The Great French Ignominy
A Portugal Demo AAR
Hello everyone and welcome to another demo AAR. Today I am taking on the challenge of playing as Portugal. This is actually the first time I have loaded up this country and have no experience whatsoever with how colonisation works since all of my previous demo games have been with Venice. So this should be interesting
First up, England is at war with France over the Breton succession crisis. We’re allied so King Henry VII promptly and rather rudely sends an ambassador to Lisbon to insist I join him in his war. Looking at my navy I notice Portugal starts with a decent navy and an explorer called Bartolomeu Dias. Explorers can discover new sea zones but they also make great admirals if their starts are decent. Lucky for me, Dias has good fire and shock and superb maneuver. I merge my ships into a mighty grand fleet of 21 ships and send them to blockade French ports in the north with Dias at the helm. I’m a little worried France might have a stronger navy but time will tell.
Sending my entire fleet is a risky strategy should they get wiped out but I think I can crush the French dogs.
My fleet blockades the French trade node. Hey King Louis! Suck a fat one!!
After checking what my ally is doing I notice England actually has cordial not friendly relations with Portugal. Apparently King Henry does not like the girly perfume soaps I sent him last Christmas or the poison chalice he got from me for his birthday or the wedding party I arranged for his brother where I accidently slept with the bride. Strangely he still likes me but the English would not go so far as to consider our two countries “allies”.
Better news comes from overseas when I learn one of our colonies is producing naval supplies.
Then like clockwork, the nobility put their hand up and say they don’t like how modern our glorious country has become. Someone should tell them they don’t work for Paradox and they know nothing about coding, they are stupid AI generated noblemen who have no faces and cannot control their fate anymore than I can grow a money tree in my real world garden. I also told them to shut up and stop complaining otherwise I would mod the core game files and remove them from the game entirely.
As I move up the French coast and into the channel I detach ship for blockade. When I arrive in the English channel there is a numerically superior French navy waiting for me. Oh no! I’m doomed!!!
Lucky for me the French sailors don’t have an admiral leading them. I think he fell overboard drunk and nobody bothered to rescue him.
Anyway ferocious battle ensure and the eventually the French pansies retreat after suffering heavy loses. Yeah, take that Clive Owen!!
19 ships in their fleet were captured, much too Anglo-Portuguese joy and the pain of the French crown. Even though we won the day many allied ships were damaged and we have no choice but return home to Lisbon for repairs.
My fleet has grown by 19 ships to a grand size of 40. I’m so proud of my seamen. They erected their sails and boldly stroked their oars in defiance of the French menace.
Some pirates are causing trouble on the African coast for one of my colonial outposts so I despatch a small force to deal with the devilish rogues. Castille wants to be friends and I’m starting to believe an alliance is the best guarantee of Portugese independence.
An alliance treaty is signed between Queen Isabella and me. She has nice legs so I hope we can be more than friends. Maybe friends with benefits?
News then arrives that one of our colonies is suffering and I have no choice except to abandon them to their fate. I hope they packed Lord of the Flies when they departed for the colonies!
Castille decides to revoke their guarantee of Portugal because we are allies and such secondary treaties are worthless. Around this time, the merchants of Portugal, those snivelling money hungry plutocrats have the nerve to ask me for permission to buy titles of nobility. What!!! You can’t buy nobility, have they not played Crusader Kings 2? You cannot, I repeat cannot, buy titles. You must build up your prestige and gold then click the usurp title button. Come on dudes.
Seriously. Let me think, DENIED!!!
When I finally commission my explorer to do what he’s good at, you know, actual exploring, I decide to give him one of the captured French ships. It is very considerate of the French to give me a free ship to expand the Portuguese empire and navigate the high seas. Hmm, ok first question, which direction? I settle on Africa, or more specifically exploring beyond the cape of Good Hope. I hope for Portugal’s sake he doesn’t fall overboard and drown like that French fool from the previous year (or get eaten by a giant Kraken).
I don’t want to upset the French too much so I politely rename their captured ship. My ambassador in Paris is convinced they will love it.
By 1500 the Portuguese explorers were returning from far away lands with knowledge of foreign countries. Exciting times. Unfortunately not for the crew of The Great French Ignominy. They were lost at sea. Seamen always let you down in the end. Shame.
But don’t worry! Portugal is opening up new trade routes with India and Vasco da Gama’s expedition to China has paid dividends.
Unfortunately my settlers are taking forever to migrate to the colonies. I spent some diplo power to unlock the first exploration idea. This gave me my first colonist which I promptly sent to colonise Luanda on the Congo Coast. Africa is not my first choice of colonial expansion but the Spanish seem to have the West Indies firmly in their grasp. As a rather controversial choice, I selected as my second idea slot the religious group of ideas. What I love about this idea group is the first idea Unam Sanctum gives me a permanent casus belli against all other religious groups. So hopefully this means I can some day send an army to the newly discovered lands of Oman and force the local ruler to cede a nice fat juicy coastal province. Once established I can send out expedition fleets to explore Asia and launch more invasion. Perhaps if I bring back a few kangaroos for Queen Isabella she will reconsider my earlier romantic advances. Her super hot Spanish curves are still fresh in my mind. The awesomeness of Portugal is unrivalled.
We actually have extremely high prestige and as the year 1500 draws to a conclusion I learned we have made several advances in the area of the printing press. No more laborious manuscripts. The monks will be pleased if not already a little drunk by now. Another very surprising fact is that reform desire within the catholic church is only 67%. This is quite low considering in earlier campaigns as Venice I witnessed reform desire closer to 106% by the year 1500.
So, let us conclude this short campaign after 8 years at the helm of an awesome colonial power and finish with a few strategy tips (as always
)So, let us conclude this short campaign after 8 years at the helm of an awesome colonial power and finish with a few strategy tips (as always
)1) The French suck at naval combat – I mean come on, they had more ships and better dice rolls and I still captured 19 ships. That’s like 40% of their entire navy!
2) Alliance with Castile/Spain critical. They are very useful. I actually used them as a defensive shield against France. By allying with the Spanish I can be certain the French won’t try sneak around the back of my borders.
3) Send your explorers to Brazil rather than explore around Africa and into Asia. There is nothing there except people who refuse to grant fleet basing rights (which severely limits further exploration). I think it is better to just discover Brazil/Caribbean, send your solitary colonist and focus on building a colony near a New World trade node. Start sending precious trade back home to Lisbon and watch the profits roll in.
4) Invest in religious idea group when you have spare power points. The first idea is very useful because it grants a holy war CB and additional ideas in this group are all beneficial for stability in some way (which is important because most player will probably have a very large colonial empire early in the 16th century.)
That’s it. Thanks for reading and have fun with Portugal!
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