Newbie asking for help (Portugal)

[Stolen Rutters]

I don't think Portugal is the best newbie start as they got nowhere to expand. Sure you can take Morocco but its the wrong culture and full of Muslims that won't convert so they rebel every 10 minutes without sky-high autonomy, I'm not sure it's worth taking anymore than the 2 provinces in the trade node.

Castile's a nice Allie but he's taking half your trade and your in no position to do anything about it.

Sure you can colonize but then the colonial nations get disloyal because you're so small.
Maybe I just did it all wrong but England seems easier to me.

You can turn territories into states anywhere in Eurasia, and that will count towards your relative size. Expanding into North Africa and West Africa makes your "homeland" larger and helps keep colonists in line. There are a couple missions that help you pay for the cost of making a core province. Use them.

The more experienced players might just take down Castile and Aragon to make all Iberia into a Portuguese homeland (I'm not experienced to do this often, but sometimes the stars line up and I can take Iberia before colonization starts up.) The newbie can usually take some of North Africa or West Africa instead. It's full of heathens, yes, but you get better conversion strength once you pass admin tech 6 and more at tech 8, more when you take the counter-reformation decision.

What do you mean by that, how can I funnel diplomatic power points into provinces for trade power?

If you have the Common Sense DLC you can improve provinces by spending monarch points. Admin points increase tax value, diplo points increase production value, mil points increase manpower. That way you can play as a small country and still control a lot of colonies.

Also, will Morocco definitely be a problem at the start or did I just have bad luck with them making war on me and treacherous Castilians ditching me? I would like to handle Morocco after I got my budget in shape and can afford a war or two.

Never reduce your army maintenance, especially at war. This reduces the strength of your army and could explain why you lose battles. It takes three to four months before your armies regain full strength (which is a lot of time to keep running for the hills before you can face them and win). Also, if you reduce army maintenance at peace, you will be harder to fight rebels so keep watch for when they are generated.

If you reduce the maintenance of your navy, your light ships will lose trade power, and have no strength to protect trade (higher trade power = more money).

You can get your army and budget in shape by only buying advisers you can afford in the first decade or two. Once your first regency ends you should have built units to your army force limit. Take a loan or two at that point and start building mercenaries, declare war, and use the mercenaries plus your regular troops to fight Morocco. If they got both Tlemcen and Tunisia as allies, you might want to look at Mali as a target instead. I tend to fight them anyway, but it's tougher when all three are fighting me so I wait until I can pull in Castile on my side.

 

[Acheron]

Thanks all for your replies. Didn't yet get to answer, much less play. I have few DLCs it seems, bought the game to soon I guess. I will try again, hoping that my alliance with Castille will hold of Morocco until I get my colonial empire in swing. Lacking the Common Sense DLC I will focus on Admin power mostly I believe.

 

[Acheron]

Sorry for brining the thread up again, but I ran into more trouble. I tried to colonize that one African province that is available from the start, Arguin, figured I could as well sue that one colonist I got before I can unlock explorers. But native uprisings destroy my colony. Worse, I sent my army (minus 3 infantry regiments to fit on the ship) to the province, the natives killed it, too (and I mean killed, since there is nowhere to run to from this province), despite the natives being numerically inferior!

What am I doing wrong this time? I even had a little bit of money put into army maintenance, though not full maintenance, because that brings me in the red.

 

[earlofbrigand]

Don't get too hung up in North Africa. Get Tunis (for the trading bonus) and leave it at that for a while. The main thing to worry about is your alliance with England - which often drags you into a painful war with France.

 

[Stolen Rutters]

What am I doing wrong this time? ...not full maintenance

First, full maintenance helps your army more than you think.

Second, your army should be on that province before the natives revolt so you get defensive bonus. As an attacker from sea, you are penalized.

To get more money, use your light ships to protect trade in your home trade node, Seville. Each colony will cost you 2 ducats or more.

You can mothball Lisbon's castle to save an extra half ducat. (Since your capital gets a size one fort by default, it won't be completely undefended). This assumes you are friendly with Castille.

 

[AngryEmpire]

Portugal is a really good country to understand the basics of the game, here's what I tend to do.

At game start ally/rm castile and France (hope that they don't hate eachother and if they do align yourself with the most powerful) attack Granada once truce expires with the help of castile offering them land (calling Morocco as co-belligerent) and take Gibraltar, tangiers and gharb for yourself. (Give the rest of granda to castille) From there, you have 3/4 trading ports in the sevilla node and want to have at least 10 light ships patrolling it to maintain dominance. You will want to prioritize colonizing the gold coast and the cape of good hope in africa and the carribean as well as Brazil to make sure you are the dominant power in these trade nodes. Also take other centres of trade from natives ie Benin and Jolof.

From there the seas are yours, you can keep colonizing south America and the caribean or look to expand in Asia by taking trading posts there, because whilst tax may give you more money at the start of the game it's trade that will ultimately make you into a super power so always look to build trade building in centres of trade.

Don't be afraid if castile is weak to take Sevilla and cadiz (to link up your land) with the help of an aggressive France as this will help you maintain dominace, also make sure you beat up Morocco so that you dominate the safi node too, as all the trade from the carribean, Brazil and Asia will Ultimately have to go through safi to get to sevilla.

Enjoy playing as one of the most laid back yet fun and immersive powers in Europe

 

[PhoenixG]

Why colonize Arguin, when you can colonize Cape Verde at the start? Portugal even starts with an explorer. Besides that, Arguin has 5k natives and early game you kinda want the same number to protect it to be safe. While Cape Verde has 0, meaning you don't even need units to protect it. Also Portugal has a small force limit, so colonizing mainland Africa is really not advisable. The best way is go for Cape Verde and jump to Brazil and pick province with low natives count. If you have the cossacks DLC you can pick native coexistence to prevent uprising.

 

[Chronicler]

Greetings, I just started playing Europa Universalis IV, I played III and II some time ago, though I am not sure how well understood all mechanics (particularly trade). I would very much appreciate some help in getting into EU4.

I play Portugal, since it supposedly is a beginner friendly country. I read that you should strive to build a colonial empire, but I have the feeling that this is gonna cost money and at the start, I only have a meager surplus and only due to reducing army and fleet maintenance, so I assume it would be better to improve the cash-flow first. Here is what I do:

- I switch National Focus from Diplomatic to Administrative Power. I will need to research two levels of administrative tech anyway before I can even start with the exploration idea, plus administrative tech seems to be good for the budget.

- I hire the good (level 2) administrative adviser, while expensive, I believe I need the extra administrative power points. However, after my last game, I believe I should fire him after getting administrative tech 4 and save the money for buildings.

- Speaking of, at the start, it is soon a decision between churches and market places. Churches increase my income from tax, market places from trade. According to the economic screen, I get more money from tax than trade. Tax has a higher percentage next to it, but even taking that into account, tax still beats trade, so I itseems to me I should build churches first and then market places and in both cases I presume I should build in the provinces with the respective highest value.

- After building churches in the high tax provinces, I believe it would be better to build market places in the high trade provinces, but I have no clue how to calculate the benefit from building what where. BTW, I also intend to order buildings only if it leaves me with 30 ducats cash in case of events that require money to make good things happen or prevent something unfortunate.

- Other things I do, I immediately break the alliance with England and instead ally with Castille. I take the missions to improve relations with Papal State and Venice and then leave missions for the foreseeable future, missionizing Ceuta is not doable for now and tangling with Morocco would require a well funded army. Also, I leave the merchants where they are, though trade is something I have never quite understood in any EU game so far.

I would appreciate it very much if you people could let me know if my assumptions and strategies are correct. As I said, I am new to the game, though not the series and I wonder if
a) the things I do are the right things to achieve what I want and
b) if the things I want to achieve are even correct, or if my basic strategies are flawed by misconceptions about how the game works.

For example, am I overestimating the importance of gold? The three power points seem very important, but compensating a lack of gold from budget by borrowing sounds like a fast way into a death spiral and gold seems still to be particularly important for the military, which is a great problem solver.

Thanks in advance!

I've played Portugal loads, if you want I can help you on teamspeak or irc, (I'm not really feeling up to writing too much now, so just tell me and when can set a time)