Let's talk Portugal.

Athenaeum

Prince
Joined
Mar 20, 2015
Messages
599
I always thought their UA was complete crap, although I never sat down and really calculated how much extra gold they could potentially get.

Also I tend to use trade routes almost exclusively for internal routes (food, production), or to city-states to complete quests (where I don't think resource diversity contributes to trade route yield).

Does anyone have other views on them?

By the way, do luxuries acquired via feitoras contribute to resource diversity-based trade route yield?
 
The thing which I find interesting is that with Big Ben and Mercantilism, you can buy a Nau (their caravel replacement) and use its cargo ship ability to not only pay itself off, but make a profit. In this way you could probably build a Nau army pretty quickly. The only problem is that this wouldn't be very feasible until you got Big Ben (Industrialization), which by then Naus would start to become obsolete combat-wise.
 
A tricky civ to play but a fun one nevertheless. Both their UU and UI are on the upper side of the tech tree so it makes the choice easy for you what direction you should go.

But it is very contradictory in that you should really be a seafaring nation and thus dig in to exploration asap. At the same time commercialism is also something you need to pick some policies from even do you most likely dont have many land trade routes or many roads. And considering a diplomatic victory is preferred, patronage is also a policy tree you need to get in on. Then you also, like always, benefits the most if you boost your science. The feitorias you can start building when you reach navigation in some ways take away some of the benefits from being allied with a CS since you get their luxury anyway with the feitoria. But you need their vote so you need to keep paying them.
 
Yeah I just did a file with them and they were interesting, but I did come across the conundrum of deciding between Commerce and Exploration. I went Commerce mostly just for Mercantilism so I could purchase Nau's and make a profit.


In the past, I thought that resource diversity accounted for all globally connected resources in your empire. Due to this false belief, I thought Portugal's strategy was to connect tons of resources via feitorias, and then you would have massive resource diversity from that. I was wrong in that resource diversity only takes into account nearby resources of the two cities involved in a trade route.
 
it's better to build Naus than buy those, you exchange hammers for gold in a good ratio (120 hammers for ~300 gold). and then you can gift it to CS for 5 influence (what equals another ~50 gold).

also you can massbuild triremes and upgrade for ~100 gold each iirc (less with Honor). Although you'll lose some gold on maintenance.
 
I've played as Portugal more than any other civ so far. I love scouting out city states and rushing to build Feitorias and Naus to make some serious gold and resource stockpiling. Plus, I love having a reason to declare war on anyone trying to attack the city states I'm "using."

The feitoria doubles as a fort to bunker down in should someone come attacking them. Interesting and fun if you enjoy Sea trade.
 
With Feitoria there's much less sense in allying city states. You can still gain from friendship though, e.g. using the Papal Primacy + Consulates permanent CS friendship combo. Or just take resources and ignore those CS.

What to do with all that happiness and resources? Go to war. Total frigate domination! In the last game i had about 40 iron from Feitorias, and plenty of other resources to trade for gold.
 
I was not aware Feitorias gifted you Iron or strategic resources. I'm pretty sure they only net you resources.

Either way, I think it would be nice to purchase a Nau every turn, break even with a Cargo Ship use, and then gift the Nau to a city-state for influence. That would be pretty nice.
 
I've actually never played as Portugal as I was a bit wary of their UU/UI/UA but after reading these posts, I think I might give them a try after my current game with Korea (also a first)
 
My favorite way to play Portugal is to go for a Cultural victory, go tall, spread you Feitorias out far and wide, pick Order, and Dictatorship of the Proletariat. It's probably not as effective at higher difficulties where the AI has a big Happiness bonus, but it is fun.
 
To be honest they are a pretty terrible civ. Compared to Poland or Babylon they really don't bring anything powerful to the table. That said they are a fun civ to roleplay in if you want to relive the feel of an exploration age seafaring trade-based empire and for that purpose they are a lot of fun. It just doesn't really translate into anything really specific

A UA that is dependent on sending external trade routes.....
A UU that is doesn't provide any real military advantage... The gold is helpful yes but it requires you to spend a lot of turns churning these units out. That will take production time away from other projects and also cost gold maintenance.
A UI that can take a CS luxury - It comes very late (at Navigation), requires you to sail workers across the map and there are only ever a handful of unique CS luxuries anyway.
 
Compared to Poland or Babylon they really don't bring anything powerful to the table.

poland and babylon (and korea) are just overpowered civs with huge but bland bonuses
not interesting to play at all, feels more like cheating
 
I always thought their UA was complete crap, although I never sat down and really calculated how much extra gold they could potentially get.

I personally like setting up a quick trade route with Portugal. The earlier you set up a route, the earlier you can benefit from the UA and thus earn more gold than most civs. Even with just 4 resources that are considered unique to both cities, Portugal is getting 2 more gpt out of that, and for 30 turns, that translates into 60 more gold. With more trade routes, they'll be raking in a lot of gold eventually.

Also I tend to use trade routes almost exclusively for internal routes (food, production), or to city-states to complete quests (where I don't think resource diversity contributes to trade route yield).

All external trade routes benefit from resource diversity, whether you sent them to a city-state or a different civ. I don't know why you think otherwise.

By the way, do luxuries acquired via feitoras contribute to resource diversity-based trade route yield?

Nope, at least not in the way you think. Resource diversity happens on a city-basis. I'm not totally sure on this but I think resources have to be improved within more or less 3-tiles of the city for resource diversity to actually work. If you have horses, but they're in a different part of your empire, the trade route considers horses to be not part of your city's resources.

To be honest they are a pretty terrible civ.

I wouldn't call them terrible. There are far worse offenders, at least, like the situational Iroquois or Byzantium. Once the former cannot get forests or the latter cannot get religion, there's nothing much really going on for them.
 
To be honest they are a pretty terrible civ. Compared to Poland or Babylon they really don't bring anything powerful to the table. That said they are a fun civ to roleplay in if you want to relive the feel of an exploration age seafaring trade-based empire and for that purpose they are a lot of fun. It just doesn't really translate into anything really specific

A UA that is dependent on sending external trade routes.....
A UU that is doesn't provide any real military advantage... The gold is helpful yes but it requires you to spend a lot of turns churning these units out. That will take production time away from other projects and also cost gold maintenance.
A UI that can take a CS luxury - It comes very late (at Navigation), requires you to sail workers across the map and there are only ever a handful of unique CS luxuries anyway.

So one of these gimmick RP civ that doesn't have any real strong thing going for them. The CS luxury UI is the most pointless UI I can think of. If you really wanted it, you might as well ally the CS as it also gives you more votes. It is more to deny other civs from getting the CS advantages.
 
The feitoria could be quite useless if you're going for a diplomatic victory since the city states will already provide you with their resources from alliances. Not only that but sending a worker over to the city state to get the feitoria built takes time and effort such as the Swedish UA but with the exception that the Swedish UA you can gift your great people over to the city states with the gift unit commands in the city state.
 
To be honest they are a pretty terrible civ. Compared to Poland or Babylon they really don't bring anything powerful to the table. That said they are a fun civ to roleplay in if you want to relive the feel of an exploration age seafaring trade-based empire and for that purpose they are a lot of fun. It just doesn't really translate into anything really specific

A UA that is dependent on sending external trade routes.....
A UU that is doesn't provide any real military advantage... The gold is helpful yes but it requires you to spend a lot of turns churning these units out. That will take production time away from other projects and also cost gold maintenance.
A UI that can take a CS luxury - It comes very late (at Navigation), requires you to sail workers across the map and there are only ever a handful of unique CS luxuries anyway.

The thing is that you can purchase their UU and their Cargo Ship ability can actually turn a profit. You can use this to spam-purchase Naus, and do whatever you can imagine with that.
 
Nope, at least not in the way you think. Resource diversity happens on a city-basis. I'm not totally sure on this but I think resources have to be improved within more or less 3-tiles of the city for resource diversity to actually work. If you have horses, but they're in a different part of your empire, the trade route considers horses to be not part of your city's resources.



.

I actually took a look at the trade route gold calculations in a recent SP game, and in some of my trade routes, it did not count improved resources that were only 2 tiles away from my city. I have no idea how to explain this.
 
I actually took a look at the trade route gold calculations in a recent SP game, and in some of my trade routes, it did not count improved resources that were only 2 tiles away from my city. I have no idea how to explain this.

it counts different resources, which the destination city does not have
 
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