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[vanilla] Civilization Guide: England (vanilla)

Veneke

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What promotions are required to get Logistics/March for the longbowman? I have units that I thought had the right promotions, but I must have read some bad info because it's not available to me when I thought it should be.
 
Playing a game as England after this reading this article and having a lot of fun. I'd thought of them as one of the weakest Civs before. Thanks!
 
jmick175 - The best way to do it is to pursue either the Barrage or Accuracy all the way up to level III. Don't get sidetracked or attempt to mix the promotions. Ranged units like the Longbowman have a limited window in which they can work optimally, so making for promotions like Logistics/March/etc is your best bet unless you're cool with scrapping your old units once Riflemen become available.


You're welcome FriendlyDalek!
 
I disagree quite a bit on longbowmen. Their range makes them very powerful. They are usually out of range of the enemy so march is not an essential promotion. Logistics and indirect fire are the are the best for them. That gives them the ability to gain 2 x 4 XP per turn, which can have the following result:

 
The problem with Indirect Fire bostich is that once you upgrade the Longbowman it becomes a wasted promotion. The question is whether or not the temporary advantage of Indirect Fire is significant enough to offset its cost. There are probably circumstances in which it is but considering the high xp cost of promotions at that level most of the time it probably isn't.


Apologies, that was a bad typo on my part. SotL's do in fact upgrade to destroyers.
 
I guess it depends on whether you want to upgrade your longbows right away or not. I tend to keep my high-lvl ones until the enemy gets artillery.
 
The article makes the often overlooked, but incredibly important, point that extra MP on water is a huge advantage for embarked units. Starting players may not realize embarked units get this advantage, and it's possibly the biggest selling point of England. Water allows England to move its land forces incredibly quick compared to most other civs stuck marching on land.

Further, England's embarked units are among the best. If you play almost any water map other than Pangea (Archapelago, Fractal, even Pangea Plus), you're likely to have a chain of islands or other land within reach (within reach because of the UA giving them more MP) to disembark onto and wait out the caravel or two, and can move like that all the way to the enemy so long as you have a couple of ships scouting ahead. Aside from defensive embarkation, England's embarked units are among the safest in the game because of being able to reach land so much more easily.

The only really high risk to England's embarked units is absolutely having to cross a large expanse of ocean that is bordered only by ice at the top and bottom, a phenomena that mostly occurs (for me, at least) when I play Pangea and go all the way around the world to attack for whatever reason. In that case, there's no land to reach, and your only hope is that you have a few escorts along with more land units than the enemy ships can take out per turn (helps that a ship can only destroy one embarked unit per turn.
 
I think one thing that needs mention in this thread is the idea of rush buying. If you focus on gold as England, you can take the policy in the Commerce tree and combine that with Big Ben. Big Ben really just requires one GE or a really good production city. I would also go tall, perhaps filling all or most of Tradition to pump up London as much as possible.

This is easily accomplished and will make buying things very cheap. You combine this with Sun Never Sets and you will quickly get a snowball going where you are invading choice spots around the globe, selling the resources and buying necessary units and buildings in your ‘colonies’ at a reduced price. Soon you will control all the good spots. Rush buy Harbors for trade routes to London, rinse and repeat. It’s a little bit of roleplaying, but the traits are setup to do it.

Any Civ can do this, but England can make a killing buy cherry picking the best map locations and taking advantage of Sun Never Sets.

Another concept is the continuous Golden Age. Once you master the above strategy, you should work on chaining together as many Golden Ages as possible to further boost your empire and put the AIs way behind you. Use happiness, Great People, even Great Generals from all your wars to keep the Golden Age going as long as possible. This would be another generic strategy that any civ should use, it’s just the timing that matters; ie beginning, middle, end game.

Also try to time Oxford University for around this time for an additional tech boost. Do this by staying small so you don’t have to build that many universities or you can rush buy them at a reduced cost.

For Social policy trees you need to open but not fill Tradition, Honor, Commerce and later on you can open Liberty and Rationalism. Use Scientific Revolution to unlock Steam Power/Industrial Age before any other Civ.
 
You've got some good ideas there but they're mostly just general strategy ideas not England-specific ones. I've played a few games like you're suggesting (I'm more a fan of the story than the gameplay in Civ really) and they're quite fun but from the point of view of applying England's advantages to it, it comes up short. You've a better argument for that kind of strategy with England in Civ IV than you have with England in Civ V.

I'm hoping that we'll get that extra spy in G&K and Longbowmen will no longer be a dead upgrade path. If that happens we're looking at a much more reasonable England in the mid to late game.
 
The G&K update really improved England tremendously. Not only do longbowmen become ranged Gatling guns and machine guns of doom (I've taken out Battleships with a couple machine guns), but a concentrated navy can now absolutely tear up your competition.

Playing an archipelago map, England was already an obvious powerhouse. I lost the race to the Great Lighthouse, but after invading Stockholm with SotLs and Privateers I gained possession of its effects.

When I saw that Egypt was heading for a cultural victory soon with 24 social policies already, I regrouped my navy, brought some infantry, and simply sliced through their cities like butter. I was able to take Cairo, then largest city in the game, prior to even landing any troops. Newly upgraded ironclads and SotLs hit it from every side at once.

Egypt was a somewhat backward civ though, so my tech advantage really made the take over easy. But had I commanded any other civ with the same tech advantage, I know the war wouldn't have been nearly as easily fought.

My last main competitor and ex-Ally was Greece. They were always ahead of me scientifically and monetarily. In fact, on our huge map, Alexander was the only opposing superpower. It felt very much like the cold war, with Chairwoman Lizzy trying to use her extra spy to steal as much tech as she could from the Greeks, and the Greeks beating us to the Apollo Program. It got to the point where the Greeks were close to victory even. My spies told me they were building all the SS components when I went into a panic and started beelining for fusion power. I had to reorganize my navy though, which had to literally travel the world because they were on the wrong side of a continent with no way to get around it without open borders. But I've been warmongering, so most civs wouldn't even discuss it.

I built three A-bombs by the time my navy reached London again, and I stole the Greek techs for the nuclear subs & missiles in time to purchase them. Greece had just completed half of the SS when I launched my nuclear strike at their heart. Athens fell from a population of 27 to 4, and the rest of their cities were halved and irradiated. While nukes are devastating for every civ, they're exceptionally dangerous when my subs have 10 movement, my battleships have 8 and my destroyer can simply slip in and take over Athens.

Make no mistake, England is a warmongerer. Build that navy and dominate the seas. Destroy the cities in your path, heal your navy in your new colony, rinse and repeat.
 
Sounds like a fun game McLuv. I'm in the middle of my first serious G&K game as England as well and despite being unable to find Iron /anywhere/ I'm really digging the changes. I'm hoping to have the guide updated for G&K by this weekend but we'll have to play that by ear.

I do think you're right though - the ability to upgrade Longbows to Gatling Guns and then to Machine Guns and keep the +1 range makes for a very impressive mid to late game army. You still need units to take cities but the naval melee units now fill that role very well and fit in better with England's style of play than the huge infantry armies most Civs are wont to tot around.

To be honest though, I'm not as convinced that the Longbow's new ability upgrade with the promotion is as important as the extra spy; with two starting spies at the Renaissance your ability to keep up with the AI in tech, especially on the higher difficulty levels, is significantly increased. On lower levels, or in cases where you have a tech lead, even from the Renaissance you can safeguard your capital and mess around with some city states.

I have yet to play around with SotLs but I suspect that they've actually received a slight nerf. I'm pretty sure that one-shotting other Frigates is out, even with the str boost, but that's somewhat minor. More importantly is that the Frigate now suffers from the Ironclad being a serious contender to naval dominance which was not the case before. I think, though I need to compare the tech trees again, that this cuts down on the Frigate/SotL's effective lifespan from Vanilla.


Also, there is absolutely nothing more exciting than realizing that your navy needs to be on the other side of the world right bloody now and there being no easy way to get there!
 
Also, there is absolutely nothing more exciting than realizing that your navy needs to be on the other side of the world right bloody now and there being no easy way to get there!

Absolutely! I've made some right dirty deals in order to gain open borders. Oh, you want 5 luxury resources and 5 turns worth of my gold for open borders? I'll give it to you if it gets me to Athens in 5 fewer turns.

Reminds me of the Game of Thrones, where Robb Stark promises his hand in marriage for use of a bridge.
 
Thx for this guide, i won my first game at prince difficulty in archipelago with england and i definetly enjoy alot their superiority !!!
 
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