since the Venetian player wasn't trading with me and was taking my CSs, and everyone backed him up because they cared about their trading partner!

Honestly I think civ as a whole is improved in multiplayer, so this may not be an argument for why Venice is playable in multiplayer. But I think it is safe to say that Venice again CHANGES how the game is played, and in multiplayer that's compounded by multiple human minds adapting to that change.

So basically, you're saying that Venice in multiplayer is fine because you and your friends decided that no one is allowed to attack Venice?