Well, I wasn't thinking about making them totally useless in regarding resource gathering, just a bit slower than the rest, like 60% - 70% slower, or maybe capped somehow (i.e. can use only a certain number of workers per city center, or can only use one worker per field/mine/whatever, etc). This way, raiding would be encouraged, but not absolutely necesary; getting more resources faster would be an alternative, in order to get over this limitation. In your scenario, the Iberian player should try to expand fast - while the oponent is busy fortifying, he should be building defensive structures around the most important resources. He should be able to defend them given Iberians "highly defensive" capabilities. With more resources available and defensive buildings around them, it would be just a matter of creating a massive army and crush the oponent. In addition to this, remember the ambushes! The Iberan could place some of them near his base or resources in order to weaken the attaking forces, kill its workers quickly and run through the mountains, etc. In other words... fortifying at the begining could be suicidal against a normal human player. Regarding Paal_101's post, I agree that the "Toledo steel" doesn't sound very good. Maybe "Iberian Forge" would be better? Or maybe it would be better just to dump the whole concept and give iberians bonuses with the "mineral gathering". That would give them a very special economy too: fast mineral gathering but slow with food and wood. In other words, relatively quick weapon technology development but comparatively slow... euh ..."birthrate". Keep up the good work guys .