England Tactics

And why wouldnt you be building coastal cities with lighthouses and naval production as England? :)

You want to play a Civ to utilize its UA and UUs / UB. England is Civ V's coastal Civ, like Hannibal and Willem were in Civ IV.

No. It isn't. Hannibal and Willem were costal civs because their economy reaped benefits from the sea. England in civ5 doesn't need a coastal empire to utilize it's advantage. Are all of your cities going to be building your military? No. England simply needs a couple of good coastal production cities so it can construct it's Navy appropriately. Say this number is 1-3 on a regular map. Every other one of England's cities could be inland and it'd suffer no loss.

There is no synergy to be found in having a primarily coastal empire as England. No more than any other civ, really.

Bear in mind I'm not discouraging the use of the collossus or anything like that... Just dispelling the notion that England at it's base somehow "benefits" from keeping most or all it's cities on the coast.

It doesn't, and the reason why Willem and Hannibal did were due to buildings that enhanced the performance of the sea.
 
King Jason: I mostly agree. However, with a strong navy that moves fast, England will be better at protecting its coastline, which does give it a slight advantage in building coastal cities over the other civs. Not big enough that you can't choose to ignore it if you want to (especially if you end up missing Colossus), but probably enough so that taking steps to make a coastal economy work is worthwhile. Plus, if England gets the Colossus, most other civs are going to stay off the coast for the most part, which makes blockading the few coastal cities that they do build a potentially devastating strategy.
 
Could you explain your idea about the Great Merchant Economy a bit more?

Commerce gives +25% gold in the capital. Using custom houses around the capital only is to boost this bonus further to create a mega gold output city that can feed much of your maintenance costs. You can specialize however many other cities you want for Science, also bear in mind that trading posts only give +2 Science under Rationalism, and from what it seems, Piety is actually a lot better for the extra happiness. Rationalism will really only be used temporailly in most games, I think a lot of players will be switching out of it for Piety later on when the tech advantage from Rationalism becomes too small.

With Commerce, plus a Market, bank, and stock exchange, each customs house around your capital will output 8.32 gold. That is still a lot more Gold with the multipliers in place that a trading post would output even under Rationalism with both Gold and Science combined (4.32 Gold and 2 science from Trading posts = 6.32 total vs 8.32 from custom houses).

You should still use somes GMs to conduct trade missions. They gold you recieve should be spent on either rush buying some infrastructure or military (whichever is needed), or on upgrades. The amount of gold you can get from GMs can put you very far ahead of other Civs that dont have that much Gold, it worked very well in Civ IV with coastal rexing and paying for increased maintenence, and this is trying to adapt on from that tactic.

No. It isn't. Hannibal and Willem were costal civs because their economy reaped benefits from the sea. England in civ5 doesn't need a coastal empire to utilize it's advantage. Are all of your cities going to be building your military?

There is no synergy to be found in having a primarily coastal empire as England. No more than any other civ, really.

You are right that there is no advantage to be had from building all of your cities on the coast as England, I dont think I suggested building every one along the coast, but they quote that you responded to was a reply to another query about having to waste production on Lighthouses.

I think it would have been better to say 'Why wouldnt you build lighthouses in coastal cities?'.

You should still build inland if there are better city spots, but if you do build the Colossus, you can settle as many coastal cities that you can with good spots.

Also, dont forget that with map bias on, Englan will start off near the coast anyway, and might have more chance of finding better coastal sites.
 
One strat I would use to exploit England's strengths would be to beeline sailing and rush the GLH, backfill some techs for terraforming, and then go for Optics to allow my units to embark. By then hopefully I'd have some good ideas of acceptable islands nearby to which I could send a settler and relocate my capital. Use my superior navy to ensure a domination victory (even though I might lose a super capital I'm much more secure on an island [just like England has been through history])
I disagree with the "quit if no GLH" meta-strategy. You'll still have at least a +1 MP advantage over every civ, and a +2 MP advantage over most of them. The GLH has good synergy, but you don't need it and you'll never play well if you're dependent on it.
Scroll the map. Find the guy with the big lighthouse in his harbor. Send your superior navy there accompanied by some invasion forces. The lighthouse should be yours hell or high water.
And, I'd say that Colossus is actually going to be much more important. To leverage the UT effectively, you need coastal cities, and from what we've seen so far, water tiles without Colossus will be effectively worthless. (Even with Colossus and Commerce bonuses, they still don't look great.)

I agree 100% that riverside trading posts are stronger.

However since the OP has decided on a coastal stratergy the colosuss becomes very powerful. What i'm saying is if you have lots of coastal cities, the colosuss gives you a lot of gold through the game for a very small hammer investment.
The problem with the Colossus is that it expires as soon as ANYONE researches Navigation. It isn't like in Civ IV where you could hold off on the tech to get a longer benefit period. It's so cheap because it could have a very short shelf life.
 
By then hopefully I'd have some good ideas of acceptable islands nearby to which I could send a settler and relocate my capital. Use my superior navy to ensure a domination victory (even though I might lose a super capital I'm much more secure on an island [just like England has been through history])

I do not believe you can relocate your capital; especially given the fact that first-cities cannot be destroyed and the fact that if you lose your first city and reclaim it the capital (Palace) gets moved back to that city for free.
 
The problem with the Colossus is that it expires as soon as ANYONE researches Navigation. It isn't like in Civ IV where you could hold off on the tech to get a longer benefit period. It's so cheap because it could have a very short shelf life.

Please link or reference source on this as this is the first time I've heard of ANY World Wonders expiring
 
King Jason: I mostly agree. However, with a strong navy that moves fast, England will be better at protecting its coastline, which does give it a slight advantage in building coastal cities over the other civs. Not big enough that you can't choose to ignore it if you want to (especially if you end up missing Colossus), but probably enough so that taking steps to make a coastal economy work is worthwhile. Plus, if England gets the Colossus, most other civs are going to stay off the coast for the most part, which makes blockading the few coastal cities that they do build a potentially devastating strategy.

Upon waking up this thought actually popped into my head (strange I know)... If the movement bonuses apply to embarked units (do we know this for sure yet?), then the coastal empire strat for england would have slight synergy due to the fact that you could keep your defensive forces at sea and hone in on whatever area may come under attack upon a declaration of war.

Further, such a possibility, with all cities (and thus all possible targets for the enemy) being coastal, almost eliminates the purpose of roads, which means all cities could instead have harbors ~ giving you all the benefits of a trade network without any of it's costs (roads).
 
The source for the expiration date is the strategy guide. I can't copy it presently as I'm at work, but it definitely said as much (and noted how it was a bit of a disappointment as a wonder).
 
I agree with Jason in general, with one exception: there is a synergy between focusing on a large navy and giving preference for coastal cities, in that your coastal cities will be easier to defend because you can use your large navy for fire support.
 
The source for the expiration date is the strategy guide. I can't copy it presently as I'm at work, but it definitely said as much (and noted how it was a bit of a disappointment as a wonder).

That definitely changes the value of the wonder. Theres no mention of it in the manual :mad:
 
We will have to see tomorrow. There have been other reports that the guide is wrong (although it disses on the wonder through the entire "strategy" entry for it). Maybe 2k didn't edit the guide or had a very last moment change of heart.
 
If your cities are coastal, then you just keep one or two ships nearby to bombard any attackers. Also with Englands UA, it will be easier to move your ships to where they are needed. A melee unit attacking a coastal city will be within a ships 2 tile bombard range.
 
I did this for my first civ 5 game, and it has worked wonderfully well. I'm now addicted to being a seafaring nation. ><
 
Yeah, having colossus expire does suck, but I think it is quite helpful for getting your economy rolling in the early stages. Especially since Civ 5 production levels seem to be much lower.
 
Yea the collosus sucks, I dont build it now.

With England, I am building Pyramids / Stonehenge / GLH instead, completely skipping Colossus.

And the great merchants arent that great, trade missions only get you around 400 gold, so a great merchant farm isnt really that important.

Just get GLH, Big Ben and Pentagon, and whatever else you want. Great Merchant economy is a waste of time.

I actually started playing babylon now and I much prefer them for Great Scientist farming.
 
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