posted 11-10-09 03:10 PM EDT (US)
Interesting title, that means interesting strat!!
Nah, this is actually just a pretty standard build, but it's important to write this one. Too many people think that Spain is a Fortress civ, when they fair very well in colonial. Very, very well.
The goal here will be to use Spain in colonial, which is "weird". We'll find that Spain does great in colonial, the faster shipments can be used to your advantage quite well. Down to business.
In this strat we're going to favour an econ-heavy strat, to the detriment of a strong military mass. This is a good strat for developing your defensive play, an important aspect if you're looking to improve your play.
There's not a lot to say. You're basically going to age with 16 villagers, and you'll be treasure hunting with your explorer and war dog. You know how it goes, hunt, make vills, hunt, make vills, and ship 3 vills. Standard stuff. Age with the tower and 200 coin (I may experiment with 500f, but I like my tower).
After you've started aging, which is to say during the transition, you'll be allocating 9 or 10 vills to wood. Depending on the coin treasure you got, allocate 1 or 2 vills to coin. You're only going to need 50 coin. Build a market, get the first three techs. Simple and painless. Gather 200w asap.
When you have those, switch 2 vills to coin, 6 or 5 on wood, and the rest on food.
We can probably affirm that treasure hunting is a to-do with every civ, in every match up, on every map. But with Spain, this to-do can quickly become an important bonus. Your war dogs are a civ bonus that can reap quite a lot of benefits if you're smart and stylish. You start with one. You can very easily gather all the little treasures. Do it. Even if they're insignificant (40 food for 1 coyote), even they're plain useless (2 sheep? FRUIT YOU I DUN WAN YO SHEEP YA DUMB OUTLAWS)(sorry my parentheses tend to get a little out of hand, i try to work on that..), go ahead and gather them. The XP you get from killing Guardians makes your next shipment come that much faster. It can be quite the advantage to send your second colonial card right after the first one.
Now if you find a big XP treasure. Go for it. 320 XP for Spain is another shipment right then and now. You're aging, you have 400f.. make 4 other dogs! 5 dogs and 1 explorer vs 4 Riders. Kill them. Reap the benefits. It's so sexy. Your dogs can later serve with your colonial army. Not bad eh?
Ok so you've aged. You should have 200w ready. Use it to build a rax. Put your tower somewhere where it gives LOS and where it will cover your villagers. Preferably, in the range of your TC fire. Immediately send 5 villagers. The faster you do these steps, the better. It was important to queue a villager before sending 5 villagers because you don't get idle TC time. As soon as you get 100w, build a house. Build it fast, with two vills (if you want to play with style).
When your rax and house are up, queue a musk and another villager. Your second shipment will hopefully be ready quite soon. Send 700w. In the mean time, make another batch of musk and more vills. The 5 villager shipment is a strong economic boost. We'll be boosting that boost. First though, when you 5 wood vills gather another
Gather than 700w, and use it in the following manner:
-125w and 200w for the second coin and food upgrades at the market.
-200w for a stable
-175w + 25w (the 25w you gathered earlier) for 2 houses.
Now, you're going to queue up a hussar and you're going to keep constant villy production. Don't make any musks at the moment. You won't need any, since you have 9 or 10 musks. Your next shipment is up to you. Make as many hussars with the resources you have available.
At this point your opponent may or may not have started attacking you. Make sure you built your rax and stable behind your TC. Make dogs, stick close to the TC (you should have herded your hunts behind your TC), you have musks. You keep cool. If he pushes, you pop MM and you defend. Play carefully, but make sure he pays for it if he comes in at this point. You should have a hussar queued and a musket queued. If he's HI heavy, finish the musket batch. If he has RI, finish the hussar batch. Defend. Persevere. Keep your villagers. Alive.
This is where I stop saying "do this" and "do that" and "make this". Where are you at? I have disclosed the following screen shot:
-26 vills, or 30, if you sent 4 vills
-4 Hussars, 9 Musks, 6 Rods, 1 dog, 1 explorer. Group these as you want. If you went 4 vills, you don't have 6 rods.
-Both Food upgrades, both coin upgrades.
-6 houses and a TC.
-1 shipment
At 7:39. In Colonial. As Spain. Da fK? That's not too bad now is it??!
What you do now is up to you, but it is especially up to your opponent. SCOUT! Your shipment I recommend you use on either 4 vills or 6 Rods, giving you a card order of 3 vills, 5 vills, 700w, 4vills/6rods, 4 vills/6rods. But of course feel free to branch off to what you need or feel you're better off with.
If you opponent went rushy and started bothering you early you can't be arsed thinking about what to do, you're probably busy defending your god damn town from the god damn
If not, it's time to bring the fight to him. Go in there, raid, scout, use hussars, be annoying, plunder, booty, rawr around but DO SOMETHIN! You have a strong, upgrade 30 vill econ, you're going to be pumping units! You can afford to be aggressive, use that to go for the win.
By the way, if you feel that he's going heavy on infantry, you can take a number of vills off of food and coin (try to take an equal number from both resources) and get the wood upgrade from the market. Commence making Xbows.
Later on in the game, you can use 8 pikes to strengthen your army, economic theory to strengthen your economy or 700 coin to sling yourself to fortress. And when you hit Fortress, with a strong eco, a stable up, a rax up, shipments ready to be spammed, you can be sure that if you did well before you're going to a force to reckon with. Up to you how to play in Fortress. I recommend going to Fortress if you can't finish off your opponent clean in colonial. Maintain pressure with what you have if possible, but you may find yourself being forced to play defensively to age without losing.
This is where you begin using the stronger, but harder strats that are strong in the long run but require skill to pull off without being killed. I wish you good luck and I hope you enjoyed reading. Have fun playing Spain in Colonial. I'll take questions, comments, flames, and sex (hot woman only please). I'll get some recs when I can.
, they beat disciples but cost less 
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