I find that the portuguese have a very fun FF now. What they lack in substantial age 3 cards, they gain from an incredible booming potential in age 3 as well as the fact that they are impervious to the anti-FF strat: the TC rush. This plays an especially large part in team games where if the opponents look at your deck and double TC rush you with pikes and such, there's no way they can take down TWO TC's before you start getting your shipments. This strat is not perfect as I'm still testing it out, so feedback is very welcome.

First minute:

Send 2 vills to food crates and others to hunting. Here's where your post FF strategy already comes into play. If you are looking to get to age 3 and just start massing vills and get mercs a little later, then you can basically age with as few as 9 vils knowing you can earn those back in age three but capitalize on the earlier fort time.

If you plan on doing mercs early, you're going to need a few more vills to get that gold faster. I'd suggest as many as 11-13.

First Shipment:

Don't look at Port's lack of a villager card as a disadvantage, look at it like, "Gee, ES thought that port's villager production so trumped other civs later in the game that they don't need it, I guess this first card is just a freebie!" So here's your choice: 300 wood card to get one outpost with minimal effort on your villy's part, or ATP to give your outpost a little map control and health and you can grab more of them, but you'll sacrifice some time in resources to do it. As far as this card goes, I'm still a little undecided. Ports NEED a TP early to rake in those age 3 cards since mercantilism is taken away and ATP seems to be the preferred method among other civs, but because you will have a booming econ in age three, your reliance on cards is not as critical as, say, Germans or Spanish. Using the 300 wood card means you can snag one earlier and you can age quite a bit faster as 300 wood for two TP's takes a while to gather. I'm actually pretty happy with the 300 wood card, as unconventional as it is.

Politicans:

500 food at age 2, and 7 cassies at age 3.

Second Card:

700 gold.

Age 2 to Age 3:

I would suggest putting the TP you get from age 2 into a forward base. It is critical that it is not discovered until you can start shipping cards in Age 3, so don't put it directly inbetween your base and the enemies. Put it off to the side of the enemy's base so it stays hidden. Gather exactly 700 food first, get the food crate you earned from aging, then put everyone on gold until you have exactly 300 gold at which point you snag the 700 gold your card gave you. This should all in all give you a sub 7 minutes FF.

Get your TP up ASAP so you can start producing villagers inbetween age 2 and age 3. If you want mercs, then just keep one TC constantly producing vills and keep 3-4 vills on huntables to finance this and about 5 on wood to keep house production up for a while (you can lower this to 2-3 after the first few houses), the rest are on gold. If you aren't going mercs, or going mercs late, then put as many as possible on wood first for a few houses, then keep about 3 on wood to keep up house production later. Put 6-7 vills on food and keep your second nonaging TC pumping them out and putting them on food. Before you age remember to put your forward TC as the dropoff for shipments.

Age 3:

You should have several cards saved up and a sub 7 minute fortress. Position your second TC close to your forward TC as protection of your forward base. If your looking to boom and pump out pikes and cassies, then you're going to need about 11+ vills on food to maintain production of vills from all three TCs and more if you want an army. I suggest going heavy on the wood to get a barracks and stable up fast in your forward base with a minimal amount on gold. Maybe even only one or two if you don't plan on going mercs for a while. Upgrade your pikes to vet as soon as you can and them start getting them out. They are your only means of taking down buildings in age 3.

Age 3 Shipments:

I always start out with organ guns first unless they went heavy on the cav in age 2 which is unlikely. Organs can take out groups of hunting vills in a flash. Don't attack with your cassies until your organs come out. 3 Organs can kill five hunting vills in a single shot, that means the enemy doesn't even have a prayer of garrisoning them. The 7 cassies can kill a vill in one shot as well. So that's six vills gone forever from his econ in one volley just past 7 minutes. That's abosolutely crippling. You could practically just sit back and boom from there on if you felt so inclined. Organs can also pretty much kill an entire age 2 infantry army in a single blast.

The second shipment should be 9 halbs or 14 pikes. This has the bonus of not only great protection of your organs and cassies against nasty hussars, but they are also the only siege you will have have in your army at this point. Remeber to upgrade the pikes to vet ASAP and start building them or else you're going to be in trouble once you reach his base.

From this point on it's either mercs, boom with resource cards, or Goon and more halbs/pikes shipments. This keeps the strategy flexible.

The key to this strat is great micro skill. Your entire army is going to be composed of counter units like goons and organs which die easily if unattended and your economy is going to go from nothing to 50 villagers in 3 minutes so you can't skimp on the econ micro either. Your army will not be a single resource dependant either which makes microing even harder. You need wood for pikes and houses, lots of food for villies, goons and cassies, and lots of gold for hussars and organs.

I believe this strat can beat a Spanish FF because of the great age 3 boom but if you can't micromanage like a champ, your done for. Once a spaniard's shipments are dry, there's not much else they can do. They need to ship the 1000 wood card to get antoher TP up while you don't need to waste a single card on that and already have 3. What the ports lack in power cards in age 3, they can make up for with supplemental units arriving from their incredible econ in Age 3.

So again, feedback is very welcome as I'm still fleshing this out myself. I have used it to great effect against solid players online as well. This absolutely destroys a spanish pike rush. The organs and casssies take out an age two inf army in 2 vollies if that as I've said before.

[This message has been edited by Racerus (edited 03-05-2006 @ 09:53 PM).]