Hey guys spirit of the law here
This civ overview is going to be all about the
Portuguese
they're a pretty unusual civilization they have a unique building
they were the first to have unique unit
that was siege and a top it all off
they have a unique naval unit that can
fire backwards lots of interesting
things to talk about so let's check them out
the Portuguese team bonus is that everyone
on the team gets free cartography.
Now this is more of a convenience than
anything on a purely technical level
it's not saving you any resources since
cartography is free in the expansion but
that's not to say that it's a useless
bonus, one thing that probably doesn't
mean a lot in pro level games but does
in casual games is that it lets you
quickly check in on your allies and see
how they're doing in the dark age an
important skill with mixed rated games
is quickly figuring out who might need
some extra help or who's going for early
aggression, you can tell a bit from the
scores and the chat but it's not the
same as just a quick check of their
early build. The next bonus is that all
of their units cost fifteen percent less
gold you might think it's analogous to
the Turks fifteen percent faster gold
mining bonus and it's quite similar but
it's not exactly the same thing, on paper
a discount is actually better than
a gather rate boost to visualize why
imagine a civilization with plus fifty
percent gather rate versus a
civilization with a fifty percent
discount, the cheaper cost it means two
units for the regular price of one
whereas the faster gather rate only
means three units to a regular
civilizations two, plus the run out of
resources on the map faster clearly they
don't work out to being the exact same
thing in this case fifteen percent
cheaper is equivalent to about an
18-percent faster gather rate, of course
Turk still get the last laugh since they
were changed to plus twenty percent in
the expansion, in the Portuguese early
game it's helps with a few different
types of rushes but more critically in
the late game it means creating more
units overall with the same gold used up
on the map just keep in mind it's only
affecting units so all your techs
requiring gold are still the regular
cost, the 2nd civ bonus is that the ships
have an extra ten percent HP in one
versus 1 galley fights that means they
take 15 hits instead of 14 and end up
with 6 HP left that leaves them at only
5% HP so it looks like it has a pretty
small effect on the scale if we look at
10 versus 10 though that small difference
can start to snowball and the surviving
group averages
about sixteen percent of their total HP
left on a bigger scale of 40 verse 40
the effect should theoretically increase
to around a 21-percent advantage though it's
going to depend on both players
micromanagement and how efficiently the
ships choose targets as a comparison to the
Saracens who if you remember have a
faster attack rate on their galleys the
Saracens win with around ten percent of
their HP left, you're definitely not
going to want to fight Saracens with
equal numbers so that goes for pretty
much every civilization, against the
vikings you're also likely to get out
produced and that's to be at a
disadvantage there early on I've only
mentioned galleys here but the HP bonus
does apply to you all ships including
fishing, fire, demo, trade dogs and cannon galleons
the third bonus is not so much
a bonus but a building it's the feitoria
in the imperial age I re-looked
at this recently in depth as its own topic
just to quickly summarize basically it's
a building that takes up twenty
population space and slowly generates
infinite resources but from a resource
collection standpoint twenty villagers
are significantly better and anytime you
have trade that's going to be by far the
best option in extreme scenarios of
really high stone prices at the market
and a lack of trade then in some cases
it can become a better way to get stone
for mass bombard tower so arguably it
has some situational uses in something
like a free-for-all, when African
kingdoms first came out the stone
generation might have been a little
strong but in the Rise of Rajas
expansion patch the stone
generation was cut nearly in half and
they now cost 250 stone and wood(he meant gold) to
build if you like them because they're
hard to raid or take less management
than villagers just be aware that you're
doing that at a pretty substantial cost
to your economy especially it trade is a
possibility, so that's really all of
their bonuses, one gold discount bonus
one water bonus and a unique building
that you probably won't use in most
games it sound a bit underwhelming so
far and to get a sense of the Portuguese
strengths we're gonna have to move on
first taking a look at the unique unit
the first unique unit is the organ gun
my last video was taking a look at all
their little quirks and specific details
basically they're a gunpowder and seige
unit so they benefit from seige
engineers and not the blacksmith upgrades
they cost 80 wood and 60 gold which is
comparable to the Scorpion and stats
wise they seem like a stronger version
of those though the conquistador stats
are also reasonably similar, where the
scorpion bolts fire through units though
the organ gun instead has a spray attack
where one projectile does the full
damage and the other four projectiles
only do one damage, despite what it says
about being very effective against mass
groups of units it's definitely not on
the same level as scorpions in that
situation, they do pretty well against
infantry roughly comparable to
handcannoneer with similar numbers but are
much better against range units thanks
to their pierce armor and the fact that
they don't take bonus damage Elite
skirmishers for example only do one
damage per attack they do struggle a bit
against cavalry mostly because of their
minimum range so they run away from
units fighting them up close, I recommend
keeping them on stand ground if you're
finding that's an issue and it makes
sure they keep firing instead of running
around the map their biggest weakness
though is against seige, basically every
seat unit is a strong counter against
them including rams which can take them
out in two hits if you micro them
to attack I find it's best to get a
large mass of organ guns and then
combine them with bombard cannons which
can counter onagers and then you can
add halberdiers in front to prevent
cavalry and other melee units from
getting too close. Moving on the
Portuguese also have a second unique
unit the Caravel stats wise if we
compare them to the galley line
counterparts they have a similar attack
range and armor but consistently a bit
less HP and a slightly higher cost
remember Portuguese have extra HP on
their ship so the numbers might look a
little odd here, the extra eight gold per
unit seems a little weird at first given
their lower HP they also have the same
creation time for each of 36 seconds
galleons also do for more hidden damage
against other ships than
caravels do, given the otherwise identical
stats that means galleons win 1 verse 1
battles pretty easily and it's looking
kind of bad to the Caravelle so far
there is one nice hidden attribute at
the Caravelle though which is that it's
projectiles go through units almost like
a scorpion on the water, it does full
damage to the targeted unit plus half
damage to anything in crunch or behind
that happens to get in the way you don't
see that one verse 1 but with 40 vs 40
bunched up together the effect becomes
really obvious, the upgrade to elite
gives them more HP more attack and an
extra one range at 750 food and 475 gold
which is significantly more than the
war galley to galleon upgrade considering
their slightly higher cost to build as
well you can think of them as a more
expensive warship line variation that
does better in large battles, basically
you really don't want to use the
Caravel outside of their specialty of
big scale fights, but in that situation
they'll definitely pay for themselves
moving on now to the unique techs the
first one gives ships +1 for both
types of armor it's basically a second
careening tech available but at double
the gold cost I wouldn't go out of my
way to build a castle for it but over
the long run it'll definitely save you a
few ships here and there in castle age
for example an extra pierce armor on
your war galleys means you're dealing
ten percent more damage to your opponent
than they are to you so it's not flashy
but it's definitely helpful, the second
unique tech is arquebus it's basically
ballistics for gunpowder units rather
than talk about the tech generally let's
look at how it affects each unit
individually, now bombard towers aren't
technically gunpowder units but just to
clear up any confusion they are affected
by a ballistic for every civilization
we can see before ballistics a bombard tower
can't hit a moving target at all and
with ballistics both a portuguese and
generic civilizations fire closer though
interestingly not perfectly at moving
cavalry now the reason i think there's
some confusion about this is previously
portuguese bombard towers fired super
speed cannon balls after arquebus as a
hidden side effect but as of recent
patches they move now
normal speed to put it simply as things
stand right now arquebus does nothing I
can find to bombard tower for the Organ gun
and hand cannoneer a pretty simple
experiment shows that both units before
arquebus have almost zero percent
accuracy against moving targets even
just a few tiles away and are completely
unaffected by the regular ballistics
tech, arquebus effectively gives both
units ballistics exactly like it says
it's hard to see the individual shots
but it also looks like they're moving at
regular speed to me similar to that the
bombard cannon isn't normally
affected by ballistics but with arquebus
they can clearly track moving units they
don't always hit their target after
arquebus but it's at least a lot closer
than it was before the takeaway is for
any land-based gunpowder unit they're
going to be much more effective than
usual and the portuguese hand cannon
ears might arguably be the best in the
game depending on what their targets are
doing spanish win and a good
old-fashioned shootout flip the other
way portuguese hand cannon ears aren't
confused in the slightest by your micro
don't forget they're also cheaper than
usual now the cannon galleon has a
little twist to it, it not only gets the
ballistics effect of arquebus but also
with slight speed boosts to its shots
making them harder to dodge
it's somewhere between a regular cannonball
speed and the Spanish cannon galleon
which at this point looks like the only
one actually firing cannon balls instead
of ballons, so that's the unique units
and techs now let's move on and take a
look at the tech tree starting with the
archers, like I said they have arguably
some of the best hand cannoneers in the
game because of arquebus and the fifteen
percent gold discount is good for both
Archer rushes as well as the late game
you could try some cavalry archers in
the castle age and they'd be a bit cheaper
but they'd be pretty much useless in
imperial age, overall I'd say it's an
a-minus for archers and you'll have
perfectly good choices at any point in
the game moving on to infantry the only
thing missing is Squires and again the
gold bonus is going to help a bit with
your champions for an early militia rush
you still need to collect one gold
to do the normal three militia but you
can easily save enough gold for
a few more men at arms over the feudal
age if you're really determined I don't
think the gold bonus does a lot for
their infantry but overall I'd say it's
a solid B plus, next step is cavalry the
option of knights is always important
here and Portuguese can do a reasonable
knight rush, though in terms of cavalry
that's about all they can do
unfortunately there's nothing to help
out a scout rush and in the late game
the cavalry would be mostly a last
resort, given the cheaper knights I can
maybe go as high as a C plus, taking a look
at the siege they're missing all of the
top and siege units tough remember the
bombard cannon benefits from arquebus
and is exceptionally good at taking out
onagers you do have your own onagers
with siege engineers and all the siege
will have a bit lower gold cost, overall
it's better than all the red x's imply
and i'd say it's a solid b-plus if you
love bombard cannons you might even try
to argue it's higher than that moving on
to the Navy the early game is helped out
by the gold bonus yet again as well as
the extra HP as the game develops you'll
have the extra armor unique tech and the
option of adding in caravels and above
average cannon galleons they're missing
fast fire ships which isn't a huge deal
given how well you can already counter
galleons though you will miss not having
shipwright I guess the argument would be
that their Navy can't have both wood and
a gold discount, either way they're still
very strong on water, they're nearly
top tier and I'd say it's a b-plus
for the early game and moves up to an a
in the late game for an a-minus overall
take a quick look at the monks it's a
pretty good tech tree I keep saying it
but the gold bonus is useful here yet
again with their monk is costing 85 gold
instead of the regular 100 you could
certainly argue that between that and
redemption may be a candidate for a monk
rush the only tech they're missing is
illumination which regenerates faith
faster, overall I'd give the Portuguese
monastery a b-plus next up is defenses
now this would have been higher except
in the last patch their bombard tower
shot slowed down and they lost arrowslits
I still like the strong hand cannoneers
and bombard cannons as counter units and
they do have good towers the feitoria
is also a very defensive-minded building
which is harder to raid and generates
unlimited stone for more walls towers
and castles I think a defensive booming
sort of player would have a lot to love in
this tech tree and I'd give them an a
now let's take a look at the economy
they basically have an indirect gold
bonus with a unit discount, so that makes
up for not having stone shaft mining and
helps conserve gold in the late game the
other eco techs are present and again
you have the option for feitorias
personally I think they're more of a
hindrance to an economy than a help but
as long as you're making an informed
decision of when to use them I'll count
them is a situational useful option
before the feitoria's nerf I would have
said it's an a minus for the economy but
I think at this point it's more of a B+
so the wrap-up I think Portuguese are
accurately described as a naval and
gunpowder civilization the gold bonus is
nice for a couple of strategies early on
especially when it comes to knights but
head-to-head they end up behind a lot of
other civilizations for the first 25
minutes I finally slowly ramp up in
power as the game goes on and about
their finest in the late imperial age at
times I've heard them referred to is
overpowered on free for all games and
even on maps like Black Forest where you
have a chance to build a big economy
that's partly because of the feitoria
but also because the combination of
organ guns, bombard cannons and bombard
towers is very difficult to counter
without siege onagers when playing them
I'd caution against getting too excited
about making feitorias and caravels
just because you have the option and
both are pretty significant investments
that might not be worth it in every game
for example if you're not trying to get
stone or if you have trade available as
an option I think it's hard to defend
investing 20 population space into a
feitoria, likewise the elite caravel
upgrade is about two thirds the cost of
Imperial age unless you have dedicated
to making a lot of them or are just
drowning in resources you might be
better off with your already quite good galleons
so hopefully that gives you some things
to think about in your next game thanks
for watching guys and I'll see you next
time