Which tribe would you think hardest for a space race game?

[Optional]

Relevant for lower levels, I think. There you can better have a power civ. Probably even a high level player wouldn't find the Portuguese traits and UU beneficial on a level like Warlord.
What you could also consider that a lot of lower level players or casual players aren't good traders, and you must trade with a civ like Portugal. But a player only comfortable on Warlord typically doesn't run a CivAssist program to check it every turn, so they miss out on good trades, they miss out on workers on offer, and therefore end up relying on their own civ to do it all. Then traits like Industrious, Agricultural and Scientific become better. Portugal must compensate for missing these traits by trading. Trading is better with good partners, and a high level partner is better than a Warlord partner, so yes, Portugal is not so good on low levels.

What I find interesting about Portugal that your qualities in a game will come to depend on what you can trade for. In one game you will manage to snap up a lot of AI workers early, so you will be Industrious, in another game you will manage great tech trades and become Scientific, or you pop a few free settlers and become Agricultural, so to speak. It's a 'What's in the box?' tribe. Did I say it's my favourite? Well, that's obvious, isn't it?

 

[Lanzelot]

Just wondering if you have ever played as Portugal?

I did a series of games where I played every Civ (warlord) and Portugal is the only Civ that I will never play again. if it weren't a matter of honour I would not have completed a game with them at all.

First of all: yes, I played them a couple of times. I can "proof" at least two occasions on this forum, once on Emperor (see COTM42, post #19) and once on Demigod in a team game (see SGOTM14 - Team Ivan). The COTM42 I "misplayed" a bit, was still a beginner at that time. But in SGOTM14 we had an impressive start, reaching Monarchy as early as 1910BC, which shows the Power of Portugal on Archipelago maps with many AIs...

Well, I did not say that the Portugese are a great Civ. I can understand you if you don't like them, because I agree that there are a few others which are much more powerful. However, in this thread we are talking about a very special case: "Space Race on Deity". And all I said was, that I think the Portugese are not the worst for this kind of game. Admittedly they are not the best, but I think that at least Arabia, Zululand, Mongolia and Japan will be much worse than Portugal in this special case. Therefore I'm a bit surprised that Portugal is leading this vote so far...

Lanzelot

 

[Lanzelot]

That's certainly one way to go, and sure enough it can work well enough. But, I doubt that as a strategy that would work well on Deity or Sid all that often.

You may be right here. I tried this strategy once on Demigod, and it was already quite difficult to implement: it was hard to find the balance between keeping the AI big and happy enough so they could help me effectively, and preventing the AI from becoming too big and sneak-attacking me (or finishing the space ship before me...). I can imagine that on Deity this becomes even more difficult to implement and on Sid perhaps even impossible...

 

[CommandoBob]

Nitpicking:

The poll question itself needs to be better worded, since many people will answer the question and then read the opening post. I know I did just that.

Perhaps something as ugly as "On a Standard size, Archipeligo map at Sid, with 7 AIs at normal agression and culturally linked starts turned off, which would be the worst civ to have when trying to get into space?"