What to do with England?

consentient said:

If you're playing with a lot of water, then England are really strong, otherwise I'm not personally convinced that Longbowmen are all that great. By the time that tech comes round, my ranged units have 'range' anyway, and there isn't any difference I've been able to discern between having 3 and 4 range, since both are more than other units/cities.

I'll take China/Arabia, etc. over England any day.

If I was to play as England, I'd probably explore what can be done with the extra spy in combo with Oxford and other 'boosts' to see if I can hit Autocracy super early and start my way towards Clausewitzian insanity.

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don't think you can get range 4 on longbow (that would be truly ridiculous; attacking from another continent kind of ridiculous )

Keep in mind range allows them to attack a hostile city every turn without retaliation (units should not be a problem against a pack of xbows especially longbows ) .. Attacking cities grants 50% more XP than attacking units ... Keep a weak city/CS near your production cities to quickly train the new recruits ... So you can "quickly" train your longbow army to get (both range they start with it/get it at upgrade) and logistics ...

7-10 Xbows ~T130 with range and logistics won't roll deity maps like keshik//camels but are the next best thing ...That deals with land .. And on water ...

Some very interesting opinions here.

@peddroelm -- I watched all of your Dutch Honor video -- I was left open-mouthed at the audacity of it all! I learned a lot from it. (And has anyone ever said you sound rather like Fernando Alonso??)

I've just been toying with tommynt's Tradition/Liberty mix opening strategy (which he describes in his Poland strategy guide). England doesn't get the extra Social Policies, of course, but so far it seems to have worked quite well (around turn 90, four cities up, though a bit slow getting National College, but managed to build the Pyramids - rather short on units, and I've been at war with Songhai for most of the game after stealing a worker). I note that in one of his posts tommynt commented that if you go for an early Domination rush you had better be a good player, otherwise it will hurt more than it will help. I'm beginning to think there is a lot of wisdom in this, which is one reason why I decided to try the slower Trad/Lib opening. But on the other hand, how will one ever learn to do early rushes if one doesn't try them?

Still, I think I might be making some progress. Thanks again to all!

mbbcam said:

I've seen the AI capture another AI city in about two or three turns when it often takes me about fifty.

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budweiser said:

Then I position my shooters so they can walk into range and shoot. You need 3-5 and some siege helps.

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I rarely bother with siege until arty, and OP has longbows. The real trick is that you need to be able to attack with 3+ longbows every turn for about three turns in a row. So as others have said, keep terrain in mind. It can be faster to walk around to the far side of city before attacking.

Illianor123 said:

Make sure you learn the line of sight rules, being able to tell from looking at the terrain if you can get 3 range shots in is very important and can save a lot of time before you attempt to take the "non feasible" cities.

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I feel like LOS is fickle. Sometimes standing on hill lets the archer fire over a hill, sometimes not. Opponent archers might not have LOS on each other. The only saving grace is that LOS is pretty consistent with the default perspective view, even if there is some arbitrariness to it. Still, you can predict if you have the shot most of the time.

consentient said:

If you're playing with a lot of water, then England are really strong, otherwise I'm not personally convinced that Longbowmen are all that great. By the time that tech comes round, my ranged units have 'range' anyway, and there isn't any difference I've been able to discern between having 3 and 4 range, since both are more than other units/cities.

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Longbows dont get up to 4 range, they get the normal range promotion which doesn't stack, so they only ever have three range. 4 range just means you can stand behind melee units without them being in bombard range, or to simply bring more guns to bear in one turn. On battleships and stuff, I find 4 range great because you hit inland cities that thought they were safe from the English navy. Longbows just mean you can start warmongering later and have range on all your ranged units.

England is a great domination civ. It rocks on the Continent maps. Your long bowmen allow you to control your continent very early on. My armies with England tend to be a few cavalry, and 4-5 longbow. I use the calvary to sight and protect flanks. I'll use the calvary to open up LOS if I'm blocked, shot with LB, then pull the cav back out of city range.

About the time you are done with your continent, you will have SOTL and can head to the other continent. If you didn't manage to build the Great Lighthouse (I never seem to pull it off) I find that one first. That with Exploration bonus means some insane travel.

I have actually found Islands or small continents a little more challenging (and by challenging, I mean it slows me down a little) with England. Sure, SOTL work extremely well, but it seems I always in up with maps where the range of the longbow is negated by the size of the islands. Granted, once SOTL come around its pretty much game over as practically every city is in range. I also have to friend lots of CS's as I never seem to be on an island with iron, or any islands around me to expand to with iron.

Oh well, if Longbows can't have 4 range then they're even more redundant.

People are actually selling England on the fact that you can start warmongering LATER?

On Deity, I find that the later you start the harder it will be to wipe everyone out.

A civ that doesn't get going until the medieval is a bad civ, IMO.

consentient said:

A civ that doesn't get going until the medieval is a bad civ, IMO.

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Have you heard of the Keshik?

But building up a strong core set of cities before starting wars is a strong strategy, you don't need early rushes. Bigger cities = more production = more units. The fact that England's newly constructed units will have range is amazing. Having lots of three range means you can fight multiple AIs simultaneously catching up on some early rushes.

But nothing in this prevents taking out one or two Civs early if your happiness can sustain it.


Also the line of sight rules. Hills/jungle/forest block line of sight. If you are standing on a hill then you can see over line if sight blockers, unless that it is something like a forested hill. Mountains always block line of sight.

beetle said:

I rarely bother with siege until arty, and OP has longbows. The real trick is that you need to be able to attack with 3+ longbows every turn for about three turns in a row. So as others have said, keep terrain in mind. It can be faster to walk around to the far side of city before attacking.



I feel like LOS is fickle. Sometimes standing on hill lets the archer fire over a hill, sometimes not. Opponent archers might not have LOS on each other. The only saving grace is that LOS is pretty consistent with the default perspective view, even if there is some arbitrariness to it. Still, you can predict if you have the shot most of the time.

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If the hill in question has a forest on it, you can't fire over it. Otherwise, you should be able to fire over it if you're on a hill. Maybe you weren't aware of this rule?
Essentially the LOS rules are as follows:
Open terrain (flatland, marsh, lakes/coast) doesn't block sight no matter what.
Forests on flatland and hills without forests block your vision unless you're on a hill.
If you're on a hill, mountains and forested hills are the only things that can block your sight, and these two things will block your sight regardless of where you are.

I think that's all. If I missed anything feel free to add on.

consentient said:

Oh well, if Longbows can't have 4 range then they're even more redundant.

People are actually selling England on the fact that you can start warmongering LATER?

On Deity, I find that the later you start the harder it will be to wipe everyone out.

A civ that doesn't get going until the medieval is a bad civ, IMO.

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Zulus don't get going until the medieval. China and Mongolia actually don't get going until the second column of the medieval era. And yet, these three civs are some of the strongest warmongers in the game.
Actually, I can't think of too many dedicated warmongers that can really get rolling before the medieval era. There's the Huns and Assyria, Rome and Persia to a lesser extent, but I don't think there's many others.

consentient said:

I find that the later you start the harder it will be to wipe everyone out.

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I guess that holds generally, really. But I'm not good at early rushes. I suppose one could use the Ingame Editor to set up a small "duel" type of situation so that one could practice at combat, rather than having to go through an entire game with all the preliminaries just to have a good fight. In fact, I think I might try that. Has anyone ever done it? If so, any tips on making it realistic / worthwhile?

Cheers.

No, we're selling that its one of the only strong early domination civs that has a parachute if the early push doesn't completely win the game. The extra spy means you'll steal a few more techs in the mid game which will allow you to bounce back more quickly in tech, especially if you go autocracy.

59saintdane said:

If the hill in question has a forest on it, you can't fire over it. Otherwise, you should be able to fire over it if you're on a hill. Maybe you weren't aware of this rule?
Essentially the LOS rules are as follows:
Open terrain (flatland, marsh, lakes/coast) doesn't block sight no matter what.
Forests on flatland and hills without forests block your vision unless you're on a hill.
If you're on a hill, mountains and forested hills are the only things that can block your sight, and these two things will block your sight regardless of where you are.

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I am aware of all this, and I still think LOS is fickle. But I am thinking of situations where the archer is on a hill its target are not lined up along one of the 3 hex axis. Sometimes that forested hill blocks LOS, sometimes not. Drawing a straight line between center of hexes hits part of the hex with the forested hill, but sometimes (but not always) the archer still has the shot. Being N or S (or maybe its E or W) is factor, but I have not figured out the logic of it.

There is -- or was -- a confirmed bug for Line of Sight. See this thread:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=398065

There seems to be a DLL fix for it here (I can't use it because I'm on a Mac):

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=479509

Cheers.

PS -- as an aside, bows don't fire: they SHOOT. As a former archer, I grind my teeth whenever I see a film in which some actor shouts "fire!" to a group of archers. It would have had them running for buckets of water in the days before gunpowder. If you want to be super-accurate, you shoot IN a bow. But I know it's a lost battle to have people use the correct terminology. Just as it's probably a lost battle to get people to spell "deity" correctly. I used to be an English teacher, hence my preciousness in this regard...

Reminds me of when I go nuts when people refer to Paul Revere telling everybody, "The British are coming!" Hello, like they WERE British. What do you think Paul Revere was--French?

When I complained that Constantlnople and Istanbul were in the same game and they were two different cities owned by two different civilizations, I got laughed off the boards.

Illianor123 said:

Have you heard of the Keshik?

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59saintdane said:

Zulus don't get going until the medieval. China and Mongolia actually don't get going until the second column of the medieval era. And yet, these three civs are some of the strongest warmongers in the game.
Actually, I can't think of too many dedicated warmongers that can really get rolling before the medieval era. There's the Huns and Assyria, Rome and Persia to a lesser extent, but I don't think there's many others.

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The point I'm trying to make is that England has NO early-game benefits, so I disagree that it is OP on Deity, since realistically if you don't capture 1 or 2 capitals before T100 you'll have a MUCH harder time of it later on.

Zulus have Ikanda to give their Spearmen more XP and promotions, plus their UA on maintenance and promotions is from T0, so they have tremendous early game benefits before Civil Service.

China have a T0 domination-friendly UA, ditto Genghis, Attila and Darius. I'm still totally unconvinced with Octavian on Deity, especially since I get so few good maps where I can go liberty and have iron.

England has a coastal bias, which, in turns of land-based resources and food puts it at a disadvantage. Also, though it doesn't have tundra bias, I usually get put close to or on the tundra. When I play Sweden it doesn't matter because I can generate a lot of GP, but England's UA is very delayed on most maps.

So I'm just arguing against the adjective "OP" for them. Sure range is nice on newly-built units, but as I said before, my XBs have range when I upgrade them, most of the time.

mbbcam said:

I guess that holds generally, really. But I'm not good at early rushes. I suppose one could use the Ingame Editor to set up a small "duel" type of situation so that one could practice at combat, rather than having to go through an entire game with all the preliminaries just to have a good fight. In fact, I think I might try that. Has anyone ever done it? If so, any tips on making it realistic / worthwhile?

Cheers.

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Play against Monty or Enrico or someone almost guaranteed to go Tradition or Piety on a Duel map, abuse the CS, go full Honour, and just make units and research techs that give you better units.

Delay taking their cities for as long as you like. Duels are horrifically unbalanced since diplo, trade, science, culture, etc. are all irrelevant.

Choose a civ with no bonuses whatsoever to early-game military and just practise moving your troops around.

If you keep stealing his settlers and workers and pillaging his tiles, he will not be able to out-tech you and make pikes before you, etc.

Or just start a game in the Modern era?

@consentient

Thanks for the tips.

consentient said:

Or just start a game in the Modern era?

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Actually, I hate the World Congress, which is one of the main reasons I'd like to get things over with earlier.

Cheers!

mbbcam said:

Actually, I hate the World Congress, which is one of the main reasons I'd like to get things over with earlier.

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Me too. I like to be in a state where I can have a game-winning position by the time CS are brought into the WC mix. It's not because I want it to be too easy, I just hate grinding. Maybe it's the influence of my Poker personality on my Civ playing. I'm 'loose-aggressive' to the bone.

If you wanna play without WC, there is a mod called 'Advanced Setup' or something like that, in which you can completely disable it, I think. If not, then you can certainly turn it off using the Editor that comes with the Windows version.

Alas, the one thing that these mods can't fix is how horsehockye 70% of maps are.

But I digress...so to return to the topic, I shall say that I played a 3 city tradition-honour game last night, and indeed, by the time machinery came round (ca. T105), all 5 of my CBs had range, so their UU was kinda wasted when I went after Ramkhamhaeng. I played until T200 to see what effect the 2nd spy would have, but I was only able to steal techs I didn't want because I had all but caught up on tech by the industrial era. Due to nice growth (3 coastal cities, 2 on rivers, with a ton of fish, grassland, whales, etc) I moved to 2nd in tech so that when I went to steal, I could only choose acoustics and stuff I didn't need. Maybe this was situational, but if I'm dominating on pangaea or donut, I don't need the top half of the tree at all, so what good would a 2nd spy do me?

If I need to get Scientific Theory to catch up, I'm usually so far behind that I'm gonna have a pig of a Modern era and it will be a total ball ache trying to wipe out 5 capitals in Modern.

I'm still of the opinion that Liberty/Honour > Tradition, and that England < all other warmongering civs except maybe Denmark.

Why wouldn't you put logistics on your CBs instead of range, since you know they'll get range for free?
Similar to how China would never put logistics on a CB. And speaking of China, their UU isn't all that different on experienced units--with CKNs, you skip logistics, with Longbows, you skip range; when you have enough XP for such promotions they become equally as good, but Longbows have the higher strength.

consentient said:

I just hate grinding.

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My feelings, too.

consentient said:

how horsehockye 70% of maps are

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I'm with you on that one, too!

consentient said:

England < all other warmongering civs except maybe Denmark.

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I was beginning to get that sort of feeling myself, which is why I asked the original question. Perhaps it depends partly on the map -- if it's Continents or something of the kind, then England would not doubt move up the rankings.

But my problem is clearing the first continent. Unlike you, I'm naturally timid, so I don't get out the knives quickly enough, and I'm not efficient enough once I do get them out.

For that reason, I think I'll probably experiment with Duel maps for a while and see if I can learn how to do things better.

I'm also beginning to suspect that Liberty is better (for me) if I just want to kill things!

59saintdane said:

Why wouldn't you put logistics on your CBs instead of range, since you know they'll get range for free.

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I put Logistics before range, but then range. And my units already have it when I get to Machinery, so the UU is redundant. Sorry if that wasn't clear.

Same could be said of the Chinese Chu-Ko-Nu. Why not put some other promotions on while waiting for Machinery? It'll make them less effective for a while, but give you an extra promo in the long run.