Castile or Portugal?

[JLHartsock]

I hear both are good beginner nations. What are the pros and cons of both.

[Mikey]

Portugal -
Secluded nation with only 2 neighbours. 1 is a historical ally (Castille and later Spain) while the other is a historical rival (Morocco).
Pro:
Ideas heavily favour trade and colonisation and being far from central europe you won't have to deal with the reformation unless you choose to. You have no real enemies beyond Morocco who can be chastised relatively early for minimal effort.
Con:
For an expansionistic player Portugal is dificult as Castille is superior to you early game and Morocco is berber and muslim meaning no convertions and higher coring cost.

Castille:
The largest and wealthiest of the Iberian lands. It has strong ideas favouring colonisation and missionaries.
Pro:
If you choose to leave Aragon alone you will most likely gain 2 powerful PU partners (Aragon-Naples) and you have a good position to move onto the Americas. You also might get the Burgundian Inheritance and you will be able to rapidly convert provinces with the nifty ideas.
Con:
Only real enemy is France, and unless dealt with early France will mess you up later unfortunately you will find it tough getting allies for it until you have secured Aragon meaning only limited expansion.

[CyPunk]

I favour Castile into Spain. It has a few possibly bad events early game, but also a few highly likely events (as mentioned, the PU with Aragon/Naples). It has as mentioned good colonization and missionary ideas, as well as a couple nice military ideas, which in my view help with the France problem. You can also build strategic forts and hold them off pretty easily in my opinion. A rich country too, with a gold mine, so less micro worrying about money. You can use Portugal as your little buddy or eat them.

Portugal is nice, but limited options, especially early game. But my biggest problem with them is that if the AI plays Castile badly, which has happened to me, then you can find yourself scrambling for new friends. So you are somewhat at the mercy of RNG. Yet most of the time Portugal is a chill game, sometimes too chill until you get your colonies up and running and making money... then you can shot above your weight pretty well.

[Zornvel]

I would even thinking about to take one of the irish minors as a start nation, you can fight the other minors and if you can make it you have to deal with scotland and england, its an own minigame in the game (also a japan minor is nice, again a minigame in game)
Castile is hard for someone who is new to the game, ther were a lot of problems inside the country on the begin.
France is more easy (you cannot loose agains england..) or Muscovy (you have 5 vassals) or ottoman (no money and troop limit). However if you have the latest dlc even mamluks were a good starting nation, a human player should be able to beat the ottos early.
But to say the true I started with Castile long time ago and as I said more problems inside then outside the country^^

[runequester]

Castille is a more militarily capable power, if you want to go that way.


Just keep on good terms with the French as needed.

Portugal is great for a colonization heavy game and you basically only have to worry about keeping the Spaniards on your side.

[Alidrules]

Portugal. Everyone wants to be your friend. You explore faster and Africa is your B!!!!.
Castile. You can Eat 75% of Portugal in the first year with ease and take their costal provinces then vassalize them. Then get the benefits of the above.

Further, as both youre poised to send the Moslum world back to arabia which is good if you like fighting wars but dont want AE

[SirTalkALot]

Something to keep in mind if you play Portugal is that if France comes after Spain, you better protect him or find some other great power allies. France will want your lands after chewing up Spain. I also I dont recommend allying both because even if France and Spain are allies in the beginning they will almost certainly rival each other within 100 years and you could risk Spain hating you which is bad if you cant stand up to him.

[Stormfox]

Portugal is much better as a beginner nation. Castile, when it works, gets stronger more quickly, but if their main events do not fire like they usually do, can be quite difficult.

Portugal is easy sailing (pun intended) with the only problem being not enough victims in the early game, which is kinda not a problem a beginner would notice much.

[BliNk0r]

Just finished my Castile campaign yesterday (yes, I wanted my first "real" playthrough to be complete and get the achievment ^^).

Had lots of fun and learned a lot of stuff. Still a beginner (70 hours now) but I think things went pretty well. Had colonization, trade, wars, diplomacy, defender of the faith and so on.

Sadly I didn't manage to form Spain at all lol.
I somehow missed the Iberian Wedding (I suppose) and later on, France had some provinces I needed to form Spain military. I was very good buddies with France pretty much the whole game, so I didn't wanna grab those provinces back (would have been stomped anyway).
Or maybe there were 10 more alternatives I could have done to form Spain, don't know.

So yes, Castile is recommended and I thought it was a good beginner nation.

Thinking about the next one, but first wanna grab "Rule Britannia" :)

[Stephania]

Castile is more versatile since it can colonize and have power to intervene in things in europe and abroad.
Portugal is too weak to be a relevant actor in Europe but can do a lot of things oversea under Spain or British protection.

I personaly prefer Netherlands when playing as colonial power.

[Energist]

Portugal is nice because if you ally with Castile, you have very little to worry about.

It's a good beginner nation that doesn't have too much going on too soon. You can control pacing a lot better. Castile is also very good. A bit harder but still fairly manageable.

[Energist]

Originally posted by firestar587:

Originally posted by Energist:

Portugal is nice because if you ally with Castile, you have very little to worry about.

It's a good beginner nation that doesn't have too much going on too soon. You can control pacing a lot better. Castile is also very good. A bit harder but still fairly manageable.

aragon is imo way better then castile (not for a starter nation but as a nation in gen)

Well, I don't disagree, but the OP kind of limited the choices :P

[Rooter]

Portugal or Castille
Pro or Con