Zardnaar said:
Any Civ can be decent enough as the traits are gravy IMHO, but what civ is worse than the Portugese?
Consider playing a variant like this...
1. A map with sedentary barbarians.
2. You can only win by the histograph.
3. You cannot train any settlers from your cities.
4. You cannot capture any cities or accept any via flips.
The only tribes really in the same class as Portugal come as the Alphabet tribes and perhaps the scientific tribes. Almost all of them can't pop a settler, so they all will research slower than Portugal. The Hittites might appear to come in the same class as Portugal, but lacking a coastal start, they might not get a shot at the Colossus, which means Portugal should get to Sanitation first, so more content and happy citizens earlier. So, which tribe is better than the Portugese?
Carracks don't come out as weak. As I pointed out in the links above, they make for pretty much the best transport ship to set up specialist farms on an island map. I played the referenced game on a standard sized map. On a larger sized map, such as a Huge map, they work out even better.
Popping a settler early on makes for faster expansion initially than any agricultural tribe whatsoever. And also starting with Pottery usually makes for faster early expansion than starting with Bronze Working and Ceremonial Burial. The traits also do not contradict each other when you play on a high water archipelago map with the proper barbarian setting and want either a free settler early on, or want to pop late ancient age techs... even up to Deity, as you can pop say Currency and Construction with the Portuguese on an 80% Deity map where you would just get barbies with any other tribe, or not reach those huts in time. See the referenced links.
Any proposed ranking of the tribes
ONLY works given that we specify map settings and desired victory condition. Anything else is either ignorance or propoganda.