Age 1 Options
Portugal gain a town centre wagon on age up which makes idling your town centre to age up faster better than completing a villager and having food to spare when clicking age up, as you'll get back that extra vil from the new town center earlier. Portugal start with 7 villagers so you need to decide which build you're doing, and whether you need to chop for a house quickly or be housed. Before considering treasures, there's 7 conceivable starts:
- 10v (save 200w)
- 10v, trading post
- 11v, house (save 100w)
- 12v, house (save 100w)
- 13v, trading post, house (chop 100w)
- 13v, market+hunting dogs, house (chop 50w, mine 50c)
- 14v?, trading post, market+hunting dogs, house (chop 150w, mine 50c)
The builds which save wood only really work with advanced trading post. Delaying a trading post or market and hunting dogs to save wood for advanced trading post allows you to place trading posts before your opponent.
The charts below show representative builds without treasures but with idle time based on timings from my games up to age 2. Steel traps is researched at the earliest opportunity when making units (ie after first crate shipment for 10/10 builds), then only food is gathered. Looking at only food makes it easier to compare builds with different gather rates. In the non-sheep builds I'd be gathering only food anyway. In the sheep builds I'd be gathering coin but this would be instead of gathering from hunts, which in terms of villager seconds is just as efficient as gathering food from hunts when herdables aren't available. For simplicity the sheep and cow gathering are with every villager gathering them simultaneously, so don't expect to gather food that fast. The naming convention I've used is civ_age up vils_stuff done in age 1__stuff done in transition__age 2 eco card.
build comparisons
Cards
Portugal doesn't have villager shipments so there's several possible first cards:
- Furrier (increases hunts/berries 15% gather rate, 7.5% yield)
This card isn't great but becomes decent as the game goes on as it affects more villlagers. It's the best option when you expect to have map control to gather hunts. Sending crates and selling food at the market allows you to almost only gather food for the early and mid game. Primarily gathering food is something you should aim for as it's the fastest gathering resource, and portugese have a 5% gather rate bonus. When you play this card you're committing to gathering from hunts, so should send spice trade early in age 2. I prefer this card to eco theory beause:
- Running out of hunts is game deciding, and furrier prolongs hunts.
- It's quite late in the game (9min?) when eco theory gives a larger benefit than furrier. Your macro needs to be at a 2:1 food:coin (or wood) ratio before eco theory is better (furrier giving 2v*0.15 = 0.3v, eco theory 3v*0.1 = 0.3v)
- However it takes up an extra card slot as you'd usually have eco theory in your deck as a late game card. - Eco theory (increases all resources 10% gather rate)
This card is the meta card when not using ATP or sheep, and beats furrier in the late game. Feel free to swap it for Furrier in the builds below. - Advanced trading post
This card is good when you can build 3 trading posts or more, when staying in base or taking map control. When staying in base this makes your opponent have to build an army to destroy the trading posts, which buys you time. When taking map control and playing colonial this can be used to get stagecoach, or you can build an early native post to be able to immediately train units in age 2. - 7 Sheep + livestock pen
This card is amazing on livestock maps, and good when you're penned in your base without have access to hunts. Livestock gathers at 2f/s (compared to a base gather rate of 0.84f/s for huntables), so you want task several villagers per livestock to minimise the decay. With 4 villagers gathering each sheep you'll gather 274f per sheep. 7*274f = 1918f. The sheep take 6 mins to fatten, so will be ready around 8 mins. After gathering the sheep you'll have gathered amount the same amount of food as with furrier*, but will have depleted less hunts (~1400f*) so can last longer in base. On livestock maps this card is even better as you can fatten the livestock from the map. Yaks take 233s/3m53 and goats take 263s/4m23s, both faster than the sheep, so tasking these to the pen before sheep will allow you to gather fully fattened livestock earlier. Since you have a livestock pen, you can later send 7 cows in age 2.
* assumes only gathering food - Team Early Dragoons
This card is a waste of a shipment. You can FF and send 5 and train a batch at a similiar time to the second batch of age 2 goons. - Save shipment till age 2
This was common when playing colonial before DE, but the addition of the 7 sheep card as a strong age 1 card, fixed 200w start making an age 1 trading post the norm, and +100xp for building town centres, you'll have back to back second and third shipments and a 4th shipment soon after. These changes makes saving a shipment a poor choice on DE, although maybe there's an less economy focused build with crates that I've not explored. - Advanced buildings
Having this card in deck is enough to make some Lakota players instant resign or suicidally rush you.
- House of Braganca
This card makes trade route upgrades free, and the train available in age 2. I view this card as 200f, 200w per trade route + 0.6vil per trade post (stagecoach is ~3v, train upgrade is +15%). The problem with this card is it forces you to take and hold the trade route, which may not be possible as you've skipped a crate/unit shipment to send this card. Sending it as the 3rd or 4th card in age 2 feels late for stagecoach, although since you've got trading posts on xp it's not too delayed. This card is OK on maps with 2 trade routes like Hokkaido, and having it in deck can mind game your opponent into taking or attacking trading posts early. This is a follow up to ATP on those maps. - Spice trade (increases hunts/berries 20% gather rate, 10% yield)
See Furrier in age 1. This card is good without sending furrier in age 1, unless you're going livestock. - 7 Semi Fattened Cows
These cows are very valueable and in some situations (FF/FI with ATP, livestock maps vs a containig civ) they can be worth sending without the 7 sheep + livestock pen card, and building a pen with 200w. They fatten in 4 mins. With 4 villagers gathering each cow you'll gather 457f per cow. 7*274f = 3199f. In most builds this should be sent at ~4.50, arrive at 5.30 and the first cows will fatten at 9.30, when you've likely depleted your in base hunts. Compared to a furrier + spice trade build, the 7 sheep + 7 cow build will have gathered ~400f less. This assumes only gathering food, which at this time isn't realistic for the furrier + spice trade build, and gathering coin in that build puts the advantage to the sheep + cow build. Maybe after 12 minutes, if the furrier+spice trade build has maintained map control and has hunts to gather, they'll be ahead as they've a higher gather rate.
Hunting upgrade aggressive builds
These builds centre around maximising your hunting gather rates and getting map control to allow you use this advantage - There's no point sending spice trade if you've placed town centres close together so you've only got 3 hunts to gather (3.3 when you consider the yield increase!). Before any market upgrades or shipments, it's more efficient to gather food and sell it to gather coin than to mine coin. (i.e. it takes less villager seconds to gather 100f and sell it for 75f than to gather 75c.) As you accumulate hunting upgrades it becomes even more efficient to sell food - It's efficient for a furrier, spice trade, hunting dogs and steel traps build to sell food till 46 coin in the mid game! Selling that much food is a bit excessive as although it's still a positive trade in terms of villager seconds, it's not as large as the early trades, and you'll deplete hunts very fast. Nevertheless you can delay getting placer mines till you're out of coin shipments.
The Portuguese economy is among the worst in early colonial due to the lack of villager shipments. Furrier requires 20 villagers gathering food before it's as good as a 3 villager shipment, and spice trade 25 before it's as good as 5 villagers - but after these gather number these cards become more valuable than the villager shipments. Therefore almost every other civ has a stronger early game economy and can outmass you early.
A forward town centre allows you to be aggressive while still having somewhere to retreat to and take a good fight with a shipment, town centre fire, minutemen, or later colonial militia. Place the town centre on a hunt/coin mine to starve your opponent and have villagers ready to garrison, and/or on a trading post to take stagecoach later. Build buildings behind your town centre so they don't get seiged as easily. Be cautious when facing a civilisation with a tower age up or that builds a blockhouse/warhut as a tower close to your town centre will attack villagers gathering nearby, and you'll likely be out massed so won't be able to seige it down. A barracks length distance between the tower and your town centre is ideal.
After your first or second batches it's important to work out what your opponent is up to. If you're opponent chooses to play colonial, you need to keep making units to survive his timing push, so need to send wood to build a second military production building and houses. Aging up and losing your town centre and forward base is something I've done too often. After their timing push you'll have a stronger economy and map to gather from so should be ahead. If your opponent is semi-FFing or FFing, to follow them up at a reasonable time you need to stop making units and send coin.
A 2 falconet timing is difficult to deal with and often leads to a lost tc. Placing a tc close to the enemy means there's little walking time on the falconets. You need to plan how you're going to deal with them. There's a few options:
- Culverins require more investment than the 2 falc shipment as you have to build an artillery foundry, and are difficult to make early enough to save the tc - You need to be aged up at a similar time, building an artillery foundry immediately (before scouting falc shipment) and training a culv immediately - all before a 1k w or c shipment.
- Goons ( trained or shipped) with tc fire and mm can be enough, but is usually an unfavourable trade.
- mams or ronin are potential options, but come in later and it's more difficult to get a good trade than with goons as you can't snipe them.
- colonial militia allows tc fire to bring a falconet down to low health before you take a fight. With mm, cm, hus or goons you can usually take out a falconet before your infantry mass is destroyed. This is often the least bad option.
Aging with a mass of muskets and shipping organs seems like a decent timing push, but it's nullified by 2 falconet shipments so there's few civs to do it against. Goon, cas is the common composition, often with hus. Cas are food heavy units, so if food is sparse then add organs for anti inf. Halbs or muskets are options for siege, as organs don't seige well. Cas musket is a decent composition as the upgrade cards and advanced arsenal techs affect both, and works very well vs Sweden.
10/10 colonial/semi ff
Build a TP with starting crates.
(1) Furrier
Bow Pike:
In transition, chop for a market + hunting dogs and a house, then transfer all vils to food. With the 400w crates build a barracks and 5 units.
(2) 700w
Sell food to get the coin for steel traps and use the remaining wood for units/houses/trading.
(3) Spice trade
(4) 700c to age up, or
(4) 600w to make another military building and units
Muskets / Hussar:
In transition, chop for a market + hunting dogs and a house, then transfer all vils to food. With the 400w crates build a barracks and save the 200w. Alternatively delay market + hunting dogs till age up to get a batch of 4 hus instead of 3. Selling food results in fewer units as it's food that limits the first batch here.
(2) 700c
Use the saved 200w to get steel traps/market + hunting dogs, and chop 25w/50w for a house.
(3) Spice trade
(4) 600c to age up / make more hus, or
(4) 700w to make another military building and houses
Muskets / Hussar into stagecoach:
In transition, chop for a market + hunting dogs and a house, then transfer all vils to food. With the 400w crates build a barracks and build a trading post.
(2) 700c
(3) 700w
Build final trading posts and houses, research stagecoach.
(4) 600c to age up / make more hus, or
(4) 600w to make another military building and houses
(5) Spice trade
Aggressive colonial/semi ff
Choose a trading post or market+hunting dogs start based on your starting treasures.
(1) Furrier
Age up with 400w. In transition, chop for a market + hunting dogs or trading post depending on what you built earlier, then transfer all villagers to food. Have 25w ready to get steel traps, a military building and a house. Sell food to get steel traps ASAP. Build your military building behind your forward town centre so you can use town centre fire for protection. Most civs will have more eco than you at this point in the game so expect to be out massed once they build a second military building. Making units and calling colonial militia beats most pushes on your town centre.
Bow Pike:
(2) 700w
(3) Spice trade
Hold off building a house and use the wood for units. With a 12vil age up, you'll have pop space for 4 units before the 2nd town centre completes. Use the 700w to build a house, second rax and units.
Musk:
(2) Spice trade
(3) 700w
(4) 700c
Sell food to make muskets. 700w is needed before 700c to make houses and a second rax else you risk being outmassed.
Hussar:
(2) Spice trade
(3) 700c
Sell food to make hus.
Livestock aggressive builds
On maps with livestock (but not sheep, they're too slow to fatten), the above aggressive above builds can have furrier swapped for 7 sheep + livestock pen, and spice trade swapped for 7 cows. Task the livestock from the map onto the pen first, as they'll fully fatten earlier than the sheep and be ready soon after age up. You can eat livestock before it's fully fattened when you've more than 10. Alternatively shift them around (take a sheep off 1min before it's fat to allow a cow to fatten, then put the sheep back on 1 min later when others have fattened) so it doesn't all fatten at the same time since you won't gather all the fat animals immediately to prevent decay. You can place your livestock pen adjacent to your town centre and fatten the livestock on the town centre side of the pen so the fat livestock walks next to the town centre like in the image:
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