[NFP] Portugal (March 2021) - Patch Notes Discussion

[Laurana Kanan]

Afaik no civs in civ 6 has a bonus linked with natural wonders (Spain in civ 5). It fits Joao leader agenda as you have to really explore. So +1 trade route for each discovered natural wonder?

Wouldn't that just be basically Kandy's bonus, but with a trade route instead of a relic.

 

[Alexander's Hetaroi]

Afaik no civs in civ 6 has a bonus linked with natural wonders (Spain in civ 5). It fits Joao leader agenda as you have to really explore. So +1 trade route for each discovered natural wonder?

I feel like the natural wonders have nothing really to do with Portugal's theme, other than like you said with Joao III he will eventually come across them by exploring. His main goal by exploring is to meet potential trading partners.

Also Bull Moose Teddy ability does include natural wonders. He gets +2 science for breathtaking tiles adjacent to one, along with the mountains.

 

[Melkus]

Also, there seems to me an imbalance with 50% plus trade route yields being too strong and feitoria too weak. I would replace both with something like plus 50% trade route yields to cities with feitorias.

Didn't think of that, but it sure seems immediately obvious now.
Had a first game with Portugal that went in a seemingly pretty typical portuguese way of casual economic dominance (played with the great Historical Spawn Dates to get to the Portugal specials quickly). It was a blast to play.
What I found strange about the mechanic, and maybe that's a general problem with trade routes: there's Cardiff in the middle of my empire, which is so close that other empires don't even know it exists, and then there are the ancient empires of China and Korea. I built a canal on the island I colonized on the right, I made the alliances, I sent out the Naus and built the Feitorias.

And the net result is ... the gold yields for the trade routes to Cardiff were already at the maximum possible amount and I could have really saved myself the trouble (admittedly the fun kind of trouble) to explore and just connect every coastal city to Cardiff for pretty much the same profits. I mean... the portuguese didn't get so rich by trading with some city on the moroccan coast (or, well, Cardiff).
Just feels like a wasted opportunity - shouldn't there be a bigger emphasis on long routes and differences in resources?

 

[Republic of San Montuoso]

I will not trust the french translation. For example:

• In the leader ability, there is no mention of free Open Borders with Cities-States. Instead, it says: « +1 Envoy when discovering a City-State before any other civilizations. »
• In the civilization's ability, there is no mention of early embarkation for Traders. Instead, it says: « International Trade Routes can only go over water tiles. », as you said.

It could also be an "early translation". Meaning maybe at the time, Portugal could have free Envoys. But the team tweaked the ability. Don't make me check this theory in all languages!

Here a screenshot for the french one. Even if you do not speak french, you could recognise the Envoy (Émissaire) icon.

Spoiler :

The French translation is very clumsy sometimes (like "Liang the Surveyor" being translated as "Liang la Surveillante" instead of "Liang l'Arpenteuse" as it should have been) so I'm ready to believe it. Hope they will change it, it's quite not really professional to have translations that do not represent the in-game reality.

It was at least somewhat thematic for Spain in Civ 5, but I don't really think there's much basis for it with Portugal. Also, it would make certain mods that I love (Terra Mirabilis) completely busted!

You know, start a game with Portugal with max AI and it's also busted. I generally like my maps clustered, so I played my last game as a OCC with Portugal and 15 AI civs. 20 trades routes (1-Foreign trade, 1-lighthouse, 1-gilded vault, 1-Colossus, 1-Zheng He, 15-other civs) for only Lisbon. Not bad for a city-State.

 

[Hakan-i Cihan]

Also, it would make certain mods that I love (Terra Mirabilis) completely busted!

I would not consider mods as a valid reason for how the devs are balancing the vanilla game. But still they could especially for mods with large amount of subscriptions, as in the case of Terra Mirabilis.

Wouldn't that just be basically Kandy's bonus, but with a trade route instead of a relic.

True.

I feel like the natural wonders have nothing really to do with Portugal's theme, other than like you said with Joao III he will eventually come across them by exploring. His main goal by exploring is to meet potential trading partners.

In that regard it makes much better sense linking it to meeting civs/CS's. A variant of your suggestion could be +1 trade route for each new CS type you meet as Portugal. This would scale less with map size, but is more RNG dependent. I don't know if that would be better considering the exploration part, but would dismiss the new continent part and would be even less similar to Victoria's bonus.

 

[DogeEnricoDandolo]

You know, I just realized - what good is using a feitoria to block a good harbor placement, if the civ that owns the tile then gets to work the tile anyways with its +4 gold +1 production, on top of still being able to build a harbor elsewhere? The more I think about it the more I realize the #1 priority of feitoria placement should be maximizing feitorias in cities you can send trade routes to.

That makes me wonder if you'd lose a feitoria if it's only adjacent resource is a bonus resource that then gets harvested or removed by a volcanic eruption. If that feitoria was lost from the cattle tile getting submerged, I'm assuming you'd still lose it if the cattle disappeared some other way, but I'm not certain.

For some reasons, nope, you don't lose Feitorias when bonus resources are harvested... By "harvesting" I mean sending a builder there and chop it, since placing a district or wonder on top of bonus resources only remove the yields (if you hover your mouse on top of those wonders/districts, they will still say which bonus resources still lie there, it is probably a bug since the introduction of civ6). Anyhow, Feitorias will not be removed this way. Btw, it could be that in the picture I provided the Feitoria was removed because of a big Hurricane, but I doubt it since I did check the climate screen, and also the position of that Feitoria is quite deep in a small bay, not out in the open.
And yes, if Portugal owns a Feitoria, it will be removed. So the post above is probably a result due to mods.

 

[Menocchio]

The problem with this is that it’s just a plain better version of Victoria’s bonus. I think it’s best to avoid abilities that invite super direct comparisons with existing ones.

Obviously Portugal’s existing trade route capacity bonus is better than Victoria’s ability as well, but at least they aren’t the exact same thing thematically.

I had my suspicions before, but Portugal's abilities reveal made it clear that the new civilisations being broadly broken is intended gameplay- and balance-wise for the April patch: people are suggesting that the new civilisations will be nerfed across the board, but instead what will happen is others will be buffed in comparison. Portugal vs. Victoria is a good preview of this. People have complained that, for example, Byzantium obsoletes Spain (and perhaps Georgia), but I find it unlikely that the developers are brainless, despite becoming zombies as of earlier this month.

 

[Alexander's Hetaroi]

I had my suspicions before, but Portugal's abilities reveal made it clear that the new civilisations being broadly broken is intended gameplay- and balance-wise for the April patch: people are suggesting that the new civilisations will be nerfed across the board, but instead what will happen is others will be buffed in comparison. Portugal vs. Victoria is a good preview of this. People have complained that, for example, Byzantium obsoletes Spain (and perhaps Georgia), but I find it unlikely that the developers are brainless, despite becoming zombies as of earlier this month.

I've seen just as much comparisons with Portugal basically obsoleting Wilhelmina's international trading ability, not that there was much to begin with.

 

[SammyKhalifa]

Oh, and archaeology spawns zombies. Is that even in the patch notes? They won't attack the archaeologist, fortunately.

Makes sense.

 

[PiR]

Civ would be like a multy field Chess Game! You would have to know the Game in-n-out and the UI must be the best that any Game can offer, in order to just keep with th AI. Now That would be a Game to stand the test of Time: How long can you keep with the AI before it will crush you?

Well, developping a perfect AI is far from an easy task. Those initiatives can let us dream though https://deepmind.com/blog/announcem...ard-open-starcraft-ii-ai-research-environment

My guess is that no, because technically if they built a Harbor you could sent to them, right? Not that they will due to CS logic. But yeah, it's annoying to have a few that are just broken. My current game has a bunch of CS one off the coast, so that's definitely annoying that you can't do anything with them. I'm also sort of stuck in that the map I'm on doesn't have continuous oceans, so I have a few different seas to navigate. Although I'm definitely still looking, since I think there might be a few potential canal city spots that I could use to extend my routes. Also I have a spot where I could technically build the Panama Canal which would join the 2 seas that I'm on together if I build a canal as well in another city. I'm actually sort of intrigued by that option, since it would let me stack all my routes together which will help when that diamond corporation comes online...

The Panama Canal actually serving its original purpose! That's a raaaare thing! I would love to encounter that.

Oh, and archaeology spawns zombies. Is that even in the patch notes? They won't attack the archaeologist, fortunately.

Nope, and I don't think it was mentioned in the livestream either. I don't think anyone knew until we experienced it and looked at the game files.

I'm pretty sure I saw it somewhere, but maybe it was in those forums?

 

[Aurelesk]

The French translation is very clumsy sometimes (like "Liang the Surveyor" being translated as "Liang la Surveillante" instead of "Liang l'Arpenteuse" as it should have been) so I'm ready to believe it. Hope they will change it, it's quite not really professional to have translations that do not represent the in-game reality.

This is a tricky question, because the feminine form and the masculin can convey different meanings sometimes:

• un Arpenteur (masc.) is the litteral translation of "Surveyor", but few french people really know that word, even if they know the world Arpentage.
  • un/une Geomètre is more used, and the noun is both masculine and feminine!
• une Arpenteuse (fem.) is... a caterpillar
• un Surveillant (masc.) is more likely to convey the sense of "Warden" without context.
• une Surveillante (fem.) is more likely to convey the sense of "School Supervisor" without context.

So let's go for Liang la Géomètre!


They are a lot of inaccuracies in the french translation:

• Mansa Musa's ability does not mention that the Gold gain is from flat desert tiles, and just says flat tiles: « Les routes commerciales internationales gagnent 1 unité d'or pour chaque case de terrain plat de la ville d'origine. » which means: "International Trade Routes gain +1 Gold for every flat tile in the sending city. "
• For a long time, the Audience Chamber does not mention the Loyalty loss from cities without Governors. This is now fixed (maybe because of the value changed recently?).
• Cree's ability make no sense if we didn't read the english one first: « Les cases inoccupées se trouvant à 3 cases ou moins d'une ville Cri se retrouvent en sa possession lorsqu'un négociant s'installe dans la ville pour la première fois. ». You could read it: "Unclaimed tiles within 3 tiles of a Cree city come under Cree control when a Trader is moving in the city for the first time." meaning you could buy a Trader (or change city) and the city claim automaticly all tiles within 3 tiles radius. Sadly (or fortunately), the ability does not work like that.

 

[PiR]

The simple fact that I would be missing Sean Bean's voice made me give up on translations.
Actually it started with Nemoy in 4.

 

[Republic of San Montuoso]

I've seen just as much comparisons with Portugal basically obsoleting Wilhelmina's international trading ability, not that there was much to begin with.

I think that the big mistake people have with Netherlands is to consider them a trade civ, because of what they were in civ V and IV, of what they were IRL and because of the meager Radio Oranje bonus.

But for me the Netherlands are way more a city-planning and colonizing civ rather than a trade civ. The way they build their cities is much more important than how they manage their trade.

Compare the Netherlands to other well-known trade civs, like the Crees, Portugal, Victoria, Phoenicia or Mali. They have bonuses towards increasing their trade route, and the bonuses they have are quite straightforward to gain more gold.
Wilhelmina has no way to increase her trade route capacity, and half the bonuses for her trade routes are tied to loyalty, and the other one is a yield generally uncorrelated with trade: culture. Important to note: it's also from receiving international trade routes, no the Dutch actively doing trade.
On the other way, Netherlands gain bonuses for rivers, culture bomb from harbors, and their Polders require careful planning and settling. In fact, they're even discouraged to build commercial hubs: they're encouraged to build harbors (which often negate the utility of having a commercial hub), and IZ, TS and campuses take the river spots generally reserved to CH.
They're supposed to colonize foreign continents and build efficient cities, not necessarily trade. They have no bonus towards trade at all. In fact, if Portugal is putting someone on spot, it would be Victoria's England. But Portugal isn't taking the trading spot of the Netherlands, because the Netherlands never had a trading spot to begin with.

At least that's my analysis. The Dutch CUA ability is clearly geared towards city-planning, the Polders are mostly a production/food improvement before gold (a great wall can easily produce 4 gold, as much as a polder, and nobody would say that China's Great Wall is a "trade" improvement) to help you newfound city to quickly have a big population to survive foreign loyalty pressure.

And I think it's a great design! Noone could say that the Polders aren't a great improvement (even if lots would admit that the requirements are maybe too restrictive), and Grote Rivieren is extremely potent and one of the few ways to have very high adjacency bonuses for Theater Squares right at the beginning without too much investment. The only thing is that the loyalty bonuses from Radio Oranje is ridiculous (need to be pumped up at least to +4) and the culture is weak. Radio Oranje needs to be improved, but definitely not towards trade, but toward consolidating a large, overseas empire.

So let's go for Liang la Géomètre!

Very good that way, sir (or madam)! I went with Arpenteuse because I know what an arpenteur is and since the new grammar reforms and the genderification of work related nouns, arpenteuse must exist. Arpentrice might be, also. But I agree that Géomètre is perfect.
And yes, it's true, sometimes I see some Abilities different in French than in English... Do you think we need to send an e-mail to Firaxis France and propose them to take the translation part?

 

[Zegangani]

Well, developping a perfect AI is far from an easy task. Those initiatives can let us dream though https://deepmind.com/blog/announcem...ard-open-starcraft-ii-ai-research-environment

A very informative Article. Developping a perfect AI isn't just a challenging and difficult task, but actually nearly impossible. Because there can be meriads of different Events and Situations, and therefore Outcomes, in a Game that we can't make AI handle everything correctly. The Task is more to make AI as effecient as possible, in its Actions and Reactions. It has to think and plan ahead as a Human Player would. The only thing that hinders the Human Player from being perfect, is our Memorry. We can't keep track of everything, and that's why a good UI is so essential to Strategy Games. Yet, even with a perfect UI that contains every important Info in the Game, it would still be too much for the Human Player.

So we need Cyborgs ! And not AI to play against

 

[8housesofelixir]

Also, there seems to me an imbalance with 50% plus trade route yields being too strong and feitoria too weak. I would replace both with something like plus 50% trade route yields to cities with feitorias.

I agree with this point as well - +50% yields is pretty strong in itself.

On the other hand, I found that, if you can concentrate a lot of Feitoria in one very developed AI city - or you develop the city yourself and sell it to the AI so you can trade with the city, an actually useful strategy - that particular trade route will give a huge amount of production.

Normally, the primary yield of a trade route is gold. The production yield per trade route, even with Wisselbanken and Democracy, is usually less than 10 (Ecommerce is a bit too late). With a couple of Feitoria, the production yield can easily exceeds 10 on the trade routes, making every trade route to that city technically an Industrial Zone. I have crated such an AI Feitoria city in my first Portugal game, as a result my new cities could build a Harbor within 10 turns, and my capital had over 300 production before modern era hits.

IMHO, the focus of Feitoria could be changed to production instead of gold - say, 2 Production and 2 Gold per Feitoria. Trade route is already gold intensive, give them a production bonus would open up new strategies.

 

[Alexander's Hetaroi]

Wilhelmina has no way to increase her trade route capacity, and half the bonuses for her trade routes are tied to loyalty, and the other one is a yield generally uncorrelated with trade: culture. Important to note: it's also from receiving international trade routes, no the Dutch actively doing trade.
On the other way, Netherlands gain bonuses for rivers, culture bomb from harbors, and their Polders require careful planning and settling. In fact, they're even discouraged to build commercial hubs: they're encouraged to build harbors (which often negate the utility of having a commercial hub), and IZ, TS and campuses take the river spots generally reserved to CH.

I know Grote Riverien is already a powerful ability but I think it needs something to add to trading. I think a simple +1 trade route capacity for shipyards would help considering they are already incentivized to build harbors.

And I think it's a great design! Noone could say that the Polders aren't a great improvement (even if lots would admit that the requirements are maybe too restrictive), and Grote Rivieren is extremely potent and one of the few ways to have very high adjacency bonuses for Theater Squares right at the beginning without too much investment. The only thing is that the loyalty bonuses from Radio Oranje is ridiculous (need to be pumped up at least to +4) and the culture is weak. Radio Oranje needs to be improved, but definitely not towards trade, but toward consolidating a large, overseas empire.

I think that's the main problem. The only way the Dutch can manage an overseas empire with loyalty is by sending trade routes from those cities.

At least Portugal got around the loyalty problem considering they don't have to go out and establish cities on other continents, just trading posts.

 

[Francel]

I hope that instead of buffing the majority of pre-NFP civs, they nerf the majority of NFPers.

There are some old timers in need of love, sure, but we don’t need more power creep. Portugal’s insane trade routes might be the most imba ability yet.

 

[Kwami]

I hope that instead of buffing the majority of pre-NFP civs, they nerf the majority of NFPers.

There are some old timers in need of love, sure, but we don’t need more power creep. Portugal’s insane trade routes might be the most imba ability yet.

But if everyone gets buffed, then nobody is imbalanced. Right? Powerful civs are more fun to play. Let's make them all powerful.

 

[tat501]

I just started playing with Portgual. This is broken. I have +300 gold a turn before turn 100. Its just ridiculous. When you get Naus and buy 10 of them and put Feitorias everywhere its just GG.

 

[Starwars]

I won a rather easy Deity victory as Portugal today.

I like the idea of this civ, naval trade civ is something that just appeals to me. But Portugal is one of those civs that is just... more more more. I find it more fun on paper than actually playing it. Once you turn the tables in Civ VI and you start to maximize your yields and head towards a victory, that's when the boredom tends to kick in and that's just amplified with Portugal. You just buy absolutely everything. It doesn't make for particularly fun gameplay. Especially since gold isn't exactly scarce in this game to begin with. I think the "+1 trade route capacity per civ encountered" ability could've been heavily toned down in some way.

Not quite my jam as far as civs go.