Hello all. Newbie here. First post and this seemed the most appropriate!
Apologies if I waffle on, iits fun to have found a forum and people to share ideas with.
So far, I've played Elizabeth or Victoria the most and always had a lot of success. Maybe its because I'm English and we all think alike
. Like someone posted above, I love Redcoats. For my style of play they come in at just the right time of play if you go for the Oracle as your first real 'extravagence) and cut down loads of woods for it and then head for Gunpowder and Rifling as fast as you can without being really silly about it.
It tends to mean you're left behind in a few areas after specialising so much but by having a good strong industrial base with an army as experienced as you can get them and as large as you can, the Red Coats add a real edge (from around 1500 I think is the earliest I've got them but I cannot remember off hand) and you can take loads of land in a short space of time and put yourself ahead on points where you have been lacking due to being so focused on thread of research.
Again it could be an English thing but I try and group my Redcoats into cohesive units of 5, either with a real speciality like City Attack (gained from earlier experience in older units) or a mixture with all 5 covering almost every possible experience upto that point- eg. Medical, hills, forest, rifles, extra strength.
Doing them in squads of 5 makes it easy to keep track of numbers and how strong your army is. It also makes it more versatile and wieldly- they can be grouped by 'battalions' to form a division- eg 5 Redcoats with City Attack experience, 5 Recoats with Extra Stars for real power, and 5 Artillery. Create 2,3,4,5 etc of these types of groupings- must have a cavalry division!- and you can really build up a logical and manageable army.
Waffling on-
Finally, my most succesful game ever was with the Japanese. Has anyone else ever found this?
And how do people arrange armies depending on their leader?