Totally agree, the two options doesn’t exist for europeans?
Shock inf and hand skirm.
I suppose if we want them as infantry-looking units we have two choices:
- Hand Shock Infantry. This is the way to sneak a heavy cavalry unit equivalent in with messing around without adding something similar to Hussars. Hand Shock Infantry would be new for Euros and we could actually go a step further with the uniqueness by making it a Lancer (i.e. anti-infantry) type of shock infantry by way of (all) infantry multipliers. This would work really well with their historic use - to smash into the infantry melee, leading the charge. They get to make decent damage thanks to their multipliers but will succumb to their heavy Infantry counters eventually (like a glass cannon), however they would fair much better against light infantry due to the ranged resistance (as per lancer type cav) and the light infantry lack of cav multipliers. Again, historically armoured Fidalgos would often face and trounce native light infantry. Weak to groups of musketeers.
Or…
- Hand Skirmisher. Another unique take for a Euro civ and more straight forward - is a natural counter to Heavy Infantry, has ranged resistance to close in and can deal with Light Cav as well. Weak to Heavy Cav
Personally a Hand ‘lancer’ Shock Infantry, i.e your abstract cavalry type infantry with lancer multipliers sounds a lot of fun. Also these guys would be historically good as ‘on foot’ units - these guys fought on ships, from ships, in the jungles - they weren’t as horse-based as you may think!
To avoid silhouette/unit model confusion we can go with a Carracks Black Sword (a one-hander that was literally black to present rust on board the ships). If we want a little flair, give him a very small Parrying Dagger in his off-hand (again very common, especially for Adventurers fighting from ships). Montantes could just be an HC shipment that increase area of effect, again to avoid unit confusion.
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I feel that the ports are in a decent spot. They have a good roster of units that is flexible. They are solid throughout the game and a good treaty civ. The new units skins will make them feel more special and unique, hopefully.
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And yet, not good enough for what it should be.
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Maybe my old post can give some Ideas.
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Hmmm the only european shock Infantry I remember Is the Roundshier Rondartschier – Wikipedia
I remember from Cossacks. Sadly just found a wikipedia text in german, its kinda lika a Rodelero. Just not so famous, used in parts in germany (Bavaria) and a lot in Austria.
Reenactment dreißigjähriger Krieg - Teil 3: Rondartschiere Fortsetzung - YouTube
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A lot of Euros used sword and shield men around the same time! It’s actually a bit of a misnomer that just the Spanish had sword and buckler men (also bucklers were incorrect Victorian era labelling - bucklers were tiny and rodeleros used far bigger shields)
Here’s an English Sword & Target man, or Targeteer for example:
English, Scots and the Irish all used them during 1500s right up to 1600s to compliment pike formations.
The Cossacks game was awesome at the time and I loved that Rundschier sword and shield men were available to all as Mercs!
Ahem.
Anyway, bringing the topic back to Ports, more talk about Fidalgos! They’re one of the truly unique Portuguese soldiers during the AoE3 time span and it seems crazy that the original Devs decided to shoehorn Organ Guns as their ‘unique’ unit. Armoured shock infantry that can glass-cannon into heavy and smash into light infantry would certainly do these Portuguese adventurers justice!
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Just a couple of mentions of Montante being used in battle by the Portuguese, as it is frequently mentioned (wrongly) just as a ceremonial/ training weapon.
“Pedro Homem put up an admirable fight…”
“He was the last to fall for he wore European plate armour and kept the Chinese at bay with a heavy montante until he was eventually taken down by a cannon shot.”
Monteiro, Saturnino (1995), Portuguese Sea Battles - Volume II - Christianity, Commerce and Corso 1522-1538, Saturnino Monteiro.
"Even with his launch scraping the bottom, Antonio grappled the galley from the stern. At once five Portuguese knights, wearing suits of armour that covered them from head to foot, jumped into her and, wielding their two-handed swords, created havoc all around them. Within minutes the galley was fully cleared of enemies!
## # ###### of ill fortune, just at the point when Antonio de Noronha was about to board the galley an arrow hit him on one of his knees, causing a serious wound that made him fall helpless inside the launch. Concerned only in saving Antonio, the launch’s crew pulled away, leaving the five knights alone in the galley facing hundreds of enemies that pressed them from all sides. Then an epic fight took place in which those five performed prodigies of valour with their two-handed swords, not allowing the Adilkhan’s soldiers to return to the galley. From his vantage point atop a high parapet Adilkhan watched, in amazement, the way in which the Portuguese were fighting and could not restrain himself from praising them.
Some launches tried to go in aid of the five isolated knights, but the low water prevented them from doing so. It was then that the boatswain of one of the «naus» who happened to be in one of the launches, had the presence of mind to tell the crew, except for the six oarsmen, to pass to the other launches in order to lighten the one in which he himself was. In so doing he was able to quickly approach the galley’s stern, and collect the knights that were ###### ### except one, named João de Eiras who, in order to cover the retreat of his companions, rushed into the midst of the enemies for never to return."
Portuguese Sea Battles Volume I
The First World Sea Power
1139-1521
Saturnino Monteiro
André de Brito, returning from Siam in a small «nau» with twelve Portuguese, to put in at Phang, to water and get supplies. As always, he was received with great demonstrations of friendship by the Sultan but, as had happened with António de Pina, at daybreak he was suddenly grappled by twenty lancharans and the Malayans started to board the «nau» like ants. Once again there was a desperate struggle in which the Portuguese made wonders with their swords and spears, killing and wounding many enemies. But, such were their numbers, when one fell or retired wounded was immediately replaced by another. And as the conflict wore on the twelve lost their strength and fell one after the other. At last only a brother of André de Brito remained alive, a young man of athletic constitution who, with his heavy two-handed broadsword was able twice, alone, to clean the «nau» of enemies! But finally he, too, was exhausted. To avoid capture he jumped to the water, still wearing his suit of armour, and perished drowned.
Monteiro, Saturnino (1995), Portuguese Sea Battles - Volume II - Christianity, Commerce and Corso 1522-1538, Saturnino Monteiro.
“At last some knights managed to hoist themselves up and into the enemy ships and, with broadsword strokes, made room for the soldiers that came after them. In a few minutes the fight spread through the whole line of «paraus», with the defenders passing from one to other as necessary and being again and again reinforced with soldiers from the stockades.”
“Although having put a brave resistance, the sixteen junks were seized. Once more the Malayans’ poisoned arrows and scimitars were no match for the Portuguese bombards, harquebuses, suits of armour and heavy broadswords.”
“the spears were passed to the slaves and the knights and soldiers received from them the swords and the broadswords. (It is worth remembering that the broadsword was a heavy sword which had to be wielded with the two hands, which prevented the warrior from using a dagger or shield to protect himself. But its strokes were devastating. When used by an athletic swordsman a broadsword could split a man from the head downwards. Therefore they were the preferred weapon of most knights).”
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The “rodela” is a small round shield
Of course, totally agree
Thoose guys look great
A nice legendary spanish example with montante is Diego Garcia Paredes (El Sansón de Extremadura)
He faced and defeated 20 sword-wielding Italian guards using an iron bar because they had insulted him.
In addition to many more warlike feats.
He also participated in the duel of the 11 best French knights (where the mythical Bayardo was) vs the 11 best Spanish knights.
undefeated in more than 300 duels to the death and lances of honor; captain of the Pope’s personal guard; condottiere, infantry colonel, Field Master and Knight.
The most famous Spaniard and undoubtedly the strongest of his time.
It has a movie story, (the GoT “The Mountain” character is based on it)
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The thing is, I don’t believe they are in a decent spot at all. Forgetting the fact that I didn’t make this thread to talk about balance (though I tried to take it in consideration), Ports aren’t good in 1v1 anyway and have been considered mid-tier in treaty for some time now, since it couldn’t manage to keep up with many of the new civs. Yes, they did receive new skins, but so did literally every single Euro civ, not to mention that the skins for both the Musk and Goon reference a legion that, although composed by Portuguese people, fought for Napoleon’s France! It’s one of the few civs that has only 2 Unique Units, 1 of them being entirely ahistorical, a mostly generic roster, no Unique Buildings, no Unique Revs and, with the exception of “Feitorias” and “Constable”, most of the new Cards that it received are either awful (Carracks and Naval Infantry) or useless (Estremoz Field Guns), so you can’t even make fun meme-y builds, just the same monotonous FF. Right now it just feels like a civ that’s blander than stale bread, that is why I made this thread.
I don’t expect the devs to follow every single idea I’ve layed out here, but hopefully they will see them and get inspired into making some changes for the civ. I’ve seen the Dutch getting new Cards every single Update, while Ports are left in the dirt and it just annoys me that a civ that I care about keeps getting the bare minimum.
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Amen.
Give them something interesting and not just a broad ‘unique unit’ that has no tie to Portugul’s real unit niches like Fidalgos.
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Seconded. Here are a few potential unique Portuguese units (per Wikipedia and Google):
- (Hussar Replacement) Acorbetados: Literally just armored (cavalry). This can be the hussar replacement. In general, they should have higher HP than Hussars, but are otherwise inferior.
- (Organ Gun Replacement) Berco: The standard Portuguese swivel gun. The should be a fast attacking low damage cannon. They are similar to the Cetbang from the Indonesian revolution.
- (Special Skirmisher) Atiradore: Sharpshooters that have 24-range. Slow firing rate, very high base damage (no multiplier of any kind), can stealth. This is a special unit that cannot be conventionally trained (can only obtain from Home City, Church, etc.)
- (Halberdier Replacement?) Aventureiros: This is can be the Montante-wielding footman. I have no idea how they would fit in the Portuguese roster though.
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Has anyone tried the grapeshot card? I can’t really notice any difference.
I like the ideas for the Fidalgos, it would be good for Portugal.
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Good card in AI skirmishes against civs that are overly reliant on infantry, like ethiopia, Inca, Aztecs, Hauds.
Basically all civs that want to swamp you.
I want to contribute here because Portugal is my 2nd most played civ throughout AoE3, although I’ve considerably less time on them in the recent DE than I did in legacy or last year, so take some of this with a grain of salt… or maybe a handful.
That aside, I do have some thoughts concerning what Portugal’s main strengths and weaknesses are.
Strengths
- Portugal’s best units are their Dragoons, Cassadors, and Rabaulds. They also have excellent mortars. The underlying similarities here? Their range. Portugal is a civ that excels at a long-range bombardment, and are just about the only civ that hits such a high strength at such a long distance. They have a Royal Guard Musketeer for this reason - not because they want to use them as musketeers, but because it gives them a reliable and semi-decent short-range unit to use as a meatshield for their actual damage.
Weaknesses
- If you get close to Portugal, their units kinda crumble. Dragoons are never good in melee, and Cassadors are low-health for a reason. Rabaulds are more cost-efficient than falconets, and deal about the same DPS, but have less health.
With that in mind, giving them a high-health cavalry unit, cost-efficient or not, would absolutely wreck that balance and make them impossible to get near. Played right, it’s already hard enough to get past their Musketeer/Hussar combo if they’re properly supporting from a range.
My suggestions: Avoid giving or strengthening their front line. It’s expendable at best to start with and making it strong would make them impossible to break through. If you want to change their Hussars, then turn them into a lower health but high attack/high resist cavalry units that moves fast. This will lean into their weaknesses, give them a decent raiding unit early on, and be offset by my further suggestion:
Give them a unique heavy cannon variant that fires faster and has less health. Portugal tends to sacrifice health for damage, as is shown with both the Cassador and Rabauld - Do the same with a heavy cannon replacement, trainable only from factories or obtainable from the home city.
Replace the Dragoon entirely with a unique variant, giving the Portuguese three Royal Guard units - Dragoon, Cassador, and Rabauld. Make the Dragoon variant have higher resist, like the Cassador, and a higher attack. They would be more resistant into skirmishers, leaning into the distance strength of the Portugal, and it would make it easier to kill these units once you got in close, as is the main weakness of the Portuguese military composition.
And push more cards away from turtling. Their extreme range already makes them excellent turtlers before turtle-specific cards come into play.
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This adresses game balance but it no way does sort Portugal civ design, which is terrible.
I don’t know much about Portuguese history, but figured my understanding of the civ in-game would help find some directions for y’all to go with your ideas.
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I have. It’s great! Once it’s in your Organ guns move at full speed even in blast mode and only have to switch to blast mode once after being trained.
It allows you to micro them way more than before (you can easily pull back if they’re being charged).
The only big issue is that if you tell them to go a long distance their AI still believes they need to switch to movement mode. That causes them to freeze up and not move (very annoying)
I’ve been playing Organ Gun plus Dragoons (and sometimes culvs/mortars) a lot in team games lately and it’s been going pretty well if I survive to the late game.
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Thanks I’ll try them out again properly.