True value of Spain`s unique ability (harnessing wonders VS 1st discovery gold)

Now I know that you need a bit of luck to have a national wonder that you can harness with Spain but I`m not talking about that...

Yesterday I started a deity game on large pangea map, epic speed and well, as most of the time, no wonder nearby...But then luck changed and I got major boost from discovering El Dorado(although too far away for harnessing) first. Bam...1k gold...and with the help of CS introduction gold I was able to buy 2 settlers in no time. This has helped me big time with claiming land due to my capitol being only bout 15 hexes away from first AI capitol and it saved me time and growth in my capitol. I already feel like winning despite still being in medieval era due to my enhanced start...

Anyway, what I`m trying to say that I find lucky gold from first discovery(500 gold) much more valuable than harnessing wonders themselves. I know that working these wonders with Spain is also pure satisfaction but if I have to choose, I prefer early gold...I know you would prefer both but if you had to choose from....what would it be?

You may also share your experience with Spain UA. I`m eager to hear about it

Ideally, the gold bonus should buy you a settler so that you can grab the natural wonder.

Larger maps have more space between natural wonders. Try playing with a standard or small map, and you are more likely to find natural wonders close by.

That's a lucky start, I woulda gone out and bought some lottery tickets after with luck like that lol.

Spain's one of my favorite civs because of that UA. Seeking out and settling natural wonders just provides a different way to play the game.

I like playing them on a terra map. I'll churn out 5-6 Conquistadors and send them to the new world before anyone else. After totally clearing the new world of barbs and ruins, I'll settle all the natural wonders. It makes for a much more widespread, colonial-style empire.

With the exception of El Dorado and Grand Mesa, Spain's increased UA yields and UA happiness are more useful than the increased gold. Since One with Nature's faith yield is doubled for Spain as well, Grand Mesa's doubled yields are also better than its gold boost if it's close by and you get One with Nature. If you don't have One with Nature, Grand Mesa's yields aren't necessarily as useful as all the other natural wonders' yields and happiness.

Gold boost is even more luck-based than doubled yield and happiness because it relies on you finding the natural wonder first; it can get you one extra early settler if it does happen, which is roughly as useful as the doubled yield and happiness depending on when this happens in the game. El Dorado is the only exception because of the ludicrous amount of gold you get from it that lets you buy two settlers instead of one.
Since gold boost does not scale with game speed, it is naturally better on Quick and worse on Epic and Marathon.

The tile yields for natural wonders in and granted by religious beliefs and World Congress proposals are also doubled.

Just whip out the Spain DCL game if you're into that and gaze upon the marvels

Delnar_Ersike said:

With the exception of El Dorado and Grand Mesa, Spain's increased UA yields and UA happiness are more useful than the increased gold. Since One with Nature's faith yield is doubled for Spain as well, Grand Mesa's doubled yields are also better than its gold boost if it's close by and you get One with Nature. If you don't have One with Nature, Grand Mesa's yields aren't necessarily as useful as all the other natural wonders' yields and happiness.

Gold boost is even more luck-based than doubled yield and happiness because it relies on you finding the natural wonder first; it can get you one extra early settler if it does happen, which is roughly as useful as the doubled yield and happiness depending on when this happens in the game. El Dorado is the only exception because of the ludicrous amount of gold you get from it that lets you buy two settlers instead of one.
Since gold boost does not scale with game speed, it is naturally better on Quick and worse on Epic and Marathon.

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Great barrier reef actually works similar way to El Dorado because it consists of 2 tiles and thats 1k gold with Spain, considering you discover both tiles first ofc

Well my fav natural wonder is Uluru which gives you 4 and 12 without the One with the nature if you are playing Spain. But I still cannot compare it to early start boost from gold to buy a settler or two if you are lucky. It`s just that good to be able to settle quickly. You save growth and time in your capitol as well as other cities if settled early and that is an advantage compared to regular opening of the game on high difficulty. Thing with harnessing wonders is that you have to claim them and then work them for output so it takes time compared to instant gold boost.

Just like Mesix has pointed it out, "ideally" you happen to have a wonder nearby and discover it first which gives you the gold to buy a settler(on standard or faster pace) and claim the wonder. And ideally is the wonder with food so you can work them right away...

I once had a second city with King Solomon mine on a predominantly desert terrain, and got Petra. That was a good feeling.
I think the best natural wonder for Spain is GBR. 1000g, very good yields (science, food, prod, gold) and with One With Nature, also 16 faith.
Fountain of Youth giving 20 happiness, plus 2 by just finding it, is crazy as well.


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yea ususally the plan is to settle these wonders with the free settler, so you get the gold and the insane tile ^^

you should have tried going for this el dorado, could be fun to play with +10 culture right from the start. finishing liberty extremly fast while settling 5 or 6 cities before turn 50, or you could even make piety or honor fun to play with that boost
you also get +2 happiness from each natural wonder discovered instead of the usual 1 which helps a lot when going liberty with lots of cities early

another option is to build an army with your +1000 gold (build as many archer as you can, upgrade them all to composite bowmen with your gold) and take a capital or two in no time

and yea, with the natural wonder pantheon giving you +8 faith, you'll most of the time get the first religion when settling next to your wonder. this is extremely powerful

Solutionfinder said:

...You may also share your experience with Spain UA. I`m eager to hear about it

Click to expand...

As an ex heavy Spain player I'd say you've got it spot on with Spain. It's all about finding NWs first. Eventually you'll get the bug and it'll be all about the NW. There's a thread about what's the best NW and that has split into 2 columns, either as Spain or not. There is a third, however and that is what's the surrounding land like? On paper GBR is the best NW but usually the surrounding land is poor. KSM on the other-hand usually has great land so imo should be settled at all costs as that city will be able to sustain itself, unless it's in the middle of Hun/Shaka/etc territory.

Spain is all about early exploration and your first tech should be Sailing and your build order scout->scout->monument/2*trireme

It's contextual. If you find a natural wonder that is in a crappy location for a city placement, yet you have very good expands near you, than the more important thing is the 500g for a quick settler. If you find a wonder that is in a great city spot, even if you don't find it first, you should rush out there ASAP with a settler.

I'm playing a game with Spain right now and it's super lucky. Found El Dorado first for 1,000G in a very nice location (coastal/river with 3 pearls/one fish/2 banana/one cattle). Was able to settle it first despite it being ~20 tiles from my cap and being only ~8 tiles from Carthage's cap. With natural wonder faith, Dorado is giving me 10 culture and 8 faith per turn. The 1,000G was nice, but I was second to religion and I'm 2 full social policies above all other AI I've met so far.

1st discovery gold from El Dorado was the main reason I won the game, I`m pretty certain of that...

Summary of the game in case you are interested.

I met Siam in like turn 5-10 and already knew how is this going to work, me being his water boy. His capitol was actually closer than I thought, 8 tiles on large map, I mean wtf? Anyway, I sent my warrior to the east, first scout south and 2nd scout west. You can see from the picture where El Dorado was. No way I was going to claim that. It would be a land theft and probably early war and as you can see that that particular city originaly belonged to Bismarck. I also don`t like to have a scattered empire, compact empire is easier to defend...The gold though helped me get Barcelona and Seville to at least grab what I could from the "good land" as to the east there was mixture of plains, thundra and desert which I eventually settled anyway due to lack of space. Only Swede and Morocco had worse lands than me and fortunately enough they were also restriced from expanding on their pennisulas.

Anyway, Siam offered me DoF and get me to attack Asika with him and Lizzie early on, bout turn 70. After he was raped, Asika struggled and played a puppy for a very long time surrounded by Lizzie, Siam, Gandhi, Bismarck and Harold. A dream team On the other side of the map to the west Pocatello displayed some unusual behaviour by playing Genghis and attacking CS. His capitol was where eventually my 2 cities are on the map that are cut off from the rest of my land. So after he conquered 2 city states, Swede, Morocco, Gandhi, Siam, Bismarck and me denoucned him and alliance was formed. Pocatello sided with Ramesses who eventually vanished from the map because of Gandhi`s peace keeping missions (he was in the eastern lands of where Gandhi is on the map)..On the other side Harold kept switching from attacking Lizzie, Asika and city states and our alliance denoucned him as well...sure why not Lizzie on the other hand was in a world of her own by denouncing every single nation in the game...I can`t say I`m surprised though So yeah it was Ramesses and Pocatello VS myself, Siam, Sweden, Morocco, India, Germany and Songhai VS Harold VS Lizzie till the industrial era.

Thing that bothered me the most was that Siam had tons of gold and kept spamming research agreements so I had to do the same just to keep up with him. He kept leading me up to 5 techs so I had a plan to take some of his cities. Bismarck was just next to him from below and went Order so I did the same and had a plan for us to invade him from North and South. But the plan failed because all civs that we had a friendship with went either Autocracy or Freedom so it was bound to collapse because later on they all denounced Germany and declared war on him while I was still having DoF with them. I wanted to declare war on Siam but had in mind that I still need to do research agreements so I slightly altered my plans by focusing on getting research labs done before making late attack on Siam. By the time I managed to Get RL done in all cities and raise an army, Siam already had nukes which, being so close by, would kill my science giants(Madrid and Barcelona) if being hit. So I just focused on science, managed to catch up with Siam on 82%, got Hubble and CN tower done, spammed space parts and as you can see I won early. I stayed with Order while Autocracy was the main ideology. Wanted to switch because I had real trouble keeping a happy empire(60 dissenters at the end) but couldn`t afford 2 turns of anarchy, being scared of Siam jumping ahead in tech and win the game.

DV was impossible, again because of Siam who went Patronage and got up to 10 CS in his control. DomV was dead from the beginning because of the map size, difficulty and time. And CV was never an option anyway...It was very interesting game, got # start and # land but discovering El Dorado first, certainly 100%, helped me win it. I doubt that harnessing any wonder would help me win this game in these circumstances...

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I played one game as spain in total, i discovered two wonders by turn 15 and settled them both, i bought a settler with the first 500 and it was a turbo charged start for sure. It is incredibly luck based though, but having said that i believe the single biggest factor in a game is my start...

Indeed it is, I believe not just in yours and mine but in general. Start is very important on high difficulty, regardless of the strategy...