LogFAQs > #947521159

I ended up resigning from my game as the Iroquois. I made more progress through Portugal and had their capital city down to 0 health, but I blundered away my melee units trying to move them in to take the city and they rallied with some Infantry that were threatening my remaining artillery. I still could've taken the city, but it was delayed by several turns, and in the meanwhile France was growing into an unstoppable empire that was beating me in every measure. the only way I could've beaten them was through a really long military campaign exploiting the AI's inability to play tactically, but that would have been such a slow and tedious process that I decided just to take the L and start a new game.

Game 3
Civ: Venice
Map Type: Archipelago
Difficulty: 6

Venice is another civ that's considered low-tier, but they're one of my personal favorites to play as and I advocate for them being a little under-rated.

Ability: Serenissima Cannot gain settlers nor annex cities, double the normal amount of trade routes available, gain a free Merchant of Venice after researching optics, can purchase in puppeted cities

Unique Unit: Merchant of Venice replaces Great Merchant, same abilities, but can also purchase a city state, causing Venice to instantly puppet it and take control of its military

Unique Unit: Great Galleass like the name implies, a Galleass with higher stats.

You can probably already see why Venice isn't considered that great. Losing out on the ability to create new cities is a pretty massive downside, and they're consequently locked into a pretty narrow playstyle that can definitely be exploited in multiplayer games. Unlike Carthage or the Iroquois, where I'd suggest ignoring their special bonuses and playing as if they are a blank civ, Venice inherently changes what you can do too much for that approach.

The way I go about it is to build a worker and then spam buildings in the early game, saving time by building neither a settler nor troops. Then once I get Optics I recover the lost value of those two things to a certain extent by purchasing my first city state. I pick the tradition culture tree for the bonuses to capital growth and happiness, and I even have my trade routes transfer food and production to my capital to help turn it into a giant metropolis. I also rush the Hanging Gardens, but unfortunately on this playthrough an AI civ beats me to it by 2 turns.

Aside from the extra trade routes, Venice can also get national wonders really easily, and I quickly build the National College, Ironworks, Oxford University, East India Company, and others. Even without the Hanging Gardens, I succeed in making Venice the world's largest city by a wide margin, and its production and specialist capacity keep me competitive with every other civ in all measures. I found the Sikh religion and spread it to the Polish despite some opposition from Ethiopia and their religion of Eastern Orthodoxy.

At one point, Poland declares war on me to try and take out my puppet city-state of Brussels, but the army that came with that city repels them with no losses except a few boats and all my trade routes. After the war concludes, I rebuild with no trouble, and Poland never bothers me again.

The Archipelago map basically consists of a lot of small islands and tons of water. Venice starts on its own isolated island and never has to deal with barbarians or threats from other civs, and Poland shares a larger island with Brussels and then hops over to a separate continent in the east. The game is much more peaceful than the last game, with only a few stalemated wars between America and Austria, which serves Venice's purposes nicely as I'm free to build 10 trade routes and make over 200 extra gold per turn, which I will use when I resume the game later today to control the world congress.

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I'm playing every game from GotD 2020! Games Completed: 10/129
Currently Playing: Sid Meier's Civilization V