Good day,

We have played two games with the Spanish and finding that they have an insane power off the start. On the fourth turn, our spanish player got his second city, was getting 16 trade per turn and the other players were still two turns away from their second city. (Part of this was the luck of huts vs village placement but we figure a turn or two to remove villages for the non-Spanish players still gave the Spanish the run)

Has anyone else had this discovery too or are we playing it wrong?

In any map they have three explorations of tiles if not more depending on how slow the opponents explore. With their movement they might even get four tiles, and four buildings. Let's leave it at three for the evaluation and this gives them three buildings (Barracks, mine, Harbor for example - by turn two they have 7 production and 6 Trade with a basic city. With Metropolis - 9 trade and 5 production) in the first two turns. With their capital guaranteed three buildings, their production is free for figures to fly out, and their tech is free to streamline for whatever they like.

We are considering that their explore/build power should be only "once per turn" which would limit them a little more. Or remove their extra movement.

Spain gets a fast start, but they have no special abilities in later turns. They really aren't much faster then Egypt. Greece is the real pain in the expansion. They are way too powerful.

We thought that Spain and Egypt would be an interesting contest as well.

We played a game with Spain vs Egypt (with a side of Indians) and Spain cooked Egypt. Spain had three buildings on the second turn (none of which they had to spend research or a city management turn to get the buildings - our player spent his turns getting a third scout out and rushing for cities.), Egypt had to not only research the tech to unlock the building, but to spend it's action to still build it. That's four turns (with research every turn) ahead of ANY other civilization's possibility to build the same power base.

I agree they do not have a benefit in the late game, however they reach their "late game" power base while most civs are just getting started on the mid game.

Greece is great, but in our three player game with them we had two players that were able to accurately guess correctly and force him to spend his trade. Although we did alter the researching to everyone reveal at once not giving him a chance to hesitate, see what everyone else was learning and then pick his. We thought it worked better with the mechanics that way.

That Spanish bonus's effectiveness depends on how much that player manipulates it, if the opponents discover the other tiles as quickly as they can then it is almost pretty useless.

I thought research was meant to be simultaneous anyway?

spains special ability is to build a building in ANY city when you discover a new tile (flip it over and reveal). they also have navigation, and can pass over water on turn 1.

seeing as spain has +1 movement and starts with an extra scout, this means 2-3 tiles on turn 1 depending on layout and at least 1-2 more after that.

thats things like libraries and workshops, markets and such.