Replacing the Feitoria with resource generation.

Title. Yes this sounds broken, but I think it can be balanced. To make this legit, I think that the bonus should start right from the dark age. Obviously each age will have different generation rates. To simplify im going to be organizing rates as food/wood/gold/stone. These are all per minute rates. The in game desc btw would have to be “Generate resources passively” just for format sake obv, so lets get started.

Dark Age 5/5/1/1 Incredibly minor bonus in the dark age. Assuming your in the dark age for about 10 min, that adds up to 120 resources, divided as 50/50/10/10. Thats a villager, almost a farm, about half a militias worth of gold, and 2 walls. During the age up another 10.8/10.8/2.2/2.2 will be generated.

In terms of villagers, since the dark age uses different food sources throughout (hunters work at 24.6/m, shepards at 19.8, etc), we’ll average it out to 21 food/min. Lumberjacks work at 23.4 wood/min. Gold and stone miners at 22.8 and 21.6 respectively. Given this, the Portuguese would have an additional 0.54 villagers working for them in the dark age.

Feudal Age 10/10/5/2 Just for simplicity’s sake well assume another 10 minutes elapses in the feudal age. Given that, over the course of feudal the resources would add up to 270 total resources split as 100/100/50/20. Thats an extra 2 villagers, a bit more than a farm and a half, a lil bit more than the gold needed for an archer and 4 more walls. Again, not overpowering but it helps give some leeway. As you age up, another 26.7/26.7/13.3/5.3 will be generated.

For villager terms, feudal farmers work at 19.62 food/min w/o wheelbarrow. With it, they work at 22.25. Lumberjacks work at 26.91 wood/min after double bit axe. Gold and stone miners work at 26.22 and 24.84 respectively after the relevant eco techs. For a normal game its safe to say double bit axe is a guarantee, so at a ceiling, the Portuguese would have 1.19 additional villagers, and at the least, 1.09 additional villagers.

Castle Age 20/20/15/5 Gold ramped up significantly. My reasoning for this is at the point is where even though gold is abundant, castle age is where the value of food and wood start to diminish. Yes the inverse is true at the beginning as you attempt to make xbows/kts/tcs, but after the inital period of scarcity, trash resources quickly become abundant. Regardless, well assume a 20 min period of castle age. That accumulates to 1200 resources split as 400/400/300/100. Thats enough food for almost half the imp upgrade, enough wood for a uni, a monastery and a little bit to spare, enough gold for 4 knights (4.7 for ports), and almost a tower. During the age up thats another 53.3/53.3/40/13.3.

Portuguese lack gold shaft mining, so their gold miners do not improve in the castle age. Beyond that, castle age eco tech commonly get delayed so we can still set a min and a max. After researching all relevant eco techs, farmers work at 23.38, lumberjacks at 26.91, gold miners at 26.22 and stone at 28.56. At minimum well assume all the feudal eco techs. The numbers may be slightly higher if you choose to omit wheelbarrow and the mining techs. At a max, the Portuguese would have an additional 2.42 villagers, and given all eco techs, would have a floor of 2.34 villagers.

Imperial Age 75/75/40/20 Lets assume the game takes another 20 min for a total above just an hour. At this point the rates are close to what the current feitoria is. Leading upto the hour mark we’ve gathered 4400 resources divided among 1500/1500/800/400.

For context, in the same time, assuming a single villager starts immediately building a feitoria upon imp, at 1h, the feitoria would have gathered 1728/1080/756/324.

In villager number, the only resource gather rate that changes is wood at 34.04. Assuming all eco techs are researched at this point, the Portuguese would have an equivalent of 7.64 additional villagers.

All gather rate numbers were taken from the AOE2 database app. Some of these numbers are rounded off for simplicity.

Over the course of this hypothetical game, the Portuguese would have collected an additional 6048 resources split as 2140.8/2140.8/1215.5/550.8 in 67.5 minutes of game time.

I hope after this breakdown this sounds less ridiculous. They only have half a vil advantage in the dark age up to a ceiling of 2.42 in castle age. Its only the imp transition where they ramp up to 7.64. Yes there are probably smaller advantages such as the added flexibility, and the fact that this would bypass the limit of gold and stone in a game, but I genuinely don’t believe this is at all an overpowering bonus. The Portuguese already had a decent imp given the solid gunpowder and arbs, they just lack the flexibility in other areas. This would not fix all the Portugueses downfalls but it would definitely make them more viable, and unique.