Venetian (Civ5)

The Venetian people represent a civilization in Civilization V: Brave New World.
* Symbol: Lion of Venice
* Musical Theme: Rotta Ò Sonata (composed by Michael Curran)
* Music Set: European
* Architecture: Mediterranean
* Spy Names: Gasparo, Giosafat, Ambrogio, Niccolo, Marino, Cesare, Francesco, Giovanni, Bertolome, Filomena
* Preferred Religion: Catholicism
* Preferred Ideology: Freedom
== Strategy ==
Venice's unique ability makes it an exceptional civilization when compared to all the others - so exceptional, in fact, that it almost deserves a dedicated strategy article on its own!
The Venetians cannot train Settlers and are thus unable to found any new cities once they build their . (Even Settlers gifted by other players or spawned with cheats will be useless, lacking the Found City ability once the initial one is expended to found the .) What's more, they cannot even annex cities they conquer, only keeping them as puppets! This essentially makes Venice a playable city-state and leaves the Venetians with only two options for expansion.
The first option is, of course, military conquest. The second and much more interesting option is to purchase city-states without the need to conquer them militarily. This is done through the Venetian unique Great Person, the Merchant of Venice, which replaces the conventional Great Merchant. Just as with Austria's Diplomatic Marriage, purchasing a city-state is far superior to conquering it militarily, because it delivers the city to them with all its , buildings, and units intact, and with no Resistance period whatsoever! The Venetians can thus start using the city right away, and gain an immediate boost for everything else. This is a much needed advantage, given all the other disadvantages the Venetians must overcome. Specifically, when playing as Venice...
* ...you can't control where you place new cities. You can only expand your empire by conquering other players' cities or purchasing/conquering city-states.
* ...you have virtually no control over anything in cities other than your . The only thing you can control is which normal buildings and units you want to purchase.
* ...you can build Wonders (as well as the Artists', Musicians', and Writers' Guilds) only in your .
* ...you can obtain Archaeologists only in your (since they can't be purchased).
* ...all cities except the have -25% and output for being Puppets.
As they can neither found new cities nor annex captured cities, the Venetians will have difficulty securing strategic and luxury resources, particularly in the early game. As such, your primary focus as the Venetian player should be on securing an abundance of and so that you can expand Venice's borders as early and quickly as possible. The Tradition Social Policy tree is useful here, as it is for every small empire. Additionally, you may want to partially develop the Liberty tree for both the free Merchant of Venice (which, unfortunately, will still increase the GPP cost of subsequent Merchants of Venice) and the additional point of culture per city, because you will soon run into another annoying limitation: you can't purchase territory from Puppet cities! This means that every city but the will be left to expand on its own, using its normal score (minus the penalty for being a Puppet). It can be quite annoying to watch the game engine decide turn after turn on the wrong tile, so you want all the culture you can get in cities in order to expand their borders more quickly. Try to build Angkor Wat to help with this same issue. Religion can also help immensely here by allowing you to secure additional -producing buildings, such as the Pagoda.
Next, make very careful decisions when selecting the city-states you want to purchase with your Merchants of Venice - while some will make valuable assets, others will become a burden on your resources. It goes without saying that you should do everything you can to boost production of Great Merchants, so that you can use this special unit as often as possible, and either expand your empire or amass great quantities of (through trade missions) to purchase stuff.
Additionally, you should complete the Commerce policy tree so that you can purchase Merchants of Venice with , besides greatly increasing your overall output.
In the middle and late game it will be time to consolidate your empire. Because of the preset locations of city-states, your cities will be necessarily spaced apart, often quite far from each other and from the . This invites other players to "invade" your space by settling cities in between. You can solve this problem by starting strategical territorial wars and conquering those cities, which you can then use to consolidate your territory.
The Venetians' restrictions on expansion can make them a target for early elimination (especially if they are neighbors with the more militaristic civilizations, such as the Aztecs or the Greeks). Because of this, it's advisable to build any defensive structure available and create some military units as your defense against the possible threat of war. You can also use the incredible power of the Great Galleass during the Medieval Era and early Renaissance Era to defend your waters, or enlarge your empire through military conquest against your enemies.
On the other hand, such restrictions on expansion also come with the possibility to create twice as many trade routes as normal (which also applies to the free trade routes received from the Colossus and Petra), as well as the ability to purchase units or buildings in Puppet cities. Use your ridiculous trade route limit to both boost your output and establish internal trade routes for and boosts to your cities. Don't just let your pile up - buy critical buildings in Puppeted cities, buy units whenever you need them, or buy with city-states to earn bonuses and edge closer to a diplomatic victory.
In addition, the cost of your social policies and the cost of new technologies will stay low (since officially you only have one city for the entire playthrough), and you'll never have to deal with the extra related to occupied cities. Even better, all your national wonders will be readily available, and relatively cheap to construct!
However, since all Puppet cities produce 25% less by default, your overall science output will be rather low. To offset this, you should aim at increasing the of your cities as much as possible, and use every other possible way to increase technological progress, such as spying and research agreements.
== Civilopedia entry ==
== Cities ==
Since the Venetians are not able to train Settlers, they cannot found any cities other than their . If the name "Venice" is unavailable - for example, because there are multiple Venetian players on the map, or a non-Venetian player has manually renamed his or her city to Venice - the Venetian will take its name from the bottom of another in-game civilization's city list (much like the Huns).
Founding Order	City Name	Notes
1 	Venice 	Formerly a city-state
== Trivia ==
* Venice's unique ability, which is Italian for "Most Serene," comes from a title given to the Republic of Venice along with other historical European states.
* Venice are, along with the Shoshone and the Zulus, one of three civilizations not called "Empire" on the loading screen - they are called the "Republic of Venice" instead.
== Gallery ==
File:venice screen.jpg
File:Venetia in game.jpg
File:Venice map (Civ5).png|Map of Republic of Venice
== Related achievements ==
== See also ==
* Venetian in other games
ru:Венеция (Civ5)
Category:Venetian