Civ 5 Portuguese Civilization

Civ Bonuses, AI Info, Strategies, Unique Units and Buildings

Updated for Gods and Kings and Brave New World DLCs

Civilization's Leader: Maria I

Civ Bonus: Mare Clausum
Resource diversity grants double gold for Portugal in each trade route. This is usually 0.5 per resource you have available in your Empire, but with Portugal is doubled to 1 gold per - this can add up to a lot of extra gold with many trade routes going to other Civs. It does help with City-State trade routes as well, but you are almost always better off trading with other Civs for the gold per turn is typically double.

Unique Unit: Nau
Requires Astronomy, Replaces Caravel
The Nau does not gain any combat strength over the Caravel, nor movement, however when it is on the border of another Civilization or City-State, it may use its Exotic Cargo ability to generate Gold and Experience relative to the distance it is from your own lands. Further = higher gold/XP. The experience gained will usually be about enough to let it go up 1 level if you have built it from a City with a Barracks, so you can tailor them to your needs.

Unique Tile Improvement: Feitoria
Requires Navigation
The Feitoria comes toward the mid-game and allows your Workers to build this tile improvement in a City-State's borders, but only on a tile along the coast. The Feitoria will give you one copy of each Luxury Resource the Civilization has connected, which is typically reserved for when you have an Alliance with a CS. The Feitoria counts as a Fort, so you may want to aid a CS by putting it in a good spot - any units defending there will get a +50% defense bonus. This would be particularly potent on a hill. For an Ally you really want to keep, you may even station your own unit there. When playing against Portugal, pillaging a Feitoria counts as an act of war.

Playing Against The Maria I AI - Their Tendencies (XML Info and Flavors)
Warmonger Hatred	Wonder Compete	Offense Build	Defense Build	City Defense	DoF	Friendly to Civs	Denounce Civs	War w/Civs	Deception Likelihood	CS Comp	CS War
5	5	5	5	5	7	6	7	4	6	6	4
Other Info	Maria I is middle of the road in many stats, so your experience playing against her can vary wildly from game to game. The AI should make use of its Trade Route bonuses, so having the East India Company built in one of your Coastal Cities will make it a better target for her ships. Trade routes benefit competing Civs, but help you, too! The more incoming, the better. Despite being a Civ that is very well-suited for Diplomatic Victory, she's not likely to pursue any particular Victory Condition.
Start Bias: Coastal

Portugal's Feitoria is one of Maria I's best features.

The Feitoria gives you a copy of every Luxury Resource a City-State has connected.

Strategies/Ideas for playing as Maria I's Porgual:
Portugal is a very flexible Civ, because their bonus is all about money and that is a commodity that aids in any Victory Condition, from helping with Unit upkeep for a Domination Victory or buying Spaceship Parts with Freedom to win Scientifically. However, when you are generating massive amounts of Gold, as Portugal is very capable of, Diplomatic Victory always comes to the forefront for most experienced players - just as it does with Venice and other Civs focused on money. Given more Resources will lead to higher Trade Route income, playing Wide with Maria to increase Resource diversity by controlling more land is not a bad idea, but the extra gold will also help a Tall empire get more out of its smaller land area. This means that even if you are put in the situation where you cannot expand to have many Cities, this Civ is more than capable of adapting to those circumstances.

You will want to favor techs that give you access to more Trade Routes, because that will aid you in the early-game even if you have few trading partners or are stuck with just City-States. Petra and The Colossus World Wonders both give +1 extra Trade Route slots, but can be challenging to build on higher difficulties and Petra requires a desert City, which would likely make for an awful Coastal start. You may want to try for the Colossus if you have Luxuries that require Mining or have Jungle that you will need to chop to access other Luxuries (Spices for example). Try to keep those Trade Routes utilized at all times. One or two could be internal to help your Capital grow larger to aid you in building any Wonders you may desire later in the game. I do recommend you try to get to Banking and adopt Patronage before other Civs to allow you to build the Forbidden Palace to get +2 Delegates in the World Congress, making Diplomatic Victory easier to achieve, particularly if a City-State or two have been conquered by other Civs. Those extra Delegates can help you control the Congress either way, especially given the extra gold should help you have many more City-State Alliances.

Because the Gold from Trade Routes is determined by the Gold output of both the originating and destination City, you will want to have Markets, Banks, etc. and possibly a few Trading Posts to boost the Gold income of the City that will be doing most of your trading. Over the long-run, a Great Merchant's Customs House could be very helpful for this reason, so long as you focus on making that City a great place to trade. Great Merchants are also the easiest type of Great Person to get early and with Portugal you would not have to worry so much about raising the cost of Great Scientists. Ultimately, this will lead to even more Gold for you because that City will also be the most favorable destination for other Civilizations to trade with. You will undoubtedly want to adopt Commerce to get +25% gold in the Capital and allow you to build Big Ben. Landsknechts could come in handy for preventing a War, and you will find further reduction of Gold purchasing costs after adopting the next Policy in that tree (Mercantilism).

Portugal's Feitoria is something that some seem confused about. It is a Fort (+50% defense for units stationed there) that doubles as a sort of dock for trade as you can see in the screenshot above. You build it along the coast and may replace a City-State's own Tile Improvement with the Feitoria. This means it only works on City-States that have tiles bordering the coast - they may even be landlocked but must have a tile next to the Coast that they control. Once built, you will get a copy of all their Luxuries to help your Empire's happiness, whether you are Allied or not. This will keep your Civ's Happiness stable even if others are stealing your Alliances. These Resources can't be traded, but it DOES allow you to then trade a duplicate resource that you only have one of - say you have one Cotton, then get Cotton from a City-State. You may now trade your own Cotton for another Luxury or sell it to another Civ without losing the +4 Happiness you get from Cotton. Because you can do this to all Coastal City-States over time, the +2 Happiness per Luxury from Patronage is a very helpful Social Policy for Portugal. This further pushes them toward being a Civ that should go for a Diplomatic Win, but the extra Research from all those City-State Alliances will also help them Scientifically. With Patronage and Commerce you could get +8 from each City-State Luxury and +6 for your own.

I saw some controversy about the Feitoria on a couple sites on the web and whether it is still useful to Ally with City-States given you will get their Luxuries. Allying still gives you more Food from Maritime City-States, Culture, Faith, etc. from the others and their Strategic Resources, which can be VERY helpful later in the game, particularly if you do not have access to something you need like Aluminum or Coal. You can use your Gold to help City-States instantly improve a Resource if it is discovered within their lands, which will give you that Resource if you are an Ally.

To make use of the Feitoria, make a pair of Workers to go out with your Nau (to protect against Barbarians) to distant City-States and build them as quickly as you can. You will be able to grow larger if playing Wide or have many more Golden Ages if playing Tall. Getting these up and running is of high importance once available and will be very handy to a rapidly growing Civilization. This should also help you to meet the demands of Citizens for We Love the King Day to help Cities grow even faster. Prioritize building Feitoria in City-States that you have not yet allied with, and particularly those that are Allied with another Civ where you cannot yet afford the Diplomatic Penalty for stealing an Alliance. The Feitoria will give you those Luxuries without angering another Civ, and you can later steal the Alliance when you feel safer about doing so.

The Nau's Exotic Cargo Ability will help Portugal generate massive amounts of Gold in the mid-game.

Exotic Cargo can be used only once, but generates a large amount of Gold and Experience for the Nau.
Exploit this to help you purchase in Cities and buy CS Alliances to become Host of the World Congress.

The Portuguese Nau will greatly help increase your Empire's Gold for a time and give you a capable Fleet that can help deter enemy attacks by improving your Military power rating, as seen in Demographics. You will still want an 'average' land military to help prevent Wars from neighboring Civs. Distant Civs will be hard-pressed to attack you if you have a big fleet of these ships with promotions to better fight against Naval Units and the +1 Movement and/or Supply upgrade to let them heal anywhere. Making 5-8 Nau and even more is not a bad idea, keeping in mind that once the Exotic Cargo ability is used you will pay upkeep on the Unit. You will definitely want to keep plenty to defend your coastal Cities, but others may be deleted within your Borders to prevent paying this upkeep.

You could make many and find that you earn way more effective Gold Per Turn than choosing to build 'Wealth' with a City. Exotic Cargo is used when along or inside the borders of another Civ or City-State and may be used only once per ship. Build many of these and explore the world, looking at how much you gain from using the ability as you travel further away from your Capital. The unit should travel as far from your lands as possible - keeping in mind that the world is round. This means going one or two tiles in another direction may vastly increase the amount of Gold/Experience the Nau generates when you use its Exotic Cargo Ability by altering the shortest path to its location. I suspect on very large maps the Nau can get even more, but on Standard I saw upwards of +340 Gold and +26 Experience for using the ability. Once you identify a good spot, send all your Nau there to use their ability before continuing to explore or returning home. The Nau upgrades to the Ironclad and later Destroyer, so you will have little trouble with Submarines later on and may even find yourself taking some Cities through force or liberating City-States.

Overall, Portugal is a great and flexible Civ that should be easy for newcomers to the game. Gold is incredibly useful and any Civ that gets more of it is going to be able to adapt to ever-changing circumstances. Share your Tips for playing Portugal below, where you may help your fellow players.

Civilization Bonuses, Unique Units, Strategies and Openings
Sid Meier's Civ 5 is a deep strategy game. I created these individual Civilization Guides to highlight the strengths of their specials and unique units. If you have an opener or tip for playing this Civ that you would like to share with other readers, please use the comments form below. Some Guides are in need of update and will be improved to a new standard of quality or altered to reflect gameplay changes in G&K and Brave New World.
America	Arabia	Assyria	Austria	Aztec	Babylon	Brazil
Celts	China	Dutch	Egypt	England	France	Germany
Greece	The Huns	Inca	India	Indonesia	Iroquois	Japan
Korea	Maya	Mongolia	Morocco	Ottoman	Persia	Poland
Polynesia	Portugal	Rome	Russia	Shoshone	Siam	Songhai
Venice	Zulu

Share Tips and FAQs (3)

Our Sims Forum is the place to go for faster answers to questions and discussions about the game. Use the form below to share your own experiences and provide helpful tips to other readers.

Scott Foltz says...

I would like to expressly declare Portugal's unique strengths are compounded by having its earliest cities founded longitudinally. This offers a great recompense for building waves of Nau to commission/deploy simultaneously (if not, at least regularly). Also, trade routes will be able to be sent to the same city by having holing tightly to longitudinal expansion. The Feitoria is a god send for having marginal coastal resources inside your own borders. I recommend strategic spending on the fattest city states that compliment your own resource reserves. And place a Feitoria inside of the C-Ss that are furthest away and work inwards (or stagger but the best timing is to send the earliest extra worker far out or midway out and build a secondary worker to cover the closer coastal states.

However, playing wide is intensely wise for conflict managers who are committed to exploration, patronage and/or liberty. Trade can solve diplomacy through subtle repetition and Nau income is great for emergency spending if you need to invest in purchasing sea&building production builings. With out express internal gold investments from utilizing all of Portugal's sea trade assets, playing wide makes Portugal limp and vulnerable. I recommend a longitudinal early city placement of at least two cities bracing your capital. Portugal is bound to make some friends and royally ***** off the other half so make bold moves as Portugal, in world history they founded one of the largest cities of the new world and later that city expanded to rival Mexivo and the USA in trade. that means little in Civ 5 but their historic trajectory has given me a clue as to how they best invest: Early exploration and heavy focus on maintaining a sprawling naval presence promote prestige. You don't have to play rough with a military to get ahead but you can certainly afford a few instigated conflicts. Portugal will thrive if it holds allies, but will fail with poor defenses. Everyone on the game humans players especially will envy your trade route gold bonuses. I dare say even venice will be hard pressed to compete since you can settle early strong cities and if you distribute production boosting national wonders/ordinary buildings evenly.