User:Safferli/Portugal
From EU2Wiki
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| Scenarios | 1419 | ||
| Orientation | Trade, Colonisation | ||
| Religion | Catholic | ||
| Economy | above Average | ||
| Military | below Average | ||
| Enemies | Spain, Morocco, Netherlands | ||
| Allies | England | ||
Contents |
Background
History
Location
Portugal is located at the far west of the Iberian Peninsular, streching along nearly the entire western coast. With no space to expand eastwards, Portugal was forced to expand seawise from the very beginning. Portugal is the country with the oldest formed borders: the borders of today's Portugal were already fixed in 1250, with the Reconquista of the Algarve, the southernmost strip of Portuguese land.
Ingame Advantages and Disadvantages
Portugal's strengths lie in its early possibilities for expansion. The Golden Age of Portugal is right at the start of the game, with Portugal historically exploring and colonising Madeira and the Azores. You will get tons of explorers (especially if you play the AGCEEP mod), and it is entirely possible for a player-controlled Portugal to have explored large parts of Africa, the Cape of Good Hope, Brazil, North America and the gold provinces of the Aztecs before Spain even gets their first explorer, Columbus! As a small country, research will be easy for you, and with the possibilies of colonising rich provinces and subdueing the vastly rich Indian provinces, a well-played Portugal should not have any money problems.
The weaknesses are obvious: Portugal will never (well nearly -- see below) have enough manpower to be able to fight the other european powers in full-scale wars and Spain will always have a pretty impressive -- and imitating -- manpower base. Also, with a large and streched empire, Portugal will need all the troops it can get to fight natives and the Indians, so that there are usually no troops left to defend the homeland territories. Success of Portugal will crucially hinge on your colonisation and exploration successes. Additionally, you will be economically rather weak until you can build up your colonies.
Portugal receives very favourable events during the historical Golden Age, but these will dry out after 1550 or so. In 1580 you will become a vassal of Spain and it's only downhill from there on. Still, there is no totally crippeling event structure (as Russia's "Times of Troubles") that you will have to deal with.
Portugal is not country for a first-time player, especially as one has to keep track of a world-wide empire of colonies, but it is a very rewarding country for those that seek a more challenging country than, say France or England, but still want the possibilities of a global super-power.
Early game
There are (at least) two possibilities of kick-starting Portugal, both take advantage of one fact: you have too many troops, which is expensive, so you should do something with them or disband them. As you start with some decent cash (even on very hard difficult level) to buy 10k additional cavalry, and a hell of a general, Pereira, we should use the troops offensively.
Note, my guide follows Portugal in the AGCEEP mod, so you might want to install that mod. If you do not play using the mod, some steps will be different, more difficult. In vanilla EU2, you do not get the Infantes as an additional general, Morroco is split into two countries, so it isn't as easy to get to the Songhai provinces. Also, AGCEEP gives you a ton of extra events and tens of addional explorers, though these only survive for a very few years.
Playing vanilla EU2, use your first diplomat to ally with Aragon on the very first day, before they ally with Castille, then buy 10k cavalry and then declare war on Castille. Together with Aragon cripple Castille so hard that it will never again be a threat to you. As you have the same culture (iberian), this is especially rewarding. Gaining some (all) of castille's provinces gives you much needed manpower, money, a gold province (Toledo) and border securities. Note that this is also possible in AGCEEP, but not as rewarding, as Portugal and Castille have different cultures and you will be needing Pereira for your journeys through Africa.
Kick-start Portugal's Empire
At the beginning of the game, you are in a reconquista with the moors in North Africa, in game-play rules they attacked you, so you want to crush them and take as many provinces from them as you can, as this is fairly cheap on badboy points. Buy 10k addional cavalry and get all of the troops to Tangiers. A few days into the game, you will receive a new general, the Infantes with a nice Siege value of 1. General tactics is: use Pereira and Cavalry to fight battles, use the Infantes to siege provinces. After winning the battle in Tangiers with Pereira, use the Infantes to siege the capital and take Pereira further south. Once the capital falls, you get Morroco's maps. Use the Infantes to mop up the rest of Morrocos land, and get Pereira south, using the "African Corridor" leading to Timbuktu. Don't attack Timbuktu -- it's muslim, so you can't change the state culture, and you will need all your troops and luck to get to the Songhai. Attack Gao and annex them (just two provinces and pagan, so they are practically asking for it). Then you can attack Songhai to get their province of Palanas and the harbour, which is the ultimate goal of all our troubles. You will lose the services of Pereira in ????, so you will have to be quick with your expansions. Try not to fight battles with those Africans more than necessary, as this early in the game their are en par with you in Land Technology, so you will only be able to win with Pereira. Also, these African tribes have a hell of lot of manpower and troops, something that you are sorely lacking. Besides, you don't want to waste your money on troops.
The habour of Palanas will be your embarking point of explorers to get round the Cape of Good Hope (which was named so by the Portuguese because the riches of India were believed to be imminent by the point they had crossed that border). But you will still need to manage your explorers well...
Explore, explore, explore
You will receive a vast amount of very short-lived (only 3-4 years) explorers, for which you will have to pay some trinkets. The table will give you an overview.
Year Gold 25. Dec. 1432 25 25. Dec. 1435 15 3. Jan. 1441 35 25. Dec. 1450 35 3. Jan. 1469 40
Mint som emoney before the dates so that you need not take out a loan. You can use your Yearly income for the two January events, but not for the December events, as they are "pause-events".
Use these explorers to first find the seeway to Palanas. Then you want to explore and colonise ???. From Palanas, get to the Cape of Good Hope and colonise Table -- this is a must. Table ill give you the next harbour from which you can explore the East coast of Africa. From ???, explore Brazil and colonise some land. Be sure to get a harbour province in Brazil (???, for example).
Don't waste your colonists on colonising the African coast. You will want to have a colony in the following provinces: ..... These provinces are fairly wealthy and the ports they provide will help you keep naval attrition down. Do build Trading posts along the African coast: each will give you national waters along the way. That way you can save a lot of ships. No matter how many months your ships have spent at sea, they do not suffer attrition when in national waters. That way, it will be possible for your ships to get from Zanisbar to Portugal itself only crossing national waters if you have trade posts along the African coast and annexed Morroco.
Slider changes
Plutocracy: go to maximum if you think you don't need the DIP hit. Cheap warships, higher production are not to be scoffed at, and as Portugal you will not have many BB points so you don't need a high DIP rating to get rid of them quickly.
Centralisation: max for extra income and an offset to the tech penalty of Narrowminded
Narrowminded: max for extra colonists, extra missionaries to convert all those pagans to Catholicism (and gain state culture). Cheap stability is a must and the tech hits are bearable.
Naval is your toughest call: you will need to lean rather towards Land for all your wars in the beginning, then fighting the Kongolese and ultimately the Aztecs (if you want) and those hundreds of thousands of Indians. On the other hand, going Naval will give you increased taxes (as nearly all of your provinces will be overseas) and additional explorers from events. Also, going Naval is the only way to get Naval Morale bonus.
Quality: I go for max, to get good troops. As Portugal, you won't have a lot of manpower so the manpower hit is survivable. Don't forget, you have at least 10 manpower, no matter how small your base is.
Free Subjects: max this to get a morale bonus that you will be desperately needing. Extra production is an added bonus. High stability costs are a serious problem, but with max Narrowminded copeable.
Mid-game
Colonisation
Securing the Indias
There are four provinces in India which should be your prime targets, as they will have less than 1000 Inhabitants so you can impose your state culture there. The two south-east coastal provinces (??? and ???) are alreay colonised, so you will have to wage a war to get them. Luckily, they are not very war score costly. The two provinces south of Goa (??? and ???) are colonisable, if you are early enough. So get to India quickly and send your colonists to these two provinces.
You will receive Goa by event as a national province in ????. Use Goa as a starting base for your explorations in the Pacific.
Trouble with the Spaniards
Late game
The world's your oyster, as they say. Played well, half the world should now be Portuguese catholics as you have converted all the pagans you can find. With a tech lead and sure economic lead, set your own goals: hit Spain to get Andalusia and Gibraltar (if you haven't done so already). The straight from Gibraltar to Tangiers counts as land connection to manpower masses of Africa. With your manpower problems over grab India or China with those juicy rich provinces.
Don't move your capital to Brasil to avoid the independence events of 18??.
