Discovery Age
Send all villies except one or two to hunt. Have the others get the crates, starting with food, then wood, then gold. Have one build a house, then make all go to hunting, along with all newly-created vils. Make sure, as usual to scare huntables toward your TC. Now is when you make a tough decision: ATP or no ATP. If you are on HV lv25, then you can use the nice Advanced Trading Post to get yourself a nice income of XP, useful for when you get up to Fortress. However, if you don't ship ATP, that means you will ship 3 villies, boosting your economy and improving your Fortress time. It is a trade off between speed and power. Of course, you have other options down the road...
Anyway, you want to age up with around 13 villies, taking into account if you ship the 3 vil card. When you get the 800 food, hit the button. If you are below lv59, get the 200 gold and an outpost politician. If you are over lv60, then you can get the 500 food politician, with will cut down on your time. You may be able to get up with as low as 10 vils this way, I am not entirely sure (I don't have a lv50 Spanish HC). Shift 1-2 (if going with the 200 gold guy [if you started with 100 gold, then lucky you, you don't need to mine at all. ]) or 3-5 (if going with the 500 food guy) vils to gold.

Colonial Age
As soon as you hit colonial, ship the 700 gold. You should have 100/300 gold collected by the time it comes. Move a bunch of guys to go collect it. You want to hit up as soon as it is collected. You should have the 1200 food. Age up with either the 4 hussars or the 10 pikemen. Personally, I prefer the pikemen because they raze buildings excellently. Combined with the age3 14 Pikemen card, you can take down a TC in no time. Move a whole lot of guys to wood. You're gonna need houses to support your colonial army. You also might want to put up a church, as it gives you some nice options. Keep about 3 vils on food to maintain vil production once you hit Fortress, about 7 on wood to get houses (and a church) up, and all the rest on gold to give you some fortress options. IF you are shooting for mercantilism once you get up to fortress, I suggest shipping the 600 gold card while aging. That should give you just about the right amount once you get up to fortress.

Fortress Age
Finally, what you have been shooting for. Hopefully it will be between 6:30 and 7:00 right now, and you are ready to get some nice shipments. Now is when your options come up, so be prepared to make some decisions of your own. Hehe.
Option 1 : Mercantilism: You did not go the ATP route, and you shipped 600 gold while aging up. ASAP, research Mercantilism from your church. This should give you 5-7 shipments. That means 2/3 Falconets, 6/10 Lancers (with optional Lancer Infantry-boost card), 10/14/24 Pikemen, and enough left over for the 5 and 4 vil shipments to get your economy back on track, or perhaps a fort to defend. Unfortunatly, it will be a while before you can get any mercs, because you exhausted the majority of your resources on Mercantilism.
Option 2 : Mercenaries: An early ATP helps with this. Hopefully, you shipped the 600 gold while aging, and soon after you get up to fort, you should have the gold for some Mercenaries. Highlanders are my personal favorite, because they work so well with cannons, but Strads and Swiss Pikes are good too. Due to the ATP, you should have some more shipments, so get the Cannons, some Lancers, (if you got the Highlanders or Swiss Pikes) or some Pikemen (if you got the Stradiots). Also, missionaries are nice if you have a church up. They work very nicely in healing injured mercs. Get more for your money!
Option 3 : Miscellaneous: This can be done with or without an early ATP. Instead of getting mercs or mercantilism, you take a more traditional route and put up a stable/barracks and do things the old fashioned way. This gives flexibility, because you can get Lancers/Dragoons (odds are the enemy won't have any artly and lancers are better than hussars for killing light infantry, so hussars aren't too useful) or Muskets/Rods/Skrims. You still want to ship some Falconets and Lancers/Pikemen.

Try to keep the battle in Fortress. If your enemy hits industrial, attack NOW. He spent 3200 resources and can't benefit from them for at least 30 seconds. Hit him before he can get factories up or ship lotsa units/mercs. You only get one factory, so you are at a disadvantage in Industrial fighting. Hit in fortress and stay in fortress, that is Spain's dominate timeframe.

If you are rushed: Hold in there. You definitely want to put the Age2 8 Pikes card in your deck (especially against Germany). It's a shame that Spain doesn't get the 8 crossbows card, but you should be able to stop most rushes. Also, don't be afraid to use Minutemen. If it keeps you TC standing, then by all means it is worth it. Get to fortress ASAP, and hit him with lancers and cannon. Lancers are amazing against almost all colonial units, and your 10 pikes from aging up can handle cav. Your goal is to hold out long enough to get to fortress, and then hold out for a little longer to get some shipments. If you expect a colonial rush, by all means, slow down your FF! Get some outposts and build a small army. Natives work very nicely for this, because you don't need to spend money for housing. That also fits in with the ATP strategy.

Nice tips: If you are getting attacked by grenadiers: build war dogs! It's amazing how well these little guys stand up to the artilleryish foot soldiers. I got owned once as Russia from those doggies .
Always put pikemen in cover mode when attacking buildings. They take less damage and throw faster (albeit weaker), but it's worth it.
Lancers are sweet. Not amazing, not OP, just sweet. Love them.
Market upgrades are nice. If you get a nice wood treasure or start with a market, be sure to get at least the beginning food upgrade. It's dirt cheap.
Get treasures! Train some extra dogs if needed. Spain can get those nice treasures earlier on, so do it.

I hope you liked it. Feel free to comment, criticize, complain, compare, contrast, condone (damn I don't even know what that means) or whatever.

Signing off,
~Syzygy

[This message has been edited by Syzygy (edited 02-17-2006 @ 09:33 AM).]