Let's talk Portugal.

So you're saying it only counts a resource of yours if the destination city doesn't have it?

The thing is it also counts resources which the destination city has that your city does not have.

I also think this civ is one of the worst in the game. As others have pointed out, the extra gold from the UA seem negligable. Both their UA and UU has strong Gold flavor, which means pretty much the only victory condition you have an advantage for is Diplomatic Victory, and that effectively renders your UI pointless. If Naus were at least available eailier than Astronomy, they would have an advantage on continents map that would mirror their history of being a strong civ for exploration.

Regardless, I continue to think the Nau is the most standout thing about them.

kaspergm said:

I also think this civ is one of the worst in the game. As others have pointed out, the extra gold from the UA seem negligable. Both their UA and UU has strong Gold flavor, which means pretty much the only victory condition you have an advantage for is Diplomatic Victory, and that effectively renders your UI pointless. If Naus were at least available eailier than Astronomy, they would have an advantage on continents map that would mirror their history of being a strong civ for exploration.

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gold is only needed for diplo victory? this is nonsense. its needed for any victory, just like happiness. and feitoria gives not only happiness but luxes required for WLTKD. you can get most of luxes on the map not allying any CS.

and as all this happiness comes mid game i think its best useage is to support conquest. and extra gold can be used to upgrade and maintain your navy.

Athenaeum said:

So you're saying it only counts a resource of yours if the destination city doesn't have it?

The thing is it also counts resources which the destination city has that your city does not have.

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To clarify, it counts for both the resources of the home city and the city of destination. If Lisbon has horses, gems and gold while Ife has iron, horses and silk, the resources that would be counted in resource diversity are gems and gold from Lisbon and iron and silk from Ife. Even if you placed a Feitoria in Ife, the resource diversity remains the same--you won't be getting the silk from Lisbon and thus cannot be removed from resource diversity when trading between the two cities.

kaspergm said:

I also think this civ is one of the worst in the game. As others have pointed out, the extra gold from the UA seem negligable. Both their UA and UU has strong Gold flavor, which means pretty much the only victory condition you have an advantage for is Diplomatic Victory, and that effectively renders your UI pointless. If Naus were at least available eailier than Astronomy, they would have an advantage on continents map that would mirror their history of being a strong civ for exploration.

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Gold is also useful for research agreements, purchasing buildings and units, paying maintenance costs for larger cities and armies, buying resources from other civs, bribery, and with Freedom, purchasing of spaceship parts, in addition to influencing City-states for their bonuses. Hardly just for Diplomatic victory at all, although it most certainly is the victory it is most associated with.

The UA is, in-fact, not negligible at all, especially if you've been getting techs and wonders that grant trade routes. So you managed to get four trade routes which grant you four cargo ships, netting you 10 more gold for 30 turns (300 gold). That already pays you for your research agreement, or perhaps helps you purchase a crucial building faster while you're building the Sistine Chapel. I think a better argument for the UA is that internal trade routes are also very important, not so much that it's negligible. Fortunately, their UU allows an alternative source of gold, allowing you to focus on internal trade routes during this time.

Feitorias also allow you to do something that others couldn't: demand tribute from CSes or even go to war with them while still gaining the benefits of their luxuries. Tribute means even more gold, but if it means maintaining your larger armies, you can definitely take over the world without needing to worry too much about happiness. It's true they're less useful in Diplomatic victories, but if you're not focusing on allying City-states, you won't be needing to pay for them for their luxuries just to maintain your happiness.

This is a civ that I've always wanted to like but just don't. That's unfortunate because I LOVE their music. Their soind track is so good it almost makes up for the way they play. Extra gold is always nice but the way TRs work it's extremely situational, and means less the later in the game you get. Naus are fun to play with, the only problem is that caravels aren't really a great unit once the world is explored so I'm left with a bunch of sub-par boats once I have Nav. The feitoria sounds cool but in practice I find it to be a pain in the neck to use. The music is great but other civs are more fun based on the way I like to play.

Get your two or three extra workers out early: Building feitorias is tricky once the CS lands fill up with units.

Aenthin said:

Feitorias also allow you to do something that others couldn't: demand tribute from CSes or even go to war with them while still gaining the benefits of their luxuries.

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Careful there: You loose the lux while at war with the CS. But it is a neat trick that neutral (or even angry) == what other civs need allied status for (the lux access).

btw CS workers repair feitorias after those were plundered

kaspergm said:

, which means pretty much the only victory condition you have an advantage for is Diplomatic Victory

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I wouldn't go quite so far as to say this. As others have mentioned gold can pay for an earlier science building, a research agreement, more landsknechts for domination or nearly anything (remember that 3 gold roughly equates to 1 production). A gold focused civ just gives you some free production or extra citystate influence.

The Nau cargo trade comes at a time when you want to rush 3 factories to get an ideology. The extra gold you get from the Nau can help with that and they can also be good to donate to CSs with arsenal of democracy.
There are some uses but I think it's hard to quantify the benefits of Portugal and by and large none of the uniques really feel like they do that much to change your game.

That said I find it normally very difficult to be in a position to demand tribute from CSs. In fact I've hardly ever done it. Until the mid-late game one CS has about an equal sized army to my entire civ lol.

With those numbers there's no way I'm getting tribute.

I agree with folks say that gold buffs every VC.

killmeplease said:

btw CS workers repair feitorias after those were plundered

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Neat! I have not seen that. On problem I had is that if a feitoria turns out to be on a late-revealed resource (say coal or oil), then the CS will undo it. Once I got burned by that a few times, I started building two of them per CS!

I also think this civ is one of the worst in the game. As others have pointed out, the extra gold from the UA seem negligable.

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are you serious? have you played as Portugal? are you saying you dont like to get 50 plus gold trade routs? do you not understand that your caravans are trade ships and your trade ships are money factories that float. resource diversity is doubled so caravans get a trade ship bonus and trade ships get 2 gold for every resource this=TONS OF CASH.

Both their UA and UU has strong Gold flavor, which means pretty much the only victory condition you have an advantage for is Diplomatic Victory

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only diplomatic victory? gold has so many uses in this game and you say its only good for diplomatic victory.

Redaxe said:

Compared to Poland or Babylon they really don't bring anything powerful to the table.

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Not as good as two of the most overpowered Civs in the game? You don't say.

Portugal is fun because their Unique Abilities generally force you into different game play mechanisms. Although for optimal play, you should always take commerce and ignore Exploration. Better to use Social Policies on Tradition, Commerce, Rationalism, Freedom/Order/Autocracy.

And to go too off-topic, but to those critical of the Byzantines: Cataphracts. They're pretty magic for early war. They get terrain defensive bonuses, smaller city penalties, and moving after attacking means they cycle. Sure religion is more fun with Byzantines, but the Cataphract can be a dominating early unit in the right hands.

Some of these things where you could spend gold in other areas as Portugal since luxuries would be copied and brought back to Portugal for it's happiness when a city state has a luxurious resource. Naus contribute to the gold that you can make also. If making enough naus by the time you research astronomy and get them to their destination which is the farthest possible way away from the capital and then to do their unique abilities which Is exotic goods then you can make more gold this way as well and not only for diplomatic victory but for any victory that you may want. Also, city states that have two or more luxurious resources won't share the other two resources since feitorias only take 1 resource.
Btw, can someone confirm that building multiple feitorias in city states will take the rest of the luxurious resources?

reddishrecue said:

Also, city states that have two or more luxurious resources won't share the other two resources since feitorias only take 1 resource.

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Not sure where you got that information from. Here's the Civilopedia entry:

"A Feitoria can only be built in a City-State's lands, on a coastal tile without a resource. It provides one copy of each Luxury Resource type that the City-State has connected, regardless of your status with that City-State, but that copy cannot be traded. It also provides the same +50% defense bonus as a Fort. Can only be built by the Portuguese."

shaglio said:

Not sure where you got that information from. Here's the Civilopedia entry:

"A Feitoria can only be built in a City-State's lands, on a coastal tile without a resource. It provides one copy of each Luxury Resource type that the City-State has connected, regardless of your status with that City-State, but that copy cannot be traded. It also provides the same +50% defense bonus as a Fort. Can only be built by the Portuguese."

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There it is, so it would be more beneficial too build a feitoria in a city state with more than one luxurious resource than in any city with one resource. Also, you don't always have to build feitorias in all the city states because most city states have the same luxurious resource, but if you do, can you sell the spare? Because if you can then it would be worth building feitorias in all The city states particularly If you can sell spare copied resources.

For people saying that building Feioria's is bad because you could just ally a city-state to get it's luxuries: What if you're playing Immortal of Deity and it is very difficult to ally a city-state?

Especially if you're playing Continents and find a city state on another continent but a nearby Civ had 150 influence? (or even more!)

For people saying that building Feioria's is bad because you could just ally a city-state to get it's luxuries: What if you're playing Immortal of Deity and it is very difficult to ally a city-state?

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dont forget if ALEXANDER is in the game its going to be very hard to ally most city states

Only way to deal with alex is to convince the world to kill him off. He can't ally your CS when he's at war with them.

You're not supposed to allow Alex to do that. That's a possible challenge.