If you look at England starting position, there is not much value with mining or pottery. If you can get a good fleet you do not even need archery. I got archery at about turn 120. There was room for 3 cities so getting an early settler as Scotland is great terrain, just not much of it. No granaries, do not need them, just slow you down initially. One key thing was because of the fish around London getting god of the sea Pantheon was rather important. I guess also pushing Foreign Trade as Maritime Industries gives you a whopping 100% for navy production. I mean Agoge, eat your heart out!Craftsmanship has little value and so pushed for 50% settlers before that so my second settler was cheaper. Its these little efficiencies that chip away at the turns so you get to attack earlier. And it is about how quickly you can get that fleet going.
I just pushed the sailing side at the right pace, getting 2 galleys then 4 quads, a fifth quad came free with an admiral. Victoria's cheap harbors can be built very early when you push navy giving good early trade routes. You still need CZ of course. A navy of 2 galleys and 5 quads is about right.
With deity the walls came up early and The first city I attacked only had room for 2 quads to fire so a lot of rotation and grinding which is in fact perfect for an early navy anyway. Promoting 2 quads up the right hand path makes them mean beasts against cities. Pushing the other 3 up the left path means they get bonuses against ships and land troops. The galleys are your scouts and very cheap to get to destroyers like all promotions, and you must have destroyers for subs.
You civics you push normally up to feudalism them time-rush them to mercenaries so you get 50% upgrades to your entire fleet.
If you are careful with a navy and do not move full distances in one click you are playing a navy properly. They have a few extra movement points to react to what they find. Once you are frigates with a range of 2 you can stack all 5 against 1 city and take it in a single turn with a caravel after bombardment. Ones further in do need troops but when you have that may frigates their city has no walls left and any troops that meet you die. Ideally your frigates get to a range of 3 ... This means your battleships get to a range of 4 and with +22 for you city takers, protected by 3 anti navy ships and 2 anti sub and an AI that is worse at navy battles than land battles... Its game over unless someone is winning mid continent. For that you grow as you dictate, you just outgrow their science then send the troops in
The above strategy any civ can do, England's only benefit is cheap harbors which are NOT useless. Getting a trade rout 6 turns earlier really makes a difference. England's real benefit comes with Pax Britannica which this example does not even show. take a coastal city as soon as you can push redcoats and you will see what I mean... every city you take gets a free redcoat and they are +10 combat and strong troops to start with... 5 cities in you have 5 redcoats... it just snowballs, at this time of the game these are not like spearmen, they are uber troops, well they can hold their own against modern infantry.
This game I befriended spain and slogged it out with France,weirdly Spain declared on me when I declared on Egypt to get into the Med.
Note: it took 3 attempts to get the right strategy to work. Norway royally beat me in one attempt and in the other I stupidly spent my gold on buying up the English channel. We all learn as we go... I play lots so am starting to get the idea now, but still learning and making mistakes. I also like playing inefficiently and not for victory. It gets dull otherwise.
