pandamancer
Prince
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- Aug 18, 2013
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Spoiler Motivations for Writing this Article :
Comprehensive Leader Guide: Joao II of Portugal
assumptions:
- single player
- restricted leaders
- water maps especially archipelago, terra
- prefect on huge maps, decent on standard maps
- relevant difficulty: up to IMM (although might work on deity with a strong start or on certain circumstance)
- stronger on marathon games and near useless on quick speeds
- less aggressive leaders for better effect
Introduction
Historically, the Portuguese civilization is a mercantile civilization that reached the height of its power through maritime trade. Translate it to Civ4, the designers of the game intended the Portuguese to be strong on water maps, although technically speaking they are also decent in Pangaea maps. Seasoned players would do a rexing and then do a conquest or domination victory somehow same style when playing with Catherine, Suryavarman or Shaka. Not very exciting, but works given his traits. Now, I would like to explore more on how he shines in water maps rather than the aforementioned strategy.
Contrary on what one would have believed, Joao II does not work well on all water maps. One instance is Continents map, where two or three civs placed in a chunk of "continent" and at least one civ in isolation. For one, the risk of isolation is very high which puts Joao in a weaker position. Although his IMP/EXP means more land, carelessly grabbing lots of land early in isolation spells doom economic wise. Secondly, due to the landmass characteristic of Continents, coastal islands from the main continent tend to be rare. Having island cities are crucial when you have Great Lighthouse when foreign
are still few early or even non-existent in the game. Lastly, landmass are separated by oceans of at least 2 tile squares (or I might have believed so). It is true that the Portuguese UU carrack allows sailing across ocean pre-astronomy but planting cities across continents would temporarily ruin your economy (later I would show some pre-Astronomy situations where you can plant cities across ocean separated foreign lands without ruining your economy!).Now, let's talk about his starting tech and traits. EXP/IMP are both traits that help mostly in expansion and tile improvements. Both traits are generally strong in the early phase of the game so it would be prudent to take advantage of them asap. Joao starts with fishing and mining. Fishing is beneficial if your capital is coastal which again is highly likely if you play a water map. Mining is another good starting tech. I tend to find water maps lacking in
and not in 
or 
. So having mining early grants you one tech away from bronze working, which converts your to . Mining also allows workers to work on hills which boost the potency of EXP/IMP.Early Phase
Starting turn 0, your first priority should be to setup at least three decent coastal cities (so intuitively the starting location is coastal). Because this is a water map, the cities need not to be as tightly pack as Pangaea as rival civs don't necessarily start with the same island as you. This is a different story in continents so your city placement should be as "conservative" as you would when playing Pangaea. During the process, your next goal is to gun for the Great Lighthouse (that also means your capital should have a potential to be
heavy or else should be at least forest heavy for chopping it, you could build this on 2nd city but as the difficulty goes up the chances of missing it goes higher if you don't built it sooner). Obviously, this wonder is a must for water maps regardless which civ you play. Losing it means slowing down expansion and research for the rest of the game and we do not like that. This also implies that you should forgo early wonders like Stonehenge, Pyramids, Great Wall, Temple of Artemis, even Oracle! You might even want to delay granary building over this wonder.Once the wonder has been built, your last goal is to meet as many AIs as possible. This time adding more coastal cities as you can as the wonder can support most of your city maintenance. Also, Pottery is a few techs away so I doubt you would crash your economy real hard. Around this time you might want to land block the AI if you have the opportunity unless he is a warmonger like Shaka, Alexander, Ragnar or Montezuma. Lastly, if you fail to meet some AIs or being isolated before the wonder is up, it would be smart to place your third city on a different island near the capital to allow a +2
on all cities.(See #14 of Seraiel's guide: CIV Illustrated #4: "Hybrid Economy" [1])
priority techs in no particular order: bronze working, sailing, pottery, writing
Middle Phase
One of the issues in mid game phase is many of your cities are running
due to constant whipping. So it would be nice if you can settle on spots with 
resources especially gold, silver and gem because of bonus from forge, which conveniently is along the path of Metal Casting. Around this time, we should beeline Metal Casting for Colossus. On higher difficulties, after having Great Lighthouse, you simply have to rush the Colossus or else the AI might grab it. Of course, there are times that you might lose the wonder race especially on IMM and deity but nothing is stopping you from taking it from the AI. If you have both wonders, the remaining parts of the game should be a cakewalk given you don't screw up badly.Next I would like to talk about is warfare. If you have a warmongering neighbor and you see a red fist. Prepare to sink some of their galleys. Again beelining Metal Casting, unlocks triremes (upgradable to carracks too) which is a counter for invading galleys. If you manage to sink the enemy ships without them landing on your empire, you are golden. Be careful of being too greedy in expansion because if you spread yourself too big, it might be difficult to defend your territories in case of a surprise DoW.
Techwise, you might want to beeline compass for harbors and optics for those caravels. Currency is always welcome if you manage to get it from AI. Playing as Portuguese civ, I recommend that you skip Astronomy. What? Are you mad? Seriously, depending on the map, the UU changes the strategy, tech path of your mid game. Let us review the Portuguese UU:
.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20100802133224)
Carrack
Cargo Space: 2 (can be military units, settlers, workers)
Can explore rival territory w/o triggering war
3
3 
What seems unimpressive addition to the Portuguese UU might be gamebreaking due to the numerous strategic possibilities. This means that with this UU we can:
- Plant a city in a different island separated by ocean
- Plant a city around the AI, who does not want to open borders
- Plant a junk city near an AI, gifting it thereby gaining diplomatic bonus
- Invade a rival civ for a quick gain (capital with lots of wonder). You can declare war even your carracks are inside the enemy territory without being transported outside their borders once declared.
- Carrack chaining (yes you can do that with carracks if you gain the +1 movement bonus from circumnavigation!)
- Unique city trade route linking
What are we talking about here? One of the limitations of trade route economy is that you can only have 1 foreign route per rival city. Given your overexpansion abuse and some AIs running mercantilism, there will come a time where some cities won't have any foreign routes left. With harbors, this is a difference between a +4
versus a +2 per trade route. A quick fix here is to research Astronomy to grab those over the ocean routes but the consequence of it is to give up the Colossus wonder. However, under some circumstances you can do a work around and that is strategically plotting cities over the ocean to "connect" those AIs. Consider this example:
We met the Sumerians and Babylonians thru exploration but unfortunately we are not being able to trade with them. If we build a city on that one tile island, our borders would just "touch" each other therefore no trade routes could be done, confirming to the rules stated in [4].
Later in the game, we saw an island in the south pole. I decided to plot a city here because once the city border pops, our culture with Sumerians will overlap; thereby, allowing foreign routes to the city as stated in [3]. A few turns later:
We are connected to Sumeria and Babylon without Astronomy. Time to grab more gold per turn over extra resources! Now let's share the foreign
to the rest of the empire:
Once Portalegre border pops, the routes from Sumeria and Babylon would be distributed across the empire. I did the same for the American located at the northwest of the empire.
Around this time, some civs were running mercantilism. Good thing I have more foreign routes for backup. In summary, how does the trick work?
- The city planted and the AI culture border should be distanced by a single ocean tile for it to work. As [4] stated, culture borders cannot be extended more than 1 ocean tile outwards. In short, the AI culture should overlap the city's fat cross.
- Your city culture border should overlap with the AI culture border. That city should "touch" your empire's plot group. We also assume that the AI is still in pre Astronomy.
- If your culture extends to the island tile of the AI. Build a fort and create a road to the nearest AI city
- Inspect if the AI is almost researching Banking. It would be a shame if the trick fails because the AI run mercantilism before you are able to establish your routes with him.
- By experience, I find islands separated by 1 ocean tile scenario are much more common on archipelago maps, fractals.
So if you could do this trick, what are its implications? This means you could forgo Astronomy, prolonging the usefulness of Colossus wonder. Secondly, you can save your Great Scientists to beeline and bulb Education, which let's you be first in Liberalism and at the same time reaping the advantage of "pseudo" ocean trade routes!
For any AIs starting to go mercantilism, you can have the option to invade them and make them your vassal. Gifting you extra
and along the way. If your luck is bad and the rival AIs are very advanced, you might want to try espionage economy to catch up.priority techs in no particular order: metal casting, compass, optics, currency, civil service, education, liberalism, calendar (if you can trade from AI the earlier the better)
Late Phase (Space Race only)
Should you think that you are not in the mood of achieving conquest or domination, Joao can also play as a good guy. He can win space! You don't believe so? Take a look
I only built 2 towns, 1 village and 1 hamlet at this point in the game. All
are generated via trade routes, and water tiles!According to [2], civ4 trade route values can be defined using the following formula:
This means that aside from choosing the right map settings for this strategy (huge, water maps),
generating coastal cities need to have granaries, harbors, feitorias (situational) and grow big to fully exploit the economy. The general weakness of this economy is because both wonders obsoletes by Astronomy and Corporations respectively. So if our endgame goal is space victory, we would want to hold the advantage as long as we can at the same time being first to corporations and communism/physics (marathon games helps). If you followed the mid game phase of meeting all the AIs, exploiting the unique city trade route linking trick, you should be able to connect majority of the AIs. Contrary to what most players are suggesting, I would ignore Astronomy for the moment and go with Liberalism route. Also, I would research Economics asap for feitorias and free market civic. Custom Houses suck most of the time, but if you can connect most of the AIs faraway, you are not scarce in foreign routes should some of them go with mercantilism. The beauty of the UB is it augments both wonders so I would suggest that in this scenario, we want to unlock it ASAP before wonders go obsolete. Add a golden age, all your water tiles are now producing instant 5 and unpillageable! Of course all good things must come to an end, some AI, will research astronomy -> scientific method. Before that happens, you need to give up Colossus if it went to Physics or Communism. I find the lost of 1
per water tile is still worth it rather than losing a Great Person as far as space race is concerned. With that Great Person, you can save that for a golden age while your 
farm should now produce a right Great Person for corporations.With wonders gone, your next goal is to aim for corporations. As mentioned in [5], the Sid Sushi is insanely powerful in water maps due to the abundance of seafood resources. The extra food can be excellent for whipping units, working on workshops, running
. Mining Inc is also nice to have; since like I mentioned, water maps tend to lack but the resources seems lacking compared to maps like Pangaea. This is the same game with corporation spread (mining only gives +8 , sushi gives +18!):
The difference between going space in water maps is that you lack
, so most of the builds are whipped. producing coastal cities but poor can ignore factories as they will do more harm than good. If you managed to build or conquer that city with Kremlin, essential buildings can be up and running soon although spaceship parts are a pain to build. Reserve some forest so you can rush some of the parts prior lunching.Oh, a fun fact: If you are able to hold your advantage long enough (even without Astronomy or Corporation), you might be able to build ironclads, which, are strong defenders against wooden ships
but highly unlikely on higher difficulties.priority techs in no particular order: economics, railroad, medicine, communism, industrialism, all space race tech
Summary
Here are the strengths of Joao II of Portugal:
- Quick Early Expansion, abusive expansion with Great Lighthouse
- Early trade route economy due to starting techs
- Potentially game breaking UU on water maps (early exploration, early cities on foreign islands, better relations from gifting cities, faster pre-astronomy naval invasion, unique pre-astronomy city routes linking)
- Lots of options mid game (domination victory if you focus on military units, espionage economy if you focus on nationalism, space victory if you focus on corporations/state property)
- Cool leader music
- Huge setback on isolation but tolerable
- Needs a sound economy plan (trade routes, cottages, specialists) to shoulder the cost of rapid expansion
- nearly trait less end game (+2
and faster great general ) - difficult to win without decent land
I hope you enjoy reading this article. Feedback is appreciated!
References:
[1] https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/civ-illustrated-4-hybrid-economy.548667/
[2] https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/trade-routes.159047/
[3] https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/trade-routes.159047/page-4#post-7999426
[4] https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/trade-routes.159047/page-4#post-8005706
[5] https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/corporation-the-power-of-sushi.237717/
