Portugal, Spain and Sweden were concerns of mine too in the naval sense.
The Early Campaign begins in 1700 and all 3 were considerable naval powers at the time. Yet, when the game begins none of the naval powers have anything more than a "shipyard" which limits them to building frigates and below. Portugal has only a single trading port and would never acquire the ability to build major warships which is completely ahistorical.
There were 100-gun ships sailing for all navies in 1699 including Holland, which is another example of a naval power which could not build a large warship in Empire.
So, to fix this I modded the startpos to upgrade Spain, Britain, France, Sweden, and Russia to the "naval hospital" version of the shipyard. That would not work for the Dutch and Portuguese though. So I added the ability for the trading ports to also build larger warships and also added more building slots so they would not have to choose between commercial ships and warships. It works surprisingly well.
The Early Campaign begins in 1700 and all 3 were considerable naval powers at the time. Yet, when the game begins none of the naval powers have anything more than a "shipyard" which limits them to building frigates and below. Portugal has only a single trading port and would never acquire the ability to build major warships which is completely ahistorical.
There were 100-gun ships sailing for all navies in 1699 including Holland, which is another example of a naval power which could not build a large warship in Empire.
So, to fix this I modded the startpos to upgrade Spain, Britain, France, Sweden, and Russia to the "naval hospital" version of the shipyard. That would not work for the Dutch and Portuguese though. So I added the ability for the trading ports to also build larger warships and also added more building slots so they would not have to choose between commercial ships and warships. It works surprisingly well.