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Portugal:How rich can he get? Part Two

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unmerged(31425)

unmerged(31425)

Married Man
Jul 2, 2004
2.826
0
OK, I'm at it again and I'm determined to beat the last mark I set. I'll post stats for the samedates more or less as the first Portugal:How rich can he get? AAR. Here's my stats for September 1532:

Monthly income:
tax = 115.5
goods production = 44.6/40% PE
trade income = 74.2/73% TE
gold mines = 105.9
total = 340.2

Inflation = 15.8% I got 2 negative inflation events this time.

I have 8 refineries and no other manus.

This time I decided to grab Spanish provinces early. Let me just emphasize that it is not better than leaving Spain alone and saving up cash for rapid E. Carribean colonization. Almost all of my early cash is sucked up taking Spain out. You also get early BB and it messes up your merchants, when you start placing alot under Afonso V. It also makes your stab take longer to get up and that also messes up early merchant income. In the end it is not a better strategy, but I stuck to it and took out all of Spain except for Castilla, who I force vassalized but not diplo-annexed.

I may have to kill him now to prevent him from vassalizing me via event. No big deal there, by 1532 I'm back down to 0 BB.

Another thing I did different this time, is tech trade 3 before infra 2. Currently I have trade 4 and almost have infra 4. This is why my total trade income is lower so far than the last time, no LCs to spike luxury demand.:( But either way, I'm not that far behind where I was last game, so I'll stick with it and have high hopes of beating my last record.

Well I'll continue this with the next post. :( It may take me longer to fill out this AAR as I intend to be more aggressive late game this time.
 
Here's my stats for January 1600:

Monthly income:
tax = 238.7
goods production = 149.1/79% PE
trade income = 207.9/100% TE
gold mines = 118.6
total = 714.3

Inflation = 14.6% I got 2 more negative inflation events this time.

I have 17 refineries and no other manus.

I haven't been militarily aggressive yet, except I that I took out the Creeks and a 1 province Spain.Unfortunately that 1 province Spain put up a viscious resistance and since I had inferior land tech, I lost a ridiculous amount of troops. Bad timing on my part really.

My stats here aren't overall better than my last game. :( I still got 220 years to go though and have high hopes that I can surpass my previous mark by a good margin still.
 
Well if you don't have more income you'll have more mp, which is better in my opinion. Also won't you have more land to build manu's in? :D
 
Van Engel said:
Well if you don't have more income you'll have more mp, which is better in my opinion. Also won't you have more land to build manu's in? :D
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The MP isn't terribly useful for what I'm doing.

It's 1696 and I'm behind on refineries and and about 350 ducats in monthly income shy of my previous 1700 date. So I'm going to abandon this game.

Let me just say that extensive pre-18th century conquests are not worth it, if you are going for pure profit with Portugal. Although seizing territory can be profitable, you just wind up paying too much in a myriad of ways.

Killing pagans is good if you have low BB and/or CBs. Killing the Aztecs and Incas is always worth it. But all those extra troop support costs, troops buildups, extra RR, and replacing rebel suppressing troops adds up after awhile.

Also always build that refinery where you have a fortress. I lost 4 refineries this game to rebels, because I tried to skimp on expenses by skipping the fortresses. Not having to make 20 fortresses isn't worth the loss of even one refinery in the long run.:(

Also I don't think that dropping more than lvl 1 TPs is worth it. And even at that, I think having more than a few is counterproductive. It's because of the decreased percentage chance for success with your colonizing. That combined with colonists being wasted on TPs isn't worth it. It's better to make almost all colonies.

Trade taxes are worth alot when you get high trade efficiency. Only provinces with high trade valued goods are going to make more in trade. So TPs have very limited value in the long run.

Anyways, I'll probably give it a shot in the future again and try my standard strategy with just a little more precision.
 
TBH I'm not sure if I agree with the "Incas are always worth it" statement .. they come with a large number of pretty poor provinces, which severely balloons your stab costs. If you're going for trade dominance, then I'm not sure it's the best way to go.

The Aztecs on the other hand are the best conquest in the game :cool:
 
dsk said:
TBH I'm not sure if I agree with the "Incas are always worth it" statement .. they come with a large number of pretty poor provinces, which severely balloons your stab costs. If you're going for trade dominance, then I'm not sure it's the best way to go.

The Aztecs on the other hand are the best conquest in the game :cool:
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I agree that the Aztecs are better but the Incas just boost your income by so much that I think the stab penalties, extra poor provinces, and the fact that you'll need to pay to convert most of them is still worth it.

What I did, both games, was actually to wait until I conquered the Aztecs, Chimu, and the Incas to make refineries and conversions. I didn't make either of these prior to killing these guys off and I skipped the Mayans et al. as well. I figured that refineries would cost less inflation to pump with all that extra gold income. Since A & A making conquering them fairly easy, IMO it's the best way to do it, at least that I can figure out so far anyways.
 
I've always found that just after conquering the Incas my stab costs sky-rocket to the point that I always end up with negative stab ..

This then results in merchants getting kicked out left-right-and-centre, which means your trade income suffers dramatically.

The incas should be able to provide around 40/month in gold income .. I wonder if you could get that much trade income if you skipped them?

Or would your stab costs be sufficiently high (due to expansion via colonisation) that it wouldn't matter that much?
 
dsk said:
I've always found that just after conquering the Incas my stab costs sky-rocket to the point that I always end up with negative stab ..

This then results in merchants getting kicked out left-right-and-centre, which means your trade income suffers dramatically.

The incas should be able to provide around 40/month in gold income .. I wonder if you could get that much trade income if you skipped them?

Or would your stab costs be sufficiently high (due to expansion via colonisation) that it wouldn't matter that much?
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I've noticed that stab does increase in cost then. But keep in mind that all I have, that I didn't start with or colonize by that point is the 4 Aztec provinces and Chimu, if he existed still by that time. So I don't have a bunch of NA Indian pagan provinces, neither do I have Zapotec or Mayan provinces.

I also, immediately after DOWing the Incas, research full stab, usually until I hit +3 stab. Then I don't DOW anybody for awhile after that. So I'm not suffering from massive merchant loss. I may lose a few only.

Manuel has high ADM too, which means I put a conversion attempt on every single one of those provinces, before he dies. So by the time I start getting ready to kill more pagans, I have only a few pagan provinces left. Manuel's high ADM also helps me to not lose many merchants while I'm at +1 or +2 stab for a couple of years.
 
With all the stab hitting events?!

Unless you're continuously investing in stab there's no way you'll be able to stay on a +ve stab .. I consider myself lucky if I can stay above -3 :wacko:
 
dsk said:
With all the stab hitting events?!

Unless you're continuously investing in stab there's no way you'll be able to stay on a +ve stab .. I consider myself lucky if I can stay above -3 :wacko:
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I've never had this problem with Portugal before. I stay at +3 stab most of the game.
 
idontlikeforms said:
I've never had this problem with Portugal before. I stay at +3 stab most of the game.
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Maybe it's just me :wacko:, but I always seem to get a raft of stab-hitting random events :eek:

And with the huge stab costs, eg. > 7k in my last game after absorbing the Inca, it never goes up :rolleyes:

But enough stab moaning .. carry on.
 
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