Noob needs help playing Portugal

[Acheron]

Hello, recently gave Portugal another try and could use some advice:

the big one, how do I prevent my Center of Trade disappearing from stagnation? I thought I had figured out a neat trick, sending my merchants there, then abandoning, thus freeing their slots, thus luring other nations in to create traffic, but it doesn't seem to work anymore.

Apart from that a bunch of minor ones:
- Is Africa worth colonizing? South American and the Caribbean seem so much more appealing, with their tobacco and sugar and cotton.
- I immediately ditch the alliance with England and stay out of alliances as not to get dragged into wars. Problem is, Castille keeps offering me alliances and refusing these gives a hit to our relation I would like to avoid. Is there anyone I could ally with who will not drag me into their wars?
- My current slider strategy: go free market at the start and keep doing so until my merchants (combined with National Trade Policy idea) can manage to stay at other CoT's and not disappear within a year. Once this is achieved, I would go to max out centralization but then probably max out free trade as the increase in trade efficiency is $$$. Bad strategy? What would be better?
- Related to the above, I don't bother sending my merchants out until I have the National Trade Policy idea, afterwards, I try every time I can make another move towards free trade, but until at least some manage to hold on for a year or so, I won't bother again until another slider shift has been achieved. Bad idea? What would be better?
- As for advisors, I go for maximum trade tech investment guy and maximum philosopher, since prestige boosts both merchant competitiveness and trade efficiency. I would love to hire the trade efficiency guy, but he requires some naval tradition which I cannot get until I start exploring, so the third slots I leave open as no one else seems worth it. Again, what would be better?

If you have advice apart from the above, I am all ears. Basically, I want to build a big colonial empire and become filthy rich. I would especially be interested on how to kepe the other western European powers at each others throats, so they hopefully have other things to do than colonizing themselves.

 

[TheArchMede]

Lisbon is too small and too far away to interest most traders at the beginning of the game. If it dies before you have a colonial empire, you'll just have to build a new CoT somewhere once you have colonised a bit. Just make sure you put it in a core, non-core CoTs are bad news for compete chance abroad.

The only war you should be worried about being dragged into is one with Castille. If you aren't going to conquer them, you should ally with them. Impose wartaxes, take white peaces. You don't actually have to do any fighting, but keep your army near the force limit or the AI will think you are weak.

You can't stop other powers colonising without conquering their coastlines. You just have to get the places you want and the places they need to expand their range first. Wars tend to result in troops in colonies which kill off the natives and lead to faster colonisation as well as removing your ability to incite natives with your spies.

100 Level 6 trade buildings are the way to get a filthy rich empire. Level 5 government buildings plus a large sphere are the way to get extra magistrates to build them as well as spies to slow down other colonisers.

Other tech advisors are good choices at the beginning of the game.

There's little point in Africa except for bases to extend your range and to loot native treasuries. You also have some missions for bits of Morocco that may be worth doing, particularly if Castille does most of the fighting for you.

 

[Acheron]

@TheArchMede thanks a lot!

Is preserving the Lisbon CoT feasible? If so, how?

Should I strive to keep my force limit low? In other words, does the AI look at the absolute size of my army or does it really check which percentage of my force limit I use when deciding whether I am weak or not?

Currently, my idea would be not to take an alliance with Castille until they start to become powerful, at least crushing Aragon, just in case that they are weak in my play-through. Also, the deteriorating of relations without an alliance seems to become an issue only after a couple of decades.

Regarding Tech advisors, one level 6 advisor quickly pushes his field to the point where I am ahead of my time and get a research penalty. Coming from Hearts of Iron 2., It try to avoid this, so I completely slash the budget for this field, reassigning it elsewhere. Catch is, with "only" a sizeable amount of the budget, government tech also advances fast enough at the start for the ahead of time penalty to come into play. The other fields do not seem as urgent to me, at least not compared with my constant lack of ducats.

I take it I should (after taking Azores, Madeira, Canaries and Bahamas) focus on one region to colonize? I would focus on South America, or are other regions preferable? Or should I strive to get some valuable provinces around the world?

 

[TheArchMede]

You can probably keep the Lisbon CoT if you conquer a lot of Castille, in particular its CoT in Andalucia. I've never seen the AI keep it, and I think its taking Andalucia thats allowed Lisbon to get enough trade to survive in my games. If you are being peaceful then colonise as soon as possible and hope. Churning merchants helps, but only once there's someone interested in empty slots.

Castille will get stronger faster than you in the early years, so if you are going to attack it, its best that you do so at the first opportunity to dogpile it, which is quite likely immediately after the game starts when Castille and Aragon get in a war over Navarre. Go all in, mint and merc, wreck Castille with a long occupation and take a bunch of its coastline. If you get lucky some Moslems will join in and you'll get a chance to use Holy War to grab a few more Spanish provinces cheap.

You can take lower grade advisors. I tend not to take 5 or 6* early because the bonus event is once per game per advisor type and a lot more useful later. If you are being aggressive early then the recruitment, discipline, fortification and infamy advisors can also useful.

The ahead of time penalty applies to the amount needed to tech up, not to the rate you tech. So if you are 2 years ahead with 5 years to go, you aren't actually taking any penalty. The ideal is to tech up in the January that the penalty drops to 0.

Concentrate on one region but grab strategic places too.

Size of army is relevant too, but the AI pays a lot more respect to a country with a 10k army and a 10k force limit than it does to one with a 10k army and a 20k force limit. Don't strive to push your force limit up unless you actually want to recruit the troops. Priority on colonising will naturally result in a relatively low force limit.

 

[Acheron]

Thanks a lot. I intend to play peacefully, focusing on colonizing,

You can take lower grade advisors. I tend not to take 5 or 6* early because the bonus event is once per game per advisor type and a lot more useful later. If you are being aggressive early then the recruitment, discipline, fortification and infamy advisors can also useful.

Wow, thanks I didn't know about the high-level advisor event being once per game! That is I am asking here, so much unknown, so any misconceptions stilöl. Like this:

The ahead of time penalty applies to the amount needed to tech up, not to the rate you tech. So if you are 2 years ahead with 5 years to go, you aren't actually taking any penalty. The ideal is to tech up in the January that the penalty drops to 0.

I assumed the tech penalty worked like in HoI-2, slowing down your research while you were too far ahead. But it only matters when you have accumulated enough points to advance? So, if I am 5 years ahead but need 5 years and 1 month to advance, I will suffer no penalty? That changes a lot, thanks!

Concentrate on one region but grab strategic places too.

Size of army is relevant too, but the AI pays a lot more respect to a country with a 10k army and a 10k force limit than it does to one with a 10k army and a 20k force limit. Don't strive to push your force limit up unless you actually want to recruit the troops. Priority on colonising will naturally result in a relatively low force limit.

Thanks a lot! For, for all of it

 

[Kovax]

Better a late reply than never? A couple of points to consider:

Your CoT depends on the value of the provinces that trade there. Either you need to conquer a few nearby provinces, or boost the trade income of your own with buildings.

 

[Acheron]

@Kovax thanks for the tip, though I haven't played much my EU3 for a while. Maybe I will start up a new game, either Poland or Ottomans...

 

[TheArchMede]

I just finished a Poland game where I went down the tolerant route. I was pretty disappointed by the events associated with the tolerant ideas, they just wipe out the state religion in your country, but I did tech so fast that I was never able to Westernise and ended up as the tech leader. I also stayed Noble Republic and always reelected the King. An Old world conquest was probably on if I'd stayed catholic rather than converting to reform and been rather less tolerant of other countries. I tried to help the US take over the New World, but they insisted on allying with the Spanish monarchy against me and that never went anywhere.

 

[Acheron]

Poland "Tolerant Route"?

 

[TheArchMede]

Poland "Tolerant Route"?

Slider to innovative. Ecumenism, and Humanist tolerance ideas.
Poland was a centre of religious tolerance in the 16th century before the Jesuits got to work.

 

[Acheron]

Slider to innovative. Ecumenism, and Humanist tolerance ideas.
Poland was a centre of religious tolerance in the 16th century before the Jesuits got to work.

I so want to do this!