Venice, anyone in EU game?
Hello all. I was just about to start a new GC (or IGC - I haven’t decided yet) with Venice. Does anyone have any suggestions about how to play them? They seem to be an interesting nation to play, because they can go in so many directions: trade, diplomacy, war, colonization.
sean9898 30-05 07:59
I played Venice a couple of times, it’s one of the most interesting minors because there is a lot to do. Be prepared for war every 5 years or more with the Turks if you ally with Hungary. Long term I recommend Austria, and Modena/Parma or Tuscany as allies.
Venice gets an advantage with all default Generals getting a siege bonus. You also get one of the best Generals in the game in Bragadin, DOW as soon as he arrives, and attack someone, anyone at all times until he dies.
Avoid battle with the Turks try to outmaneuver them, cut them off and siege multiple provinces. You get a lot of good admirals, so using the fleet for renaisance Anzios should help starve the heathen. When Hungary disapears (without Austria and Venice as allies that should be pretty quick) Venice and Austria can expand nicely into the Turkish lands.
You also get 1 colonist a year. It’s enought to colonize a big block of N. America. It’s probably worthwhile sticking to the high % colonies as your colonists are too precious to waste.
Depp 30-05 08:00
I tend to colonize the two provinces above Oman and head for india, and keeping somwhat calm in europe, just chopping down some italian states and such…
von Clausewitz 30-05 08:50
One of those nasty little tricks is to quickly go for Macedonia. That way you only have to march across the border every time Turkey declares war in order to capture their capital. You always get favorable peace-agreements that way.
Also, try to get a hold of Egypt as soon as possible, you?ll get a valuable COT and lots of income. For some reason Venice - the great trade power - seems to get stuck in their own trading area as a result of fierce competition. Try to avoid that…
You have lots of nice areas to build refineries. Try to do that as quickly as possible.
Your long time goal should be to unite Italy. Once you start to annex the small city states, the others will be pretty pissed off, so be prepared. On the other hand you don?t lose stability in DOW. 
BoL
Johan IV 30-05 14:34
In the only Venice IGC I’ve played so far, the Turks never increased their fortifications in thrace once for 300 years.. So every time I had a war with them I used the same tactic (grab thrace and 2 other provinces = quick peace).
You can run into some religion problems with Venice. You will generally have Catholic, Moslem and Orthodox provinces. And if you switch to protestantism (which imho is best as Venice) you’ll have that too 
Petrus 30-05 14:59
In the only Venice IGC I’ve played so far, the Turks never increased their fortifications in thrace once for 300.
That’s a really good point. Constantinople (Thrace) should start as one of the most fortified cities on the planet. It should be nearly impossible to take that city. Heck, the Turks lost some of the larges armies ever assembled (three seperate times!) trying to take the Golden horn.
Venice is really fun. btw. Lots of room to expand. Just make sure you have France or Austria to watch your back.
horragoth 30-05 15:02
I had tried alliance with Hungary, Helvetia, Moldovia and Mameluks (the last wer added after Turkey declared war on them). Got Kosovo and Macedonia in the first war, ten Styria from Austria - that is what serves Helvetia for. I used the goldmine to finance another war with Turkey and diploannex Hungary soon. After that I have switched allies to Papal states, Genoa and Eire (much stronger than England by that time) and expanded in Italy beacuse the provinces are richer there than in Balkan. In 1575 I lead in VP by 500 before Spain.
Venice is very interesting to play.
General advice: Outmaneuver your enemies and let atrittion and generals siege bonus work for you.
Jehangir 30-05 16:36
go for Hungary as an ally and hit the soft underbelly of the Ottoman Empire. Venice is a lot of fun to play and you have manueverability with that huge fleet. So hit the Turks all over and make them run around trying to defend against you.
Coug 30-05 17:29
Hungary
It seems Hungary can be dynstically inherited by Venice as well… happened to me one, it was great! Just keep sending those royal marriages over to them, and they should be more than happy. Also, make sure Austria and Hungary is NEVER in the same alliance! This way, you can prevent the Austrian annexation of Hungary.
ishlilith 30-05 20:07
Try to ally with P-L and Hungary, This way is unwilling that Austria can attack you successfully and the turks cant attack you directly. Keep P-l as an ally as long as you can and DoW at Austria often to prevent them from annexing bohemia. Annex styria(?) as soon as you can and keep the inflation under control. Exchange maps with oman, persia, ethiopia, etc, and build some colonies in the E coast of africa, you’ll have cities there way before portuguese discover those lands.
Jehangir 30-05 20:19
Venice and Hungary
Yes, you do seem to have a pre-disposition for the inheritance of Hungary. But be careful. The first time it happended to me, I realized that Austria then had a CB on me and I ended up with an endless round of Austria declares war, Turkey declares war, Hungary revolts, Austria declares war…. to the point where all the money I started out making was going into just keeping me afloat. So you definitely need to neutralize Austria if you follow that path.
Graymane 30-05 21:09
Check out the AAR forum, there are a few Venice AARs there. I’ve played it about 4 times now. Quite frankly, Venice is the easiest minor to play for the following reasons (assuming you are using ICG):
1. Shipyard = colonists and lots of ships of course.
2. CB on Turkey.
3. Early potential alliance with Hungary and P-L.
4. Lots of cash from the best early game CoT.
5. Excellent default leaders with a siege of 1 although other stats are relatively crappy.
6. An ahistorical leader, C. Borgia, to start with.
7. Good admirals and generals for most of the first 150 years.
8. Fine Arts Academy to start with.
If you combine Venice with the hot, new banking strategy found in the gold mine thread, you are set for money. The disadvantages are:
A. Next to Austria and Turkey. Could be bad if you aren’t careful.
B. Expensive military.
There are 3 basic starting strategies for Venice:
1. Ally P-L + Hungary and go for Turkey. This is probably the easiest early game strategy as you will roll over Turkey with those allies. Try to get Moldova in the alliance as well, Turkey will always go for Moldova first. Then take Macedonia and the Hellas in the first peace and the gradually work your way back towards your core provinces in the ensuing wars, taking Orthodox provinces first.
2. Join the Austrian Axis. This has some promise but will take a bit longer to develop as you will be starved for territories unless you can get into a fight with the papal states or Turkey. If Hungary is not in this alliance, things could go bad if Turkey gets ambitious.
3. Form an alliance with Turkey. This is actually more of a favorite if you want to expand into Christian territories like Hungary and ensure that your islands are somewhat secure.
In cases of #1 or #3, if you get into a war with Austria, go for the gold mine province. The thing to ALWAYS avoid is combat if at all possible. Your armies are expensive and the default leaders generally suck for combat. What you want to do is wait and see where everyone is attacking, pick a choice province and siege it with your 1 siege leaders. I tend to stay out of Italy as much as possible, too many small countries and too much potential for scoring a high BB there. Basically, get the war over ASAP if you can, settling for one province or ducats if you have to. You can definately go the colonization route if you can get some maps since you have a shipyard early on.
GrandInquisitor 30-05 22:07
Thank you all for your suggestions! I’ll try them out as soon as I get back from work (ugh);)
Van Barel 30-05 23:44
actually the best thread i read so far: full of good advices and no bragging (”I conquered all of russia and half of your dinner table with Venice”) 
Misha 31-05 00:42
“I conquered all of russia and half of your dinner table with Venice”
Well, okay half of Russia, all of Italy, & everything from Morocco to Persia inclusive.
I just finished the 2nd of 2 consecutive back-to-back Hard/Aggressive GCs as Venice, & most of the advice above is useful. But my strategy was a little different - I allied with the Mamelukes & Persia in addition to Poland & Hungary right out of the gate. This meant that I fought regular dfensive wars against the Turks from early on - as they tended to DoW the Mams every five years or so. As suggested, keep your head down, grab a nice province or 2 every war, & make a separate peace with the Turks. Despite owning most of the Balkans after 20 years, my BB was still 0.
Eventually, the Turks will start rolling the Mams up. At that point, you need to transition your alliance structure a bit. I look for a nice Italian minor that I can aim at diploannexing, although I’ll take the Georgians, Russians, or someone else to tie up the Turk’s eastern flank instead. Once the Mams are down to their 3 Egyptian core provinces, I DoW them & annex them in order to keep those rich provinces out of the hands of the Turk.
The land base in Egypt is quite strategic - in allows you to expand east, west or south into RotW provinces (so no BB), & often denies the Turk the geographic link he needs to diploannex his vassals. Once in Christian hands, Alexandria usually becomes the richest CoT in the Mediterranean, running 600-900D - so I aim for a monopoly there. This makes up for the decline of the Venice CoT nicely & fills in the gap until the Far Eastern CoTs get established.
Then I tend to let the Turk DoW me, & begin to roll up his allies. You would be surprised how free game downloads soft the competition in North Africa & the Middle East is. And other than a few really horrific provinces, the attrition is not too bad. You can use some of the colonists from your shipyard to build up to city status strategic places like Sinai or Quattara, or to convert to Catholicism some of the lower population Moslem provinces. Colonial costs in the Middle East are substantially lower than anywhere else (usually 25-35D), due to the close proximity to Europe. Not that I’m suggesting not colonizing elsewhere, just save a few for the Middle East.
Once you are strongly established in the Middle East, you can just roll up the opposition. As long as you don’t annex large nations, your BB will be quite low. The Persians are the richest & eventually the easiest. As an exotic power, their tech development lags latin powers considerably. The Turks are also comparatively much weaker later in the game. I enjoy making sure that they are an annexable power - I like reclaiming Constantinople for Christianity. Just leave at least one of your CB provinces in the Turk’s hands, so that you can DoW him without penalty. After a certain point, he seems reluctant to do you the favor, so you have to do it yourself.
As mentioned before, I try to find allies that I can diploannex. I succeeded in doing this with the Georgians before the Turks could whack them in the last game I played, having picked up an adjacent province in one of my many wars with the Turk. I wasn’t even aware that a Catholic nation could diploannex an Orthodox power until I did it. 
Of course, that led to a series of wars with the Russians, who seemed to think they have a godgiven right to everything in the Caucasus. Despite never really wanting to engage in that region due to the winter attrition, I eventually pushed the Russkies back & claimed the goldmine in Samara, along with most of the territory of the former Khanates.
Of course, diploannexing Italian minors is the more normal strategy. Forceful annexation (other than the Papal States), while doable, is a bad idea, as the relations hit with other Catholic powers is painful, & the resultant BB is trouble early on. Other than Milan, which I like to whack if at all possible (it is one of the richest non-CoT provinces in the game & I hate to see it fall into the clutches of the French), I never war annex Catholic nations.
As to religious tolerance, it is tightrope walk early on. You start out as a Catholic nation with several fairly populous Orthodox provinces. Attempting ethnic cleansing against the Orthodox rarely succeeds, so you have set them to at least moderate tolerance. And if you want to keep some Moslem allies in order to encircle the Turk, then all three start religions must be moderate. Of course, once the Reformation kicks in, this gives you first 1 & then 2 religions that you can persecute mercilessly, allowing you to up tolerance for the other 3 religions. This means revolt risk in your home & conquered provinces is negligible due to religion. I never suffered a single revolt in North Africa or the Middle East in either of the GCs as Venice. Later you can choose to up tolerance for one of the two Protestant faiths, & add provinces of that religion to your empire as long as you can keep your wars from getting prolonged too much.
I really enjoy playing Venice. It gives you options for expansion comparable to a major, while still allowing you to think that you are playing a minor. But you’re not - Venice (like Sweden) is really a major in disguise.
Baston 01-06 12:08
Cool thread…
I allied immediately with Austria because i felt they would be more of a threat against me than anyone else. This alliance also includes bohemia who are surprisngly quite strong in game. The only problem with austria is that they are quite trigger happy, however letting thm do the good portion of fighting allows me to preserve my army and still take provinces or favourable peace agreements.
This worked out well against hungary, where thanks to the austrians i was left to my own devices as i stole croatia from the hungarians.
I had never considered some of the other options laid out here, but i like the idea of taking egypt or some territory in north africa. Going to be seriously looking at the choices available to me.