Chapter 0
CHAPTER 0
The story thus far...
The Castille-Aragonese Unification War begun in 1356, with Portugal taking the side of her steadfast ally, Castille. The war ended with Aragon being ruled from the Castillian throne. Only a short few years later much of the Iberian peninsula united under the banner of Spain, a new and powerful nation.
The Hundred Years' War continues to rage, with naval assistance from Portugal aiding the English crown. Scotland was defeated and became a duchy of England. There has yet to be a decisive battle on either side. France has done well to keep the English off the continent.
Portugal waged war on the excommunicated Queen of Naples. The enemy alliance was defeated soundly both on land and sea. Because of their heresy against the Pope, the Queen of Naples and King of Sicily were revoked of divine right and became duchies of Portugal.
The deceased King Pedro II commenced a vast construction project across the entirety of Portugal, building Courthouses, Training Fields, Drydocks, Workshops, and Trade Depots in every province. This project was largely funded by the Crown through minting and several loans from banks over a period of two decades.
Local Portugese banks were financially restructured, vastly reducing inflation and allowing the Crown to loan much larger sums at a time.
The focus on construction works and building projects left little coin to spare for the advancement of research, and thus Portugal's technical innovations began to lag. King Pedro II commissioned many great artworks and literature to richen the cultural heritage of Portugal. This attracted the services of several great advisors to the Portugese court, and they have since overseen government policy, regulated foreign trade, and begun naval reforms.
Now, onto the pretty pictures!
There we are! Us! Portugal! A lovely strip of mild green along the coast, surrounded by ocean blue and eye-gouging yellow. We've seen a few wars, and we're doing just fine right now. The reigning monarch, King João I, dreams of greater glory across the sea. Lets see where we stand in this crazy world.
We have alliances with England and Spain, and our two Italian vassals, Naples and Sicily. We've arranged royal marriages with these nations, as well as Ireland and Brittany. Nothing really unexpected, here.
King João I is an absurdly skilled king! 8/8/7 stats, I've never had a leader this good before. He's also only been on the throne for a handful of years, too. His son has nice stats too (8/5/4), but doesn't compare to his father. Knowing my luck, something terrible will happen as soon as I unpause. Our advisors are also quite excellent! Hooray!
Our economy is strong for our size. We have 5 merchants placed in Lisbon, Barcelona, Liguria, and London, and even with our poor efficiency that's almost as much monthly income as our taxes. Soon our trade will totally eclipse our tax income!
Tech-wise, we're focused in Government, Trade, and Naval. Our three key areas of research that will lead us to greatness! We're pushing for more Government so we can unlock a new National Idea at level 12. We lag in Production and Land. Our plan for these is to skate by on neighbor bonus unless we become too backwards. Fingers crossed!
A review of our glorious military. We field 18,000 soldiers and knights. It's a modest sized army, and our economy supports it without a lot of trouble. I've noticed in Death & Taxes that army sizes, force limits, and manpower are quite a bit higher than in Divine Wind. Our navy is capable as well, more so than our land forces, at 15 carracks and 15 cogs. For some reason we like the number 15.
As Catholics, we have a lot of potential religious policies to pass, and I intend to pass them all at some point! Thankfully we have no rebels, but our army would deal with them easily. Lastly we see that France is the Defender of the Faith. We're not a big fan of France, though our best-bud Spain is allied with them. Let's hope that France gets pulled into some distant war and something horrible happens to them.
Here's some meat to sink our teeth into. Our first National Idea was Church Attendance Duty, but only so we could pass the excellent Gilded Iconography decision. I switched immediately to something more befitting of our grand nation: Naval Glory! It's quite better in Death & Taxes. A sizable boost to naval morale, some extra yearly tradition and prestige, and finally double prestige from battles. This is a wonderful all-in-one package that gives us quite an edge in a war. The boosts to prestige is handy in all sorts of ways. Namely increasing our merchant chances! Besides better admirals, this will also allow us to hire better naval or trade-focused advisors.
Further down we see our government policies, which are just as important. We have big plans for our little green strip of land, and one of them entails becoming a trade empire. Portugal begins the game with heavy mercantilism, which doesn't suit our goals in the slightest. Mercantilism is quite a bit stronger in Death & Taxes, as it reduces inflation and increases production in addition to its normal effects. Our inflation is very minimal and our production is only a tiny portion of our income, so Free Trade is the way to wealth for us.
Portugal has no generals or admirals. We had a general once, quite an amazing one (4/4/5/0), but he died in the first exchange of his first land battle so we're hesitant to hire anymore. Generals seem to be quite flammable and prone to getting stabbed. Admirals behave better, but ultimately we don't plan to get into any wars soon and we have enough ducats in our treasury to hire one immediately. King João I could become a general, but that would be tempting fate.
Look at all that yummy cultural tradition. Portugal is quite a fancy place, it seems. There is unfortunately no interesting decisions to pass because we've passed them already.
Here's our current mission. Do I need to say more?
As for the policies below, we're going to pass as many as possible. This will require us becoming much more Centralized, which we plan to do anyway. We also need to make our people less free than they currently are, so they become more free again. Strange, but with nice benefits. We'll see how it pans out.
Our current modifiers and bonuses. Forgive the double showing of some of them.
Sorted by income. Spain is unbelievably wealthy, thank goodness they are on our side. The remainder of the top 5 is no surprise. Portugal is actually in 6th place, which frankly surprised me. Looks like our trade policies are paying off! Another item of note is Muscowy's infamy, and you'll see why it's so high shortly.
We place low on this list, which seems unfortunate at first blush. However this placement is deceptive. We're 4th place in Big Ships, combined with our transports, makes our Navy the 3rd strongest on the list. Only Spain and England with their ridiculous fleets are mightier than us. We can't easily dismiss the Galley fleets in the Mediterranean, though. If they outnumber us with a good admiral we can still lose, especially on Hard difficulty with our morale penalty. We aren't invincible yet!
Several of our provinces are rich, and we have plenty of wine to increase the value of our Center of Trade in Lisbon. Our fish also command a good price as well. They must be tasty.
I still can't get over how awesome our ruler is. Look at those stats! Our previous kings were mostly capable as well, so Portugal has been blessed with competent leaders. We'll make sure that's always the case. (foreboding!)
Thanks to our previous king's expansive construction programs, we've got all the best buildings we can possibly have in all our provinces! It only took a lot of blood, sweat, tears, loans, and minting. Seriously, I think I took 10 loans in 43 years. But they're all paid off! Thanks to
diegoami's Venice AAR for showing me several loans won't bankrupt my country.
Our relations with people important to us. Spain guarantees us, and we guarantee our vassals. We're hesitant to get into many royal marriages, since we don't want to accidentally inherit something on the mainland. We'd need to defend it, then. We have other lands on our minds across the ocean that need to become civilized. For Gold and Glory! And God, too, we guess.
Current wars being waged throughout the world. Something very strange is going on here.
The whacky world as we know it. Seems fairly standard, with some notable exceptions. Spain is already formed and so early, but we know that already! Milan is gobbling up Italy, which may be a big problem for me later. Lithuania is still Pagan and swallowed a huge chunk of the Golden Horde. Seems like Muscowy got jealous and took a bite out of Lithuania. If they keep going at that rate we may see Russia in 100 years. Current Emperor is Bohemia, which syncs up nicely with the standard 1399 start.
Thanks for the vote of confidence!