Overview
Venice introduces a new level of gaming that makes it seems a completelly different game.Also, Venice can be quite powerfull if some simple paths are choosen, making even harder difficulties easy to beat.And, more than the that: It is ubber fun to play as the serenissima republica!
How is playing with Venice different?
First thing you should know!
Playing with Venice feels as if you are playing a completely different game.
Think of it as playing with a city state – but a powerful one, capable of rivaling with powerful empires (and utterly dominating them easily!).
And if you know a little of history, you will notice that guiding Venice through similar paths that it followed in real life will wield great results. The game developers were awesome at making it in such a way (Or lucky enough that the end result was such!).
With this nation, you will experience a true empire building: Building lots of wonders and buildings on your capital, allying with as much city states you can – and getting really really rich really fast!
General Tips
Those following tips here will work on most Venice games. And by most I really mean it. These simple tips WILL bring you victory if followed, they may only be otherwise if you are playing with exotic mods or game conditions.
It must be said that I did not consulted any online guide or anything like that. This guide you are reading is 100% original, made from my own experience at the game.
P.S.: I can’t vouch for multiplayer games, since I think Civilization works best as a single player game, so if you want to try these strategies in MP, adapt accordingly.
The begginings and your initial settling
1) Be VERY selective about the initial site of the initial city. Because it will be your ONLY city! While playing as other nations, one does not look a lot about where to build the first city. Usually you build it where your settler appears, or only move to a nearby location. As Venice, it pays to spend as many turns as you need in order to find an awesome location. This awesome location MUST BE at the coast for access to the sea and adjacent to a river. If you begin at a location which meets these two requirements, it is usually fine to go for it.
Send your initial warrior to scout.
The first things you should build: A monument to acquire tiles around your city, a shrine to go for a religious rite and in the future founding a religion, a worker to improve the area around your city and acquire some resources. Preferably in that order: monument; shrine; worker.
After that, you should focus on wonders, preferably the Stonehenge, since you can build it really early and it will help you found your religion (which is important!). It is likely that you will be attacked by barbarians sometime, and if that happens your initial warrior should be far away scouting or, even worse, dead. So you will need to build a military unit to do two things: protect your civ from ravaging barbarians and acquire favor from city states by killing barbarians near them or fulfilling quests. Be very cautious about building more than this unit, because there’s plenty of things to do with your only city. Most time it is a waste to build a second military unit, only do so if you really need. Likewise, do not be very aggressive or take risks with these units you have and your scout.
Build the greatest city ever
Build lots of wonders and buildings. Preferably wonders, since you can always later simply construct or buy buildings . Wonders are one of a kind, and provide huge bonuses. About wonders: Go for those that provide bonuses to the city. Do not go for military only wonders (like the great wall or t
Terracota army), unless you really want to and does not have anything better to do (which I doubt will be the case by the time!).
Building this legendary city also involves some decisions about which pantheons, policies and religions to follow.
Policies to choose
6) Policies to choose: Tradition first. This is a must. Tradition helps a “small empire”, as the description says. You are only one city, so that is a clue. The policies will help you greatly, and by having all of them will help you even more by providing faster growth. It will also help you build wonders, which you want to have lots of them in your capital. Usually, after unlocking tradition, it is good to go for aristocracy, to help you build wonders. Second, legalism, which is not good, but will unlock landed elite and monarchy, which will be so great to this playstyle it will fell like you are cheating. Your third choice should be landed elite, an uber policy which will help enormously. Fourth, monarchy, which will help your small empire keep happy. Lastly: the oligarchy is a poor policy, with a very small benefit to Venice because you will have many units, and by garrison them will mean those are upkeep free. Not a great deal, since you will also swim on money by them. Think of it as price you have to pay to have the tradition tree completed, and pick it as the last of them. When trying to complete tradition, it may be worth to go for some other policies of other trees even before completing it. More likely the piety and aesthetics. But always complete tradition before completing others.
Other policies: Piety, worth completing. You will, if every goes according to plan, have a holy city, after all!
Aesthetics: unlocking aesthetics is a MUST! It will give you bonuses in creating great people, which you will be producing by the tons on your capital. Remember also that you can only acquire other cities by either conquest (which you won’t go for until late game) or by great merchants (here named merchant of Venice), which is a great person which in turn is produced quicker with this policy. Not to mention other great persons, which always help you a lot one way or another.
Another policy tree which is as important as tradition is the commerce. With Venice, you have the power to grow rich in a quick time. With the policies in the commerce tree, you will be swimming with money. In mid game, it is a common sight to see all other civs having less than 10 gold per turn income while you will be having an obscene income by the time, like 200.
Avoid the liberty tree. Avoid the honor tree. Liberty helps expanding – which you won’t! Honor helps combat – which you will avoid, unless technological and military supremacy has been settled, which will give you an easy victory despite having or not having any of the honor policies. Ideology is situational, but if you play well you will, by the time an ideology path can be chosen, be at the vanguard of the world. So you can freely choose the one which will benefit you best. Most likely freedom, least likely autocracy.
Exploration
One of the first things you should do when you found a city is to build a scout, and use it to explore.
Two scouts are great, BUT it is generally better to invest your time in improving your capital, given the importance of it to Venice.
The other unit is a trireme, which you should use to explore everything you can. Since it cannot enter ocean, you will soon run out of places to explore, in which case you must send it inside your territory and hold it.
Make open border treaties and use your units to fully explore your starting continent, including opponents’ territory.
As soon as you discover optics, upgrade your trireme to a caravel, and use it to explore the map.
Also, use your many units that are just sitting idle inside your territory to explore the sea (By then you should already have all of your starting continent, including opponents territory, scouted). Scouting the sea with embarked units is not as efficient as with the caravel, but since they have nothing better to do, it is wise to use them is such a way. Plus, when they find land, they can explore it, unlike the caravel. Send your units where you know or believe there may be land. Even after you scouted all land in the map, you can still use your units to explore the hidden spots on the sea. Think of them as the “mop up” which will reveal small pieces of dark areas left behind by your caravel.
Don’t forget to keep pledging to protect city states which you find. You will also have a chance to discover isolated city states on islands, and gain the first civ bonus.
It is important to have the map fully revealed because when you research archaeology, you will instantly see all antiquity sites, so you can acquire them. more about that on “archaeology”.
Neglect your military
Yes, I’m saying that! Apart from your initial scout which I really advise you build in the beginning of your game. Only build military units if you REALLY NEED TO. This generally happens in the early game, to help protect your surroundings from pillaging barbarians, or to gain favor from city states by fulfilling quests or killing barbarians near their cities. But only build few of these units (preferably only one, two maximum if you really think it is worth). Another unit that is good to go for is the trireme (Only one!), which will later be upgrade to a caravel for maximum exploration. Apart from these early decisions, you will spend centuries and centuries without ever building ANY unit. You will only do so when you decide to attack another civ (in late eras) or if something goes wrong and you must defend yourself. In most cases, you only go for units when the Venice supremacy is already at place, and you only want to destroy weaker civs to finish the game quicker. Or when you literally have nothing else to build (which will happen in late game).
By neglecting the military you will also stay away from policies that improve military capability (namely: the honor and autocracy police tree. Don’t chooses them). Why? Because these bonus are too situational, and because you won’t declare war on anyone before you have completely outplayed them by having a bigger military and more advanced technology – not to mention more money to fuel your war effort, possibly a better diplomatic situation and more allied city states to annoy your enemy.
Lastly: You WILL have a big military, even if you won’t produce them, because you will have city state allies that will gift them to you AND they won’t be lost in wars, so they will be just pilling up over time. By mid game, you will even have a bigger army that you want, so that’s another reason not to waste time building units while you could be improving your city.
Off course, depending on who attacked you, it may seem wise to switch to a military production. But these attacks always seem to happen in late eras, after you choose an ideology that bother the AI.
Religion
Found a pantheon and a religion. Remember you are trying to build a great city, and having it as a holy city for a religion will help a lot.
Choosing your pantheon is situational, for example, some rites are useless if you do not have a specific resource nearby, and great helpful if you do. But even if such situation is your’s, it may be best to go for “fertility rites”, which provides a bonus to growth if the civ is in peace. You will be in peace for almost the entirety of the game, and you also want to build a great city, which in turn requires a great population, which means more tiles being worked, bigger production, more specialists… So, fertility rites is almost a no-brainer to go for. Pick it, unless you cannot, which will make you choose a fitting rite which will help your city.
About the religion bonuses, there’s not a really dominant strategy as with the fertility rites. Choose freely but wisely what to pick. Only don’t ever choose the bonus that allows you to spend faith points to buy early age units. As will be explained later, you wont be producing or in need of many units. Plus, they cost a hefty price of faith, which you will better invest in better things like great prophets to enhance your religion and build holy sites and missionaries to gain favor with city states that requests your religion. One thing that is a wise choice is the bonus that gives you money for cities following your religion. Remember you are trying to be rich.
Diplomacy or “How to deal with your opponents”
Never seek war, UNLESS it is late game and you have already established a great level of supremacy, which means you are much more technologically advanced, richer, and militarily powerful than your opponent. Usually, you should only declare war to finish the game, for example, in the situation where you have already -or will soon- acquired influential culture over all opponents save one, and this one is resisting your tourism, you attack him/her to destroy this nation, and then winning a game by cultural victory.
When trading with the AI, always try to acquire its luxuries, this will serve purposes greater than the immediate happiness effect:
– It will give you diplomatic bonus to the nation
– The nation is unlikely to attack you while trading. Remember that as Venice you will only declare war when you have already achieved a “check-mate-like situation”. Even if a nation attacks you and you manage to survive, win the war or even destroying it entirely, it will have a cost. Your time and resources would be better employed on building your trade empire, wonders & buildings on your capital and allying with city states.
– Luxuries will help your cities enter the “We love.. day”, which means better bonuses.
– the luxury will be “reserved” for you. What I mean by this is that, if they are trading this luxury to you, they cannot trade the same item to another nation, right? So as long as you keep renegotiating the deal, you will have a permanent supply of this luxury. If you don’t do this, it may happen that in late game you will lack access to some luxuries, and will have no way of acquiring it. And do remember that the unhappiness grows as your empire does, and it may be problematic in the future unless you plan ahead. It will also help you gain culture to acquire new policies (by having the fine arts policy from the aesthetics tree, which you really must have) and to create golden ages.
– If you play well, you should swim on money, and buy the luxuries for a ridiculously low price from the AI (something like 5-10% of your gold per turn. Well worth it.)
Open borders with everyone on the beginning of the game, even if you have to pay something for it, and make effort to scout their entire territory (more about why to do that on “exploring”). After you have done so, you may decide if it is worth paying to continue with this treaty or not. Usually, with far away civs it is better to let the deal go away, even if they charge a low price, because you don’t need it anymore. With close civs, it is generally good so you will have an easier time moving your units (missionaries, units to explore the map and great merchants) and better diplomatic standing which will prevent war.
I have already said so, but this is so important I will repeat myself: DON’T GO TO WAR. Even if you have the upper hand. The path of Venice is not of gradual conquest, it is of playing your cards until you have absolutely outplayed your opponents. Only then you can pretty much do anything you want, including declaring wars, which by then should be very fast and decisive, usually just to win the game.
Generally avoid being a nuisance to other nations, but don’t think twice about using your spies to steal technology and replacing city states allies’.
The world congress is a special part, which in turn holds a special part in this guide.
World Congress
Rush to acquire the technology and found the world congress.
Your first proposition should be the world fair. By then you should have a city good enough to easily win the first or second prize. Plus, it is likely that every other civ like it, so you don’t need to schmooze anything to make it pass.
Second, you should make your religion the world religion. In order to that, you WILL need to employ your spies as diplomats and bargain with other civs to vote on that. Just pay whatever they are asking, or make your offer. Most of the time the AI asks for resources which you have only one, what you must do is refuse that deal and substitute it for a GPT one, trying something like 10 gold per turn, and go raising it by one gold until they accept it. If you don’t feel like clicking many times, try raising it by two or three gold. It seems like you are paying a lot for it, but trust me: making your religion the world’s official is damm worthy every penny!
If you still fell like you will not be able to pass the world’s religion, don’t propose it. You will upset the AI for nothing. But most of the time, when the second world congress arrives, you have the means to make it pass.
Apart from that, it is situational: Ban proposals the AI passed and don’t help you, propose things that will help you, and so on.
TRADE ROUTES!!!
TRADE!! Venice has double the trade routes. Make use of them. The trade bonus may seem like a small advantage at the beginning, but keep in mind they WILL improve greatly over time. Plus, since you are not going into military matters soon, they are not vulnerable to raiding. By mid game there shouldn’t be any barbarians on your main continent, which means they will stay alive forever (or something close to it). It is quite possible that the first caravan you ever built will follow you to the end of the game.
And consider sending one or two trade routes to your capital to give it growth and production points (in order of importance). Apart from that, all your trade routes should go to foreign cities. Choose the ones which will provide you more gold, unless some city state requests one as a quest or you want to receive the tourism bonus that having a trade route brings.
Trading with other civs also will help you diplomatically, because civs are less likely to attack someone they trade with.
Archaelogy
As soon you research archaeology (which you should as soon as possible), begin producing only archaeologists at Venice. By then, you should have plenty of money per turn to buy buildings in your capital instead of constructing them. Only stop building archaeologists if you really think it is worth, and only to build a wonder or world congress project.
As soon as this technology is researched, the archaeological sites will appear. If you followed my guide well, you should have the entire planet map revealed (or at least what is worth of it!), so you can choose your targets. Instead of choosing those inside your borders first, go for those far away, preferably inside other nations.
Use your big military force to hold ground on the sites you wish to hold for future use. The opponents’ archaeologists cannot enter a tile if it is already occupied, so use that to your advantage. This works even in their territory!
When stealing artifacts from other nations’ territory, do not go one at a time. Move your archaeologist to the site, and hold ground. Continue doing that until all sites in it’s territory are occupied by your archaeologists, and then order them to dig all at the same turn. That way, they will all plunder all artifacts at once, and you can even promise the leader that you will refrain from stealing their artifacts in the future. So what you are doing is maximizing the stealing AND minimizing the diplomatic penalty! Talk about high level theft… =D