Since they came out in the conquerors edition, the Spanish have become one of the civilizations that has received the least changes. Their tech tree is one of the most complete, having access to fully upgraded barracks, stables and all the trash units but, in my opinion, I think they need something that makes them stand out from the rest, something that allows them to play more than just FC+conqs . This is how I got to thinking of a totally new concept / partial rework.
The Spanish: Gunpowder and Monk civilization.
Builders work 15%/25%/30%/35% faster in dark, feudal, castle and imperial ages.
Each time you research an economic or blacksmith technology, you will receive 50% of the food cost back in gold.
Gunpowder units are created 50% faster. (This does not affect the UU).
Monks convert faster.
Unique units:
• Conquistador (mounted hand cannoneer)
• Missionary (mounted Monk). This unit can now pick up relics but it will slow them down.
Unique Techs:
• Inquisition (Knights and scouts deal +25% damage to camels and +10% to spearmen)
• Supremacy (Villagers stronger in combat)
Team bonus:
Trade units generate +25% gold.
Explanation:
With this changes I cover most of the issues this civilization has. The Spanish will no longer be top pick in nomad with the -15% nerf in dark age, now they will have many more alternatives in feudal age than just FC.
Something that was also missing was a clearer economic bonus. The extra gold will help make the boom more meaningful, developing an economic approach will no longer put you at a huge disadvantage against other civs, like the Franks.
The new bonus for gunpowder will have much more impact, since gunpowder units don’t have 100% accuracy a +18% faster attack is just irrelevant.
I have also decided to change the castle technology and make it directly a bonus (also removing the bonus for cannon galleons, fun but useless). One of the worst matchups for the Spanish is against civilizations with camels, since the Spanish don’t have access to x-bow, with this new technology you can at least face them.
Your changes make spanish more ordinary. Also what is the strong side and weak sides of your offer ? It is like preparing a meal with whatever you find and calling it special.
Spanish is a gunpower uu civ. It means they can rush to castle into uu and cover their eco weakness with uu presure.
We have only 3 civ in game like that: Turks, portuguese, spanish.
This bonus will only start to work on castle age since spanish arent really gold dependant on feudal. And for fc you dont research eco tech. As for the booming part, food and wood bonuses are generally much better.
Since it doesnt affect conq and HC are available only on imp. This look like more a nerf than a buff compared to their previous bonus.
Nice effect, but it require a castle to research, before it their knight rush is still generic. So it’s better to just fc conq because they are less countered by those units on castle. On paper i think this tech is researchable mid castle at best (which cost do you put on it?).
I think most of your propositions dont change that much. It increase their strong point (late game and monk rush) but their early game is still very weak and rely too much on fc conq to get back on the game.
You can use it to m@a rush earlier without building a mining camp or go fc and start producing some knights instantly. It also helps to afford ######### with skirms and some archers (not the best but its usable if going full feudal).
Conq fire rate stays the same. keep in mind that this benefits BBC a lot since they are really hard to produce.
The knight rush is supposed to work with the gold bonus, you research some eco tech in feudal and when reaching castle age, thats 2 knights gold cost for free. The UT was meant to compensate the lack of good archers vs camel and halb+siege compositions.
I think it should be cheap enough to compensate the fact that not every civ has access to camels.
The gold bonus gives you 188 gold with all feudal age eco techs and 275 with wheelbarrow.
In castle age its 238 with the basic eco techs, 388 with hand cart + 200 with market techs + 75 with gillnets, so thats a total of 663 free gold.
This actually gave me one idea, making it work with every tech researched. As this civ has the most techs in the game it could have good synergy.
This change imho isnt really addressing the issues at hand (apart from a nice nerf on nomad).
For the UT change, this would make them pretty strong in late castle and even more so in teamgames; civs without halb might struggle vs their pala, and civs like Gujara (that dont even have pike) simply wont have an answer to late castle age kts spam. This is bad for two reasons: First, it feels really bad to be in a situation where you just cant match the enemies units, even if you have better eco. Second, it doesnt even really help the spanish - their weakness is in the subpar feudal, not in too few castle age options, they actually have a few.
The gold bonus change is weird too, because again, it helps them in the wrong circumstances. In feudal, this barely changes anything (you get 50 gold from double bit, instead of saving 50 gold on ########## if you also get horse collar, we are talking about a net difference of 37.5 gold. In castle age, its a net nerf IF you go for BS upgrades; if you dont, its a buff. This means that for closed maps and mostly for conq play (who dont rely on upgrades) this is a buff, but for mass kts play (which spanish could do) its a pretty big nerf because +2 armor for your kts is now that much harder to afford (and the 75gold you get from bow saw wont make up for it). So you nerf them on open maps, and give them a slight buff on maps like BF where castle+conqs with some eco behind is a viable strat already.
So you are saying its a nerf but its a buff, this gold bonus is better in feudal age but then you say they are still bad in feudal age. You say on closed maps its a buff because armor on conqs doesn’t matter but then on open maps, where your eco is under constant preasure, its a nerf. I don’t get the point.
m@a rush is more food reliant than gold. If i follow what you said then we are forced to research eco upgrade as soon as spanish hit feudal which make thing worse. Man at arm upgrade + double bit axe is like 200 food spend just for the upgrade. This is too much on early feudal, for an average result.
For FC knight you get something like 130 gold after you research double bit axe + horse collar and gold mining (wheelbarrow and other castle eco upgrade are researched later most of the time after you hit castle knight rush).
Compared to other cav civ like franks or berber you are still behind since they save food that help to do double stable knight production faster or double tc + one stable knight spam
You were right for conq but BBC production problem is mostly due to their huge cost and chemistry long research time. I prefer faster firing BBC to push faster.
I think i explained pretty well…but let me try again:
Yes, its a buff in feudal. By 37.5 gold, IF you get horse collar. They are and will remain very bad in feudal, this is just way too little.
Yes, your eco is under pressure on open maps, which is why you need more BS upgrades and cant afford that many eco upgrades. Realisticially, the only eco upgrades you will get in early/mid castle age are Bow saw and wheelbarrow, thats 162.5 gold. On the other hand, if you arn’t going conqs (which is basicially impossible on open maps) you will either go skirm defense (needs bodkin and +2 armor, so 250gold) or +2 cav armor (220 gold). Its not a big change either way, just a slight nerf on open maps and a slight buff on closed maps when they need the opposite.
Why is upgrading your eco bad? horse collar doesn’t affect your existing farms only the ones you build after being researched, isn’t it better to research it early?
And thats why the aztecs main strategy is m@a rush (ofc their units r created 11% faster), they start with +50 gold which makes them able to do it without needing a mining camp early.
As i said before,I don’t want to make this a cavalry civ, just give them some chances against camel civs.
It now affects blacksmith techs. I wanted to make the changes as balanced as possible but if you think they need a buff, this will match it with the old bonus.
By that I meant that this is just impossible to rush m@a earlier with eco upgrade + maa upgrade and spam m@a at the same time. It requires too much food.
No, Militia rush on dark age, rush timing is very different. Then they turn them into m@a and need a mining camp since most of the gold was spend to make more militia than just classic 3 drush.
I like really like to see these changes implemented I would keep Inquisition as is keep the fire rate increase but nerf conqs by them by decreasing their armor to 1/1 for non elite. 50% faster creation is useful but laughable compared to Turks who get Free chemistry, Artillery, +25%hp, +25% faster creation time, 50% cheaper BBT and Elite Cannon Galleon.