✔ RE Patch
✔ Treaty Patch
BOOM
Age I
As soon as you start, separate villagers on food crates first, one on the other crates, quickly queue your first villager as soon as you get 100 food.
You must maintain constant villager production from now on untill you max the villager limit (99).
Depending on starting crates either build a house then a market [200w] or just a house [100w].
Try to find food/wood/gold treasures around the map with your Explorer.
New villagers to wood and gold as needed, get hunting dog. All new vills go to gather from from animals.
First card is Economic Theory.
Age up with 15 vills and take 400 wood politician, put 10 villagers on food, rest on wood, get placer mines [first gold upgrade in market], move villagers from wood to nearest mine.
Age II
Immediately put down your Town Center wagon and build your new Town Center near a bunch of animals or a mine and start training villagers simultaneously from all the Town Centers. Do this every time you get a new Town Center from aging up. Collect 400 wood from the age up.
Get Steel Traps and Algamation [food and gold upgrade in market]
Start to pump villagers to gold, possibly more villagers on gold than on food depends on how your resource distribution is looking, tweak and adapt on the fly. Your goal is to get 1200 food and 1000 gold for Age III.
Age up using fast age up [exiled prince], should be around 26-28 Villagers, but don't mark when to age up by villagers.
Age III
Research the first wood upgrade in market, and build one more house, move villagers on wood to gold. Second card is Royal Mint and Third card is Refrigeration.
You might need to tweak vill distribution for food/gold depending on resources and map layout. You want to hit around 2000 food and 1200 gold at the same time to get age up as soon as possible.
Age up with 1000 gold bonus.
Age IV
Build one house, distribute your villagers on food and gold to gather 4000 food and 4000 gold to age up ASAP. You should be able to age up to Age V at around 14 min. Fourth card is Factory, fifth card is another factory, put both on wood, research wood upgrade in a factory.
Age V
Get all wood upgrades in the market.
Go heavy on wood while aging to Imperial.
Build one mill and one plantation, start getting upgrades for them.
When you hit Imperial, build Capitol, get Imperial economy upgrades.
Research Mercantilism [1500 XP in Church].
Send Church card, get food upgrade from the Church, then send Sustainable Agriculture card. Start sending villagers to mills.
Final villager distribution should look something like - 42 food, 15 wood, 42 gold.
NOTE: Wood card with Ports isn't really needed because their boom is already very good and the wood card offers nothing significant long-term for Port, they aren't Sioux/Iroquois/Aztecs/Spain where you have legitimate reasons for this card.
FIGHT
In order to play Port effectively you must be cost efficient (expensive base unit - Cassadores - costing 80 food and 40 coin which is much more than a Musket) and have fair map control skills.
BEING AGGRESSIVE
VS MELEE
Melee civs do very well vs Port as Port are a long ranged civ, therefore you want to keep your distance. Civs like Germany and Spain can take you in close, forcing you to make muskets as a meatshield. But do not get too musk happy as your economy cannot support it as well as other civs. 20 - 25 muskets at the front of your army as a meatshield should do with cassadores and organs behind.
One mistake with Port is that people tend to make too many Dragoons. REMEMBER they cost 2 pop, so do not over spam. You want to keep them at the back of your army AT ALL TIMES. Their 20 range means that they can last a fairly long time.
VS RANGE
This is where you want to be as Port. Your best composition is Cassadores/Dragoon/Artillery. not too many Dragoon, maybe 10 - 15, with a solid core of Cassadores with a few Organs, Culverin and 2 Mortars. Again keep Mortars at the back of your army. Make sure you secure flanks so you can wall and whore Mortars all over enemy forward base.
BEING DEFENSIVE
Basically all you need to do is Cassadores/Dragoon/Artillery. Just sit and pull back when you need to. Keep 1 - 2 Mortar out at the back of your army. If they are a melee civ again you will want slightly more Musket and Organs Gun, with Dragoon to support as anti cav. 15 - 20 Cassadores should pick off what your micro'd Organs can not.
Watch Portuguese Boom and Fight:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=57oVpYc5Wck
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9nHUO7SLVwI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kYCbZu1_LQA
