Venice

[Athenaeum]

The general consensus with Venice is to go Tradition (which is the general consensus for just about every nation it seems.)

I agree with consensus, as I've tried both ways and Tradition seems to work pretty well.

The one thing I have to say though, is that the first time I played them (in which I got Liberty), I had about 10 to 12 cities near mid-late game, and my cities were pretty much crapping out merchants.

I was literally getting merchants about every other turn near the end. I was actually doing multiplayer and me and my friend were in a diplomacy battle as he desperately tried to steal delegates from me to keep me from winning.

He was simply unable to keep up, because of all the trade missions I was doing. On tradition files where I have had 4 or 5 cities with them, my cities fluorish, but I did not receive 1/4 of the great merchants I received when I had 10-12 cities.

My rationale for why this happened, is that if you have more cities, you have more markets, banks and stock exchanges to place specialists in, and thus more great merchants appear, provided that you have the food to sustain them.

Basically more cities = more great people, of course if you have enough food to sustain specialists as I said before. Which is not usually that much of a problem with granaries, hospitals, and that Freedom tenet that decreases specialist food consumption by one half.

 

[poom3619]

IMO, One got to make city of Venice a solid place first before popping Merchant and buy the world. I don't think focus on trading and infrastructure before an era from being able to build it is good idea.

 

[Athenaeum]

Not really sure what you just said, sorry.

 

[Acken]

The more merchants you get the less scientists you get.

 

[RuleroftheHex]

While GSes are more valuable most of the time, it's hard to ignore GMoVs. Once Athenaeum started spawning those Merchants, he would have been hard, if not impossible, to stop via warblocking. Also, just keeping CS allies would be hard when faced with a storm of GMoVs. So, back to the GS idea, when you're pumping out GMoVs every other turn, all you really need is Scholasticism and Mercantilism and you've made up for the wide tech penalty. GSes are mostly irrelevant for a wide DiploV so long as you don't fall behind in tech. Really, though, with so many CSes and Scholasticism, that's hard to fight.

 

[TheMarshmallowBear]

The problem with Venice is that no matter how hard you try you can't contorll other cities, and because they are ALWAYS on Gold Focus (Puppets that is) they will defeniately spawn more Merchant points before anything else.

I had a 1 city population which worked a 2 Production 4 Gold Tile FIRST>.. which guess what? Meant it wasn't growing at all xD

 

[Acken]

While GSes are more valuable most of the time, it's hard to ignore GMoVs. Once Athenaeum started spawning those Merchants, he would have been hard, if not impossible, to stop via warblocking. Also, just keeping CS allies would be hard when faced with a storm of GMoVs. So, back to the GS idea, when you're pumping out GMoVs every other turn, all you really need is Scholasticism and Mercantilism and you've made up for the wide tech penalty. GSes are mostly irrelevant for a wide DiploV so long as you don't fall behind in tech. Really, though, with so many CSes and Scholasticism, that's hard to fight.

Well diploV No need for a special civ to win that. Now to win it fast... Venice loses there.

 

[RuleroftheHex]

Well diploV No need for a special civ to win that. Now to win it fast... Venice loses there.

Fair point. DV is basically the easiest victory. But nonetheless, Venice doesn't have to make it fast, they just have to make it easy. But that's really aside the point.

 

[Athenaeum]

Why does Venice lose at winning DiploV fast?

In that game I had with my friend, he was ahead of me in science by a fair margin and still lost. There wasn't much he could do about it.

With DiploV you only really need to be ahead in science as far as you need to be able to defend yourself. Let other people jump ahead in science and activate the WC for you, and the extra delegates.

 

[Acken]

Because winning a fast DiploV is mostly a science game. Getting to info era very quickly. The gold part is usually easy to achieve.

But that is for SP. On multiplayer it's a very different scenario since player will stop you and gold has more impact then. But usually on MP Venice just dies quickly because external trade routes are too risky in multiplayer. I'd bet your friend didn't spend the whole game pillaging your routes...

 

[reddishrecue]

One good strategy with Venice is that in order to expand your trading to other areas of the map, purchasing faraway city states will get more trade routes when your trade rroutes with Venice and other city states don't reach other cities and city states.

 

[RuleroftheHex]

Far away CSes are worse than close CSes. They're harder to defend, more isolated so internal TRs are harder, and harder to control. Usually, if a civ DoWs you, you can back it up with your navy/army, but an iso CS is hard to protect due to 1UPT purchasing.

 

[beetle]

In that game I had with my friend, he was ahead of me in science by a fair margin and still lost. There wasn't much he could do about it.

For SP and not-quite-cutthroat MP I think Venice for DiploV is an excellent choice. It might not be the fastest DV civ but I think it has to be about the easiest. Double trade routes plus tier 3 Freedom tenet Treaty Organization (4 influence per turn from CS trade routes) == WIN.

 

[reddishrecue]

Far away CSes are worse than close CSes. They're harder to defend, more isolated so internal TRs are harder, and harder to control. Usually, if a civ DoWs you, you can back it up with your navy/army, but an iso CS is hard to protect due to 1UPT purchasing.

That's true and that's why you have to buy closer CSes.

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

Close CS are good for making domestic trade routes and distant CS are good for diversifying foreign trade routes.

Many times I've had Venice start too far from other civs for trading and had to buy a CS nearer to the other civs.

 

[sixty4half]

If your opponent starts pillaging your trade routes just go with what I call the One World Army strategy. This is also good for when your opponents start trying to conquer your Allies to reduce your WC votes.

With Freedom's Teir 2 tenant Arsenal of Democracy you get 20 rep per unit gifted to a CS as well as 15% production when building Units. With Commerce you can purchase items at 25% discount. You can then buy Landsnecks at 130 gold. If you build Big Ben you get a further discount dropping the price to 90g. So:

90g = 20 Rep
or
1000g = 120 Rep (on a really good day, if you haven't gifted to them before and they are asking for a handout)

So for the same price of Max Rep (1000g) which can range from 70rep to 120rep, you can instead get 220 rep spread across multiple CSs or stacked through multiple gifts.

This is also supplemented by building a massive amount of Artillery in Venice. Under the right conditions you can build a new Artillery every 2 turns. So, every 3 turns you mass purchase Landsnekts and gain 20 rep with every City State on the map.

It's slower to get going but if you start earlier you'll have better results than the 1000G gifts.

This strat does work better when you can BUILD units in multiple cities, but it's a good alternate strat for Venice if they start pillaging your 16 trade routes.

As an added bonus, you can use the Foreign Legions for a quick 120 Rep (20 spread across 6 CSs) which also gives you an immediate discount on 6 of your other units. Meaning more money for Unit purchase/Gold Gifts.

 

[TheMathmagician]

If you build Big Ben, Landsknechts cost only 90g

 

[sixty4half]

If you build Big Ben, Landsknechts cost only 90g

Even better. Thanks for the reminder. I thought I had seen that price before but hesitated to quote it because I wasn't sure if it was game pace or something else that caused the price reduction. I'll edit my above post. Thanks.

 

[Athenaeum]

With Venice I typically have an insane navy (and I mean insane) to guard all my cargo ships, although it usually takes a little time to develop it.

Venice can make craptons of gold just from doing trade missions late game. They don't necessarily need too many trade routes.

 

[sixty4half]

With Venice I typically have an insane navy (and I mean insane) to guard all my cargo ships, although it usually takes a little time to develop it.

Venice can make craptons of gold just from doing trade missions late game. They don't necessarily need too many trade routes.

Quick question regarding this:

Is there a way to group units together like you could in Civ 4? You can't stack, but you can if it's a Civilian with a Military Unit. Like when I'm escorting Settlers. Can I group that settler, or Cargo Ship in this case, with a military unit so they move the same rate? I hate micromanaging my escorts.