Note: This guide assumes you have all game-altering DLC and expansion packs (all Civ packs, Wonders of the Ancient World, Gods & Kings and Brave New World)




In the classical era, the land which is now Spain was inhabited by Celts and Iberians, and colonised by Carthaginians and Greeks until the growing Roman republic captured those lands and expanded inland to eventually conquer the entire Iberian Peninsula. As Rome fell, the land fell into the rule of the Goths, and then controlled by the vast Umayyad Caliphate. The Reconquista, beginning in the 8th century, would see Spanish kingdoms regain independence - the last Islamic Emirate fell in the same fateful year the Spanish-funded expedition of Christopher Colombus would reach the Americas. Spain would then rise to great heights in expansion over the New World. The mightiest of mighty empires across the pre-Columbian world crumbled underfoot, bringing in vast wealth and an incredible chunk of new land to rule.

But it was not to last - as in home in Europe the French came conquering, the people of the Americas fought for their freedom. While Spain would hold on to some colonial holdings for a few decades longer, the nation was battered. Economic catastrophe has hit Spain hard in recent years. But could such prospects look brighter under your rule, leading a new Spain? Take up a nation in its hour of need. Discover new lands in a brave new world. Bring Conquistadors to war, or raise natural splendour to peace. Build a civilization that will stand the test of time.



Before I go into depth with this guide, here's an explanation of some terminology I'll be using throughout for the sake of newer players.

Infinite City Sprawl - ICS for short. A strategy where you just keep building more and more cities - as many as possible. In other words, rapid expansion for the entire game.
Finisher - The bonus for completing a Social Policy tree (e.g. Free Great Person for Liberty.)
GWAM - Great Writers, Artists and Musicians. These are the three Great People who can make Great Works for tourism leading to a cultural victory.
NW - Short for Natural Wonder.
Opener - The bonus for unlocking a Social Policy tree (e.g. +1 culture for every city for Liberty's opener)
Rapid Expansion - REX for short. A focus on building lots of cities quickly, which Spain is strong at in the mid-game.
Sniping - The act of taking out an enemy Civilization's capital when ignoring other cities. As you only need to be the last Civ left with your original capital to win, this is an effective strategy in the late-game to take out Civs with particularly large numbers of cities.
Spotter - A unit which allows a ranged unit (usually a siege unit) a line of sight with its target. Typically, siege units have a higher maximum range than their sight radius, hence the need for spotters.
Turtle - As in to "turtle up". Refers to a highly defensive state where expansion is limited. An effective strategy in Multiplayer is to get other players to do this.
UA - Unique Ability - the unique thing a Civilization has which doesn't need to be built.
UU - Unique Unit - A replacement for a normal unit that can only be built by one Civilization or provided by Militaristic City-States when allied.
Uniques - Collective name for Unique Abilities, Units, Buildings, Tile Improvements and Great People
Wide Empire - A high number of cities with a low population each. To make the most of dispersed natural wonders, Spain works best when building wide.

Spain is biased towards coastal tiles. This means you can more effectively make use of sea-based exploration in the early game, as well as helping to ensure you can more easily take Conquistadors overseas.


Spain has two unique units, one in the medieval era and one in the renaissance in addition to a Unique Ability useful throughout the game.

• Discovering natural wonders gives a gold bonus (typically 100 in normal-speed games)
  
  • The gold bonus is higher if you're the first to discover the natural wonder (typically 500 in normal-speed games)
• Happiness from discovering natural wonders or having certain natural wonders (e.g. Fountain of Youth) within your land is doubled
  
• Tile yields from natural wonders are doubled
  
  • Double tile yields also affects the One With Nature Pantheon and the Natural Heritage Sites resolution from the World Congress

A mounted melee unit

*Assumes a normal speed game.

Negative changes

• Costs 135 production in normal-speed games, up from 120 (+13%)
  
• Costs 500 gold In normal-speed games, up from 460 (+9%)
  
• Costs 165 gold to upgrade to from a Chariot Archer In normal-speed games, up from 135 (+22%)
  
• Costs 130 gold to upgrade to from a Horseman In normal-speed games, up from 100 (+30%)

Positive one-off changes

• Upgrade cost of 190 rather than 220 in normal speed games (-14%)
  
• 4 sight, up from 2
  
• No penalty when attacking cities
  
• Can found a city on a landmass not containing your capital, using up the unit

Positive stay-on-upgrade changes

• Double embarkment defence and may embark without the Optics technology

A standard melee unit

*Assumes a normal speed game.

Negative changes

• Costs 160 production in normal-speed games, up from 150 (+7%)
  
• Costs 570 gold in normal-speed games, up from 540 (+6%)
  
• Costs 90 gold to upgrade to in normal-speed games, up from 70 (+29%)

Positive one-off changes

• Upgrade cost of 140 rather than 160 in normal speed games (-12.5%)
  
• 26 strength, up from 24 (+8%)
  
• 50% bonus vs. mounted units

Miscellanious changes

• Counts as a standard melee unit rather than gunpowder melee, meaning...
  
  • Tercios can be built 15% faster with the Warrior Code Social Policy
    
  • The 25% bonus against gunpowder Impis (the Zulu UU) have doesn't work against Tercios

Note these scores are a matter of personal opinion based on experiences with the Civilization. You may discover a way of utilising the Civ more effectively in unconventional ways.

Cultural: 8/10
Diplomatic: 6/10
Domination: 8/10
Scientific: 6/10

Spain is effective at both domination and cultural victories. Either way heavily relies on a strong religion. A possible idea is to declare war on a cultural player in the midgame to seize control of their Great Works, then decide which strategy will be your main path and which will be your backup. Both the Autocracy and Order ideologies synergise with both victory routes.


Overall

There's no obviously similar Civs to Spain, but there are a few with some similarities in playstyle. The high faith output Spain can achieve with the One With Nature Pantheon together with some happiness bonuses (discovering natural wonders is twice as effective for happiness as Spain than other Civs, after all) and the encouragement to settle overseas (both for natural wonders and due to the Conquistador's settling ability) is similar to some of the advantages of Indonesia. Indonesia deviates from Spain notably in their military peak - Kris Swordsmen arrive in the classical era, while Spain's military peak is in the mid-game.

Same start bias

The coastal start bias is the most common in the game. Aside from Spain, it's also the start bias of Byzantium, Carthage, Denmark, England, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, the Ottomans, Polynesia, Portugal and Venice.

Similar to the UA

Although no other Civ has unique bonuses associated with natural wonders, the incentive to explore early on for a unique advantage can also be seen with Pathfinders, the Shoshone Scout replacement. In that case, the advantage surrounds ancient ruins.

Similar to Conquistadors

Other uniques that replace Knights include Arabia's Camel Archers, Mongolia's Keshiks, Siam's Naresuan's Elephant and Songhai's Mandekalu Cavalry.

The last of the preceeding list is the UU most alike Conquistadors. Both share a removed penalty when attacking cities, and both have doubled embarkment defence (in the case of Mandekalu Cavalry, it's via the Songhai UA.) Conquistadors are more expensive, but come with more abilities (the extra sight and ability to settle overseas)

Sight bonuses on cavalry units can also be seen on Austria's Hussars and Ottoman Sipahi.

Similar to Tercios

The other Musketman UUs are Ottoman Janissaries, American Minutemen and French Musketeers. Musketeers have even more strength than Tercios, but lack the bonus against mounted units.

The versus-mounted-bonus of Tercios is similar to that of Siam's Naresuan's Elephant. They both come around the same time, and offer better anti-mounted bonuses than Lancers, despite coming earlier in the game than them.

Spain's UA makes natural wonders amazing. And if you want them, you're going to have to know where they are fast.




This aspect of Spain's UA is often viewed as being luck-driven. As you have no idea where natural wonders are, there's no guarentee you'll be the first to discover any of them. But just because it's luck driven doesn't mean you can't influence that luck...

You need Scouts fast. It's a good idea to start building straight away. Early discovery of matural wonders will more than cover the cost of a Scout, likely enough for a Worker, a Caravan or possibly a Settler! The gold is best used supporting your expansion to the natural wonder(s) you've discovered to take full advantage of double tile yields. An early Trireme is also a good idea seeing as a great deal of natural wonders are coastal.

In some maps, you may have continents or islands unvisited by any other player. These are great opportunities for mid-game cash and colonisation, and are less luck-based (except the luck of having Polynesia or not in the game, who'll probably discover the entire world before you leave your starting continent.)


Above: Even if you're not first, 100 gold in a normal speed game is still handy.



Above: There are four natural wonders on this map, therefore 8 points happiness for Spain!

Out of UAs affecting happiness, this aspect of the Spanish UA is probably the most consistently useful (as the Dutch UA relies on trading, the Indian one doesn't work for very wide empires and the Indonesian one doesn't take effect until you start colonising other landmasses.) It's pretty much certain you're going to discover all the game's natural wonders at some point.

True, the total happiness may be much smaller than that received by other Civs, but the happiness bonus lasts the rest of the game. The total bonus could support an extra city in your empire compared to otherwise, and help get you through the midgame without slipping into unhappiness.



Above: The Grand Mesa with the One With Nature Pantheon. I conquered a City-State just to get it in Barcelona's city radius.

This bit is awesome but unpredictable. Unless you're playing a scenario or true location Earth map, (or something of the like,) the natural wonders in play will be different every time.

Typically, they'll either make the city founded in the area get off to a strong start (food, happiness or production bonuses) or make the city contribute a lot in the long run (gold, faith or culture bonuses.) Individual natural wonders will be covered in their own section, as there's a lot to cover.

Now, how do we make a consistent strategy out of natural wonders? The One With Nature Pantheon belief. Its effects are doubled thanks to Spain's UA, so +4 faith to natural wonders becomes +8. This is actually a significantly useful bonus as not only does it apply to all natural sonders but it may also be enough faith to get you first pick of religion. A high faith output goes well with follower beliefs like Pagodas, Cathedrals and Holy Warriors. The last of these lets you buy pre-Industrial units with faith - including both your unique units. This nicely complements other means of building up an army.

That's not the only natural wonder bonus. Later in the game, the Natural Heritage Sites bonus from the World Congress will add +5 Culture to them, or +10 for Spain. This allows you to cut through ideologies faster, letting you stay strong in the later game.


Above: You'll love the Great Barrier Reef, particularly with both One With Nature and Natural Heritage Sites. Not to mention the fact this screenshot's in a Golden Age adding an extra point of gold to each tile.

Remember that Hotels, Airports and the National Visitor Centre will give you tourism based upon natural wonder culture, among other things. As double the culture thanks to your UA means double the tourism, a cultural victory isn't out the question.

• Build Scouts right away to track down natural wonders. Triremes and Caravels are good too once you can build them.
  
• Finding a natural wonder first gives you enough gold to buy a Settler. Do so - it's a huge advantage having a second city so early on.
  
• Extra natural wonder happiness is small, but helpful for getting through the happiness-starved midgame.
  
• Secure as many natural wonders as you can, and use the One With Nature Pantheon as well as the Natural Heritage Sites decision from the World Congress to make them stronger.

Let's now look at the natural wonders themselves in more detail. First things first, the number of natural wonders in a randomly-generated map is tied to its size. The Great Barrier Reef counts as one natural wonder for the purposes of this limit:

• Duel: 2
  
• Tiny or Small: 3
  
• Standard: 4
  
• Large: 6
  
• Huge: 7

Now let's look at each natural wonder in turn, their yield and how you can use each one. "Heathen yield" in this section refers to the natural wonder's yield for Civs other than Spain.

Note mentions of "priority". These are wonders to favour over others to settle at first, though thanks to bonuses such as One With Nature and Natural Heritage Sites, it's not a good idea to avoid any NW entirely.

All wonders are equally likely to spawn except those marked "rare wonder". Rare wonders have different probabilities of spawning from each other as well, so they'll be given a rank from rarest to 4th rarest.


Medium priority

Heathen yield: 2, 3
Spanish yield: 4, 6

Master of none, the Barringer Crater is usually found in deserts and hence is difficult to make much out of. Still, 4 gold will help cover the city working it in its infancy while the science, while not up to Academy standards, still merits working the tile.

In true-start Earth maps, you'll often find this near the Grand Mesa. This creates a decent gold-generating city if you can get them both, and even better for Natural Heritage Sites.

Rare wonder - 4th rarest

High priority

Heathen yield: 10
Spanish yield: 20

Yep, that's right. 20 gold per turn. If you get a hold of Potosi, the city working it will pretty much always be profitable to the empire. This is significant enough to be worth going for even if all surrounding tiles are weak. Prioritise buildings such as Markets and Banks in the city and build lots of Trading Posts to make the most of it.

Rare wonder - 2nd rarest

High priority

Heathen yield: 5. One-off 500 if first to discover.
Spanish yield: 10. One-off 500 if first to discover in addition to gold from the UA.

With Natural Heritage Sites, this generates you an impressive 20 culture per turn, and with both a Hotel and Airport, it's up to 20 tourism, too! A city with El Dorado is a good candidate for the National Visitor Centre (a national wonder) for up to 40 tourism a turn out of a single tile.

Rare wonder - Rarest

Very High priority

Heathen yield: 10 when in cultural borders. Units that stand next to it get a special promotion allowing them to heal 10 health a turn extra while healing, which carries over on upgrade.
Spanish yield: 20 when in cultural borders. Units that stand next to it get a special promotion allowing them to heal 10 health a turn extra while healing, which carries over on upgrade.

Consider your happiness problems over. With One With Nature, it's two Notre Dames in one tile for no production cost.

As for the promotion, it's no different for Spain (no doubled heal bonus here) but it's still worth mentioning that it greatly helps military efforts. Together with the March promotion, it makes units very hard to take out. Note that the "double heal rate" is actually a flat +10 HP a turn bonus while your units are healing.


Medium priority

Heathen yield: 2, 3
Spanish yield: 4, 6

Somewhere in the middle of natural wonders. Think of it as a gold mine without the gold resource - cash and production together which helps both to build units and buildings and maitain them. Remember the lack of needing to improve it makes your city better faster.

In true-start Earth maps, this is typically near the Barringer Crater.


Very High priority

Heathen yield: 2x (2, 1, 1, 2)
Spanish yield: 2x (4, 2, 2, 4)

The Great Barrier Reef always comes in two tiles, meaning two lots of discovery happiness (and 16 faith a turn with One With Nature or 20 culture with Natural Heritage Sites) 4 food lets the city grow fast while the production makes up for the city being coastal. It's certainly one of the best natural wonders you can find by pure face value, but remember that it's offshore and hence fairly hard to "catch" in cultural borders.

Rare wonder - 3rd rarest

High priority

Heathen yield: 6
Spanish yield: 12

The huge production bonus gets a city's infrastructure up incredibly fast and could make it a decent city for grabbing a few world wonders or churning out UUs.


Medium priority

Heathen yield: 5
Spanish yield: 10

Because you need three technologies around the same time at different branches in the tech tree (Chivalry, Gunpowder and Astronomy) to take full advantage of your uniques, a good science boost is always welcome - this bonus is greater than that of an Academy until the Industrial era. The only problem is that Krakatoa's a notoriously hard wonder to get into cultural borders, due to it tending to be a fair bit out to sea.


High Priority

Heathen yield: 6
Spanish yield: 12

Two Hanging Gardens for the price of none! The important benefit of a Spanish Lake Victoria is that not even an Incan Terrace farm with half the mountains in the Andes surrounding it could get that much food - it's by far the best tile for food in the game. A fast-growing city is a good spot to focus specialists and Great Person generation boosting buildings.

If Lake Victoria is positioned next to a river, its entire course will be much wider than usual. As such, if you see a particularly broad river, follow it to find this valuable wonder.

Medium-High priority

Heathen yield: 2, 3 , 3
Spanish yield: 4, 6, 6

Mt. Fuji will be a great help whether you find it early on or in the mid-game. Early on, it'll help you get beliefs early and unlock social policies much faster as well as help support building or unit maintenance. In the mid-game, the gold and faith will be a great help on your way to buying an army. The only downside is the lack of food or production to get the city that will work it up and running immediately.


High priority

Heathen yield: 2 when in cultural borders. 6
Spanish yield: 4 when in cultural borders. 12

Partially cover the happiness cost of building a city and gain lots of faith. Hooray! While it isn't as amazing a source of faith as Mt. Sinai, happiness is important for supporting conquests.


High priority

Heathen yield: 3, 2 All units adjacent to it gain the Altitude Training promotion, (which carries over on upgrade,) granting double hill movement and 10% extra hill combat strength.
Spanish yield: 6, 4 All units adjacent to it gain the Altitude Training promotion, (which carries over on upgrade,) granting double hill movement and 10% extra hill combat strength.

Similar to the Fountain of Youth in that it grants units promotions, but less overpowered. It's like a hybrid of the Alhambra and Hanging Gardens wonders on a single tile. The promotion itself is useful to help conquer other mountainous NWs, which often are in fairly hilly areas (particularly in true-start Earth maps)

The tile itself isn't bad either, letting you build up a city quickly while providing a level of culture which is significant in the early game.


High priority

Heathen yield: 8
Spanish yield: 16

The Potosi of faith. With One With Nature, you hit 24 faith which is the most of any single resource on a single tile. It's going to be hard to stop your religion. The downside is that this tile doesn't offer you anything directly to grow the city. Unless you're in a close race for beliefs, work other tiles until the city's at least size 3.


Low-Medium priority

Heathen yield: 3 when in cultural borders. 2
Spanish yield: 6 when in cultural borders. 4

The science yield is poor even when doubled. One With Nature will make the tile more worthwhile. If Old Faithful is in a Desert tile, (as can sometimes happen,) it will be affected by Petra like all other desert natural wonders (but the +1 food and production will not be doubled by your UA.)

High priority

Heathen yield: 2, 5
Spanish yield: 4, 10

This is one of the better wonders, and it's particularly good in true-start Earth or Europe maps where Spain begins right next to this handy thing. It'll give you as much food as a tech-boosted farm on grassland, with the gold of a non-Spanish Potosi.

Like all food-giving natural wonders, this is particularly good because your city prioritises working it right away, giving you all the benefits, and it allows the city to grow faster as you've immediately got a good food tile rather than having to watch it grow slowly while you build a farm.


High priority

Heathen yield: 2 when in cultural borders. 2, 4
Spanish yield: 4 when in cultural borders. 4, 8

Basically a self-sustaining source of faith. The happiness covers the cost of building the city to work it, while the food covers the citizen cost of working it. Thus, there's little reason not to build a city to work it.


Medium-High priority

Heathen yield: 2, 6
Spanish yield: 4, 12

Very much alike Mt. Kailash, but encourages building tall rather than wide in the respective city. A tendency to be around lots of Desert tiles makes working it harder, but then again, flood plains can help. Like all food-giving natural wonders, your city will likely work the tile as soon as it's within its limits, so you get your faith sooner rather than later.

The Conquistador is an incredible and versatile unique unit. It finds cities, takes cities and even makes cities. It's a super version of Songhai's Mandekalu Cavalry (even with double embarkment defence, like the Songhai unit!) with a powerful set of abilities.


Conquistadors are 13% more expensive than a normal Knight. Considering against other units they're no more powerful than normal, this can be a disadvantage of Conquistadors. Hence, to make the most of them, keep them well out of the reach of Pikemen (even more so than with regular Knights,) unless you're attacking a city.


Let's start with the smallest advantage. Double embarkment defence reduces the need for escort naval units. Your Conquistadors will actually start off with a higher strength at sea than Triremes do (which makes them safe against Barbarians for the most part). Embarkment defence rises in later eras, so this promotion remains useful if you're keeping any Conquistadors around later in the game.

Caravels may be a little more of a problem. They outrun you, and the extra sight Conquistadors have doesn't work while embarked.



Above: Make it even better with the Sentry promotion.

This bonus makes Conquistadors one of the only mounted units capable of seeing as far as it can move, which is great in a military situation where you want to be able to plan ahead. Stacked with the Sentry promotion, you have a sight of 5 on your Conquistadors, which makes it one of the game's best land scouts.

Sight bonuses are great when scouting - when you come across a new continent, you can use high speed and sight to very rapidly scan it for natural wonders and ancient ruins.

As a defensive measure, sight keeps Barbarians away seeing as they only spawn in revealed territory. Spacing Conquistadors well throughout your lands keeps your workers safe (and gives you good warning of incoming armies from other Civs)

If you're taking Conquistadors to war, high sight works brilliantly with siege units to make the most out of their range (as siege units have only 1 sight but 2 range.)

Keep in mind that the sight bonus doesn't stay when you upgrade the unit. Luckily, they don't obselete until the Industrial era so there's a wide window of opportunity. Even then, you can keep one as a spotter for Artillery - just place it on a hill relatively near the city and surround it by stronger units as a bodyguard.


So, you've found a lovely new continent. Look, there's even natural wonders! But there happens to be some annoying natives which won't give up their sacred lands without a fight. A fight it's going to have to be...

Conquistadors lose the normal 33% city attack penalty Knights have. This makes them 50% better against cities than a standard Knight to put it another way, but lack of defensive bonuses coupled with Pikeman vulnerability means it's difficult to rush them all in without backup. A good move could be to take less defended cities or hit and run at cities in open terrain. When Tercios come around, it's going to be very difficult for anyone else to take them back.

You can't use Conquistadors the same way as Mandekalu Cavalry for the Songhai. The Spanish knight is 23% more expensive than the Songhai one, hence the best move is probably just to bring one along as both a spotter and to take the last hit on a city, capturing it.



Above: I used the Conquistador to clear the island of Barbarians, before founding a lovely city in range of both halves of the Great Barrier Reef. Sending a Missionary soon afterwards ensured I could get lots of Faith out of it.

Conquistadors are the only units besides Settlers that can found cities. It cannot be on the same landmass as your Capital, but otherwise the city can be built as normal, using up the Conquistador in the process. This is no small matter.

The crucial difference between Conquistador settling and settling the conventional way is how the units are built. Settlers halt city growth while being built. Conquistadors do not. Settlers cannot be bought by faith through Holy Warriors. Conquistadors can. This means that wide expansion in the mid-game does not need to slow down the development of your other cities, and the cash saved from not buying Settlers with gold can be placed in reserve to support other units, spent on buying tiles for new cities or buying Workers.

Besides this difference, as Conquistadors are military units, they don't need escorts. Double embarkment defence means they don't even need sea escorts most of the time. This lets you even more rapidly expand in the mid-game, especially as having twice as much movement and sight as a Settler means finding and reaching a prime city location is easy.

Over land, you could use your Conquistador to escort a Missionary. They both move at the same speed meaning one won't slow the other down, and it means you can immediately place your religion in the new city. You can escort a worker with a slower defensive unit over later, meaning maximum efficency for setting up a city.

Because of their speed and lack of instant-capture, it may be worth keeping some Conquistadors around even beyond their obseletion to found cities with, if there's still room in the late-game.

As a final note, Conquistadors can still build cities while damaged. This can be a decent way of not letting your unit go to waste if it otherwise wouldn't last a fight. After all, the city isn't built with reduced health.

• Conquistadors don't need to be escorted over seas and have a huge sight range, making them excellent scouts.
  
• The huge sight range of Conquistadors is also good for spying on enemy lands and providing a line of sight for Artillery.
  
• While Conquistadors don't have a penalty against cities, the relatively high cost of the unit means you should only attack cities if you're certain the unit can escape safely or will get the last hit on the city, capturing it.
  
• Conquistadors can act as super-Settlers, being faster, able to see threats coming and being able to defend itself. Building them doesn't stop growth in a city, and they can be faith-purchased, giving them an even bigger advantage over regular Settlers.

• Double embarkment defence

The sight and city-founding abilities of Conquistadors make it worthwhile to keep some around even after obsoletion.

Conquistadors offer a range of special utilities. Tercios are for fighting. They'll beat pretty much any other Renaissance-era land unit (besides the French Musketeer, and even then, it's a close fight) making them an ultimate defender for your Conquistador colonies but also great for going on the offensive.


Before your powerful Tercios enter the battlefield, there's two changes of theirs which will affect how fast you can produce them. The first, more clear one, is that Tercios are 7% more expensive than your standard, run-of-the-mill Musketman. This is hardly noticable in most situations and will likely cause no major problems.

The second difference is a little more obscure. Tercios technically count as standard melee units rather than gunpowder, and as such benefit from the 15% production bonus from Warrior Code Social Policy in the Honour tree, unlike regular Musketeers. This means Tercios can actually be faster to build than regular Musketmen!

Let's put this in context. Let's say, for example, in a normal speed game, you have a city producing 10 production a turn. A regular Musketeer will take 15 turns. A Tercio without Warrior Code will take 16 turns, but with Warrior Code it'll take 14.

Additionally, the fact Tercios count as a standard melee unit makes them immune to the 25% bonus Zulu Impis have against gunpowder units. All the Zulu uniques are focused on raising a large Impi army, but being able to counter Impis makes the whole Civ much weaker.


Your Tercios will be 8% stronger than the average Musketman, which is half-way between the standard Musketman and the French Musketeer. The difference may be small but in an even fight with another Musketman, it ever-so-slightly gives you the upper hand. Higher strength also helps your units defend better against ranged attacks, useful if you're fighting cities.


This is your main advantage and a significant one at that. Front-line units (Warriors, Swordsmen, etc) are typically prone to mounted units due to their high speed and, (with later mounted units,) their ability to move after attacking thus making counter-attacks difficult. Tercios turn the tables - even Cavalry will lose to them. In defence, this discourages mounted assaults against you. When attacking, this discourages the defenders from rushing reinforcements.

An interesting point about this bonus is that it's one of the only counters for Poland's Winged Hussar. Like the Zulu Impis, Poland's midgame warfare depends greatly on that one unit; sending a few Tercios their way can really ruin their day.

Because the bonus doesn't keep when you upgrade the unit, it may be worth keeping some Tercios around into the Industrial era, as they have 1 point more strength than Lancers and a higher bonus against Mounted units.


None. Use your Tercios while you can!

Spain has lots of options for Social Policies. Generally, you should start with Liberty at least up to Collective Rule (and perhaps the entire tree.) Switching the last half of Liberty for Honour up to Warrior Code gives you a few decent advantages of both, letting you have a reasonable starting infrastructure and an edge to combat - but you'll need to be prepared for plenty of war to make up for the loss of some early developmental advantages. Another approach is to switch the last half of Liberty for Piety up to Reformation if you want a really heavy religion emphasis.

For the second tree (or its equivalent), cultural players should go with Aesthetics. Picking up Piety now is also an option for warmongers who didn't take it before, otherwise, Exploration will be helpful due to its naval warfare strengths. Consider taking at least the opener of Exploration if you're playing culturally for a shot at the Louvre wonder.

Finally, once in the renaissance era, head to Rationalism for the science bonuses.

In all cases, I've included the entire Social Policy trees to allow for excess Social Policies you may have along the way.


Opener

Start here. Spain needs to build wide to seize as many natural wonders as possible. The Liberty tree helps with that. 1 culture per city allows new cities to start expanding borders immediately and helps soften rising Social Policy costs. Keep in mind cities favour expanding to resources over natural wonders, so have some cash at the ready to buy tiles with.

Republic

In the early-game, Spain should focus on infrastructure and expansion. Slightly faster building production will be useful for building Markets in Potosi or Gibraltar cities, for example.

Collective Rule

This is very important for its free Settler, allowing you to expand quickly without slowing Madrid's growth down so much. Out of all the wide-building Civs, Spain probably builds the fewest Settlers (buy some with discovery happiness, later on there's Conquistadors) but that doesn't stop this policy being very useful.

When you're done with that branch, it may be worthwhile to switch to Honour for bonuses that'll help with mid-game warfare or Piety for Reformation. Otherwise, just carry on.

Citizenship

Citizenship helps you make more out of Workers, saving you some maintenance or letting you develop new cities faster.

Meritocracy

Stretching more happiness out of your pretty wide empire isn't a bad idea.

Representation

This policy opens a handy Golden Age for extra cash, culture and production. Reducing the Social Policy cost increase due to new founded cities will be handy for Conquistador colonisation.

Finisher

A free Great Engineer to rush a world wonder or Scientist to make an Academy to keep your tech rate up is a good idea here. Alternatively, try a Great Admiral - they can cross oceans before you even have Astronomy, making them excellent for finding natural wonders for your UA's gold bonus. A Great Prophet could be useful if you want to develop your religion faster.


Opener

This will prevent you sending your Settlers out to Barbarian-infested lands or leaving cities only lightly protected, uncertain of where Barbarians are thanks to revealing encampments. It also provides a handy source of culture to help complement your other efforts, as well as the combat bonus against Barbarians meaning they're less likely to burn your farms down.

Warrior Code

Getting a Great General early is not only good for starting a war, but also useful in defence against early-game warmongers. (Placing a Citadel can also get you a natural wonder off an opponent; useful for those awkward City-States which always seem to be near NWs.) Faster melee production will get your Tercios produced faster by conventional means.

Discipline (Warmongering Spain favoured)

You'll produce melee units en masse, so combat bonuses for ones adjacent to each other is something very useful. If you're heading down the culture route, you'll be alright to ignore this one.

Military Tradition (Warmongering Spain favoured)

Again, cultural Spain players should skip this one, but if war is your focus, extra XP will go a long way. Tercios with the Siege promotion are particularly mighty.

Military Caste (Warmongering Spain favoured)

This is useful for keeping happiness up, while extra culture will help expand city borders faster.

Professional Army and Finisher (Warmongering Spain favoured)

If you want to carry on with warfare into the later game, it's not a bad idea to faith-purchase new units with Religious Fervour while using cash to upgrade the rest - leaving your cities free to build happiness and gold infrastructure to maintain your conquests. This will let you upgrade all your units faster with lower costs, and gold-on-kills helps cover this cost too.


Opener

A lot of your faith will hopefully come from natural wonders (aside from the first little bit to get a Pantheon going) but having Shrines and Temples up quickly is still useful. If you're in the business of puppetting your conquests, those cities are likely to build them.

Organised Religion

Just before we go further, it's worth pointing out that Mandate of Heaven's reduction of religious unit purchasing doesn't apply to Holy Warriors or Religious Fervour. That's why it's a good idea to pick Organised Religion first, as the faith bonus will be useful no matter the route you take.

Religious Tolerance

If someone else took One With Nature, this still lets you use the bonus by enabling the Pantheon beliefs of the second-most popular religion your cities.

In order to bring Religious Tolerance to its full potential, have one city with a majority of citizens following the faith you want to use for its Pantheon. Any Missionaries made in that city will spread that belief rather than your own.Use those Missionaries to spread a little of that heathen honoured faith into the rest of your cities.

Reformation

This is where you need to make a choice - war or culture? Religious Fervour will put you on the path to a Domination victory, while Sacred Sites is good for culture. Jesuit Education is a possible route to Science, but Spain doesn't have quite so many advantages for it.

Mandate of Heaven

This will help get Missionaries and the Spanish Inquisition up faster, but more helpfully for a Spanish cultural player, religious buildings. The Sacred Sites Reformation belief gives 2 tourism for every faith-purchased building which with your very high faith generation will propel you towards such a victory.

Theocracy

A bit of extra gold will come in handy for maintaining units or buildings.

Finisher

If you don't need the religious spread from the free Great Prophet, they can instead make a very good holy site, with a good faith yield, some gold and some culture (which can be added to tourism later on.)

Opener

Because of all the preparation for mid-game warfare, early expansion and getting a Reformation belief out the way, a cultural Spain starts late into Aesthetics. You'll need to furiously drive your way down these policies in order to get the large tourism bonus the finisher grants you.

The opener itself grants you faster GWAM production. Make sure that you have all the guilds up and running early for maximum benefit.

Cultural Centres

Cultural Spain players work best with the Freedom ideology, as Autocracy relies too heavily on warfare (which for Spain is an either-or matter, it's war or culture, not both - you don't have enough culture for Social Policies for both) and Order relies too much on happiness (which a wide empire lacks) for a level three tourism-boosting tenet. Hence, faster production of buildings up to Broadcast Towers is a particularly useful bonus.

Fine Arts

Not as useful as to most other culture-seeking players, but still, an extra little culture boost has its uses.

Flourishing of the Arts

This gives a significant bonus to culture, particularly in cities which have a Natural Heritage Sites-boosted natural wonder. Using Great Engineers to rush wonders in otherwise wonderless cities is a decent idea.

Cultural Exchange

Conquistador/Tercio warmongering may put other players off trading with you or opening their borders, but a strong One With Nature - boosted religion should at least give you some tourism bonus.

Artistic Genius

A little boost to tourism from a Great Work, or a Golden Age? Your choice. A bit weaker than the other policies, so best as a final choice.

Finisher

Now, you get a doubled theming bonus from world wonders and Museums. It's an important push on the way to a culture win.


Opener

Exploration is both good for cultural and warmongering Spain, offering bonuses to archaeology as well as naval combat.

For warmongering players, the extra speed and sight for naval units gives you a slight edge over other nations in that it's easier to retreat or use sea units as spotters. Remember that you have a coastal start bias, meaning the well-developed Madrid is a brilliant place to produce naval units, but that you can't faith-purchase such units. Purchase the land, produce the sea. Simple.

For the cultural players among us, the opener allows you to build the Louvre. You might not quite manage to build it, but if all else fails, you can always take your ex-Tercios and try to conquer the city that did.

Naval Tradition

You can support all your Conquistador colonies better with happiness boosts to certain coastal buildings. For cultural players, this helps you develop your smaller cities so they can start pulling their weight culture-wise without unhappiness slowing down growth so much.

Maritime Infrastructure

Coastal areas are often production poor. This helps compensates for that. Your coastal start bias means Madrid should gain from this, making it a more ideal city for building wonders if you're that way inclined.

Merchant Navy

Covering some maintenance costs will be handy to build either more units or buildings, such as the cheaper culture buildings from Cultural Centres in the Aesthetics tree.

Treasure Fleets

Sea routes become more profitable than land ones. The +4 gold bonus as a flat bonus makes it useful even for short-distance sea routes, which are easier to defend.

Navigation School

Better for the warmongers amongst us. Faster Great Admiral gain and movement speed allows you to last longer in war even far away from your own shores.

Finisher

Purely a cultural thing, so warmongers may have little reason to complete the tree. Finding hidden antiquity sites will give you a tourism boost, especially considering your wide empire will have more sites to exploit than taller-building cultural players.


Opener

Falling behind at science is bad for cultural and domination-minded players alike. Keep your happiness positive, and you'll have a global 10% science boost helping you to keep up with other Civs.

Secularism

Instant extra science if you have specialists.

Humanism

Great Scientists are the most useful Great Person for warmongerers, and as they don't raise the cost of GWAMs when created, they're very much worth generating for cultural Civs as well. Generating them faster means, well, even more science.

Free Thought

Another burst of science, and one particularly useful if you're struggling with unhappiness - setting your cities to work trading posts instead of excess food means cities can still have a good science output without needing to damage your Civ's happiness level by growing taller.

Sovereignty

Get some gold back from scientific buildings. Particularly good for warmongers who have taken a wide empire but are struggling with upkeep costs.

Scientific Revolution

Even warmongers can sometimes find partners for research agreements, and the 50% bonus typically means you'll make more science out of the deal than they will.

Finisher

Your substantial faith output can be put to good work buying Great Scientists. You'll also get a free technology - grab something expensive you're not already researching.

If you're going for a domination victory or an aggressive cultural approach, Autocracy is a great choice. Order is a reasonable alternative for warmongers who want more infrastructural advantages rather than better units.

For peaceful cultural players, try Freedom. Seems odd with Freedom's building tall bonuses, but the tourism boost it offers is more consistent than Order or Autocracy.

This guide shows the best choices for the first "inverted pyramid" of tenets (3 from level 1, 2 from level 2, 1 from level 3.) If more choices appear in a category, there are particular circumstances that may favour one of the options or another.


Futurism (Cultural Spain favoured)

Get a considerable tourism boost for generating GWAMs. Hoarding faith up to this point so you can buy lots of GWAMs at once is effective.

Mobilisation

While it only applies to gold purchasing and not faith, this is still useful as, for example, you can't buy naval units with faith.

Fortified Borders

Defensive buildings require no maintenance. As such, they're a brilliant source of happiness with this tenet without running out of cash to maintain units with.

Elite Forces

Helps to maximise the impact of your units, by doing a little more damage.


Lightning Warfare

Your old city-rushing Conquistadors may have some pretty nice promotions to upgrade all the way to Landships and Tanks. Enhance the bonus with Lightning Warfare. If you earned March on a Conquistador, now you have a fast-moving constant-healing Tank.

Militarism (if razing conquests or if kept conquests can be quickly developed)

Militarism offers easy and effective happiness bonuses and will outperform Police State if you're either razing your conquests or can develop your conquered cities fast enough.

Police State (if keeping conquests)

If you're in the game of keeping your cities rather than razing them, perhaps to maximise faith output in this late stage of the game, (faith output generally scales to the number of cities you have,) Police State works well. Until you've got cities well-developed with XP buildings, it's a better bonus than Militarism.


Clauswitz's Legacy (Warmongering Spain favoured)

Finish the job. A large attack bonus should help you get the edge over a rival (or several) in a late-game war.

Cult of Personality (Cultural Spain favoured)

The 50% tourism bonus for Cult of Personality stacks based on how many common opponents you have with a Civ, meaning huge wars can make huge multipliers.


Avant Garde

A Great Person bonus helps you get GWAMs produced more rapidly, which will help with tourism generation.

Civil Society

By halving food usage for specialists, you allow your cities to grow faster. You'll need bigger cities for better production of top-end buildings such as Broadcast Towers. Cities near food-based natural wonders will grow particularly fast.

Capitalism

A little easier than Universal Healthcare to get the full happiness benefits from. Cities around gold-based natural wonders will likely have Banks and maybe Stock Exchanges already.


Universal Suffrage

The point is to support a switch to building tall in the cities you have. The 50% bonus to Golden Ages is a less useful as they're relatively rare for Spain.

New Deal

If you need more happiness or lack Great Tile Improvements, take Urbanisation instead. Otherwise, this is a nice bump up for Holy Sites, Academies, Landmarks and the like.

Urbanisation

Another tenet helping to grow your cities fast while covering some of the unhappiness created.


Media Culture

This is the reason for taking Freedom over Order, despite it having two bonuses to tourism - Broadcast Towers will provide tourism that works on everyone, rather than those of matching ideology or less happiness. Make sure Natural Heritage Sites is up and running and you have Broadcast Towers as well as Hotels and Airports in all your natural wonder cities for maximum benefit.


Hero of the People

You can now make Great Scientists even faster. And other Great People generated by Great Person Points, but that's not so important.

Socialist Realism

A ridiculously easy source of happiness.

Young Pioneers

Even more happiness - you'll need it.


Workers' Faculties

Faster Factory construction makes it easier to develop new cities, and a higher science output helps your army to keep up.

Five-Year Plan

Strong production means you can launch an attack sooner leaving your enemy with less time to prepare.


Iron Curtain

No longer suffer the additional unhappiness or gold costs associated with annexing cities! Combined with natural wonder tourism, your new conquests will remain in a good state after capture, cutting back the time required before you can buy an Airport and start airlifting in units from afar.

Spain's at its best with a heavily religious strategy. Without religion, you leave yourself very open to the luck of which natural wonders the game gives you.


Note that highly-situational Pantheons (including most faith Pantheons) aren't listed here, though picking up a faith Pantheon is a good idea to get a religion going more easily.

One With Nature

I've mentioned this belief a few times before. You may know by now the +4 faith is doubled for Spain. But you may not realise what this all means. Mt. Sinai now gives 24 faith per turn. Even the weaker wonders are now worth working. And most importantly, this bonus is the same no matter the wonders in the game, bringing more consistency to what could be a fustratingly luck-based Civ.

Spain with One With Nature will probably beat Arabia or Morocco with Desert Folklore to a religion. Being the first to enhance is very likely. You just need to seize one natural wonder and it'll work its magic. Be careful, however - don't let someone beat you to a natural wonder and be aware that getting one may require settling right in what's technically someone else's land.


Above: A nasty situation. I discovered the Grand Mesa first and used the cash to build a Settler, then settled Barcelona with the intention of buying my way to the wonder. Almaty beat me to it. When preparing an army to take it over, our old pal Genghis Khan started attacking it himself with his +30% City State attack UA. Luckily, I dealt the last hit and took the city.

Messenger of the Gods

A good option for building wide. Science is good for all strategies. This belief is stronger the more cities you have, so rapidly expanding into new continents will get you lots of those mysterious blue orbs.

God of Craftsmen

If you fail to get One With Nature, God of Craftsmen will help you in wide-building efforts as well as to make Conquistadors and Tercios slightly faster.

God of War

If you still want to faith-purchase without One With Nature, getting faith on kills is a possible route to it. It's not spectacular, but it's better than nothing.


Tithe or Church Property

Tithe and Church Property both give you cash to support raising armies, though it comes at the opportunity cost of having more faith gain for faith purchasing. If many cities worldwide are over size 8 or you struggle to convert cities, Tithe is more effective. Otherwise, Church Property will raise more money.

Pilgrimage

Stacking faith bonuses is a good idea to take full advantage of faith-purchased buildings, Holy Warriors, Religious Fervour or Jesuit Education. In addition, if you convert cities to it which you intend to take later, you can use the Just War enhancer belief to make your armies even better.

World Church (Cultural Spain favoured)

If you want to finish Exploration (for its hidden antiquity sites) as well as Aesthetics and Rationalism, you'll need a lot of culture.


Mosques or Pagodas

These buildings will provide you with happiness, culture and faith. Faith is useful as it allows the building to go towards making more of itself (or providing more faith for Holy Warriors/Religious Fervour) while the happiness will support your wide empire.

If you're playing culturally and are keeping warfare to a minimum, try to pick up two of the faith-purchased buildings (the other two being Cathedrals and Monastaries.) The reason for this is the Sacred Sites reformation belief, which provides 2 tourism to all buildings purchased with faith. And you'll have a lot of faith.

Holy Warriors

Holy Warriors lets you buy any pre-Industrial era unit. Both your unique units are pre-Industrial. Together with high faith from One With Nature, you've got yourself a huge fighting force. You can't buy Settlers with faith, but you can buy Conquistadors. Unlike gold, you can't lose faith, (only spend it) hence why faith-purchasing is a particularly good and reliable course of action to take.

With a range of faith boosts like Pilgrimage, you may generate faith so fast your economy cannot keep up with the maitenance of all the units you may be buying, so make sure your economy is strong enough to support all these faith-purchases.

An important point is that faith purchase costs rise every era, like with Missionaries and Inquisitors. As such, try to purchase plenty of Conquistadors while you're still in the Medieval era if you want to stretch the faith further.

Also note that there's no way of reducing the faith costs of unit purchasing. No belief, no Social Policy, world wonder or Ideological Tenet, nothing.

Cathedrals (Cultural Spain favoured)

If you're going down the culture road, Cathedrals are a very good idea, being the only religious building to have a Great Work slot.

Divine Inspiration (Cultural Spain favoured)

If you manage to get a few wonders, Divine Insipiration pays well in providing you a significant amount of faith. The higher the difficulty you play at, the harder wonders are to get, so in that case Mosques, Pagodas or Cathedrals are probably better options.

Religious Community (Cultural Spain favoured)

A great source of additional production to help out with wonder construction.


Just War

An early religion due to One With Nature's faith gives you time to spread it into the cities of potential enemies.

Religious Texts

When you're spending faith on military units and religious buildings, you may have little left for Missionaries and Prophets. As such, an option that boosts religious spread without needing to spend any faith is a useful one.

Itinerant Preachers

Can substitute effectively for Religious Texts if you have a strong core of cities following your religion.


Jesuit Education

A very worthy choice, this offers a cheap way to acquire scientific buildings. You'll need good science to stay ahead whether in war or for keeping up in the tourism-wonder-building race.

Sacred Sites (Cultural Spain favoured)

High faith generation and religious building beliefs give a considerable amount of tourism here. To maximise it, pick religious buildings for both of your Follower beliefs, and let other religions involving religious buildings spread to your cities. Buy their buildings, then convert your city back! Lots of tourism! And a source of tourism that's good for wide empires.

Religious Fervour (Warmongering Spain favoured)

Or "Fervor" if you like American spelling. This is basically Holy Warriors for the rest of the game, allowing you to take your high faith production into late-game conquests. Thanks to Armouries and Military Academies, those units purchased can be of a high standard. In fact, you can focus purchasing on just a few cities and focus the rest of yours on happiness buildings and suchlike to support conquests.


Above: I've got over 5000 faith stored away. I can hold on to the faith until I feel my economy can take on all these units.

To the Glory of God

Of course, why does all the faith you have got to go towards units or buildings? If you've got the world's best faith generation, but you struggle to finish Social Policy trees, then why not go for Great Person spam?

Here's a list of the decisions and brief notes on importance of some. Ones missing depend greatly on the situation you're in. Voting choices may vary depending on your game.

Arts Funding

Medium priority if you're warmongering
High priority if you're cultural
Vote no if you're warmongering
Vote yes if you're cultural

GWAMs aren't very useful when you're looking to take over the world. Great Engineers, Scientists and Merchants are.

Cultural Heritage Sites

Low priority if you're warmongering
High priority if you're cultural
Vote no if you're warmongering
Vote yes if you're cultural

Embargo City-States

Medium priority
Vote no if you're warmongering
Vote yes if you're cultural and have plenty of trading partners, thus having no need for City-States

Historical Landmarks

Low priority if you're warmongering
High priority if you're cultural
If you're warmongering, vote varies depending on your situation and that of rivals.
Vote yes if you're cultural

This provides culture to Great Tile Improvements, so it's not bad for a warmonger generating Great Engineers for Manufactories or Great Scientists for Academies.

International Games

Medium priority if you're warmongering
High priority if you're cultural
Vote yes unless you're a warmonger and there's a particularly strong cultural player in the game

The International Games can provide up to 6 happiness, hence making it useful even if you're warmongering.

International Space Station

Medium priority
Vote no

Natural Heritage Sites

Very high priority
Vote yes


Above: The last thing you want is someone with lots of delegates to repeal your hard-won culture bonus. I planted a Diplomat in Warsaw and bribed Casimir to vote against repeal.

Nuclear Non-Proliferation

Medium priority
Vote yes if you have plenty of nuclear weapons, you lack uranium and other players have it, you're the only player with nuclear weapons or you're playing culturally. Vote no otherwise.

Scholars in Residence

Medium-High priority
Vote yes unless you're in the lead technologically speaking

Sciences Funding

Low priority
Vote yes if you're warmongering
Vote no if you're cultural

Standing Army Tax

High priority if you're warmongering
Low-Medium priority if you're cultural
Vote no if you're warmongering
Vote yes if you're cultural

World's Fair

Low priority if you're warmongering
High priority if you're cultural
Vote no if you're warmongering
Vote yes if you're cultural

Generally, any world wonder that's good for a wide Civ is good for Spain.


Stonehenge

A strong boost to faith which will get you a religion much faster and adds to the faith pool for stuff like Holy Warriors.

Statue of Zeus (Honour Only)

City-taking becomes easier, but arguably it's more useful to focus on culture for Honour policies which have similar levels of boosts.


Petra

Some natural wonders are commonly located in deserts, such as Mt. Sinai. Petra turns an average or below-average desert city into a powerhouse. It also gives you an extra trade route, which is handy for maintaining your mid-game army. It's often worth keeping a Great Engineer to rush it in a new desert city.


Above: Yes, I've shown this screenshot before, but look at the location - perfect for Petra. Shame that I just missed getting it in that game. Turns out Brazil started in a desert tile and pretty much wasted the wonder.


Alhambra

If you can grab this before you start churning out Conquistadors and Tercios, with a Barracks and Armoury they'll have three upgrades as soon as they're built. Faith-purchased units benefit from this too.

On top of this, the Alhambra generates extra culture for the city it's built in, so it's good no matter your eventual route.

Borobudur or Hagia Sophia

Ways to help you spread your religion without needing to spend faith.

Machu Picchu

The city connection gold formula slightly favours wide empires, but this wonder's good no matter your setup for the extra cash and faith on offer.

Notre Dame

Helps get you through the happiness-starved midgame and produces a bit of faith for buying units or buildings with.


Globe Theatre (Cultural Spain favoured)
Theming bonus wonder - 2 Great Writing, same era and Civ for theming bonus

Great Writing slots are pretty hard to come by (especially later in the game) so any you can get will be good. Plus, there's the matter of the theming bonus for extra culture and tourism.

Leaning Tower of Pisa

A rather competitive wonder but can help you make GWAMs faster, and therefore more tourism. Or perhaps more Great Scientists for keeping ahead with technology.

Forbidden Palace (Patronage Only)

Yes, my Social Policy guide doesn't include opening Patronage, but that doesn't mean you can't take the wonder off someone else. The Forbidden Palace's two delegate bonus is important for making sure no-one tries to repeal Natural Heritage Sites while the happiness helps your wide empire.

Red Fort

Remote natural wonder cities are hard to defend. The Red Fort makes that a little easier. A low priority wonder as a whole.

Sistine Chapel (Cultural Spain favoured)
Theming bonus wonder - 2 Great Art/Artifact, needs art of the same era and Civ for theming bonus

The Sistine Chapel will be brilliant for getting through the many Social Policies you need to get through faster. Eating up Rationalism policies faster in particular will be helpful to get its scientific bonuses sooner. For cultural players, enjoy also the theming bonus attached to this wonder's Great Art slots.


Brandenburg Gate (Warmongering Spain favoured)

With a Military Academy, new units start with three promotions (four for non-ranged land units with the Alhambra as well.)

Louvre (Exploration Only, Cultural Spain favoured)
Theming bonus wonder - 4 Great Art/Artifact, needs 2 art and 2 artifacts all of different Civs and eras for theming bonus

The Louvre offers a particularly high potential for tourism, especially with the finisher of Aesthetics that doubles world wonder theming bonuses. Similar wonders such as the Globe Theatre are a little less useful as Spain is better at generating artifacts (due to building wide) than GWAMs.


Broadway (Cultural Spain favoured)
Theming bonus wonder - 3 Great Music, same era and Civ for theming bonus

One of the trickier of the theming bonus wonders to fufill the requirements of, seeing as Great Music cannot be traded (unlike Great Art, Artifacts and Great Writing.) It's worth keeping a Great Musician around until the modern era to prepare for this wonder.

Cristo Redentor (Cultural Spain favoured)

The good cultural output of this wonder lends itself nicely for use with a Hotel, Airport and the National Visitor Centre for a decent tourism output, too.

Eiffel Tower (Cultural Spain favoured)

While a little bit of happiness will help both warmongering and cultural Spain, the point of the Eiffel Tower is its high no-strings-attached tourism bonus.

Kremlin (Order only, Warmongering Spain favoured)

Conquistadors don't keep much when upgraded, so why not build yourself a new load of armoured units backed by Military Academies for a stronger start to warfare? The free Social Policy helps, too.

Neuschwanstein

This wonder has a pretty high cultural output, meaning an above-average tourism contribution with a Hotel, Airport or National Visitor Centre. For warmongers among us, it offers a source of both gold and happiness (and adds it to Castles.)

Prora (Autocracy Only)

Prora offers you lots of happiness, particularly with plenty of Social Policies adopted. Natural Heritage Sites and culture-producing natural wonders themselves should help you make more out of this wonder than most, while Autocracy exclusivity makes it easier to build.

Statue of Liberty (Freedom Only, Cultural Spain favoured)

An excellent source of production for those late-game theming bonus wonders, and a free Social Policy on top.


Great Firewall (Cultural Spain favoured)

The main reason for picking this wonder up is to deny other Civs from getting it, as it prevents the doubled tourism output from the Internet technology operating against the Civ that builds it. If a rival Civ with a high culture output manages to grab it, it'll make your job significantly harder.

Sydney Opera House
Theming bonus wonder - 2 Great Music, same Civ but different eras for theming bonus

The last of the theming bonus wonders is also the only terrain-restricted one - only coastal cities can build it. While the requirements of the theming bonus are easy to meet, you might want to consider using your Great Musicians for concert tours at this late stage of the game - it'll be worth more tourism, and more importantly, you can focus that tourism on a specific rival Civ.


CN Tower

The main point here is that it affects all cities - the more cities, the bigger the bonus. With modifiers reducing unhappiness from population, this actually makes you some happiness on top of the population boost (rather than just covering it.)

For cultural players going into Freedom, this is one of the best wonders in the game. You'll have the tourism bonus in all your cities, and if all your cities have a Broadcast Tower already, you can sell them just before completing the wonder for a nice sum of cash. It's close on the technology tree to the tourism-doubling Internet, too.

Spain's fairly unusual setup makes it easy to make mistakes. Here are a few I've identified as possible mistakes to avoid.


Spain was really intended for maps with more than one continent separated by oceans. In those maps, tech to Astronomy fast and there's little reason you can't be the first to discover natural wonders there (well, unless Polynesia's in the game.) First discovery due to preparation, not chance! Early-game discovery is a little luck-based, but isn't it anyway? After all, ancient ruins can potentially get you a religion before anyone else has a Pantheon.


True, a strong start makes the rest of the game easier. But double natural wonder yields is the bonus that will make the biggest impact over the course of the game, and double discovery happiness is handy too.


Natural wonders like to hide sometimes. Many are located just off coasts, so try building a Trireme or two early on, or Caravels later in the game. Don't stop exploring until at least you're told there's no more natural wonders to find.


You're wasting Conquistadors' and Tercios' potentials if you turtle up around your natural wonders. Conquistadors have no city attack penalty. Tercios lack clear weaknesses. Use that to your advantage.

However, if you're playing for a cultural victory and you're past the time of Tercios, then it's fine to just go ahead and turtle around what you have.


Again, similar to avoiding playing too defensively. Notice that even for cultural strategies, I encouraged opening the Honour tree. This helps your midgame war efforts, letting you take more cities in the window of time you have for your UUs. It's worth going to war to steal Great Works, and the more cities you take, the more Great Works. Plus, it sets your cultural rivals back somewhat.


One With Nature and Holy Warriors together lets you raise an army pretty much faster than anyone else in the mid-game. Even one natural wonder will produce plenty of faith towards making units.


The only special promotion Conquistadors keep is the double embarkment defence. As mentioned before, not upgrading them to act as a spotter for Artillery is a viable strategy (so long as you keep them well defended.) As for Tercios, they keep nothing on upgrade. Tercios are better than Lancers at fighting Cavalry with both higher strength and a bigger anti-horse bonus.

Spain is strongest at the mid-game, and can excel at religious aims. You can use that against them.


Spain is all about natural wonders. In the early game, they're trying to discover all they can. If you share a continent with Spain but there's a bottleneck between them and part of the continent, try to block it. You can then patrol the rest of that blocked-off area to find natural wonders before they do.

If you're aiming to build a wide empire, you can settle next to natural wonders yourself if you can to deny Spain them. Prioritise defensive buildings in those cities. Alternatively, take good city spots near the wonder so if they found a city there, it'll be worse than otherwise.

You can turn their religious strategy against them. One With Nature relies on a very small number of tiles to generate a lot of faith - take the cities working those tiles and you've deprived Spain of a lot of it. Holy Warriors allows you to faith-purchase units too, being a Follower belief. If all else fails, you could always buy cheap units to slow their attacks down.

Overall, the best course of action is to take Spain out before the mid-game, where rapid expansion strategies makes them much harder to beat.


Bonus sight is no good when it's blocked by hills or mountains. Rough terrain is a weak point of Conquistadors like all mounted units. If they climb up on a hill to look over other hills and forests, they will be just as vulnerable as in open terrain.

Pikemen are just as effective against them as always. In fact, arguably more effective due to the higher cost of Conquistadors meaning it's likely they'll have fewer of them.

If Conquistadors are building cities in your lands, remember they're likely not to be very well defended. Normally, you can escort a Settler with another unit on the same tile. Conquistadors are their own escorts, and a poor (or particularly expansion-mad) Spain player is likely to overlook city defences.

Double embarkment defence may stand up to Triremes, but embarked Conquistadors are still weak to Galleasses and Caravels. It's possible that a rival Spain player may overlook escorts for Conquistadors making them quite vulnerable to being picked off.


While Tercios do have higher strength than Musketmen, it's a very small difference as a whole. Even just one promotion's difference between the Musketman and the Tercio will determine who has the upper hand. Hence, probably the best way of taking out those things is through their generic counterparts. Just remember not to waste time building mounted units. Even Cavalry will lose to Tercios.


Polynesia's ability to travel pretty much anywhere on the map from the first turn means they can easily locate all the natural wonders and shut Spain out of the discovery bonus (and settle cities there too to make things even trickier) as well as taking the best overseas settling spots (usually Conquistadors' speciality.) Spain can't compete with Polynesia's tourism production normally, so they're forced into going into war.

But the upgrading nature of Maori Warriors means that Polynesia's likely to depend on front-line and ranged units for defence - not mounted - making Tercios somewhat less effective than they could be. It's not to say Polynesia's best at stopping Spanish warmongering - France's Musketeer is probably more effective - but the combination of factors makes Polynesia the strongest counter-Civ to Spain.


Early-game Aggressors

Take out Spain before they can cause any trouble. If that fails, take out someone else instead.

Mid-game Warmongers

Use Musketmen in defence (or even Crossbowmen) while the rest of your army's out on raids. Unless Spain is vulnerable, leave them be in the mid-game. Defeat them later when you've gained the upper hand through one of your other conquests. Alternatively, pick off lightly-defended natural wonder cities of theirs. It'll frighten them and probably make them turtle up around them.

Late-game Warmongers

Attack some of the more remote natural wonder cities to divert their armies towards them. Then, move in for the kill and attack Madrid.

Diplomatic Nations

If Spain's trying to win favour with a lot of City-States, they probably have a high-gold natural wonder. Take that city out, and if needed, burn it down. Ought to set them back somewhat. Otherwise, get together with other nations to try to lead an embargo of Spain through the World Congress. Earlier warmongering means they're not popular.

Scientific Nations

You have something Spain probably hasn't after all that warmongering - friends. Get those research agreements going and try to maintain a technological lead.

Cultural Nations

Just build a few Musketeers for Tercios and maybe a couple of Pikemen or Lancers to take on Conquistadors. If you want to be particularly mean to them, use any unique faith bonuses you might have to grab their favourite beliefs (One With Nature springs to mind) so to deny them a decent religion. If Spain's playing culturally, move your Great Works to an unexpected city away from them. That way, even if they take your capital, they won't steal your tourism bonuses.

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These guides cover every Civ in the game and can be used as quick reference guides.

• Civ summaries (Gives a brief overview of how each Civ plays)
  
• Civ-specific tricks, secrets and clarifications (Compiles the lesser-known features of each Civ)

All 43 Civs are covered in in-depth guides linked below. In brackets are the favoured victory routes of each Civ.

• America (Domination)
  
• Arabia (Diplomatic/Domination)
  
• Assyria (Cultural, Domination and Scientific)
  
• Austria (Cultural, Domination and Scientific)
  
• Aztecs (Domination/Scientific)
  
• Babylon (Scientific)
  
• Brazil (Cultural)
  
• Byzantium (Cultural/Domination)
  
• Carthage (Diplomatic/Domination)
  
• Celts (Cultural)
  
• China (Domination)
  
• Denmark (Domination)
  
• Egypt (Cultural)
  
• England (Domination)
  
• Ethiopia (Cultural/Scientific)
  
• France (Cultural)
  
• Germany (Diplomatic/Domination)
  
• Greece (Diplomatic/Domination)
  
• Huns (Domination)
  
• Inca (Scientific)
  
• India (Cultural/Scientific)
  
• Indonesia (Diplomatic/Domination)
  
• Iroquois (Domination/Scientific)
  
• Japan (Domination)
  
• Korea (Scientific)
  
• Mayans (Scientific)
  
• Mongolia (Domination)
  
• Morocco (Diplomatic)
  
• Netherlands (Diplomatic, Domination and Scientific)
  
• Ottomans (Domination)
  
• Persia (Diplomatic/Domination)
  
• Poland (Domination)
  
• Polynesia (Cultural)
  
• Portugal (Diplomatic)
  
• Rome (Domination)
  
• Russia (Domination)
  
• Shoshone (Domination/Scientific)
  
• Siam (Diplomatic/Scientific)
  
• Songhai (Domination)
  
• Spain (Cultural/Domination)
  
• Sweden (Diplomatic/Domination)
  
• Venice (Diplomatic)
  
• Zulus (Domination)