Best use of wonder discovery bonus for Spain?

So I've been playing Spain for a while, as it provides great bonuses for both cultural and domination victories both of which I like doing. However up until recently I've always played Spain a specific way. Normally, when I would find a natural wonder I would use the discovery cash to buy a settler and settle it immediately, but that seemed to always cripple my happiness and leave vulnerable my empire, making me a juicy target. Recently I've been instead putting my money towards buying a worker instead, using that to improve my capital rapidly, and then use my free settler from liberty to grab the wonder. If the wonder doesn't give faith(grand Mesa for example) then I'll use some of my cash to instead befriend a religious city state so I can quickly get to the one with nature pantheon. Alternatively, if it is a faith wonder, then I'll use my cash to buy off a maritime city state. What do you think is the best way to spend your cash when you get it like this? Considering Spain avoids constructing buildings early game, there a lot of things you could use it on.

tl;dr how should you spend natural wonder cash.

If you get the first in the world version, the first of the world bonus usually goes to cash rushing a settler which will go settle near that natural wonder to get the other part of Spains's UA.

I always go for One With Nature pantheon (I actually missed out on it once. Rome found Uluru. I destroyed them) almost no matter what the NW is. Well, except Krakatoa. I love how those bad wdoners become good with Spain.

Although I suppose it can be debatable if the terrain around said wonders is good enough as well.

Doktor Vic Tim said:

I always go for One With Nature pantheon (I actually missed out on it once. Rome found Uluru. I destroyed them) almost no matter what the NW is. Well, except Krakatoa. I love how those bad wdoners become good with Spain.

Although I suppose it can be debatable if the terrain around said wonders is good enough as well.

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I wasn't debating whether or not to get one with nature. You should always go for that with Spain.

I pretty much always buy a settler and usually settle near the natural wonder (unless it's a bad one or the surrounding terrain is really bad).

i usually buy a settler too. alot of them time you get the settler early enough before u lose negative happines. sometimes you get a natural wonder that gives happiness to. one time got the fountain of youth. +20 happiness. that was epic

JimBobV said:

I wasn't debating whether or not to get one with nature. You should always go for that with Spain.

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So wasn't he, actually.

Spain with good amount of luck (and little diligence) would easily go mad. I once start as Spain near the Great Barrier Reef. I then use money on buying settler to build a city near it. You should know how the rest of my game runs.

Because the second half of the UA is getting double yield out of the NW tile (and actually double discovery happiness), I pretty much always go settle it so I can work it. The terrain around the Wonder and the Wonder itself would have to be pretty bad before I considered the terrain not worth settling. The only cases I can see that happening would be:

- Barringer Crater in flat desert/flat tundra
- Old Faithful in flat desert
- Krakatoa in a poor Coastal position*
- Grand Mesa in bleh terrain**
- Mt Sinai in really, really bad terrain***

Otherwise, the crazy yield of the wonder itself can't help but make the city spot worth settling. Uluru or Kilimanjaro with their doubled food yields are great as they're a lategame farm with nice bonuses, even before One With Nature.

*Less likely to happen to me - I run a mod that forces it to be workable. It'd have to land on the very end of a bad peninsula.
** Grand Mesa's not exciting even when it's Spanish. It's like a Gem mine. Only good thing would be One With Nature, and maybe Natural Heritage Sites later.
*** Could still be worth it to be number one at religion forever.

It depends on what turn it is. Did you find it on turn 3? Load your auto save and run your settler there. Just kidding. Buy a settler, you basically have a deity AI start. Is it turn 28 and you've got a settler coming in 4 turns? Ally a CS or buy a granary and caravan to pump up either your new city or capital.

You should rush buy a settler and settle the NW asap before the AI does. When everyone is building settlers Spain can be building workers(or stealing them). The ability to have 3 cities up and running before anyone has even built their first is a huge bonus. Assuming you have at least 1 faith NW or you get 'one with nature' early you will have your choice of happiness building and happiness shouldn't be a problem thereafter. Another consideration is enhancing very early, you might deny your neighbor a religion just because of that.
My build order for Spain is Scout->Scout->Shrine->worker->Granary->TOA->NC

on large map you can buy few more scouts to find more wonders