Ok guys. Here´s my SWOT analysis on Ports. Strenghts and weaknesses now and opportunities and threats after a possible patch 1.02
Ports Strenghts
- 7 villagers at the beginning of the game
- More TC than other civs - Good for spamming villies and protecting navy
- Great Walls for turtling
- 2nd best Musks in the Game
- Good Skirms (Cassadores), Imperial Upgrades for Halbs and probably the best X-Bows of the Game (Besteiros)
- Great Dragoons with their great upgrade shipments
- Long Range Mortars
- Great Cards in our Tech Tree such as the resources, the Navigation School, The Eng. School, Dragoon Combat, Schooners, Whale Oil, Mamelukes and Ronin, 2 factories, Eco Theory, Donatarios (I really like this card to secure shores from enemy´s navy), ATpost´s and Native Warriors, Team Artillery Hitpoints, Team cheap Outposts could be excellent if they had a hitpoints bonus and reduce their building time.
- Spyglass from our explorer
- 2 great cannon card
- 2 forts
Ports Weakness
- Our unique cards like White fleet, Bandeirantes, House of Bragança are useless.
- Ecomienda Manor unique tech from church as good as Silos cards all other civs have so there´s no uniqueness in there. Ports are a food civ and almost all other civs can gather food better than Ports.
- The cost of besteiros. 2200 wood in age III to spend just in this card
- Black Riders is redundant we already have a great ant cav army . . .why spend 2000 wood on these guys?
- Ports have no settlers card
- TC takes to long to build reducing our early eco potential.
- Can only build 7 Outposts while other civs can build 13 and have a 25%more hitpoints bonus with extensive fortifications.
- Only 2 military shipments in Age II and no upgrades at all. All infantry upgrades are in Age IV
- Lack of siege artillery. We only have the mortars in age IV. No granadiers or falconets wich have more building damage than organ guns despite the fact they should be anti infantry weapons.
- Blood Brothers . . . who uses this?
- Our warships are worse than the british, spanish, dutch , japs (at least this civs have better upgrades than Ports).
- Lack of Trickle Cards
Ports Opportunities
If ES boosted Ports in the next patch with a few ideas this thread provided than we could have more Ports players increasing this game variety. I´m fed up with Brits, French, Indian and Japs players facing each other!!!
- House of Bragança becoming a trickle card, Ports having a better all food gathering rates or the cost of their villies decreased, TC building time decreased could help their early eco and allow them to construct militay units more easilly to face rushes.
- Team cheap outposts now provide a 25% more hitpoints bonus making Ports defences stronger, giving them equal outposts strenght as the other european civs.
- Lowering the cost of besteiros could give easier access to Ports unique unit.
- Changing 11 Black riders for 2000 wood for 8 - 9 Mamelukes for 2000 gold would allow Ports to have a very good Heavy cav shipment instead of more dragoons. They are not even that better as Jinetes imo.
- Ecomienda Manor tech. Could be a great card if other civs didn´t have Silos and colbertism. It´s not unique card. We could have silos and a military improvement card making Ports stronger.
- White fleet spamming caravels instead of fishing boats. Schooners already gives us low coast boats . . .this card in Age IV is a joke. Give our caravels a boost like you gave spanish galleons or Dutch Fluyts. Ports were major explorers like Caçador said. Please improve this useless card.
- Artillery hitpoints card giving 10% damage too. A bit like Dragoon combat. Making our artillery a bit better.
- Ragefinding now affects monitor ships. Logical improvement since it´s a mortar on a ship.
- 24 pikes card now gives more siege damage to our hand infantry. 10 Pikes card changes into 8 Pikes and moved to age II giving Ports more options to face rushes.
- Team Infantry gunpowder card - changed into Team Gunpowder Unit card giving our goons also 15% more hitpoints making them the BEST goons in the game as ES says. To compensate Unction card and just a bit less range than the brits. Ports should be the best Goon civ with this change they could give a boost to allies goons. Logical
- One of the infantry upgrades card should move to age II.
- Bandeirantes could give our explorer the abillity to train a bunch of grenadiers, or colonial militia.
- Blood brothers affecting not only american allies but also asian, and instead of the champion level a hitpoints and damage boost or anative build limit increase.
- TC Anti ship attack increased again (one of Ports advantadges that was a bit lost in the previous patch)
- Cassadores attack increased by 1. Damage now is 18 instead of 17.
- Team Fish Market changed to 20% gather rate
- ATP range attack increased (this would be a general change for all civs)
Ports Threats
I´m afraid that if ES doesn´t boost Ports at all in this patch we might loose the few players that play Ports. lol
Seriously we have been waiting for a strong boost for Ports since vanilla. And after so many patches we haven´t seen that boost. ES please notice that Ports are one of the least used civs. That no one has ever considered them OP, almost everyone agrees that they´re UP in land maps and in supremacy. Everyone likes to play against them . . .they all now they just have to rush them and not let them reach age IV wich rarely happens at all.
PS: sorry for the long post. I know that with all those changes Ports would be OOOOOOP!!!
these are all suggestions. Perhaps it helps ES to choose a couple of them.