Continuing the discussion about the civs that needs some balance, in order to see them more online, the portos to me are one (if not the one) that needs a buff.
Portos 15% gold discount
I’ll start to explain why, in my opinion, their main bonus, the 15% gold discount, is good, but not that strong/helpful for their main problems.
Less gold helps in the late game for 1v1, but in the previus ages gold isn’t that important resources (and it’s there when it’s more likely for them to lose the game), I’ll try to explain by confronting it with the bonus of the bizzantines and koreans.
The bizz comparison is simple, their cheap units are discounted on all resources, so that bonus actually helps to train more units, while the portos save on gold, but still pay the full price on wood/food, that acts as a block for producing more units.
As for the koreans’ bonus, 15% less wood actually helps a lot more than 15% less gold, that because wood is a much more important resources, expecially in the feudal/castle age, that is because it’s a resources that is needed in a lot more fields than gold. When you think about it, wood is needed for bulding, military units, ships, techs in a greater mesure than than gold, and last but not least wood is needed for farms, so indirectly it helps for food too. On the other hand, in feudal/castle gold is less important and more accessible.
All that to explain why they don’t need a buff to that bonus, it’s a helpful bonus, but porto’s problem is that it’s not enaugh alone, yes it means that in dark/faudal you can have 1 less vill on gold, but it’s not that strong of a bonus untill late game, when also other porto’s bonus comes to help.
Feritoria in castle age
So essentialy the idea is to give them a weaker feritoria for the castle age.
Moving the possibility to build the feritoria in castle age could actually help them a lot. Now it’s a viable option, but like everything else it comes in late, having the possibility to build it in CA could give them the bonus they need to actually use their flexibility, it would also help defensily, since it’s a tanky building, hard to bring it down with just BRams. The idea behind it is to give the portos a different way to booming, by accumulate gold and stone in feudal and building feritorias in castle instead of TC.
Of course this need to be balanced, in CA the feritorias would need to require at least double the bulding time, they could take only 10pop, while also give back half of the resources (upon hitting imp, they would became the same building that are now).
This could become an high risk-hight reward kind of strategy (similar to now) that can be implemented in CA (without the need to wait to go imp), one could choose to do not go for extra TCs or castles (since the investment in stone/gold and working time would be hight), but to go for feritorias only, using them for both walling their base and booming their economy.
Again, this is to see more different civs in oline games, on all maps, not the same 5 civs bacause they are the strongest. Also, by balancing them all, maybe we encourage more people to go random on online matchs.
Feitoria is already a very hard thing to balance, and I honestly think now it is in the right place. I wouldn’t change anything about it.
Regarding the 15% gold discount bonus, I deeply agree. Shouldn’t be changed.
I would just simply give them some kind of new bonus (which also helps on water, after all they’re intended to be a water civ). My current idea is free ballistics (which is a really huge one), but this one is really tricky, should be argued about a lot. Since the teuton buff, portuguese are pretty much the worst civ, I think devs could give it a try, if it turns out to be a bad idea, they could just remove it or nerf it like the goth dark age bonus (for example make it require a university).
I propose the free ballistics too some time ago (I don’t remember if it was my idea or someone else) but a lot of people thought that it would be OP (on any civ), so I think of a way of making their strengths more useful.
This idea is to balance the main weaknesses of the feritoria, which is that it come in a lot late (you have to reach imp while stockpiling the stone/gold and then build them) and then their bonus take a wile for pay off in resources.
This way they could build them in castle age and then build up resources for booming in early imp.
It could be a unique way of booming.
Portuguese very strong in water, they can’t be that strong either in land. Just a small buff like a discount like cheap tower upgrades or something like that.
Theh already have good archers so why buff them?
I don’t think they are that strong on water. Yes, definitely above avarage, but nowhere near Italians, japanese or vikings. They deserve atleast a small buff on water, but I think free ballistics could really make them one of the top tier water civs.
Feitoria is hard to be balance, and it is still really low payback in most of occasions actually.
I had a topic for Feitoria before, so here I gonna suggest something not about it.
The strength of the Portuguese is in the Imperial age, we can help it to get the Imperial age more quickly or smoothly. For example, the cost of the upgrade of the common units can get a discount, maybe 33% off.
In my opinion that’s would help more for rushes than for booming, and it would also be a lot similar to chinese bonus.
That’s why I propose this, feritoria in castle age could help them both for walling and for booming up to imp, so it would help both survive and giving you the means to hit back in imp.
Free ballistics would also only kick in in Castle age and thats where the Tide for Portugiese begins to shift anyway, so Id rather Go with Something that Kicks in earlier.
I Like the Idea of cheaper Upgrades.
(Common Units = Archer, sword, Knights?)
Or IT could be Discount in eco-techs or maybe If a specific unit Line should be encouraged, barracks, stable or archery techs.
Maybe they could get the fletching Line for free, Like the Magyar get the melee Attack Upgrade free. Makes for Strong early Archer Play and Helps on water as well.
Similarity is not a problem, there are many similar bonus and tech among the civs.
Most important is, this Chinese bonus can not affect the upgrade of the units.
It is really really doubtful.
Feitoria is expensive, means it is harder if you wanna build it earlier.
Building it in the castle age may make the player have less resources to defense.
Yes it is.
It may be overpower. The range upgrade should not be compared to the melee upgrade.
The list of “tech” does not include the upgrade of the units.
Chinese: Technologies that benefit Long Swordsmen are 15%/20% cheaper in the Castle/Imperial Age.
That means the upgrade itself does not be influenced.
And Basically its eco payback is totally less than a TC, and the defense by the resources it provides may not enough than a castle, especially Portuguese depends on the organ guns very much.
It is hard to persuade me now that letting it available in the castle age is worthy and useful.
The upgrade itself it is discounted, even the Maa upgrade is discounted, the wiki is misleading because it consider only the upgrades on top of the LS, not the ones already researched like the LS itself.
Well.
Even if Chinese can -20% of the upgrade cost, it is doesn’t matter to let Portuguese have -33% or even -50%.
It get more cheaper upgrade and units, that will be really helpful to make more troops than the enemy in same resources. It is cheaper than Chinese but no discount on other tech, so it is not so similar to Chinese and it works for Portuguese own strategy.
Too inefficient. Do you know that Feitoria has to take about 14 minutes at least to pay back its own cost, no mention the 20 population occupied?
Digging the stone mine and build a castle is definitely better than spending the stone to build Feitoria and waiting the stone provided from it, no matter in the castle age or imperial age, especially taking defense and attack when you have to do the strategy or face the emergency.
As long as you have trade, buying stone is also more efficient than Feitoria. It only shows its power in the late late game. At that time, every player is already in the imperial age. No need to build it in the castle age, since the resource it costs may have better way to use.
