The "All or Nothing" nature of Spain.

I find Spain odd. I rarely play as them.

Either you get a great start that allows you to steamroll everyone or you get a bad start that makes you want to quit because your handicaped.

Does anyone else think Spain is weird? The all or nothing nature it projects?

I've never gotten a Natural wonder near enough to get in-borders with them so I've never experienced the "all" part of this question. Usually their ability just nets me early cash which I use to buy some settlers and my capital stays a bit larger as a result--down the road this often means an extra wonder somewhere. Other then that the game plays out like normal. I just tried spain for the 2nd time on immortal difficulty. there were only 2 wonders on an enormous map and all incredibly far from me. didn't find them first so I only got +200 gold for their ability. However, I was isolated, had great dirt, and it quickly became the strongest immortal game I've ever played when I was able to use my rapid early growth and tech order to net hanging gardens AND petra. it's not like their terrible if you can't use their ability, they just are average.

I don't see how Spain is "all or nothing", nor how it is ever handicapped.

I see Spain as a Civ that gets some extra-gold in the early game, with the off-chance of becoming the most overpowered Civ in the game. Never had a match where I really didn't find any wonder reasonably early. (I think that might happen on Island-Maps though)

Don't forget that Tercio's pretty much wreck as well.

You're forgetting that the second, arguably more valuable part of the UA is: you get double yields from Natural Wonders. And you have the Conquistador - which has no penalty vs. Cities and can settle new cities on other continents. I've come across a few situations where:

a) a Natural Wonder was just out of reach of an AI, or was far away from them
b) a Natural Wonder was already claimed by a neighbouring civ with a weak or semi-strong city
c) a Natural Wonder was claimed by a City-State.

Essentially, you can conquer one city state for free, or for a small diplomatic penalty (which you can mitigate by trade, religion, ideologies and in general being nice to people). Make it count - you could get a Great Barrier Reef or Mount Fuji with double yields. Conquistador is invaluable in all those situations. Use the Tercio + Conquistador combo in Renaissance and there you have Spain - not really an exploration civ, but a military and war-oriented civ, to capture the NWs you want, wherever they are. And when you have those NWs in your empire, push the Natural Heritage Sites resolution and build Hotels and Airports - tourism victory imminent.

You still get 100 gold and 2 smiley per discovery, something I wouldn't call handicapped at all.

Spain is great. I exclusively play as them in the last like 5+ of my games.

It's very rare for me to get "handicapped". Probably because I play on Fractal standard mapping and it's rare to never encounter a Natural Wonder in the early game. The early gold is very handy since everything you do early on have a snowball effect for the entire game. You also get +1 more happiness upon discovering a natural wonder.

The Conquisador seem to work well with the unique ability, since there's often a Natural Wonder on another island/continent and you can settle right beside it using this unit to explore rather than a slow Settler that also hindered your growth to make.

The Units in general comes at a great time since Renaissance is usually the start of warfare, as any early warfare before that can make you an world warmonger and/or cripple your infrastructure.

If you do find a Natural Wonder early AND can settle near it, you're basically guaranteed a powerful religion and early science/growth which would be the "all". I've had one game where I discovered 2 Natural wonders first for a whooping 1k gold, but they were far enough that I couldn't settle near it, still I was able to buy 2 settlers within the first 30 turns which would easily snowball the rest of the game.

Tl;dr: I love Spain as it feels there's variety in how you can play with it since the random-generated map seem to dictate more on the progression of your game. It's the only civ where I would remotely think to make more than 4 cities, where I'd actually declare war just to get a Natural Wonder in my land, and so on. I'd easily play Isabella over the boring civs (Iroquis, Greece) or one-trick pony civs like Attila/Genghis Khan.

Spain are also really fun to play on a terra map. I'd never really enjoyed terra maps until I played one as Spain. Rush to Astronomy, get your Conquistadors/Caravels exploring the new land before anyone else and snap up all the best spots.

All or nothing? Spain is still decent even if you can't settle any NW or find any first. The gold boost they get for finding a NW is pretty nice as well as their special units. Spain is more like super ultra mega over powered or just normal.

I absolutely hate Spain players in MP because they either find a NW and get mega OP or don't find any NW first and rage quit. Either way the game is out of whack. Spain is usually banned in legit games.

Even if you cant get a natural wonder, you'll still destroy with tercios

Early gold is hardly nothing. Plus the crappy natural wonders like old faithful or Barringer crater or red mesa that other civs wouldn't bother settling become very good tiles.

Thanks to "restart", the problem with situational civs like spain, marocco or netherlands is not a problem anymore. Even though it may take a few restarts.

Never tried Spain on regular games. Perhaps I'll try one of these days, since everyone says it is so good. What's the best victory type to aim for with them?


But I played it in the "Into the Renaissance" scenario, and it was a BEAST:

- Send 03 Conquistadores to New World = 1500 points guaranteed, something no other civ can do

- Send 05 Caravels (very easy to do, since it is SO close to the Atlantic ocean) = another 1500, can be done as easily by some nations, but with Spain I felt it was like a cake

- Peninsula Iberica is isolated from all civs except France (which has a VERY tough time crossing the narrow mountain pass) and Almohads (they need to cross the Mediterranean, which is no walk in the park)

- Peninsula Iberica is also GREAT (both in size and in all kinds of resources), and relatively close to Vatican if taking it is needed/desired. I managed to keep allied to it from turn 100 until turn 200 (that's a 1000 points, which is GOOD), so I didn't take it

- Tercios & Conquistadores = f***ing IMBA, so so overpowered in combat, love them