How to win with Portugal

[justaquestion]

Hey all, I've been playing CiV for a while now. I usually do really well (win most of my games on prince). I won once on king but other than that I had no success on there. But since brave new world came out. Its gotten harder I realized. I usually win though still except I can not for the life of me win with Portugal. I can't use them apparently. I've came close twice and still lost and flat out got beat 2 more times and I was way behind in science it was bad. So my question is how do I win with Portugal? can some one give me pointers or point me to a strategy guide on it? i've looked up the guide on steam aboout each civ and it still didnt seem to help me with winning. can some one show me or give me a indepth strategy and look at maria I of portugal and how to use her successfully.

TLDR: tell me how to win with portugal or show me a strategy guide on her or something

 

[Ravellion]

Wage as little war as possible.
Find a spot on the ocean with a lot of different resources near it. Settle one or two cities near there. Hopefully your capital, but you might spawn on an inland sea without knowing.
Trade with all the Civs.
Buy all the CS.
Win diplomatically.

 

[RealHuhn]

Wage as little war as possible.
Find a spot on the ocean with a lot of different resources near it. Settle one or two cities near there. Hopefully your capital, but you might spawn on an inland sea without knowing.
Trade with all the Civs.
Buy all the CS.
Win diplomatically.

Portugal is obviously designed to ignore city states. Why would you pay money for a CS when you get their luxury resource for free after Navigation?

I had fun doing the following:
Go Commerce for -25% rushbuy costs combined with Order's level 1 tenet -33% costs for buildings.
Focus on getting to Astronomy quickly, upgrade 4-5 triremes to Naus, use them to explore the whole map in just a few turns. Beeline Industrialization, rushbuy three factories with money from Naus and start Order. Settle new cities on good spots on other continents and rushbuy workshops and aqueducts to get them going. Counter happiness issues with other Order tenets like +2 happiness per monument. Also have enough workers ready to build Feitorias quickly.

A Liberty start makes it easier to build those colonies although you should focus on a rather small empire with big coastal cities in the early game. I'd suggest to ignore religion and focus on trade routes instead. Always have one trade route dedicated to food trades.

If you have multiple good spots at the coast, you might also wanna spend two policies in the exploration tree for early happiness boosts from lighthouses and harbors. Or finish commerce for +2 happiness per luxury.

Victory types:
Cultural - Portugal has a huge advantage when it comes to finding dig sites for artifacts. The Nau is an amazing scout. Colonies can have enough museums to support archeologist spam. Either rushbuy those buildings or spend two policies in the Aesthetics tree for cheaper museums. Finishing the exploration tree for hidden artifacts might also be a good plan.

Science - Rushbuy science buildings asap, +25% science per factory, rationalism

Domination - works well when AI has mostly coastal capitals, Autocracy might be better here for rushbuying an army instead of useless buildings

Diplomatic - no, it's a waste of their ability

 

[chukownu]

Why would you pay money for a CS when you get their luxury resource for free after Navigation?

Good question. I think I found the answer:

If you befriend a City-State, it may provide you with food, culture, or even military units.

 

[RealHuhn]

Good question. I think I found the answer:

Are you trying to make fun of me here? Everybody knows that.

The point is that you can spend gold on something else instead of investing into city states for a small bonus. I'd say only cultural CS are worth considering because culture can't be bought as easily in BNW.

But yeah you're smart, you would spend 1000 gold on a mercantile CS although you get both of their luxuries for free ...

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[scheva007]

You will get tons of extra money with portugal, so staying as friendly as possible with anyone is recommended. With the money you can buy the CS that arent coastal, or already have resources you have, but provide units or culture or food.

The Nau is indeed an excellent unit, so if you beeline for it, you have a good chance of becoming host of the world congress. Once in the industrial era, spend your money on CS to get their vote. Then you can go diplomatic or science victory.

I got a question about CS resources in general though. They cant be traded anyway, so i dont know why its mentioned again on the feitora page. What is the use of additional copies in CS anyway? If a CS has for example 3 wine, that pointless, right?

 

[Veneke]

Portugal is obviously designed to ignore city states. Why would you pay money for a CS when you get their luxury resource for free after Navigation?

...

Diplomatic - no, it's a waste of their ability

A Civ focused on gold generation is wasting it's ability by going for the diplomatic victory, the victory condition which is almost entirely based on gold?

Plop down Feitorias everywhere, then sell all of your own luxury resources to the AI and rely upon city-states to cover your happiness. That's a huge jump that comes much earlier and far cheaper than it otherwise would. The gold you generate from that (which is recurring if you play peacefully, by continuously selling your domestic luxuries to the AI), then, can be turned into anything and the victory condition which most easily lends itself to investments of gold is the diplomatic one.

You should definitely check out Freedom and bee-lining Treaty Organization. You'll still need an initial investment (already covered by the sale of luxuries and/or quests) but once Treaty Organization comes online you'll have those City-States locked down.

Also, typically speaking Portugal favours coastal city-spots so Exploration can be more useful than Commerce (although taking the Commerce opener for Big Ben is definitely a solid move).

...

I got a question about CS resources in general though. They cant be traded anyway, so i dont know why its mentioned again on the feitora page. What is the use of additional copies in CS anyway? If a CS has for example 3 wine, that pointless, right?

There's not really any point to getting multiple CS luxuries, no. Unless they're from different city-states in which case they're useful as backups.

 

[chukownu]

Everybody knows that.

Then why did you ask the question?

But yeah you're smart, you would spend 1000 gold on a mercantile CS although you get both of their luxuries for free ...

Please don't make things up about people who answer your questions.
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[Chiatroll]

Portugal is obviously designed to ignore city states. Why would you pay money for a CS when you get their luxury resource for free after Navigation?

Diplomatic - no, it's a waste of their ability

Their ability is extra gold. Lots of extra gold. Your trade city has a 1.0 modifer per resource instead of a 0.5 and this is huge. You get an extra resource when you befriend one so you always have resources to sell for GPT if you can find a trade partner. They are second in the ability to make money only to venice if you find a good spot for your trade city and then pump it full trading posts and the farms to work them.

You have excessive amount of all the lux resources you have because of the Fetoria and your alliances so you can sell those to the other civs that lack them.

Thanks to the nau you probably found all the other civilizations first so you start as host and want to use that time to set up for the next era to continue having diplomatic control.

Economics and the big ben first then then regularly buys naus and run them across the world for a trade mission and destroying them for a profit. The trip they can perform makes a lot more then the cost of the nau.

A trade city is one you designate to have mostly trading posts and great merchant improvements along with enough farms to make sure that they get used it should also have the East India Company it probably won't be your capital but it's your most important city as them. This city will be excessively important for Portugal. I would even go to war over it if you can find a spot with more then three unique luxuries to base this city on top of. Portugal can be crazy rich with a good trade city and crazy poor without one.

They are like a less restrictive Venice when played right.

Fetorias won't get you a lot of city state resources because of it's positioning rules and the unique resources owned by some of them. (jewelery and porcelain) but it does give you a nice sized advantage over not having them. I think they are great for trades of your extra resource with a civ but not as good as the UU or the UA.

 

[Browd]

Plop down Feitorias everywhere, then sell all of your own luxury resources to the AI and rely upon city-states to cover your happiness. That's a huge jump that comes much earlier and far cheaper than it otherwise would. The gold you generate from that (which is recurring if you play peacefully, by continuously selling your domestic luxuries to the AI), then, can be turned into anything and the victory condition which most easily lends itself to investments of gold is the diplomatic one.

...

There's not really any point to getting multiple CS luxuries, no. Unless they're from different city-states in which case they're useful as backups.

Protugal is next on my list to play, so this is an interesting thread.

With Feitorias, Portugal arguably gets the main benefit of "ally" status (the lux--doesn't get strategics), but none of the benefits of "friend" status that is usually subsumed in ally status. Friend benefits can be substantial (culture, extra happiness from mercantiles, food, faith, military units, etc.) and aren't unique to Portugal, but may be attractive for Portugal in a unique way.

For other civs, to maximize the benefit of a CS relationship you need ally status (to get their lux and strategics and, for cultural and faith CSs, more culture and faith, and for militaristics, to get more frequent unit gifts and the UUs they provide to allies). Portugal seems to be the one civ that can settle for friend status (Patronage + Consulates?) without straining for ally status for most CSs (definitely the case for mercantiles) -- at least until later in the game, when strategic resources may be hard to come by and when CS allies matter for World Congress purposes. Portugal bears a slight resemblance to Siam in that regard.

Another issue with Feitorias and CSs is the irritatingly common phenomonon where half (or more) of the CSs on the map have the same luxury (whales, anyone?). I guess it makes sense to drop a couple of Feitorias in whale-giving CSs (as Veneke notes, for back-up purposes, in case one Feitoria gets pillaged by an enemy), and then spam Feitorias in the remaining CSs with different luxuries (most notably mercantiles -- 1 Feitoria for their regular lux and their porcelain/jewelry).

And then, regarding victory conditions ... hmmm.

 

[bewebste]

I played a game with Portugal on King (standard speed, standard size, continents) and won a cultural victory without too much trouble. The basic outline of play was:

• I went for a very tall approach, only founding three of my own cities. Two of them were coastal, so I was able to get some lucrative sea trade routes up and running fairly quickly, giving a good cash flow. Building Colossus in my capital helped, getting an extra trade route and a free cargo ship, plus its gold bonus. The other civs didn't end up building many coastal cities, so most of the sea routes were with city states, but they still provide pretty decent gold.
• The extra cash meant I was able to concentrate my cities efforts on food over production, and buy any extra buildings/units I needed to keep up.
• Building National College and Oxford University with only three cities kept costs low, and always had a (narrow) science lead for the whole game.
• I was on a continent with a big mountain range down the middle. Siam and I were on one side, with Arabia, Sweden, and the Huns on the other side. I took out Siam and puppeted their three cities after I'd gotten the science wonders built, and never had any military threat for the rest of the game. Atillia tried to attack me once, but failed miserably trying to squeeze his army through the mountain range. Once I liberated Columbo, he paid me for peace.
• Started building the various guilds and national epic ASAP so I could start churning out great writers, artists, and musicians. (no Gardens unfortunately, since I couldn't build any of my cities on a river).
• Built a couple Naus and used them to quickly explore the globe and found the World Congress.
• Got the Sistine Chapel and the Louvre built, and did a little swapping for some nice theming bonuses once I started churning out Great Works.
• Went straight to Archaeology and starting spamming archaeologists everywhere, stealing everyone's artifacts. Some civs were a little peeved, but it didn't seem to have much of a lasting effect.
• My tourism didn't have too much trouble influencing most of the civs, except for Arabia, who had conquered Sweden and most of the Huns and was churning out a ton of culture. To combat that, I ended up sending several Great Musicians on concert tours over there, to get their "tourism bomb" effect. They would provide 2000+ tourism per tour once I got to the later part of the game. (!)
• I founded a religion, but it didn't go anywhere. My cities were growing too fast for the conversion to even keep up in my own cities, much less spread it to others. Most of the faith I earned ended up buying great people (one scientist, a couple engineers, and at least three great musicians)
• I never ended up building any feitorias. Partially because I kind of forgot about them, but I was also swimming in gold and happiness already, so didn't have much need for extra luxuries anyway. I also allied with the maritime city states to grow faster, and the cultured ones, mostly to keep Arabia from getting their culture. Later on I bought the religious ones too, so I could use the faith to buy MOAR MUSICIANS.
• Later on, I was generating enough cash even without the trade routes, I made most of my land routes internal and gave boosts to my food/production instead of even more gold.
• Proposed the World Fair and International Games, and "won" them both. The latter was especially helpful, giving a +100% tourism boost for 20 turns.
• Tried to keep open borders and trade routes open with as many civs as possible, to get the +25% tourism boost from that. Totally shot myself in the foot by proposing an embargo against Arabia, and losing my trade route bonus as a result. Ended up proposing to repeal my own proposal a couple sessions later. Did you know there's a Steam "flip flop" achievement for that?
• I chose Freedom as an ideology, with only India choosing the same. So, I proposed World Ideology: Freedom at the World Congress, and it didn't take long after that for most of the other civs to revolt and switch to Freedom. That helped with eliminating the tourism penalty for differing ideologies.
• The end game was pretty much just churning out as much tourism as possible (Eiffel Tower, CN Tower, etc.) and once I researched The Internet, it was pretty much over.

So, definitely take advantage of their trade route bonus. Early sea routes with mercantile city states are especially lucrative. Churn out a few Naus and get in charge of the congress. Not too much war. Use your gold to help concentrate on food/production in your cities.

 

[scheva007]

Another issue with Feitorias and CSs is the irritatingly common phenomonon where half (or more) of the CSs on the map have the same luxury

Thats so annoying. In my game as portugal, 50% of the CS had only fur...

 

[RealHuhn]

Then why did you ask the question?



Please don't make things up about people who answer your questions.

It was a rhetorical question. Ever heard of that before? It couldn't be more obvious.

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Please read the forum rules: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=422889

Plop down Feitorias everywhere, then sell all of your own luxury resources to the AI and rely upon city-states to cover your happiness. That's a huge jump that comes much earlier and far cheaper than it otherwise would. The gold you generate from that (which is recurring if you play peacefully, by continuously selling your domestic luxuries to the AI), then, can be turned into anything and the victory condition which most easily lends itself to investments of gold is the diplomatic one.

You get bonus happiness from feitorias but when you sell your own unique luxuries you lose happiness again. I think it's a lot better to use this happiness for expansion, either through settling colonies or conquest.

However, I like the idea of Patronage/Consulates. That way, you get the bonus from CSs and their luxuries as well without investing any money at all.

People here assume that you can't do anything else with money than to win a diplomatic victory. Obviously, this isn't true and Portugal is probably the best civ for ignoring CS alltogether.

Buy a huge military, buy science buildings as soon as they are available, buy workshops and lighthouses in new cities. Whatever you want. It has more benefits than wasting money for city states although you get half of their bonus for free anyway. Sure, if you get 2-3 succesful quests in a row and get allied to a cultural CS, then go ahead and spend 250 gold to keep the alliance. I agree.

That was the whole point of my post. The true strength of Portugal isn't diplomatic victory. It's commerce and rushbuying stuff. Stack all the rushbuying bonuses for buildings and a research lab only costs ~550 gold. In late game, Portugal can earn that in 2-3 turns.

 

[Veneke]

You get bonus happiness from feitorias but when you sell your own unique luxuries you lose happiness again. I think it's a lot better to use this happiness for expansion, either through settling colonies or conquest

However, I like the idea of Patronage/Consulates. That way, you get the bonus from CSs and their luxuries as well without investing any money at all.

People here assume that you can't do anything else with money than to win a diplomatic victory. Obviously, this isn't true and Portugal is probably the best civ for ignoring CS alltogether.

No, people assume - correctly, that gold is most easily and efficiently converted into a diplomatic victory.

Buy a huge military, buy science buildings as soon as they are available, buy workshops and lighthouses in new cities. Whatever you want. It has more benefits than wasting money for city states although you get half of their bonus for free anyway. Sure, if you get 2-3 succesful quests in a row and get allied to a cultural CS, then go ahead and spend 250 gold to keep the alliance. I agree.

That was the whole point of my post. The true strength of Portugal isn't diplomatic victory. It's commerce and rushbuying stuff. Stack all the rushbuying bonuses for buildings and a research lab only costs ~550 gold. In late game, Portugal can earn that in 2-3 turns.

Portugal's strength is in making money - what you do with that money is up to you. They're a very versatile Civ suited to any victory condition, diplomatic more than most because of how much closer you get to that VC per gold spent.

You keep saying that you're wasting money by buying city-states and I struggle to see how you can make that argument with such fervour. Buying up city-states is the same as buying up spaceship parts or buying production buildings to crank out more troops - they take you directly to your victory condition. The thing is that buying up city-states takes you closer to the diplomatic victory condition than any others earlier and, with the Feitoria, they effectively pay for themselves even if you don't bother with Patronage, Arsenal of Democracy or Treaty Organization (though you'd be mad to ignore them).

I think you're getting hung up on the fact that the Feitoria gives you an element of the stuff you get for purchasing city-states when really what you should be recognizing is that Portugal can make money hand over fist earlier than anyone else (except perhaps Venice) without breaking a sweat and that the diplomatic victory condition is, essentially, one that comes to the person with the most gold.

 

[Chiatroll]

The problem with domination victory for them is that your money is from fragile trade routes. When you get into a war it is expected that all your trade routes will be plundered unless you are very good at defending 8-10 different points on the map and when they are plundered you will no longer be made of money.

 

[chukownu]

It was a rhetorical question. Ever heard of that before? It couldn't be more obvious.

"A rhetorical question is one that is asked already knowing the answer."

So, when you asked "Why would you pay money for a CS when you get their luxury resource for free after Navigation?" you already knew that the answer was obviously:

To gain delegates in world congress that can either help push or deny proposals, or contribute to the diplomatic victory?

To gain units, culture, faith, food, or happiness (mercantile CS do give happiness independent of their luxuries at friend status)?

To gain access to strategic resources, such as coal, when not having any alternative source, being first to industrial and wanting to have factories up to get an ideology running quickly?

As a defensive measure, if the CS is close, and its current ally may indicate an incoming DoW, or an aggressive tactic, if the CS is close to the target, where during war the CS units will pressure and/or distract to your benefit?

You would under no circumstances pay money for a CS when you already have a copy of their luxury?


Thank you for the brilliant insight delivered by a method of rhetoric that cannot be manipulatively misinformative whatsoever.

 

[Monado]

I've won one emperor game with Portugal so far. One fun tactic I used:

1. If you choose Freedom, grab the "arsenal of democracy tenet" ...I believe tier 2. Gives 25 influence with a city state per gifted unit and 25% production of military units. (can gift units to a cs every 3 turns)
2. Delay steam power for a bit, as to not obsolete the Nau with ironclads.
3. Absolutely spam Nau's (at this point they'll can be created every 1-2 turns in a good city), and find a good spot halfway around the map to sell their exotic goods.
4. Gift to a city state immediately after selling the goods.
5. Gain all the CS without spending gold and getting tons of extra from the exotic goods.

Standard speed, size each Nau was getting 350 gold from its exotic goods and giving 25 xp to a city state. The feitora's were completely unneccessary in my game, but you can still spend a bit of time building a few before this strategy comes into effect if you're short on happiness at that point.

 

[chazzycat]

get good production port city to crank out Naus. crank those suckers out, sail them across the world and watch the cash roll in.

Build a couple extra workers, send them off all over the world to the city states to build Feitorias as soon as you can. Its best to be at peace during that time.

Otherwise they are a pretty normal peaceful trading type civ.

I agree with RealHuhn when it comes to city states. The luxuries being free makes investment not as worthwhile. Might as well use all that gold for RAs, infrastructure or units.

 

[Danei]

If you're determined to ignore city states with portugal, you can, but it's not necessarily a good idea. Portugal ends up making a lot of money, and when you're sitting on 1100 bucks and a CS comes up with a public works quest, sometimes you might as well grab it.

 

[_megafone_]

Just finished a Deity game with Portugal on Archipelago, and the Feitorias impressed me more than I thought. A single Feitoria in a Mercantile CS can give you 8 free PERMANENT Happiness, which is an incredible bonus that costs you basically nothing. It's even more powerful than their UA if used properly, I believe.

In terms of strategy, though, there's nothing special about playing Portugal. They're a versatile civ that can do whatever you want - you can use Feitoria free happiness to maintain extra puppets, or chain Golden Ages in a cultural strategy, and gold can be used for whatever.