Trade changes

Trade flow–

• Reworked some trade flows around India and Africa this patch
• Biggest change was connecting the Coromandel node to Cape. This means that all that spice trade from Indonesia and the riches of India can flow directly to Cape. And you don’t need to control all of Arabia or Zanzibar trade area.
• Significant impact on how colonizers should play early game

Centers of Trade (CoTs)–

• Lot more CoTs now
• Can be upgraded to level 2 and level 3 CoT, for more trade power among other bonuses. Upgrades cost 200 and 1000 ducats respectively.

Charter company–

• Can now buy a province from any nation in a trade company region.
• Not cheap; prices scale depending on the province and country development and opinion modifiers.

Trade company–

• Can build extra buildings in these trade companies to boost goods, production efficiency, trade power, trade steering and other things.
• Expensive, but worth the investment if done right

Colonization changes–

• New policies synergize well with ideas groups related to colonization.
• Exploration-Expansion policy gives settler increase and -50% native uprising. Which can be combined with Native trading policy giving +50% native assimilation (ass) with no native uprising.
• First policies are free, so you can get that perk for no cost.
• Use your colonizer to upgrade development in your provinces, although I don’t see much use coming from it honestly. (more testing needed)

Now that we have reviewed all trade and colonization changes in the new patch and DLC. Lets start with our opening moves for Portugal.

Opening moves–

1. Take scripted discount advisors at the start. So take the level 2 admin and level 3 diplo guy. And any level 1 mil guy.
2. Set Morocco and Granada as rivals. Set Tunis as your third rival in December, this is to make sure all your rivals don’t band together.
3. Bring army maintenance to zero.
4. Mothball all forts and delete the fort in evora
5. Set 4 light ships to protect trade in sevilla. Set 1 heavy to hunt pirates there. And set the other 2 heavy and 1 light ship to explore west africa. Portugal starts with an explorer even though you don’t have the exploration idea yet. The idea is to explore just west africa soon, as you never know when your explorer might die. This is save you time and diplo points later, as you don’t have to wait for an explorer to start colonizing when you get exploration ideas. Once you are done exploring West Africa, get your explorer to help with protecting trade in Sevilla.
6. Build light ships to force limit. This will satisfy a mission. Once the mission is done, you can sell your transport if you want, but I prefer to keep mine as shuttling armies to from Ceuta is easier that way.
7. Ally and RM Castile. Break your alliance with England. You don’t want to fight France early game. Or ever actually.

Now you will be losing money and you will take few loans for the first couple of decades. Just keep paying loans whenever possible. You will be fine. The higher cost advisors are going to die soon as the scripted ones are in their 40s and 50s. After which you can get level 1 advisors which helps with finances a bit.

Early conquests

• Regency until 1447.
• Start building spy network in morocco for Tangiers.
• Granada is a good target for humiliate CB, but you have truce with them will 1448. Unfortunately, Castile’s truce with them expires earlier than yours. So if they go for reconquista, you can’t do much about it.
• Ideally, you would want Granada to ally just morocco. And for Castile to join the war with a promise of land. But this doesn’t always happen. You will have to figure out the best time to fight them based on the alliance web in north africa.

Conquest of Tangiers

• Your navy is strong enough to have naval dominance over Morocco and Granada. But if they ally Tunis, you can’t take them on your own. Usually there is one alliance between morocco, tlemcen and tunis. So try to ally the third wheel here as they will help you out with promise of land.
• Take Tangiers. Humiliate, if possible.

Conquest of Granada

• If Granada joins the war against Morocco, humiliate them and peace out. Give a province or two to Castile, if they helped you out.
• Try to get humiliate early to get splendor generation going soon, as you have a settler increase perk in the first age. Crucial to establishing the early colonies.
• If you ever find Granada all alone without any allies, declare with humiliate rival CB immediately. You can peace out either with humiliate rival or show strength. Humiliate rival needs 40% warscore gives you 30PP and satisfies the age objective. Show strength needs 100% warscore gives you 30pp, 100 monarch points each but it doesn’t satisfy the age objective, which in my opinion is an oversight by devs (hope it gets fixed soon)

Colonization

• Beeline to admin tech 5 then get the first colonist ASAP
• Colonize Arguin.
• In the older patch, it was beneficial to start colonizing the new world next as that gave you more money quicker and it also guaranteed your colonial dominance over the new world.
• For the new patch, top priority here is to get full dominance of the cape node as that’s where most of the money is going to come from (India and Indonesia trade ducats)
• Colonize West Africa -> Kongo -> Cape.
• As soon as you see any other colonizer starting to colonize the new world, you should spare a colonist to start colonization there too. You will have the settler growth advantage, so you should be able to beat them to the first colony which means you get the benefit of Treaty of Tordesillas.
• Prioritize colonizing CoTs first then fill in the rest of provinces.

Africa

• Colonize West Africa -> Kongo -> Cape -> East Africa.
• Start taking provinces from African nations as well.
• Focus on taking, coastal CoTs -> all provinces in the trade company areas -> inland CoTs -> gold mines.
• Don’t need a big army to conquer these provinces, in fact you don’t need to have a big army until late game.
• Naval dominance is key though. Invest heavily on your navy.
• Always give your conquered provinces to trade companies. I don’t even bother converting religion first as that gives more unrest and I would rather not deal with rebels when I have a small army and small manpower pool. The religious unity hurts a bit, but we can fix that later with humanist idea group.
• Before approaching East Africa, try to get a province from Kilwa as a charter company. They will sell you Sofala which is a CoT and it gives you a foothold for conquests later. Do this before you get a colony there, as the adjacency negative modifier will deter any country from selling you provinces.

New world

• Take your time building colonies here, but don’t completely ignore it.
• Get the Caribbeans colony going faster for more income and trade power.
• Get Mexico colony faster by attacking one the countries there. The Mexican countries might attack your colony later, just enforce peace and join the war. These wars are not difficult as long as you have naval dominance and enough transports to ferry your army.

South East Asia

• Start your colonies in SE Asia as soon as you can.
• Some seriously rich provinces there which will give you a lot of trade power. Fabricate and attack countries with weak allies. Again as long as you have naval dominance, these wars will be easy.
• Provinces here will give you a launching base for future wars in India and China.

Trade Network

• High trade income by early to mid game.
• Build new trade company buildings.
• Company Garrison (local defensiveness and supply limit)- Not worth investment.
• Harbor (trade power and local production efficiency)- Prioritize in CoTs. Great investment.
• Local Ventures (production efficiency and goods produced)- Prioritize in areas with high value goods, such as, slaves or spices. Very good investments.
• Foreign Influence (Tax and local dev cost)- Build if you have money after the above two buildings.
• Special investments (limited to 1 per trade company)-
  • Officers’ Mess and Admiralty (land and naval force limits)- Not worth 1000 ducats.
  • Property Appraiser (trade steering) and Township (trade value, army tradition)- Great investments, even at 1000 ducats each.

All these trade company building don’t require any build time, which I think might change in future patches. Right now they seem really overpowered.

• Upgrade CoTs as soon as you get enough ducats
• Start by upgrading the ones in Sevilla node first. Sevilla node isn’t an end node and you need to make sure the outgoing money is minimal. Again the upgrading of CoTs doesn’t take any time, so as soon as you have the money click the button.
• Upgrade restrictions-
  • Cannot upgrade when at war
  • Cannot have more than 1 level 3 CoT in the same area.
  • Can only upgrade a CoT if its in a state or a trade company.
  • Number of level 3 CoTs = Number of merchants.

Upgrade all CoTs from Sevilla -> Ivory coast -> Cape -> Zanzibar -> India -> SE Asia to at least level 2 as soon as you have the ducats.

Europe?

• Be opportunistic when it comes to getting some provinces in Europe
• Operation Backstab Spain- Need to get more trade power in Sevilla. Get the CoTs with help from France.
• France is your long term ally now.
• PUs can also give you large areas of land in Europe. Keep an eye on the disputed succession tab.

North Africa

• Take control of Safi trade node and taking over morocco is not that hard.
• If they are allied to Ottomans just wait till they are busy in another war.
• Make sure you release subjects here as Berber provinces have 50% increased coring costs.

Late game conquests

By 1700 you should have complete dominance over African and SE Asia trade nodes. Now you will swimming in money and although you don’t have the strongest army, you can just throw mercs against whoever is strongest in India and Ming. Late game objective is to get all those trade company provinces if you are keen on it.

Ideas

Exploration- For early colonization boost

Expansion- Continue colonization dominance

Offensive/Defensive- Time to buff up your army

Humanist- By this time your religious unity will be suffering, so you need to go humanist. Humanist also has some good policies.

Naval- For the new patch, I recommend going naval next as having the naval dominance is key. And naval ideas and some policies associated with it makes it easier.

Next is up to you. I would go diplo for the extra diplomat and PU possibilities. Then Quality for some army buffs and even more overpowered navy. And finish it up with either another military idea if you feel you need more firepower. Or go trade, to get more merchants which means more level 3 CoTs, just to see how much money you can make!

Policies

Exploration – Expansion policy-

• Change your native policy to native trading and still get no native uprising while having a small boost to good produced
• Along with a lot of native assimilation pop up events

Exploration – Naval policy-

• OP navy with extra 20% naval engagement

Humanist – Exploration policy-

• Settler increase along with an extra 50% native ass. That means with the earlier policy you get 100% native ass. That is a significant boost to economy.

Expansion – Naval policy-

• Reduced LD in subjects which is helpful as you will have a lot of subjects.

Later you can get more policies from trade ideas group for more trade power and steering. Not that you will need to make more money.

Institutions

• If RNGesus blesses your game, you can spawn Colonialism, Manufactories and Enlightenment.
• Spawning Global trade also possible, but a bit harder as Sevilla is not an end node and making it highest value trade node by 1600 is tough.
• Develop institutions as you can afford level 5 advisors giving you more monarch points.
• Build Manufactories and Universities everywhere for faster institution spread. A

Missions and Events

• Follow Portugal mission tree for amazing perks and claims
• Good events such as Vasco de Gama event from a mission. Gives you the province of Goa for free.

I’m having a lot of fun playing Portugal and going full colonizer/Trade. It’s a refreshing change from taking all provinces for yourself in most games. The new changes in 1.26/Dharma DLC are great for playing as a colonizer or trade focus. Hope this guide helps out players looking to try their hand at the new and improved Portugal!

Here is a video tutorial if that makes it easier to understand.