Some possible adjustments to place at the same time.
Builder speed bonus increased to +50%
(If sicilians can have +100% building speed on castles and town centers, spanish can do it with +50% within reason on all buildings. Not to mention, unlike sicilians, spanish don’t have treadmill crane)
Cannon Galleons benefit from Ballistics (fire faster, more accurately) → in addition to this, have it effect their bombard cannons, it would be the reason they don’t have siege engineers, and it would be a good one. It would be different enough from the ports’ version to justify existence as well.
Missionary healing range increased to that of a regular monks’ (or if the range is already the same, increase by x2.)
These three simple changes would finish balancing of the spanish for the most part.
Beyond that, simple adjustments to the Conquistadors would be all that’s left after these changes.
Broken on arena and makes them more oppressive on nomad, plus just making dealing with Conqs a lot harder.
Broken too, would be impossible to escape from those cannonballs.
This one is fine.
And I recommend to see tournaments to have a better game understanding, your suggestions only makes them OP on closed maps (where they are good) and don’t help on arabia (where they are bad).
(btw I still wait for Bohemians, Poles, and Turks nerfs on arena)
Finally a post here that offer buffs that dont turn the civ into a generic one but compliments its identity.
I’d definitely make Missionaries heal much faster. Noticably faster.
Could maybe do with some early buff aside from the ones you mentioned.
Faster firing BBC is why they don’t have SE. Their late game is already very strong, they don’t need a better one. they need a better early game/ mid game civ bonus aside from conqs.
Making missionaries more feasible might be the better option
I suppose 50% faster build speed would be fine if it doesn’t apply to TC and castles (and towers too if it gives them OP trush), which would remain at +30% as they are rn. The bonus is already only 20% for wonders (and the game doesn’t even disclose it smh) so it’s probably doable. Spanish castles built 50% faster would be way more dangerous than Sicilian castles because conqs are better than serjeants by a lot.
While that would be fun, if they heal too much faster, pairing them with the byzantine team bonus would make them op, so probs best to stick with the healing range increase, and, if increasing healing speed, perhaps only by +25%.
Ballistics for Spanish is kinda dumb as a land bonus since the whole point of the civ is to use conqs as your ranged unit of choice, and those don’t benefit from ballistics (thx goodness for that), I suppose it could kinda work as a water bonus since while it’s ludicrously powerful they also have 0 bonus before castle age so it mught be bearable.
I think the question that has to be asked first is what do we consider the problem of the Spanish? Is just that the winrate is low, or can we identify particular problems with their gameplay experience, strategies, or flavor?
I’m not in the loop on Spain’s winrates right now, but I do know that missionaries could use some serious buffing. I like the increased healing range idea a lot.
considering that Portuguese essentially have a weaker version of the spanish’s accuracy on their bombard canons(cannon gals’) and at the same time have the possibility of unlimited resources, the Spanish can most certainly have a stronger version of the bombard canon especially since it does not have that same ‘unlimited power’ variation, and it fits the spanish theme by way of the cannon gal’s and giving the same effect to their land based bombard canons so it’s not just a water map thing.
Give spanish crossbows and their open map game instantly gets better without touching their closed map and nomad gameplay. Which is exactly what we need for spanish
Bulgarians have the archer only identity and you can have future dlc civs with that identitiy if you want to run with that. It makes no sense to just keep it because its always been that way. Look at the way theyre changing the indians and also historically spain did have crossbowmen
If not that then i would say give spanish the 50 extra gold aztec bonus and compensate aztecs with something else. That would make spanish drush and maa better than average which would also help on open maps
An idea I had for Spanish was to give them free Sappers.
Yes it would be quite useless. But yes it would be fun watching people go for buildings with Supremacy villagers because of that small push towards that challenge.
Yeah, the build speed buff is too much. 30% increase across the board is plenty handy.
Spanish win rate right now is 48.70. Not bad, but not at the point where a small buff or two should be out of the question. I don’t think Spanish are in a particularly bad place (or particularly great for 1v1s), but yeah, it reeks of bad design to have units whose existence you can’t justify 95% of the time. My thoughts prior to the Inquisition tech were that missionaries should be a conversion specialist (since…that’s literally what a missionary is), with the same range (or perhaps -1) as a monk, but with a faster conversion rate. Whereas monks could be generalist units with better healing and that could pick up relics. Given that tech though, a healing buff for missionaries seems fine.
Also, maybe it’s just me, but I actually think Elite Conquistadors are extremely lackluster. Not bad, per se, but rarely worth making given the other options available. Castle Age conqs are good because they pack a punch in small numbers, but the diminishing returns of that kind of micro in Imp + the lack of range increases & tracking that all other cav archer units get makes the elite upgrade look pretty dubious. Anecdotally, I play Spanish about 90% of the time, and I literally never find myself “Going Elite Conqs.” Mayyyybe I’ll get the upgrade if I made a boatload in Castle Age for some reason, but it seems I always get a significantly better ROI from just going cav or infantry + Skirms/hand cannons. Between missing a lot of shots and a slow reload time, Elite conq’s DPS is not actually that impressive. I would give Elite Conqs a moderate buff, perhaps +1 range, or perhaps have their projectiles affected by ballistics. It’s true that their late game is already pretty strong, but I don’t see this quite breaking into OP territory.
I played with you on a ffa map and i dont think camping with cannon galleons and bombard towers is the best way to play spanish lmao
I main spanish and let me tell you elite conqs is the best range option they have even in imperial
Paladin and elite skirms is the best combo in individual battlles because paladins are just a juggernaut of a unit but there are times (like in ffas) where you want your gold unit to be ranged so that they can survive multiple battles. Paladins might win a battle but their numbers dwindle with every engagement
In those times elite conqs are better than spanish hand cannoneers or heavy cav archers( they have pretty decent hca only missing parthian tactics) and they are plenty good
Spanish can get a slight eco buff in early game. They absolutely dont need any help in the late game