Frustrated

[unmerged(5112)]

I hav been playing venice for a while and it just gets boring even when i set the goal of uniting italy. I like colonizing and Venice just isnt to good at that. Can someone tell me a good colonization country plus a little mission to keep in mind for the rest of the game. For example, while i waas playing as Venice my goal was to unite Italy ( very unsuccesful). Someone please suggest a country and what you would do as a little mission thing. Thanks.

 

[unmerged(3627)]

Venice can do some colonising, provided you can cosy up to at least one of either France, Spain, Portugal or England, and pick up some useful maps. Alternatively, you need a base near one of these four capitals so you can pick up maps by sacking the capital every few years

 

[BiB]

5 countries get colonisation bonuses and those are Portugal and Holland mainly for TPs, England and Spain for colonies and France is a bit inbetween. Colonising is a lot easier and a big part of any game with any of those 5.

 

[unmerged(4868)]

Venice can be pretty good at colonizing. It has all the ingredients for that:

1) you don't really need conquistadors for colonizing. but you do absolutely need maps.

A) one way to get maps is to exchage maps with a friendly Spain or Portugal or France or England. Let their conquistadors explore the lands. You simply need their maps.

B) fight a few naval battles and you will steal rutters. Your Venice should never lose naval battles. Otherwise shame on you.

2) Venice gets settlers.

A) you get settlers simply by having the gold naval shipyard (in IGC)
B) Venice can convert to counter reform catholic as soon as it's allowed. this gives you an extra free settler each year

3) Venice has excellent navies. Once you have a couple of colonies or cities overseas, use your navy to explore even more, or let them land armies into terra incognita.

Venice won't be as good in colonization as say Spain or Portugal, but it has all the right ingredients for decent colonization experience.

 

[unmerged(4868)]

Originally posted by Heyesey
Venice can do some colonising, provided you can cosy up to at least one of either France, Spain, Portugal or England, and pick up some useful maps. Alternatively, you need a base near one of these four capitals so you can pick up maps by sacking the capital every few years

You automatically steal maps by sacking a capital? I never knew that. I thought that you can only forcefully get maps by stealing rutters in naval victories.

 

[dralizaar]

whenever you take a capitol you learn everything your enemy knows map wise..thats why they boosted france spain and portugal's forts to level 3's..it was too easy to cheesy steal maps

yes venice makes good explorer i trade around with mameluks first then down through the arabians in that region do it early..at start your reltaions are decent with them..if you wait it drops...also at start spain and portgual dont like you you need wait on them...get all arab maps then trade that knowledge later for spanish and or portugses ones...

early on i use vencie to colonize socotra it makes an excellent base of ops for building a couple ships and infantry to put them where my colonies are gonna grow to protect from natives...mogadiscio is good one to try and make grow..large pop..once you get one colonist set up move troops by sea into its ports from socotra..this will avoid setting off the natives in revolts..this way if they do revolt after a failed attempt to colonize you can avoid losing your base...keep shipping troops in..not too many as you eliminate the natives but enough to avoid defeat..there is also a empty prov along the african coast no native in it..thats another good one although odds arent great at success..using these 3 provs you can set up tps rest of africa if you want...most of the provs arent worth colonies..being low base value, high attrition pop wise and high native agress/low chance success...use these bases to colomize india once you get the maps form portugal..from there its easy city..conquer india and the cash will fund your inufication of italy




other goals...any german state unify germany..although again not much colonization, Netherlands...regain all your dutch lands all the way to french border and unifie that part of germany under your new republic,,,great colonization after you convert and if you get shipyard even better... there of course is also the option to edit colonization files to increase them if thats all thats keeping you form enjoying a nation ..ie..maybe once brandenburg gets to coast you want to try it but the 1 a year from protestantism isnt enough...edit and give him 2 more not hard..i dont find this sort of thing nonhistorical at all either...any nation of the era could have been a colonial power had their leaders invested and pushed for it...most of them had many poor people who were willign to take chances to make up the bulk of said expeditions and many nations contributed to other nations colonies through colonization evne though they themselves never set up their own..ie the irish, poles, slovacs and italians sent many groups to america to expand exisiting colonies < i would think same as sending a 100 colonist to expand an existing city..only you cant expand another nations city in this game> why couldnt you as monarch spend a little more <its not as cheap to make a colony as it is to steal one or expand one> and turn to this course.. if you get big enough as too where you can afford to do it i say go for it

 

[unmerged(4868)]

As for unifying Italy... I see how it can be frustrating.

The problem is that all those small Italian nation states were very divided in their loyalties. Some of them are strongly pro-French, others are strongly pro-Spanish. Yet others are clearly friendly to the Austrians.

for unifying italy: start with one or two italian nations that are most friendly to you.

Don't start with Genoa!! Genoa starts the game HATING Venice, because they are historical arch-rivals.

What you should do is to ally with someone else thats at least luke-warm friendly with you, like Tuscany or Modena or Naples or Milan. Then work on vassalizing them one or two at a time. Once you have a strong ally in the Italian mainland, you and your allies can slowly eat away at the "rivals" like Papal states. But do NOT attempt to war with them if they are clearly allied to a huge bully like France.

It's extremely easy for those huge French-Savoy-Helvetian armies to march into Mantua and Venice and give you a bloody nose if you piss them off at the wrong time.

You need to time your wars when you 'eat away' at your rivals. Always look at the ledger to see when that France-Savoy-Papacy-Helvetia grand alliance expiration date. It tends to expire a lot or it falls apart often because they disagree on this or that. As soon as that big alliance "expires", you and your allies can immediately declare war on the lone non-allied nation. They have no allies to call upon, so you can slam them hard if that's what you want.

You can also use the alliance expirations as the perfect time to grab new allies away from France or Spain. This assumes you have good relations with them already, otherwise they obviously wont join into your alliance.

Then once you have some of these small italians on YOUR alliance, never let them go. As soon as your alliance expires, reinvite them right away, so you keep your alliance forever. This will give you many many years to work on vassalizing them one at a time, without worrying that they will switch sides to someone like France or Spain.

Also, be very careful on who else you invite to your alliance. For example, if you invited Spain or Turkey into your alliance, then keep in mind that several of the small italian nations have an animosity for either Spain or Turkey. If there is someone already in your alliance that they do not like, then they will REFUSE to join your alliance.

Good luck, and I hope that the righteous Austrians crush you under their metal-tipped boots. Oops, did I just say that?