I am red, I did a fast castle drop (time 16:35, 23 villagers, used market to help age up) on blue in arena. I am not even a pro player, all I did was fast castle, send 7 villagers forward and drop castle on blue, (I have censored blue’s name) game over basically. The berry wood bonus is too much. Give the Portuguese some other buff, this is ridiculous. Or nerf the wood berry bonus much more.
If I could pull this off, some other pro players could do it even better. The game was over at 25:51.
You need to work on your response then I guess. Portuguese can do a 23+2 fc forward castle drop which usually is too early to deny with scouts. However you can make scouts or archers in feudal age and delay castle age a bit. If someone goes for such an all in build and doesn’t get the castle up it’s probably gg. Also a lot of civs will have the means to defend from that with redemption monks or 1tc defend castle fast imp, maybe even guard tower defense into all in castle age. These games tend to play out pretty clownly but if you pick a good strat all that stuff is totally doable.
I am the the guy who did the rush. Not blue. It seems broken to me.
I know but so what? You claim it’s broken and I claim there is good responses. Doesn’t matter if you were aggressor or defender in one particular game.
there was a Liereyy vs Dracken game on Arena yesterday in TTL where it was Poles vs Portuguese and the Portuguese opened with a Castle drop. Dracken ultimately won, but more due to Liereyy not properly assessing how far ahead he was and tilt resigning. If we look at how Liereyy responded to the Castle drop, though, we can say that Dracken found 0 damage in early Castle age as Liereyy responded with his own Castle and walled well. In your screenshot, your opponent was bad for not expecting/scouting the strategy. The fact that you took his TC and we don’t see any army or a Siege workshop by blue also makes me think this was a very low elo game where blue just panicked and made 0 army and didn’t wall to prevent the push from spreading.
In any case, it can probably be worth to go to Stone vs Portuguese now and yes, Portuguese are a good Arena civ, but they are not unbeatable, especially if it’s not a 2000+ elo game which I don’t think the game in the screenshot was. Arena tends also to be more civ win-y, I am not sure what a screenshot is meant to show, Arena has always been like, BAM, poles 27 min Imperial into Trebs into GG, or Turks, 26 min fast Imp into Bombard Cannons into GG. I hardly see Portuguese doing a strong strat as being any worse than the offenders we had so far (Burgundians, Poles, Bohemians, Turks).
In any case 1 screenshot isn’t much of a proof, I can post screenshots of games where I beat the Cuman 2 TC boom with Scouts + towers on Arabia, but that can mean that Cuman 2 TC boom is weak or broken, player quality also matters and recognizing the strategy the opponent is going for also matters.
All that said, I feel some player who is a ‘pro’ could pull off what I did even better. If he had some scouts on the field and spotted my 7 villager castle drop rush, I would have lost then and there. Losing 7 villagers and a failed castle drop would hurt me badly even if I were to somehow recover from that.
I agree. And maybe they can do the same build with some other civ like Poles, Bohemians even better. And also the opponent player can respond better because he will also be ‘pro’.
Why not nerf castle drops instead of Portuguese?
It is the syndrom of Arena players to start making military units at Castle age… With only 3 or 4 scoots near the opponent doors from feudal age you can easily prevent castle drop. It will only delay your castle age of 2 min.
Another solution is to go for castle age asap (24 - 25 vills) and make immediate mangonel to counter the drop castle. The time the opponent sends villagers, you ust have time to do it.
FC at 16:23 is really too late lol, if you check even 25+2 or less FC and castle drops that come into 14:20 mins at least, you just simply played way better but a higher level most likely you would bethe one dealing with the castle drop.
The only issue with Portuguese 1v1 atm is the Feitoria.
Otherwise they look fine to me.
Can ofc change if there are some better builds we haven’t figured out yet.
TGs I don’t have too much experience rn to make a call.
Feitoria is a nice feature though, and it doesn’t gather resources efficiently. I get that people panic when they hear “infinite gold” (and especially infinite stone), but if you macro efficiently, you actually have many minutes before the “valuable resources” from Feitoria trumps all the gold/stone mines in the map.
I reckon Feitoria is good ONLY in late Imp on water maps (and you have to get there, Portuguese other than extra HP don’t have the best eco on water), and on Arena (where it’s acceptable but niche).
Well yes that’s the only solution to deny castle drop but if opponent makes castle at home you’re probably dead so it’s a huge gamble.
You can do the castle drop build with 23+2 so you need to predict in advance and maybe even sell stone. Not a good approach imo.
A regular boom is indeed way better than feitoria so going fast imp just for it doesn’t make sense however if you use early imp timing with monk treb to force opponent to engage in very inefficient fights and then add feitoria behind they can work great.
yes they can be not bad in the situation you describe, but this is mostly good on Arena, a map that has these “niche strats” to begin with, like Full Monks, fast Imp etc. I don’t see it as a Portuguese problem, it’s more that Arena encourages these gimmicky all-in strats more than Arabia does.
Thanks to the berry bonus. Portuguese is now a solid pick on every kind of map at every age and i dont like that.
Better that than useless.
You have Lithuanians that are solid on most maps too.
TTL
Portugues stats so far:
Platinum: 2-2
Golden: 2-3
Looks indeed solid.
Not OP.
That’s definetely wrong, I just recently saw an arena game won by Feitorias. It’s not only on these maps. And I think the way how opressive they can become on these maps is also proplematic.
Even if they aren’t the most popular maps doesn’t mean the people who like them need to deal with such a thing.
Any civ with eco bonus can do 22+3 or 23+2 FC
Deny it with SC is not a good way IMO, but it is not hard at all, the SC should deny the villagers on the way before they can put down the castle.
All-in castle age is very common on Arena in high ELO games. This strategy can pretty much kill everybody who are trying to boom
So if you go feudal archers or sc on arena and delay your castle age to a solid 21 min, you dont think the opponent can just scout that and see you also reaching feudal 19 pop before you? Then the enemy just builds the castle home, make 4 organs and rekets your feudal sc’s or archers and defeats you before you even get castle age.
Im 2k+ player and i agree the wood bonus is absolutly too strong for closed maps. The organs are already hard to beat on maps like arena and now they have a solid eco bonus behind them.
Stronger than Turks (who needs a nerf there) or Poles (way more oppresive here)? 
If your issue are Organ Guns then just take away one range for the non elite, since the projectile speed buff the unit is simply too strong in castle age (and yes you can do a double castle organ gun, almost same as oppresive as old arambai). So a range nerf is needed for Jannissaries in castle age (gunpowder unit with 8 range in castle age is overkill).
And ultimately, rework Feitoria, I already saw two games in tournaments on water maps where that building was proving to be too powerful and making it like the win condition for the player who was using it, and as well being unfun for non competitive games (diplomacy games mostly).
