Portugal

[Von Nanega]

I built forts and staffed them with peasants on all of the passes in the mountain range between myself and France.

(Pretorian)
Spanish have to go first as they will become a power horse in no time.
Dealing with Spain in the beginning is the best way to aproach the Portuguese campaign, after aquire managment over the peninsula (moors have to go down also)
Either way so far and playing on M/M I think Portugal is a very entertaining Faction to play, but the start is not easy.

Concur with Pretorian. I also believe once the reconqista is complete, you need to turtle for a moment. You probably paid heavily in blood to unify the Iberian peninsula. The forts so far seem to keep the French out of Iberia. (about 20 turns or so)
Build those jinettes. They will be your battle winners in the early stage in field battles.

[llewellyn]

first turn i made roads and seiged zaragoza. then i took my southern army took toledo. after i had toled i stateded to pump out heavy cav and then took spains capital and with the rements of my northern army and some mercs i took valencia. after this i opened relations with france and gave them a 20 turn tribute, this bought me some time. then i retrained every single unit i had and bought some more. by the time this was done i had a stack and a half. i sent the full stack to north africe and the half stack to granada. o sacked granada and used the florins to build a new army to take corduba. then my army in NA had conquered up till algeris which i soon took. after that it was fairly easy and by turn 30 i had all of north africa and a lot of priests and cardinals feverently converting the population to catholicism. by turn 50 my economy was back on its feet and i was the richest faction and was producing elite (being feudal knights and almughavars) armies to conquer france and the holy land

[Jonathan_Thompson]

Ugh Portugal some great units but starting position is almost as bad as HRE. I'm halfway through Portugal on VH/VH and this is what my experiences taught me.

Opening Moves

Without a doubt Toledo has to be your first target. Unfortunately your forces are split so you may have to waste a turn joining them for an attack. The reason for this is Toledo appears very well developed and teched up. This means that for every turn the Spaniards have it they are making troops of a higher class than yours. Once Toledo is done things are (slightly) easier. Spain is broken and you will have a brief respite before they try anything. During this time blockade the land bridge connecting Africa and Iberia. If you don't you will get hammered by the Moors as you can't afford another war after Toledo. This is done by putting 3 fleets on the bridge, one on the arrow and 2 on either side of that. Now you can take Leon, Cordoba and Granada with relative ease. Once all of Iberia is yours(including all rebels) you have many options you may want to send a fleet to the opposite side of Africa and start conquering to Timbuktu to supplement your poor economy. You may get unlucky and France will declare war on you (on VH this is a given)But you have a decent platform to launch into Europe.

The Pope

The pope usually hates you. Not alot you can do about it so I usually just take the Exco and move on. If you are trying to play nice guy however it is possible to temporarily lift the blockade on the bridge to africa, send a priest squad across and stack the college of Cardinals with

Units

In early game your units suck, no nice way to put it but they stink. The only decent units are mailed knights and Almughavars (spelling?) but good luck being able to afford them on anything other than easy. Another complaint is the severe lack of spearmen. Aventuros and pikmen are only later in the game
so in the beggining you'll have to use merc spears as the basis of your melee infantry. An important tip is to only occupy Toledo, Zaragoza and the other province on the border to France who's name escapes me. Yo0u need the expand quickly to get to adventuros.

Economy

The Iberian peninsula is not a great money spinner. You need provinces bordering France to be castles for defence. This leaves precious few florins for teching up. Because of this is may be wise to send a merchant force to timbuktu and and build forts on the gold.

Summary

The Portugese are an often underrated faction. Most people choose Spain because of the easier early game but Portugal truly shines in late game with it being the best naval faction and a spread of high quality units. As a last random point you should generally stay away from Mongols and Timuirds. Your armies are not suited to fighting them.

[Aetius22]

I am currently playing a game where I have about 9 cardinals. The pope has been on my side for a long time. Trick is to send a lot of cardinals to convert the Moors and that seemed to work for me.

You really have only two options either take Cordoba and Granada right away, or go for Toledo. If you don't go for Toledo you are taking a risk. I took Cordoba first, but rushed an army towards Toledo from Pamplona. I think no matter what difficulty you play France will declare war on you. Once I dealt with France, Milan declared war on me as well.

The Portuguese have some very nice units that match very well against other Catholic factions in my experience. I will use the Jinetes to maneuver to the rear of the opposing army and the Almughavars towards the front. The Jinetes thin out their heavy cavalry, while the Almughavars take care of the heavy infantry. Then I might charge home with Portuguese knights (mounted and dismounted). But as Jonathan pointed out they don't do so well against the Mongols - then again I haven't found an army that does. In one battle the only thing that saved me from defeat were my aventuros. I am still puzzled as to how that happened - I didn't think they would have survived the barrage of arrows.

I wonder if anyone has used an army composed mainly of Portuguese Arquebusiers against the Mongols? My armies were mainly Almughavars, Jinettes, Portuguese Knights (mounted and dismounted) and Feudal Knights - with one army which had Aventuros and Knights of Santiago.

[Jonathan_Thompson]

I've tried various tactics in custom battle against mongol horde replicas and portugese arbequiser spam doesnt really work. They'll always outnumber you in missle troops as you need to bring along some adventuros to stop their charges. I think the settlement sieges or the peasant auto resolve spam are your only options.

[vonsch]

After trying the Spanish knockout opening gambit, and getting excommed (darned Pope lived forever too!) and having all kinds of trouble as a result, been playing around with alternatives.

This current one was amusing. I piled all the Lisbon troops except a garrison of one town watch and the prince (no sense risking the whole family!) into an army and headed to Cordoba on turn one. Meanwhile, the Pamplona crew has laid seige to Zaragoza. My princess swapped maps with the Moors to put them off guard while the King hired a couple extra merc spear units just in case (turns out I didn't need them, but at least the Sultan can't hire them now.) Oh, and my spy ducked into Cordoba to check out the garrison, of course. It was the Sultan and 3 units. (This is H/M level, btw.)

On turn two I see a force of one unit of garrison spears move out of Cordoba to stand on the bridge south. That prevented me from assaulting Cordoba, so I decided to split off a small group to chase them off, then move the main body into the seige after that battle. Then the survivors of that battle could rejoin the start of the next turn before I began the assault, or that was the plan.

Well, you know the sayings about plans and meeting the enemy...

I wanted to overwhelm the single spear unit with minimal losses, so I set along a unit of peasant archers, one of peasant crossbows, one of garrison spears and the King and his heavy cav guard. I figured I'd set up the archers for a crossfire, either draw the Moors into a bridge battle in range of the archers, or drive them back and charge the cav through to envelop, depending on the enemy reaction.

My King is clearly nearsighted. He didn't notice the Cordoba garrison could see what was happening. When he attacked, the garrison sortied (darned bridge is kiddy-corner, but even though it coulnts as 2 moves to get there, that's apparently "adjacent" in game terms!) so instead of a relatively straightforward and small bridge engagement, it got complicated!

Of course, my main force was out of position to help.

The Sultan had his cav to match my King's cav, and two units of desert archers. Pretty darned even matchup in forces, but the garrison was coming from my left rear and the spears were sitting at the end of the bridge. I wasn't anxious to charge them headlong with my cav.

So I started my spears at them with my cav trotting along behind, and darned if they didn't pull back! I double-teamed my two missile units across and set them up facing what had been my rear while watching the Moor spears pull halfway to the edge before setting up facing my, now, rear. Fortunately, they were far enough away that that posed no morale issues... so far.

Long story short: Sultan's guard charged at my spears across the bridge while the missile units dueled a bit. I swapped my archers to fire arrows and shot into the cav's flanks, had the crossbows also shoot into their flanks, the spears held, and my cav countercharged and we rolled up the Sultan's guard and he routed.

He got away, darn it. Solo. My cav chased him off the map and got back in time to see the Moor missile troops on the bridge and the spears almost back too.

My spears, the 20 left, spun and met the incoming Moor spears, my archers pelted them with fire once, and my cav charged into their rear. Instant rout. I had my few spears chase them off the map while the cav charged and routed the archers.

It ended up being my first heroic victory in this game (only had it a week). The better victory ratings sure are harder than in the earlier games!

But the best news, and what makes it of interest in this strategy tips section: My main force just trotted through Cordoba's open gates. I struggled with whether to sack it or just occupy, but since the Sultan refused to ransom all the captives from the earliler battle, I sacked. If he'd paid, I would have just occupied. Sacking didn't damage any buildings, btw. Dunno if that's more good luck, or if it's the assaults that do the damage.

Next Zaragoza should fall this turn too. Have the straits blockaded. Should roll up Granada very soon since my losses were so minimal. The council will probably want me to take Valencia, so I'll be racing the Spaniard for that. With any luck they will bloody their noses on El Cid and I can roll over his survivors.

Then I try to marry a French princess to my prince (or vice versa, if I don't get any husband offers that are too good to refuse before that) to firm up the north border, and ally with the Spanish and try to convert the locals to the true faith as I build up, explore, make diplomatic nice-nice, kiss the Pope's ...err, ring, and start building up some admirals.

I expect the Spanish will pick a fight and I will aim to crush them then. If they take their time, I'll raid and sack in the musselman regions of Africa. Doing all this conversion will let me get at least 3 cardinals in nice sky blue in line for any opening at the top too.

I ended up replaying this opening attack on Cordoba three times (so far) and each time I see something move out to the bridge. This is the first time I tackled it thise way. So it may be a regular Moor move when threatened at that early stage. It does prevent at turn 2 attack unless you do as I did, and also puts a stop to a direct move on Granada, but I don't see why that would be of concern compared to Cordoba. Chalk it up to dumb AI moves, I guess.

[CharleyLFC86]

If anyone else has played yet on VH/VH as the Portuguese, I'm sure you may have become very very frustrated with the Moors and blatant computer cheating. So I had Cordoba under siege with an army of about 1200 under commad of my Prince on about turn 5, and despite the Moors having only about 300 men, on the snuing turn, they managed to increase their numbers to 1400 and sally from their garrison. Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't training halt while under siege?! And secondly, they were mercenary troops, despite the fact that they had no general to hire them.... Also, they would have had to hire 7 units of mercenary spearmen, which not nearly enough were available in the territory. And lastly, while consulting with their diplomat, they were read to be "bankrupt."

My point is that it was not possible for them to gain 9 full units of spearmen without cheating. VH/VH should make the computer smarter, not allow it to cheat.

What's worse it that after defeating this army the computer simply did the same thing again. So even though I had Gibraltar blocked with ships, the Moors had a seemingly endless flow of troops to throw at me, and consequently I went bankrupt.

Anyone else encountered this ridiculous scenario?