This post is meant to be both a summary and the post used to participate in the civ contest that @casusincorrabil is organizing.
AoE Venetians Civilization Design:
Civilizations Concept:
Bonus:
- Receive +50 gold after researching any technology (including age ups).
- Archery range units are 5/10% faster in feudal and castle age.
- Docks and barracks costs -75 wood.
Team Bonus:
- Guilds is 80% cheaper and available in the feudal age.
Unique Technologies:
III - Schole: villagers generate an extra 5% gold when dropping any resource to a building nearby a monastery.
Cost: 300 wood 300 stone, 30 sec
IV - Schiavona: barracks units (militia and spear lines) get +30 HP.
Cost: 600 food 300 gold, 40 sec
Unique Units:
C - Stradiot: light cavalry that can stun enemy units with a special charged attack. It have a small bonus damage against knights and cost only gold.
Cost: 80 gold, 14 sec, 800 food 400 gold for Elite
D - Galeass: heavy ship that with a short range gunpowder attack. The ship can ram other ships, dealing massive damage, and without 1/3 chances of converting the ship to your side.
Cost: 120 wood 80 gold, 40 sec, 700 food 500 gold for Elite
Tech Tree:
Baracks:
Docks:
Archery Range:
Stable:
Blacksmith:
Monastery:
Siege Workshop:
Defenses:
University:
Economy:
Castle:
Wonder:
The Basilica of Saint Marco and the Dogal Palace
NOTES:
- The dock barracks discount can be nerfed to -50 wood if it’s too strong.
- Archery range units could also receive +15% speed in imp if deemed necessary.
- The main idea for the civ is to use the free gold to either fast castle or drush into archers. The free gold allows you to delay putting vills on gold, having more vills on food and wood. In the late game, it overall gives you a bit more gold than your opponent, allowing you to either spend it into your UUs or to train more siege during trash wars.
Campaign:
I’ll summarize here the 6 missions that I thought of for an eventual venetians campaign.
In my mind, a campaign about venice should be through its entire history, and not just about a singular moment in its history. So here are the 6 missions:
-
The birth of a legend:
Set in the last years of the Western Roman Empire, you control a small group of survivors and refugees that are trying to escape from the goths and hunnic invasions, seeking shelter in the deep lagoons. The scenario starts with you besieged by none other than Attila in the city of Aquileia, and you’ll see the downfall of cities like Padua and Altinum too, while every village you’ll find is under pressure by goth raiders, and there is no safe place until you reach the islands of the lagoons.
This scenario is based around the mith of the foundation of Venice, which is actually a more gradual process, but still it’s a nice mith and callback to the Attila last mission campaign. -
Finding its place in a new world:
Here the venetians struggle to survive in a new age, with a even more distant and weak Easter Roman Empire, and with the even more eager lombards, the venetians needs to find its own space, and save their prosperous trade networks.
Besieged in your main coastal settlements by the new longobards, you might need to fall back on your smaller settlements on the islands of the lagoon, where you can find protection behind your fleet. But right when your enemy is defeated, you’ll find out that the even more threatening giant of the franks kingdom is looming on your islands, and you’ll have to fight for your survival by burning the enemy fleet, and conquering their inland fortifications. -
Pirates and merchants:
From a river regional power, you are even more evolving into a sea trading empire, but the cities of the Istria and Dalmatia, once under the ERE, are threatening your interest with piracy and competition. You simply cannot accept that, goods can be sold by everyone, but they have to sold them in the city of Venice.
In this scenario, you’ll have to put under your banner every city in the balkan Adriatic, either peacefully or by force. You won’t have a city, but conquered cities will allow you to trade resources, use their blacksmiths and universities, and train condos and stradiots. You’ll also timely receive reinforcements from Venice with ships, archers and siege.
Once the pirates and cities are conquered, you’ll need to help the byzantine dealing with the normans invasion, by burning down their fleet and docks in Apulia, while also settling down the rebellion of the city of Zara, aided by the Hungarian kingdom. -
Old alliances:
In the most shameless point of the history of the republic, you’ll lead the crusader knights into siege of Constantinople itself, the city that should owns your fidelity.
With your allies, you’ll defeat the byzantine army and varangians, and then install your puppet emperor. But when even him can’t satisfy your hungry for gold, and your supplies are running low, you’ll breach the city seawall, and set the city ablaze, pillaging every house, monastery and market. -
The most serene city in flames:
The rivalry with Genoa is something that goes by since centuries, they are your main and most dangerous maritime power, and now they occupy your main dock on the entrance of the lagoon, while Italian and Austrian allies besiege your from the mainland, but you won’t give, and a long siege awaits you.
You’ll have to fortify the canals and sandbanks, and fight in a weird battle of ships and soldiers alike. Your city is called the most serene for its wealth, and so you start with a huge amount of resources, but no natural resource besides fish. All resources needs to arrive in the city either by the northern rivers, or by trading with the venetian Istria.
Then you have to raze to the ground the city of Chioggia, occupied by the genoese, in order to beat your hated rival. -
The downfall of the Republic:
No one could withstand your rise to power, not the pirates, not the byzantines, nor the other Italians states. Not even the Pope and the kingdom of France could stop you with the league of Cambrai, but now, a rising star to the east is treating you. The ottomans conquered Costantinople, and while they can be good trading partners at time, now they eagerly look at your Mediterranean holdings, in particular to the island of Cyprus. The Republic is not anymore the power that once was, but you won’t go down without a fight.
Here you’ll play in the hopeless defense of the city of Famagusta against the ottoman siege. You’ll start with a sorty outside the walls, for then retreat and protect the city from even more aggressive attacks. With few resources and only the sea as a supply line, you’ll need to resist the most time that you can, until all your walls are destroyed by enemy mines, and you cannot build anymore anything. To win you’ll need to survive at least 30 minutes, but then scenario then it won’t end, you’ll just keep fighting until you have strength for a relief force that will never arrive, but that will avenge you in the battle of Lepanto.
Brief History of the Venetians and of their Bonuses:
The flag of the Serenissima
The history of Venice is something that always fascinated me. A small city build by refugees on the water, and without large territories behind it that became a world power in its apex.
The city as already said founded by the WRE refugee of the province of the Venetia, that processes partially started with the invasion the goth and huns, but in reality it was the lombards that really forced them to settle there.
Reconstruction of a venetian village in the lagoon in the late antiquity
The city became rich thansk to its natural ports, and to their ability to navigate the lagoons if the Adriatic. This allows them to navigate the northern Italy rivers where there was an abundance of wood, and to sell them to merchant ships of the ERE. The byzantine themselves called the venetian region the great emporium of the empire. From this, comes their cheap docks and barracks bonus, which represents their natural docks, their early wood abundance.
They also were skilled sailors and merchants of course, this is what they are famous for. This is represented by their early and cheaper guild tech, which allows you to have better market prices. The venetians in fact became rich thanks not because of their merchants alone, but because the Republic imposed that every goods in the Adriatic have to be bought or sold inside their city. That made them rich thanks to the taxes, but also because they always controlled the flow of good, in particular salt and grain, which meant that they could starve the Adriatic and the peninsula when they wanted.
But venice wasn’t just a merchant Republic, it was thriving with artisans and skills laboratories, which transformed and sold the goods that passed by the city. At a time, that was the main economic entry of the maritime empire. This is represented by the gold bonus after each technology, to represent the wealth accumulated thanks to the its artisans and their technological advancements, worth of note, was in particular their arsenal, capable of producing 1 ship per day, thanks to its laborers, the arsenalotti.
Such artisans often gathered in the most nearby church, and formed brotherhoods that regulate and formed the new entries, as well as paying assurances for its members unable to work or their families. Such congregations were called schole, or schools, and thanks to their taxes and external donations, they were very rich, and could finance the state of Venice in time of crisis with loans.
The arsenal, the first industrial mass production facility of the world
Being a maritime republic, the venetians were of course a city of sailors. This is represented by their wide tech tree for ships and foot soldiers. Venetians sailors in fact were hardy people, able to fight both on land and on ships, and capable of quick and lighting amphibious campaigns. Their weapon of choice for the naval warfare was of course the crossbow, but they were able to fight even on foot, and were often well armored. The state in fact often payed for set of armors that was then put aside in ships for the battle. That way, even the sailors and the rowers were able to have a piece of armor, at least a steel pectoral and an helmet. This is represented by their schiavona UT, which also represents the huge chest sword used by their troops.
Venetian soldiers through the ages
A venetian armed galley
Their UU respectively comes from their extensive use of albanian cavalry, the stradiots, since the venetians were never horsemen, but either fought on foot or on ships. The other UU instead represent the galeass, a huge heavy galley, unassailabletg thanks to its high, and capable to rain fire from above, as well as cut in half other ships. There are cases where a single venetian galeass was able to keep at bay an entire ottoman fleet alone, and at the battle of Lepanto they smashed the enemy armada.
Albanian stradiots
Venetian galeass
The venetians rose to power thanks to their trade abilities, but sooner started conquering and colonize various ports of the Mediterranean. From the Istria and Dalmatia, to theit Greek territories, among them Crete was their crown jewel, but Cyprus, Cefalonia, Eubea the Peloponnese were all their possessions. They also have numerous trade hub in the black sea, among them in Crimea there was the city called “la Tana” which we can see in the third scenario of Tamerlane.
Venice trade network and controlled territories
After the war with Genoa, Venice also started to look to its inland neighbors, and conquered a good part of north of the peninsula. This put the most serene republic against huge continental powers, such as the HRE, the France kingdom, the Pope and almost all other Italians states at the war of the league of Cambrai, that almost saw the extinction of the venetians. But Venice endured, and endured the wars against the ottomans too, even when the Mediterranean wasn’t anymore the rich hub that once was, and the city start became overshadowed by the colonial powers.
Still, Venice endured, it kept the ottomans at bay with numerous wars and became a cultural and diplomatic hub in the centuries to come. The Republic was still rich and strong when its fall came in the 1700, when Napoleon ignored its neutral stance and threatened to level the city.
A venetian parade during the “sposalizio col mar” when the doge would annually throw a golden ring in the water, to marry the city to sea"