Advantages of using Venetian (Venice) Civilization?

I am having a difficult time understanding how to effectively use the Venetian Civilization .

At first glance, the Venice Civilization seems significantly weaker than other civs: with the primary reason being that they CANNOT build/buy settlers.

In place of the settler and Great Merchant, Venice uses the Merchant of Venice.

Merchant of Venice

Abilities:

1. Perform a Trade mission
2. Puppet City-States
   • Able to purchase in puppet city-state
   • Gives control over puppet city-state army

This means the only way to expand my empire is to:

• Use the Merchant of Venice to "buyout" other city-states
• Use my military to conquer other civs and/or city-states (NOTE: cannot annex)

Although I may feel inclined to use military force, it seems almost counterproductive, since I cannot annex cities. Being able to take control of puppeted armies and buying units/buildings in puppeted cities has its perks but I feel Venice is too weak of a civilization to last, especially on harder difficulties against aggressive, militaristic civilizations.

Am I missing something? I fail to see the real advantage of using Venice.

Solution 1:

You're overlooking the main benefit of Venice! Extra Trade Routes!

Money does everything in Civ V. When you play as Venice, you use your faction bonuses + trade routes to generate egregious amounts of gold. The puppetted city-states will focus science for you, meaning all you have to do is generate scads of gold to buy whatever army you need.

Ally all the city-states so that your opponents can't reap their ally benefits. Get in all the research agreements you can. And buy all the swordsdudes you need to crush your enemies into a pulp!

Solution 2:

I played a prince game with Venice. It's really painful to go to war, 'cause they plunder your trade routes and takes more money to have them back. Since you have only one fully controlled city, getting social policies is easy, so you need to build your culture.

The trick is to have enough money via trade routes to buy alliances with city states in order to get a diplomatic win. Use the Merchant of Venice with city states that are strong allies of your main competitors, so they lose the votes in the World Congress.

I even bought a city state that was two cities 'cause captured another one in a current war, so I got a 2x1.

Playing with Venice is really fun, but if you don't build up enough military to defend from military leaders you will have bad time.

Solution 3:

Personally I find that using as many trade routes as possible to ship food between cities is hugely advantageous rather than using them for money. On my last Venice game by the end I had just 5 cities (all bought city states) and each was over 30 population and still growing at around 3-6 turns per pop point. Consider that the Hanging Gardens wonder is worth 6 food to your capital but an early cargo ship is worth at least that.

Getting more cities also increases growth exponentially. With 3 cities, each has two food trade routes into it, but with 4 cities, each city now has three trade routes in. Combining trade routes will filled out tradition is so overpowered. Boosting pop will boost science well ahead of your rivals and you should still have enough money to buy buildings and influence should you wish to.