Tips as Spain

[Razer_greece]

I'm currently playing as Spain and i want some tips on how to continue. Ottomans are allied to France,Russia and Tlemcen. France is allied to Savoy,Ottomans,Poland and Tlemcen. France,England,Ottomans and Russia rival me.
Right now i'm focusing on colonizing but the game becomes boring cause i don't think i can win any major wars.
My allies are Savoy,Ethiopia and Bohemia. My ideas are exploration,quantity,religious and defensive. Any tips on how to push the major powers?

https://prnt.sc/h81iep

 

[Robert de Bruce]

Hm, well, as Spain you should go early for colonising and exploring and when you expand, it should be at best in Africa (West African coast for trade company and gold mines inland in West and East Africa) and Asia (India and Indonesia). It's 1631 and you haven't even fully explored Indian Ocean. With the power gained outside Europe, stomping other europeans and even Ottos would be easy. Now it's not that easy. Ofcourse, you can start hitting India now, still. But you have to hurry for it and little time to take advantage of it. If you focus on India now and then continue with East Africa, get all the trade there to Sevilla, you should still be able to beat Europe around 1750. That is the easy way. Ofcourse you can also start tryharding and beat the other euros without it.
Also, why do you have only 3 colonists? No expansion ideas? They are absolutely worth it, especially with Spain. You gain 1 more colonist + more colonial growth + a policy to increase settler growth further. You can have that running around 1500-20, should guarantee you to be nearly the only one colonizing Americas and this means all of them. No problem ofcourse to still get African coast and Cape meanwhile until 1631. Would also mean to have 12 merchants out of colonial nations only. With all trade company merchants and the ones from other sources you can have way more than 20 merchants, steering all trade to you, making you super rich and netting you nearly all trading in boni the game offers. Forget about Europe first, play the colonial and trading game, then Europe falls to you in the end automatically.

 

[sadhukar]

Ouch. You should not have let Ottos and France get that big...that's why 99% of the time it is in the Spanish player's interests to help the emperor. Start by securing your trade - Mali and Portugal still own a large part of the Ivory Coast trade node I see. Get rid of them first. Then use your money to hire alot of infantry mercs whilst keeping your cav and artillery as regulars.

You have to beat France in a war. Luckily you can abuse the stupid AI abit here:

1) Make forts on all of your border provinces, especially the mountain ones. Or make a mountain for in the Pyrennes such that they have to attack that fort in order to go to the rest of Spain (I think Girona or Pirineo if memory serves)
2) Attack someone France is guaranteeing/allied with. The goal here is to bait France alone and not let Ottos join in.
3) Make sure you have enough ships to challenge the French navy. Check the ledger for their heavies vs. yours and their gallies vs. yours.
4) War should be straightforward: bait them to attack the mountains. Since you have quantity and defensive you should win the war of attrition.
5) At the peace deal, get them to break alliance with poland ottos OR take the carribbean center of trade provinces - seriously, why the hell did you not colonise the caribbean? As it is an ally war you won't be able to get much out of them.
6) Keep cutting them down like this. At the very least you're preventing them from crushing the Dutch rebels to the north (I *think* they fire up until 1680, just unsure if Belgium is included). Eventually they'll lose those lands.
7) ???
8) Profit!

 

[ecrurudesby]

Russia allying Ottomans and rivalling Spain is some bullshit. My condolences.

My only advice for you OP is to try and isolate one of the majors by declaring on an ally of theirs who won't call in any other majors. But you missed probably your best window in the Age of Reformation when you can get -30% shock damage received.

Also if I may, your colonisation thus far seems rather poor. You own nothing in the Caribbean and your share of Ivory Coast looks feeble meaning you're unable to get a lot out of your South American colonies.

 

[herrhals]

Easy easy people. Not everyone plays the min/max optimization strats. Maybe Razer just wanted a nice casual game?

But yea, Razer, basically what they said. You're up poo creek if you're looking to expand massively in Europe.
Prevention is better than treatment.

You should hurry up and take out those native abominations in Mexico area. All those gold mines should have been yours 150 years ago. And what is the PINK thing? Kill it with fire.. and shock, and more fire.

What is England up to? You can probably kick England out of their island, and hopefully out of the world too. Take out Scotland and Ireland too of course.

You can definitely take over the rest of the world, but Europe looks quite locked down, unless you are really opportunistic and find those chinks in the alliance chains. Russia and Ottomans might fight over Crimea eventually. Eventually someone will get bogged down in some bloody war. That's where you step in to "restore the peace"

Conquer the RoTW.

 

[holyvigil]

Take indonesia or India? Why fight tough wars when you can do easy ones that boost your income more.

 

[Snake_Squeezins]

Truthfully I think your game is going to be a stalemate and you should just start over. Don't consider that a failure of any kind, you have probably learned a lot during this playthrough!

Here are some general tips next time you start a game as Castile/Spain:

1) Colonization and Trade are your specialties and you need to exploit your early advantage in these - Castile is one of the only countries that benefits from taking Exploration as its first idea set. Focus on your early missions like conquering Granada and the North African Center of Trade, but during the early game, try to stay under the radar and build up your income base before you get dragged into difficult European wars with major powers.

2) Expanding in North Africa isn't critical and is a major drain on your Admin points. Take Centers of Trade and possibly a little bit more, but don't get bogged down there with major expansion - that is a classic mistake for a new player, and one I made myself on my first Spain game. If you can maintain a rivalry with Morocco, prioritize Humiliation rather than land conquest, it's just too expensive for Admin points compared to other things you can do.

3) Make sure you prioritize colonizing Centers of Trade in the Caribbean and in Ivory Coast, those are the gateways to the Sevilla trade node. In the Caribbean, that means the two COTs in Cuba and Hispaniola should be your top priorities before you set up a Colonial Nation. In Ivory Coast, that means you should colonize Gold Coast, eventually colonize your way to the inhabited COT to the east, and eventually conquer it. With those COTs, you will get an extra merchant and dominate one of the most valuable trade steering hubs in the world.

4) Colonize the Cape for the COT and extra merchant.

5) Don't overexpand your Colonial Nations. The bigger they get, the harder it will be to keep them under control. Focus on quality rather than just quantity - so aim to get all the COTs and Estuaries ASAP, make sure you rush to 5 total provinces to form the CN, and then slow down. You will eventually want to build up to 10 provinces to get the extra merchant, but after that, I find it's best to move on to other regions. Also, do not raise tariffs past more than 20% or so, Liberty Desire can get out of control fast when you have a big network of CNs (and you should!).

6) I think it's a good long-term goal to build up a trade route to India, Indonesia, Philippines, and China, but you don't need to rush once you secure Cape. Colonizing a few strategic, defensible lands is a good idea. (The COT in Manila, for example, or the various small islands linking Zanzibar to Indonesia.) Eventually you'll need to go to war to get the best lands over there but that's after you've set up a network of CNs.

7) Don't explore too much New World coastline! Drop off a set of 3 merc infantry led by a Conquistador in North America and then another set led by a second Conquistador in South America, and let them hunt for the Seven Cities. I find this to be the best way to find one or more of the Seven Cities of Gold.

8) Don't treat Portugal as an enemy by default. Remember that they steer trade back to your home node, too. And in the early game, if you ally with them and use them to fight Morocco, you can initiate wars and ensure that they don't take the land - which means you can maintain the rivalry (rather than eclipse them immediately), keep going to war regularly and Humiliating them, and profiting.

9) Make sure France and Ottomans don't get too large. On your map . . . Ottos are definitely too large. France you should aim to defeat and Humiliate on a regular basis, as well as release and dismember small pieces to keep them off balance, and break off any dangerous alliances they've formed. Ottos is trickier because you need to find the right moment when you have strong allies and are not already busy, while Ottos either don't have strong allies or are spent from a tough war. If Otto is rivaled and warring with Muscovy/Russia, this is much easier, but if you wait too long to start striking Ottos . . . well, the result is your map.

I could keep giving tips, and others will certainly have very different ones, but I think these set the early tone for the type of game I find enjoyable as Castile/Spain.

 

[ThatRabidPotato]

I cannot understand why you didn't get into the Caribbean, Colombia, and Peru.
This is closer to what a Spain game should look like, although it's not perfect: The Ottos are even bigger in my save than in yours, but the key is that I could beat them if I had to, their huge ass army be damned. I'm making so much money and literally recovering manpower faster than I lose it, so if necessary I could drown them in mercenaries.

Prioritize the Caribbean when colonizing as Spain. Then, Colombia, and use that as a gateway into Peru with its gold mines. Mexico as well, and you'll be rolling in cash from gold alone. Take Expansion, and with Inter Caetera you'll have four colonists, enabling you to spread ridiculously fast. Make sure to get into South and East Africa, then India, and send a colonist to Australia as well. Control of the Cape and Ivory Coast is crucial to directing the flow of Eastern trade into Seville or Genoa if you choose to collect there.

 

[Incompetent]

The situation in Europe looks bad, but honestly as Spain that doesn't matter too much as long as you play a strong ROTW game. What I find worrying about that screenshot is that you're nearly 200 years in and you've made so little progress outside of Europe, aside from colonizing South America (fine, but you need to conquer as well) and taking over some fairly useless land in North Africa.

Some easy next moves from here:

- Conquer Mesoamerica and Inca. The gold is easy money and you're going to be spending hard to catch up with where you should be by now. It's also really important to stop the French getting Mesoamerica, as that much extra income in French hands will cause problems for you.

- Clean up the remnants of Portugal in Africa. You need to go around the Cape into the lucrative Indian Ocean trade network. A war with Mali wouldn't go amiss either (they have gold mines, and also land in the Ivory Coast node that you'll need for your trade routes).

- Take over the East African coast, get as much of the Zanzibar node as you can.

- Fortify the Pyrenees and build a strong navy.

Once you've done that, you're in position to work your way into Asia (India and/or Indonesia, preferably both) to start making the serious trade money. If you get into a war with France and aren't strong enough to push north, fight defensively in Europe (let them come to your mountain forts so you get the terrain bonuses) and focus on taking over their colonies, especially in the Caribbean.

 

[lymond]

Castille is a great nation to play for achievements. So many to be had, if you are playing ironman. I've played them many times. Some thoughts:

1) My main early goals outside the normal ones (Granada, Navarre vassal, and colonization) is to hurt France and vassalize Portugal.

2) It appears you conquered much of mainland Portugal but did not cap them...not good. Take a small bite at first, and then enough to vassal them in the next war. Then they will colonize for you. Leave them Lisbon, one or two mainland provinces, and their islands.

3) As Castille you are fairly competitive with some allies against France early. You should definitely ally Austria (they will be a good ally a long time and likely bring you into wars with Ottos at some point to keep the Ottos at bay). Try to grab Savoy as an ally before France. Hit France when they are at war with Burgundy, or England - Burgundy usually better. Take Gascogne and release Guyenne as a vassal - plenty more of there cores to grab later with Reconquest CB. Take Labort at some point from England or France. Look to take coastal provinces up Saintogne and East toward Province. Later, if France happens to eat Brittany you can release them as well. Continue to be opportunistic with France looking for good times to attack when they and their allies are hurting from other wars. You will likely rival Aragon and hope for the IW, but try to protect them as well. France often likes to take a big bite out of them if they don't ally them, which is less stuf for your union, and may result in Naples getting released.

4) North Africa is not a priority, but you do have the CB. You can use it to release Fez as a vassal (Melila), then take back their cores later and feed them some more berber provinces. I use the vassal approach on North Africa to avoid the cost. You can feed Portugal some of it as well, and later release some other hidden nations (Safi, another one in Morocco I forget, Algiers, etc.)

5) Ideas: Exploration, Expansion, Quantity is pretty normal for the colonization game, and the IGs have other benefits as well including the CBs for primitives and the East. From there it depends on your game, but one of Influence or Diplo is nice (and maybe both at some point). Helps with the vassals/annexations, and becoming HRE at some point (achievement). I like Quality for Castille as a balance of both army and navy boosts.

6) Castille can rake in dosh from trade. I disagree with the point on growing your colonies. You want them at 10 provinces as soon as possible, but make sure they are colonizing as well. Sometimes you need to subsidize them a couple of months or so to get them to colonize. 10 ducats usually works - cancel it as soon as colony starts. But definitely lay down those first 5 asap to lock down ToT in each region. With first colonists I work may way toward the Caribbean via Brazil or Columbia, whatever Portugal has not started. But Caribbean is your first focus to lock down as it is the main node leading back to Seville - control it and most of the trade from the Americas is yours. Second colonist starts on West Africa. Once 3rd colonist is available, I start another colony growing in South America. Then with bonus colonist from National Idea you can double speed getting the CNs established and move on to other colonial regions to lock them down. If you can afford it, go over colonist limit. After CNs are established and Explo filled out, you can start hitting the primitives for free. (great way to establish Mexico and Peru CNs)

7) Always keep a colonist moving toward the Cape and beyond (Cape secures South African Charter). Once America CNs are secured you can put more effort on the East and locking down the Trade Companies. Meanwhile, hit Mali, Jolof or whoever for the coastal TC provinces - Kongo too. Kilwa and Madagascar should not be a problem. With spare colonist bandwidth, backfill those islands in the Atlantic and Indian oceans, basically to lock out the other Euros from the East. Portugal may fill in some gaps for you too.

8) Then you have India and all that. Expansionist gives cbs on all this stuff, but you get missions like Makassar as well, which may be a good first target as you colonize toward the Moluccan Charter.

9) With the TCs and bonus merchants from CNs eventually you wil be able funnel trade all the way from Australia and China back to Seville and just roll around in ducats.

10) Working yourself up East Africa and Southern Arabian Peninsula to Aden and Hormuz, while grabbing Malacca will get you the Trade Hedgemon achievement.

11) 3 Georgia is another good one for Castille. Just no-cb Georgia first thing and vassal them, and then it's all down to colonizing the provinces you need later.

But first and foremost, look to hurt France as much as possible early as they will just get harder and harder to deal with later, and they will always be a problem if you let them be. Neutering them early on allows you to colonize at your leisure later.

Ottos can usually be handled indirectly via your Austrian alliance (Poland an option too). And once you get Naples you can start hitting them directly and expanding that way, unless you want to be more aggressive about it early on.

 

[ElGranCapitan]

You didn't take religious right?

You should, as you can holy war anybody in the new world or in africa or india. Colonization isn't the way to expand, conquest is, focus on that
Pick Exploration first if you want to focus outside of Europe, Diplo if you want personal unions (diplo reduces the impact from truce breaks, which you will do a bit), Influence if you want to vassal expand in europe
2nd and 3rd ideas are always religious and admin

Even without exploration you can still expand outside europe, you only need dip tech 7 and your 3rd idea. Noone except Portugal can reach the new world before dip tech 7 and if you take away their centers of trade they'll be too poor to do much. You need to take the trade centers at the ivory coast and cape and 5 provinces in the carribean for the treaty, so you only need to colonize 7 provinces. The rest is conquering inca/aztec/mali and friends/kongo/Kilwa by starting a colony next to them, declaring holy war and abandoning the colony

Don't be afraid to give your colonies >100% overextension, their rebels are weak and you can kill them all with a good stack over there. You might get 2 or 3 rounds of rebels but then there's eternal peace

If you want the PU game always remember, It's hard to get your dynasty on their throne, it's easy to get their dynasty on your throne. Just disinherit when you have an old king, he'll die and another dynasty takes over (that from your strongest marriage partner)

by the way, anything that includes Expansion is bad, Religious speeds up your growth much more that Expansion does, Admin is necessary sooner or later and Humanist is the fifth idea once the Age of Absolutism is around. If you don't take Exploration you have some room with your fourth idea for a mil idea of choice, if you did take Exploration some AE reduction would be needed (Diplo or influence). though I'd probably still take an idea from the diplomatic group fourth

So Exploration/Diplo/Influence->Religious->Admin->Exploration/Diplo/Influence->Humanist->Offensive

Offensive as sixth idea because it helps sieging, at this point siege speeds holds you back more than anything else militarily

 

[Razer_greece]

I'm a noob when it comes to colonizing cause hardly ever i play nations that can colonize in the early game. If anyone can point any guides to it, i'd be grateful.
Also regarding the ideas, i was between getting expansion or some military idea to make my army stronger cause i don't want France and Otto declaring on me so i ended up with defensive. I realise now that going for the African provinces was a mistake cause i wasted a lot of admin points in coring.Sadly the game is ironman mode hard cause i wanted to make some achievements with Spain. Is it better to restart?

 

[PhoenixG]

Nah, it's fine. Defending is easy if you have forts on the right spot. Most morocan land are mountains and France need to go through one of the two chokepoints. Eat Africa, go around and swing by India and Indonesia.

 

[mag_zbc]

You colonized Brazil and La Plata, but you ignored trade nodes between them and Sevilla - you are just letting others take advantage of your colonies' trade.

 

[lymond]

Holy War the New World? What?! Religious seems wasted on Castile IMO, unless you are not focused on colonization at all.

Basically your ideas should match your goals. If you want a large colonial and trade empire, Explo/Expansion is the way to go. Quantity helps with policies and forcelimits for protecting colonies while maintaining a reasonable force at home to deal with the Euros.

I wrote some stuff above on colonization above. It's not that complicated. Check your trade, colonial region, and trade company map views. Understand where to target your colonies and how it will impact trade later. Study how all the trade flows to Seville from the Americas and from the East. Critical nodes are Caribbean, Cape, Malacca and everything in between/behind. Once you lock down the Caribbean, you pretty much control the flow of trade back from America (south of Chesapeake). Cape helps control the flow from the East up through Ivory Coast to Safi to Seville. Make sure you lock down those center of trade provinces too in each region.

Each CN with 10 provinces gives you a bonus merchant and naval force limits. Dominating TC (50%) gives you one as well. Use those merchants to steer all the trade back home.

I recommend select the Native option that gives 20% settler growth and just dedicate some forces to protecting your colonies. Use the Burghers New World deal to increase settler growth. Later on, polices from the Explo/Exp/Quant combos give 30% more settler growth. Try to use the mission to "colonize this or that province" that gives Colonial Enthusiasm.

 

[indika_tates]

To fight France as Spain I set three forts. One on Abruzzi if you inherited Naples. Another fort in Navarra and the last one in the Pirineos. These are my borders. All of them on mountains. You need to have naval supremacy (20-40 carracks are enough depending if you also have to fight the Ottomans). These are the steps of the war:

1) Destroy the french&ottoman fleet with a 20carracks navy. One fleet in the mediterranean and the other one in north atlantic to deal with random french northern allies.
2) Full blockade France when your light ships are secured from attacks.
3) Enable defensive edict on your forts and let the AI siege them.
4) When a siege is near to an end hit France with 70k-80k defensive troops (tercios).
5) Sooner or later France will deplete his manpower and his allies are prone to accept a white peace.
6) Hit france with a 100% war score and liberate gascogne.

France is no more a threat for you. Just guarantee or ally Gascogne and you can safely play your colonial game without worring about them. Around 1530 if you played your cards right your economy should be able to sustain enough heavy ships and regiments to deal with France.

 

[CoolSpin]

To fight France as Spain I set three forts. One on Abruzzi if you inherited Naples. Another fort in Navarra and the last one in the Pirineos. These are my borders. All of them on mountains. You need to have naval supremacy (20-40 carracks are enough depending if you also have to fight the Ottomans). These are the steps of the war:

1) Destroy the french&ottoman fleet with a 20carracks navy. One fleet in the mediterranean and the other one in north atlantic to deal with random french northern allies.
2) Full blockade France when your light ships are secured from attacks.
3) Enable defensive edict on your forts and let the AI siege them.
4) When a siege is near to an end hit France with 100k defensive troops (tercios).
5) Sooner or later France will deplete his manpower and his allies are prone to accept a white peace.
6) Hit france with a 100% war score and liberate gascogne.

France is no more a threat for you. Just guarantee or ally Gascogne and you can safely play your colonial game without worring about them.

When aboutish year would you do this, and if you are agressor, which claim do you use?

 

[indika_tates]

The age of reformation is the best era you can do it because you can pick Spanish Tercios for -30% shock received. I hold the mission "Continue the reconquista" to attack france with +30% morale or +45% if you also have defensive ideas. The claim I use is conquest of Narbonne but it really doesn't matter because you aim for a 100% war score. It's an easy war but you have to do it safely and slowly. Play it defensively until everyone else is out of the war.

Check the ledger to see the moment where you go on the offensive. It's the time where France has 0 manpower and lots of mercs. Use artillery barrage at your disposal to deal with unpleasant forts (Dauphne).

 

[CoolSpin]

So if you got BI + IW, and broken up France, and eventually eaten it, you can ally electors and be emperor? And get how many reforms done by adding territory, anyone done this? Im missing emperor as spain and enact all the thingies!

 

[Sfan]

Well you can get all the reforms, you just need to add enough territory.