Trade

Venice

Suzerain and envoy bonuses summarised in our own words from the game data.

Suzerain bonus

Trade routes you send to foreign cities earn +1 Gold for each luxury resource at the destination.

Game data traceMINOR_CIV_ANTIOCH_UNIQUE_INFLUENCE_BONUS

Strategy guide

Route your traders toward foreign cities stacked with luxuries — big capitals usually hold four or more, which turns each route into a meaningful gold stream. Check destinations before assigning traders; the bonus scales entirely with the destination's luxury count.

Best civs & plans

Pairs with international-trade civs — Portugal's sea routes and Mali's gold economy squeeze the most out of it. Also worth envoys whenever you simply need cash for unit upgrades.

Envoy plan

Suzerainty at three envoys is the target, and the trade-type envoy tiers make the path painless: one envoy pays Gold in Markets and Lighthouses, three more in Banks and Shipyards, so a merchant empire collects on every step even before the luxury bonus kicks in. Six envoys is only sensible when you are also running the Chancery and Stock Exchanges. The AI contest for trade city-states tends to be fierce because their quests are easy to complete, so budget one spare envoy above the leader rather than sitting exactly at the threshold. Sources to divert here: the envoys from Foreign Trade and Currency-era quests, which arrive right as your trader count grows. Skip it entirely in a game where you plan on domestic routes for food and production; the suzerain effect touches only foreign destinations.

Value by era

Early trade routes are few and destinations small, so in the ancient era Venice is a modest supplement at best. The sweet spot opens in the classical and medieval eras: capitals have improved three or four luxuries, you own several traders, and each route now carries a bonus that rivals its base yield. Through the Renaissance the value keeps climbing, and a well-connected capital can be worth a surprising amount per route. Late in the game the absolute Gold still grows with route count, but it is dwarfed by Stock Exchange income and late trade policies, and the opportunity cost of not sending routes to your own cities for the Trading Post network becomes the real consideration.

Pitfalls and how to protect it

Assigning traders by distance or yields alone and forgetting to compare luxury counts is the usual error; the route-picker shows the total, so sort by Gold rather than habit. Another common miss is sending routes to Venice itself or to other city-states — they hold few luxuries, so they rarely beat a big AI capital. Foreign routes are exposed to barbarians and to any civ you go to war with, and plundered traders are a costly way to learn that a Great Admiral or an escort was needed. If an aggressive neighbour captures Venice, your routes lose the bonus immediately; consider whether liberating it fits your military plan, and otherwise redirect traders to domestic routes rather than keeping them on now-ordinary foreign ones. Levying Venice's units is seldom useful.

Envoy bonuses

  • 1 envoy+2 Gold in your capital and in each Market or Lighthouse you own.
  • 3 envoys+4 Gold in each Bank, Shipyard and Consulate you own.
  • 6 envoys+6 Gold in each Stock Exchange, Seaport and Chancery you own.

Envoy bonuses are shared by every city-state of the same type.

Plan your districts in the adjacency calculator →

Other Trade city-states

Related guides

Last reviewed: 2026-10-03