Have the Spaniards start of with only a fleet and an offshore SC. they can build in any SC.

And say no natives could build fleets.

Another idea is to have Spanish explorers competing with each other? That would be problematic if they aren't allowed to fight each other.

To be historically accurate, the Spanish player should disband his fleet after convoying Havanna->VeraCruz, have only one army, and not be able to build anything anywhere. There should be one other Spanish player (also with only one army) whose mission is to destroy Spanish player #1's army, but Spanish player #1 should be able to hack the password to Spanish player #2's account. Additionally, the Spanish player (#1) should also have the power to force his enemies to go CD.

Hernan Cortes was the greatest Diplomacy player ever...

i won't deny ur sentence about hernán cortés, though his skills got worse with age...
two spaniard different power would be o.k., as there could be "cortés spaniards" and "narváez spaniards" (narváez army was the one sended by cuba gobernator, velázquez to stop cortés, but was easily defeated by a much better diplomat cortés).
the biggest reason for the final fall of mexico (tenochtitlan) was that cortés was able to ally with almost every other power...

i was thinking however about the two-strength of spaniard forces, and maybe, for playability (and also cos maybe this would be a little more accurate historicaly), it could be better this rule:
if there r the same number of units in spaniard side and native side, spaniards win.
if there r more natives than spaniards, and only then, natives win

(just wanna remember u that anywher spaniards were, they were numericaly inferior, so u can imagen all native units built up with more warriors)

Well, according to http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Batalla_de_Otumba, the Spanish should have a strength of 8. (40,000 divided by 5,000)

JECE, those numbers include the Tlaxcalan forces (who were allied with the Spanish and would be represented as a separate country/player on the map). If memory serves, Cortes never had more than six or eight hundred Spaniards under his command, even after assimilating Narvaez' force.

wikipedia can say mass, but the combined tlaxacalla-totonaca-spaniard forces in otomba were fleeing desesperatly after the "sad night" and if mexicans didn't destroy the spaniards then, it was cos they didn't want to

Ha ha. At least 8 is reasonable!
"By one series of estimates, the population before the time of the conquest is estimated at 19 million" -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aztec
"Población
• 1521 est. 20,000,000" -- http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperio_azteca
"Consistía aquella armada en 11 naves, con 518 infantes, 16 jinetes, 13 arcabuceros, 32 ballesteros, 110 marineros y unos 200 indios y negros como auxiliares de tropa. Llevaban 32 caballos, 10 cañones de bronce y 4 falconetes." -- http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hern%C3%A1n_Cort%C3%A9s
"11 ships, 500 men, 13 horses and a small number of cannons" -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hern%C3%A1n_Cort%C3%A9s

So, between strength 21,372.328458942632170978627671541 and 40,000 for a Spanish army. That sounds good.

this could be the population of whole mesoamerica, including children, women, slaves, as well as people from the whole regions of mayab, tabasco, oaxacan, michoacan, huaxtecapan, that hardly took part in the mexico-tenochtitlan fall (if they took part at all), which was basicly a won by tlaxcalla, with precious spaniard help (tlaxcalla had infinite motives to fight mexico).
on the other hand, by the time mexico finally fall, the population had dramaticly decreased because of the black smallpox

checkmate: The enemy ambushes you in the very capital of their empire. Oh, and the capital happens to sit in the middle of a lake. The fact that any Spaniard surprised is astounding. La Noche Triste occurred on June 30, 1520. The Battle of Otumbo was on 14 July 1520.

Oh, so 20,000,000 is too low a figure?

the enemy was friendly invited to the capital, where they lived for some time as dear guests. then, when cortés was out fighting narváez, alvarado, cortés first captain, stabbed mexicans, creating a terrorist, bloodish genocide against defenseless people

why don't you search for the number of MEXICA-WARRIORS, and tlaxcalla warriors, instead of THE WHOLE POPULATION of mesoamerica?

on the other hand u can search, as well, if the days between sad night and otumba battle were empty days

by the way, should i mention that alvarado's main motivations were of religous (christian) sort?

checkmate: I don't exactly know what you are arguing. If a story like Cortés' was found, in, say, The Epic of Gilgamesh, not a single expert would believe it. If you would add that an even more outrageous feat by the same people occurred just 12 years later, that of a the brutal Pizarro, experts would shake their heads and laugh. If you are claiming in any way that any European power of the time (if it miraculously managed to transport an army there) could have easily captured the Aztec Empire you are dead wrong.

i won't comment about pizarro, cos i don't know about that, (though maybe u know less)
may i ask u how many, and which, books have u read about mexican conquest?
i hope i won't answer me u have read thousands of wikipedia articles without context

and of course, i'm not claiming that mexico was more powerful than spain. i'd never do that

on the other hand, in this moment i'm aguing nothing. just trying make ignorant people stop speaking without knowing

checkmate: If there is one person who is not ignorant about history, it's me. My post about strength of 8 was a joke (even though it has an element of truth), as Tolstoy keenly realized. My next comment about 40,000 was a further extension of the joke. And why do you keep referring to this "Mexico"? Are you inventing an entity? I doubt you meant it to refer to the Aztec government.

wow!,
do u think "mexico" was a wor invented by iturbide in 1821? maybe has a vizcaín etimology.
each time u speak u stand worse jece

by they way, if it were the case i'd only read "aztec" gary jenings garbage, and had reas nothing about greece, but anly watched "300" movie garbage. i'd find equally unbelievable, if not more, the fact 300 spartan hoplits wer able to stop 500,000! aryan! warriors

300 Spartans didn't stop Xerxes forces. They were just trying to stave off and break the unified military and naval assault while the rest of the Greek forces retreated and regrouped. It was a suicide mission, but served it's purpose. the original intent was to hold Thermopylae with a much larger force (approximately 7000 strong), but when Leonidas learned he had been betrayed by a local who showed the Persians a narrow pass around Thermopylae, he dismissed all but about 1500 or so men (300 Spartans, 700 Thespians, 400 Thebans, and a few hundred of other nationalities) who were all his top soldiers to cover the flank so the rest of the army could get out.

While the plan to hold Thermopylae and Artemisium failed, the delay allowed the Greeks to set a new boundary that help and eventually led to the routing of Xerxes navy at Salamis.

But the real point is modern Greece is descended from ancient Greece. Modern Mexico is descended primarily from Spanish invaders, not from the ancient Aztecs. It's an apples and oranges comparison culturally speaking.

i know, draugnar, i said (with some writing errors):
"if it were the case i... had read nothing about greece, but only watched "300" movie garbaga"...
i intended to make up an hipothetical event, in which i had moreless the ignorance of jece

but there r still 10,000,000 native lenguage speakers in mexico, some of them r still autonomous. and for most of the other mexicans i'd say there's 50%, 50% of european and native blood

No, the native blood is definitely predominant. I'm from San Diego, and even without hearing the language spoken, you can usually tell the difference between Spaniards and Mexicans.

By "I doubt you meant it to refer to the Aztec government." I hinted that I knew México-Tenochtitlan was the capital of the Aztec Empire (Mexica, if you like).

it's hard to seperate mexica empire from mexico cities (tenochtitlan and tlatelolco, but mainly "mexico-tenochtitlan"), specially when we speak about spaniard conquest, since many of the allied and subject cities were suddenly deserting, and ignoring excesive commitments with mexicas, the moment they saw that allying with spaniards was not a tacticly bad idea

the only reason to call "aztecas" to the mexicas is that they said that they came from "aztlan", a mythical city that probably didn't exist. mexicas r rather part of a bigger nomad movement from north towards south, which was assimilated by nahuatl culture

And as for your 300 analogy, that doesn't make much sense. The real story of Thermopylae was impressive, without the movie 300 to make it look ridiculous. And who's Gary Jenings? But the Spanish conquest of America needs no exaggeration. To use a quote:
"When has it ever happened, either in ancient or modern times, that such amazing exploits have been achieved? Over so many climes, across so many seas, over such distances by land, to subdue the unseen and unknown? Whose deeds can be compared with those of Spain? Not even the ancient Greeks and Romans." -- Francisco Xeres , Report on the Discovery of Peru

don't worry about gary jenings, u'd prefer not to know.
themopylae history need exageration?
i won't deny that america conquest is one of the greatest epic adventures of humankind, only comparable with alexandros and gengis khan ones

Well, if they cut down 1,500 Greeks to 300, maybe.

1,500 greeks against how many persians?
500,000 is certainly an exageration, but even if reduce it 10 times, i'd say spaniards had better numbers in otomba

Well, the Greeks all died. (By the way, the only reason I am using Otomba is nbecause that is where I could find figures) Trusty Wikipeda says it doesn't know: "A huge number of estimates have been made since the 19th century, ranging from 15,000 to acceptence of Herodotus's 1,800,000. No real consensus exists; even the most recent estimates by academics vary between 70,000 and 300,000. As Holland puts it, 'in short...we will never know.'" But those numbers should be the Persian army before the battle began, a couple days prior to when the main contingent of the Greek army retreated and left those 1,500 (which is in itself an estimate).

And from the infobox for the Persians:\
"
Total
1,800,000 (Herodotus)
~800,000 (Ctesias)
70,000–250,000 (modern estimates)
"

o.k. jece, u win: native american r semihuman inferior beings, and there's nothing ridiculous about aryan people...
:)

That's not exactly what I was getting at, but suit yourself. :-)

i should have expected u wouldn't be able to catch even the clearest sarcasm...
see, i'm a little tired of discussing with u, i'm not a professional historian, and not eve an amateur one, while u must be an expert.
the only thing i can tell u is that if u dare to answer this without begging pardons, i'll need to seriously consider to report u (and not necessarily only with a mod).
wonder if u'll find certain historic events so ridiculous and certain jokes so funny once u get an antinazi volunteer hacking ur computer

If I was serious (or didn't get the sarcasm) I wouldn't have ended that with a smiley face. I understood that you still did not agree with me, that you did not believe in native inferiority and that you did not believe in the Aryan Race.
"i'm a little tired of discussing with u" -- so am I
"i'm not a professional historian, and not eve an amateur one, while u must be an expert." -- sarcasm
Oh, and if there is one thing in the world I despise, it's Fascism. To believe one people is superior to others, to believe might makes right is not only the natural order, but the order to live by: I shudder.