I really can't understand the bad press about them and their poor win ratio. They have weaknesses yes but also some awesome advantages. I have a level 11 city and have only lost one game in a 2vs2 when I was rushed by both enemy players with loads of Russian strelets Anyway this is what I have been doing pretty successfully: With these new villagers you can get them onto wood and gold fast, get a market up and running and claim any outposts you can. Having the two town cnetres means you can produce so many more villagers and so stream ahead of everybody else. If you are worried about being rushed build a barracks and start producing musketeers as you should have enough food. Try not to stop producing villagers at all so send more out to hunt if possible. If there is not much to hunt get a farm going as well. I personally like to develo the market as quiuckly as I can. You can either concentrate more on military at this stage or aim to get into the fortress age, depends on the circumstances. When one town centre is going to the next age keep producing villagers in the other. I rather feel that the reason why noobs do badly with the Portuguese is because they do not build enough villagers. Once in the fortress age continue with the villagers, also set up more military buildings and start with plantations, if there is plenty of gold available then use that first as it is likely that you will be struggling for wood so plantatiosn can come later. My economic strategy concentrates on the fact that you can constantly keep producing villagers throughout the early ages by setting up high food production early on. This is very important. It will give you such boosts and should help you on your way to a large army before anyone else. The Portuguse military is frail, you have to be careful with it. You I like to use musketeers as my basic unit, you should have easily enough food to keep churing them out. Artillery are also essential. You Feel free to post up your own thoughts about the Portuguese or any of the other civs and why you play well with them Edit/ maybe this should be moved across to the strategy discussions... [This message has been edited by NAT (edited 01-01-2006 @ 02:06 PM).]
Put everyone on food, berries and hunting. Build one house as well. Get to around 11/12 villagers and go colonial as fast as possible. Once in the colonial age quickly build your second town centre and start chucking out villagers, you should have plenty of food due to the 12 you already have collecting it. I like to use the 300 wood crate and the hunting bonus as my early shipments to help out growth.
The Portuguese artillery are brillaint if sheltered properly, you must not allow yourself to be flanked by cavalry or even infantry while on the move though, this is why you must be very careful when moving your army around. It does need a lot of attention. However using this combination of units carefully will allow you to take on armies larger than your own.
This is only a rough guide, hopefully what I have said above should help a few people who are struggling to use the Portuguese. My technique is still a work in progress, I need to work out the most efficient allocation of cards. Using this technique is also fairly vulnerable to rushing as well but once you are established in the colonial age you shouldn't have much to fear.