It makes use of the extra card ports have due to no villager card, makes use of the xbow boost and it makes use of the free tc to get map control!
I was thinking the other day that I was having stupid problems vs rushes with my turtle so I thought that the ports can be annoying as well. So let's see the build order first:
Discovery Age: Ship no card, age with 12 vills. All treasures are welcome, but early on food treasures are good to reduce tc idle time. Pick the quartermaster poli (400w). Start herding hunts and send a couple vills to a resource chokepoint forward like a mine with hunts around or sth.
Colonial Age: Queue vills asap, make the tc on the chokepoint were you sent your vills. You should have aged earlier than your opponent. Ship 700w asap and makes some houses, you'll need em. On your fb make a barracks and get pikes making.
As soon as the 700w arrive ensure you have pop, and send 8 xbows. Scout too. Make vills from both tcs all the time.
If he has a base and a small army, make xbows, if he has only houses, make pikes. As no one expects port rushes they'll either rush you or boom so you don't have to worry with turtles. Your 8xbow/5pike army is good for harassing vills and keeping them in the tc and to take down barracks and houses with the help of the extra army you keep making. As you shipped 8 xbows early and you got plenty of wood you will surely outmass him early on no matter what. As third card you can ship 600w or 700f according to the resources you need.
Use your army to cause as much damage as possible AND to make him retreat to his base! I wouldn't siege the tc unless you totally annihilated his army which is unlikely if he fights back. You can then fall back to your tc because map control is yours. He'll suffocate without res and you can even get a stable too just to annoy him if you ship 700c. To ensure your position you can ship colonial militia and watch him try to take down your tc for some space with 15 mm shooting at him -plus- your army that you should keep feeding with either xbows or pikes. Don't forget, tho, that after 7-8 mins what deals real damage is the hussars (it's always nice to abuse the 1.01 and fp patch changes, the cav boost vs RI and the xbow boost vs HI) and the portuguese army can stand on its own.
Then you can do as you want but my favorite is to go fortress age and to ship mamelukes and 2 organ guns bring chaos.
TPs are nice to get too if map control is yours, this is a good strategy for maps like Great Plains, Ozarks, and other wide open maps that often betray ports with the lack of hunts, so this way you can turn the game the other way around make the opponent cry for hunts
I'll post some recs later.
epic failure for me
