Conquest of the New World Portugal Strategy (Deity)

In the history of Portugal, the era of the Portuguese Empire is surely the most glorious: Lasting for almost six centuries it was one of the longest-lived empires in history (1415-1999) and one of the largest, too. During the Conquest of the New World Portugal built an empire stretching across all continents. It was rivaled only by the Spanish and exceeded by the British Empire.

Unlike other empires, the Portuguese didn’t become famous by the name of one of it’s leaders, but rather by the discoveries of it’s pioneers (e.g. Vasco da Gama).

Per agreement with Spain, the Portuguese limited their empire to half of the world between one North-South meridian crossing Brazil and it’s respective anti-meridian crossing New Guinea. The area between, mainly Brazil, the coastline of Africa, India and Southeast Asia was thoroughly covered with a dense network of trading posts. The African outposts should prove even more valuable in later centuries during the Scramble for Africa.

The following Steam Achievement Guide is basically the same as Conquest of The New World – Tea and Crumpets for Everyone Steam Achievement Guide, which describes how to succeed with England. The same strategy was already validated with Conquest of The New World – Tout le Monde Francophone? Steam Achievement Guide and now, winning on Deity, with an even higher score will be my final validation. If you need more details on something, please check out the English strategy first. I will use this guide to point out small variations and improvements to the aforementioned strategy.

Part 1: Dominate Europe

Chapter 1: Initial Build Order and Research

The AI in this scenario is dominant as always. So as usually we need to defeat the main AI players as early as possible.

Now in Conquest of the New World, European Nations can not declare war on each other until the discovery of Piracy. This means in order to win with Portugal, you need two things:

1. Direct your Research straight to Piracy
2. Meanwhile build a military strong enough to capture those European capitals

The initial build order shows exactly that focus on Production improvements and right after only units:

Lisbon	Research
1. Ironworks (5)	Navigation
2. Workboat (6)
3. Forge (9)	Calendar
4. Cargo Ship 1 (12)
5. Seaport (17) — and buy a second workboat —	Trapping (18)
6. Navigation School (22, way later than other games)
7. Cargo Ship 2 (24)	Economics (24)
8. Cargo Ship 3 (25)
9. Cargo Ship 4 (27) — leading to a whooping 86 Gold per Turn already —
10. Circus (29)	Printing Press (30)
11. Garden (31)
12. Armory (33) — Total War Social Policy for +production of units —	Education (36)
13. Galleas 5x (until turn 40)	Imperialism (40)
14. University of Oxford (42) — Golden Age —	Piracy (42 with Oxford)
15. Privateer 6x (until turn 53) — Upgrade 5 Galleases for 750G	Warships (54, later than most games)
16. Privateer 7 (55)
17. Frigate 6 (58, due to oversupply and -20% production)	Banking (59)
18. Zoo
19. East India Company	Advanced Piracy (74)

Unlike England, France and the Netherlands, both Spain and Portugal have the chance to improve their capital city dramatically by capturing the capital of the respective other Iberian nation. For Portugal the effect is even bigger: Each other capital has 1 source of Fish, where Lisbon has 3, contributing greatly to food, production and gold per turn.

European Social Policies

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Timing is essential: First getting the production bonuses is great for building the army. Only then adding City Sack and Ransom supports the European conquest.

Tier 1 Social Policies	Tier 2 Social Policies	Tier 3 Social Policies
1st SP – Maritime Infrastructure +3 Production in coastal Cities	3rd SP – Total War (~ Turn 37) +25% Production when building units New units start with +15 XP	6th SP – Overseas Empire (~ Turn 83) 1 Great Admiral +2 Movement +1 Sight for Great Admirals +2 Movement for Naval Units New Cities start with +3 population
2nd SP – City Sack +33% Combat Strength when attacking cities	5th SP – Barter System (~ Turn 71) +1 Gold per Trading post +2 🙂 from each Luxury resource	9th SP – Conquest of the New World (~ Turn 128) Double Gold from Treasures (thus double VP)
4th SP – Ransom (~ Turn 62) Gain Gold for each enemy unit killed	8th SP – Merchant Navy (~ Turn 110) +2 GPT for Trade routes with City States
7th SP – Naval Tradition (~ Turn 95) +1 🙂 for each Harbor, Seaport, Lighthouse
(Monarchy ~ Turn 147)

Chapter 2: Conquest of Europe

This being the 5th of 5 Conquest of the New World posts about a European Civilization, I’ll just list rough timings here:

1. Turn 55 War with Spain (Seville: Turn 57, peace turn 61)
2. Turn 64 War with France (La Rochelle: Turn 68)
3. Turn 70 War with England (Plymouth: Turn 71, peace turn 76)
4. Turn 79 War with the Netherlands (Amsterdam: Turn 82, peace turn 85)

Part 2: Conquest of the New World

Chapter 3: Defeating the European’s Colonies

Chapter 4: The Native Americans

Main points of the game:

• save treasures until you get the Conquest of the New World Social Policy as this gives you double VP and Gold
• bribe Native Americans against each other as every unit they kill themselves is one you won’t have to kill

Other than playing England and France in the first two European games, I won’t provide a detailed log of the conquest. It’s very individual per map anyways, so I’ll just show some highlights in the following gallery.

Eventually playing Portugal I got an amazing score of 9000 in 15 hours, 23 minutes.

Conquest of the New World – Portugal (Deity) – Conclusion

This last European playthrough for Conquest of the New World was a bit less boring compared to the Netherlands, because Portugal has more potential thanks to its capital. Still: Winning is never out of question. The only question is: How much of the Americas can one conquer before time runs out…

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