My friend began a playthrough of the new expansion as England. I was unable to find anything in the forums about a new strategy that she can use, so does anyone know what she can to do well with the new mechanics and what England already offers?
England strategy
- Thread starter taulph88
- Start date
-Play Tall adopt Tradition and Keep the number of cities low
-After NC find out where the Iron for Ship of the lines, finish Tradition
-Win some wars in the middle ages with your S.O.L. and long bows, take points in ascetics or patronage until rationalism
-Level up spies to reach Tech Parity use rationalism to ecplise the AIs tech
-Build the NIA and switch spies to diplomats
At that point you are set to win any victory condition
- Joined
- Mar 11, 2008
- Messages
- 25,112
Parity = Equivalence
Eclipse = Surpass
(you must be quite young)
Place spies in enemy capitals to steal techs to catch up (reach tech parity)
Ironically, that's the exact word the game uses to tell you that you're ahead in tech.
Falconiano
Prince
He's from 1988 so he should be 25 by now, not very young anymore.
We're heading to the thirties man. +10
Anyways as EN I would just spy a ton, then later switch all spies to diplos except for one.
Else you will be behind in techs.
The rest is the usual, spam SOLs to conquer, abuse LBs.
We're heading to the thirties man. +10
Anyways as EN I would just spy a ton, then later switch all spies to diplos except for one.
Else you will be behind in techs.
The rest is the usual, spam SOLs to conquer, abuse LBs.
I almost always play as England and I've come up with a few rules to love by when staring a game with them. First, I always build the Great Lighthouse. This gives you +1 sight and movement on water, which, along with England's special ability and adopting Exploration, gives your ships and embarked units a pretty amazing advantage at sea.
My early game strategy is usually very passive. I build as many wonders as I can and invest in money making buildings, improvements, and trade routes. When I get the long bowmen, I build a veritable ton and use them as homeland security. Later in the game, you can upgrade these into Gatling guns on up to bazookas that have extra range... Which is awesome.
By the time the renaissance comes around, I usually have a pretty flourishing economy and a couple of naval units for security. Then I explode with tons of Ship of the Line and privateers. It's important to me to have the 50% extra experience policy from the Honor tree when this time comes along because as I go from coast to coast taking stuff over, my Ship of the Lines get promotions like extra range and logistics, making them virtually untouchable because you can bombard a city without it being able to attack you back.
After the era of destruction and conquest via an indestructible and speedy navy, I either just continue my pattern of conquest and go for a domination victory, or I'll hone my empires efforts for whatever other kind of victory I feel like going for. The cool part is, and this might be uncouth for more polite civ players, is if another civ is near winning, you can arrive on their shores quickly and totally foil their efforts.
I read that someone suggested keeping your empire small and focused, but I've never found this to be a good way to play with England. I usually have many many cities in all corners of the map for various strategic and resource based purposes. I think this is important because eventually, everyone will hate you and refuse to trade resources with you.
My early game strategy is usually very passive. I build as many wonders as I can and invest in money making buildings, improvements, and trade routes. When I get the long bowmen, I build a veritable ton and use them as homeland security. Later in the game, you can upgrade these into Gatling guns on up to bazookas that have extra range... Which is awesome.
By the time the renaissance comes around, I usually have a pretty flourishing economy and a couple of naval units for security. Then I explode with tons of Ship of the Line and privateers. It's important to me to have the 50% extra experience policy from the Honor tree when this time comes along because as I go from coast to coast taking stuff over, my Ship of the Lines get promotions like extra range and logistics, making them virtually untouchable because you can bombard a city without it being able to attack you back.
After the era of destruction and conquest via an indestructible and speedy navy, I either just continue my pattern of conquest and go for a domination victory, or I'll hone my empires efforts for whatever other kind of victory I feel like going for. The cool part is, and this might be uncouth for more polite civ players, is if another civ is near winning, you can arrive on their shores quickly and totally foil their efforts.
I read that someone suggested keeping your empire small and focused, but I've never found this to be a good way to play with England. I usually have many many cities in all corners of the map for various strategic and resource based purposes. I think this is important because eventually, everyone will hate you and refuse to trade resources with you.
England is a flexible civ but imo their best suited for just straight up domination. I usually take tradition and set up fairly small by the coast and use their devastating UU's to wage wars from the medieval era and up, winning by a domination victory.
The spies are good for either stealing techs or going for city states. Personally I prefer city states for happiness and culture but that's just my preference.
The spies are good for either stealing techs or going for city states. Personally I prefer city states for happiness and culture but that's just my preference.
I'd say this is map dependent (luxuries map type), by doing this you're delaying your tech quite abit. On higher difficulty levels you're already pretty far behind by delaying tech you're only going to get further behind. Why not instead of building it you let the AI build it and take it with your Gallasus/SOL?
I suggested keeping the number of cities small because you want the national wonders, what I don't advocate is waiting until the Renaissance to get aggressive. If you've got 1 city and 5 puppets you still have 5 cities that cover enough area to get enough iron/coal/oil/uranium to build your units. Going wide 6-8 cities and then conquering and puppeting is going to result in too much unhappiness in the mid game. You can win the game in the Industrial Era if you focus on taking dwon capitals.
milk steak
Warlord
- Joined
- Sep 17, 2010
- Messages
- 258
I like to use Oxford to bulb Navigation so I can get SoLs even sooner. If I hit SoLs before the AIs hit Frigates, it's game over.
johnny_rudeboy
Warlord
- Joined
- Oct 7, 2013
- Messages
- 288
As Resipsa say above, focus on a small empire and get the national wonders and focus on good infrastructure (food and hammers) let other civs build the early wonders. Who ever builds the great lighthouse should be the first you visit with your armada.
With England you can truly rule a terrain, the ocean, and cut off trading routes for civs you are at war with while protecting your own. You can rather easily take even well fortified coastal cities and your longbows protect the heart land or go on the offensive to take the inland capitals with some longswords and a knight or two.
But to get to that point you need a strong economy and production heavy coastal cities so you can quickly build the costly SOTL. You should already have an armada of Galleas and enough gold to upgrade them once you have reached Navigation.
I would found 3 cities and grow them tall with libraries and the NC and complete Tradition. Save that 4th city for when you know where the iron is, perhaps you are lucky and have enough iron within the sphere of your 3 first cities but dont rely on trades to get iron. It is so important that you need to own your own iron and lots of it. If you have enough iron, save the 4th city for when you know where the oil is located. You will need plenty of that to for when your SOTL will have to be upgraded to Battleships. Some times a small island with 2-4 oil resources can be found in the middle of no where and that will fuel your navy in the industrial era. That location can also be used to resupply your ships when at war.
So when your little empire is growing and producing as they should and you hit the renaissance getting astronomy you will get two spies. Use them to steal techs, preferable from inland civs who have the techs from the lower tree so you get longbows and workshops asap. If they steal techs from you, so be it. What ever they manage to produce in terms of ships will be no match to you anyway.
Once you are level with the AI in terms of techs you can use the spies to get coastal CS in strategic locations that can be used to reinforce (heel up) your wounded ships, along with the other benefits they give you.
As for social polices a typical tradition opening followed by Honor to Military tradition (50% extra experience from combat) and then complete Exploration or at least down to Merchant navy. Perhaps open Honor in the early start to get some help with barb camps and some extra culture. The often AI neglected wonder the Oracle can be built after the NC to get that extra free SP. Open commerce can be a good idea to depending on your culture out put, since it allows you building Big Ben, kind of feels as England should do that. But complete Tradition at least.
I would not worry much about religion. Getting a pantheon will of course help you in the early game at least. God of the sea if available is a good one, but perhaps a culture boosting is even better so that you get the needed SP even faster. On the other hand, having an early hammer boost from your pantheon will allow you to build cultural buildings faster that will still be there once your cities have adopted some ones religion. And that will happen sooner or later once you get your trade routes up and running.
I hope this will help. After Babylon I think England is my favorite civ.
With England you can truly rule a terrain, the ocean, and cut off trading routes for civs you are at war with while protecting your own. You can rather easily take even well fortified coastal cities and your longbows protect the heart land or go on the offensive to take the inland capitals with some longswords and a knight or two.
But to get to that point you need a strong economy and production heavy coastal cities so you can quickly build the costly SOTL. You should already have an armada of Galleas and enough gold to upgrade them once you have reached Navigation.
I would found 3 cities and grow them tall with libraries and the NC and complete Tradition. Save that 4th city for when you know where the iron is, perhaps you are lucky and have enough iron within the sphere of your 3 first cities but dont rely on trades to get iron. It is so important that you need to own your own iron and lots of it. If you have enough iron, save the 4th city for when you know where the oil is located. You will need plenty of that to for when your SOTL will have to be upgraded to Battleships. Some times a small island with 2-4 oil resources can be found in the middle of no where and that will fuel your navy in the industrial era. That location can also be used to resupply your ships when at war.
So when your little empire is growing and producing as they should and you hit the renaissance getting astronomy you will get two spies. Use them to steal techs, preferable from inland civs who have the techs from the lower tree so you get longbows and workshops asap. If they steal techs from you, so be it. What ever they manage to produce in terms of ships will be no match to you anyway.
Once you are level with the AI in terms of techs you can use the spies to get coastal CS in strategic locations that can be used to reinforce (heel up) your wounded ships, along with the other benefits they give you.
As for social polices a typical tradition opening followed by Honor to Military tradition (50% extra experience from combat) and then complete Exploration or at least down to Merchant navy. Perhaps open Honor in the early start to get some help with barb camps and some extra culture. The often AI neglected wonder the Oracle can be built after the NC to get that extra free SP. Open commerce can be a good idea to depending on your culture out put, since it allows you building Big Ben, kind of feels as England should do that. But complete Tradition at least.
I would not worry much about religion. Getting a pantheon will of course help you in the early game at least. God of the sea if available is a good one, but perhaps a culture boosting is even better so that you get the needed SP even faster. On the other hand, having an early hammer boost from your pantheon will allow you to build cultural buildings faster that will still be there once your cities have adopted some ones religion. And that will happen sooner or later once you get your trade routes up and running.
I hope this will help. After Babylon I think England is my favorite civ.
johnny_rudeboy
Warlord
- Joined
- Oct 7, 2013
- Messages
- 288
Good idea. I will try that. I usually save if for later but that really speeds up the domination game.
England is one of many civs that can do very well treating them as a vanilla civ and applying the standard Tradition approach. (Of course they can also do well following the Liberty approach if there's nearby empty landmasses or room on their own landmass)
On the Longbow other than it has a free range promotion so it shoots at range 3 so its kind of like very early artillery. This retains upon upgrade so if upgraded to Gatling Gun it will have a range of 2 instead of 1, etc. Of course if you manage to get an Archer or Composite Bow so many promotions that Range is an option you should skip as England since you get Range for free on that upgrade.
The Ship of the Line is a more effective Frigate. You'll easily be able to capture enemy coastal cities at the time if you have a melee unit (say a Privateer) to finish the job. Captured Frigates from your own Privateers though sadly will NOT convert them to Ship of the Line.
The faster movement at sea applies to both naval units and embarked units (both military & civilian) so you may find the coastal tiles to be a faster than road movement even when the destination is on the same land mass.
England has an extra spy, which early on means they can both have a spy on defense in their capital and do something else. It's fully convertible to a diplomat which effectively means going Diplomatic victory you have 1 more vote available via Globalism than anyone else.
On the Longbow other than it has a free range promotion so it shoots at range 3 so its kind of like very early artillery. This retains upon upgrade so if upgraded to Gatling Gun it will have a range of 2 instead of 1, etc. Of course if you manage to get an Archer or Composite Bow so many promotions that Range is an option you should skip as England since you get Range for free on that upgrade.
The Ship of the Line is a more effective Frigate. You'll easily be able to capture enemy coastal cities at the time if you have a melee unit (say a Privateer) to finish the job. Captured Frigates from your own Privateers though sadly will NOT convert them to Ship of the Line.
The faster movement at sea applies to both naval units and embarked units (both military & civilian) so you may find the coastal tiles to be a faster than road movement even when the destination is on the same land mass.
England has an extra spy, which early on means they can both have a spy on defense in their capital and do something else. It's fully convertible to a diplomat which effectively means going Diplomatic victory you have 1 more vote available via Globalism than anyone else.
OBRkenobi
Chieftain
play archilapego or tiny islands
Illianor123
Warlord
- Joined
- Aug 26, 2014
- Messages
- 293
Start with Tradition and found some strong coastal cities. When you get to Longbows, puppet the nearby AIs, make sure to raze their bad cities, and keep only the good ones (capitols mostly). Then when SoTL come around you can look beyond your own landmass conquer the world.
Great Lighthouse, Exploration and the UA makes naval warfare even more one sided than it normally is against the AI. It also means that once you hit logistics you can cycle through a huge amount of SoTL to take cities with even the most narrow of sea approaches.
Great Lighthouse, Exploration and the UA makes naval warfare even more one sided than it normally is against the AI. It also means that once you hit logistics you can cycle through a huge amount of SoTL to take cities with even the most narrow of sea approaches.
You have it backwards, you don't need to attack because people will hate you, it's that they hate you because you attack.
Surely, though, others may come looking for the same topic.
I read the first response without looking who wrote it and thought damn that's good advice.
