City placement & strategies for the English

[Chep]

I'm pretty sure that anything said here will become useless soon when the new sides get added but let's try anyway.

Firstly: where do you settle?

I take York, Edinburgh and Dublin as given unless stated otherwise.
That leaves:
London, Mercia, East Anglia, Wessex and Wales as provinces.

My first idea was to settle Swansea in Wales (between sheep and fish) + London + one city in Wessex + one somewhere in Mercia.

But I was never really happy with that. Swansea is okay but not really good and not on a river and the one in Mercia will probably suck.
And there are no rivers in Wessex :/

Now in my current game I tried the bare minimum:


By settling on the dye I have Wales and will get Mercia via culture, same should go for East Anglia.
The only real problem might be the atlantic access resources and getting enough culture in London for East Anglia.
but with a 2nd cultural expansion from Dublin & York I should get at least one of the access resources. I might try to conquer Lisboa or Tangier later (to disrupt the Spanish colonization attempts)
I'd like to build a 2nd city in Scottland and Ireland as well, but as I have to conquer basically all of France I don't want to go too far above 10 cities...
Another disadvantage: you don't get the sulphur for a while.

Speaking of France...whats your strategy here? I think the best would be to start at peace, get declared war upon city flip (which gives 4 more lancers than just starting at war with them) and then take out Calais+Paris with them.
But I wasn't that lucky and will have to try defeating them a bit later, but they're just really really strong :/

 

[Wessel V1]

A city 1SE of the timber could work I think. I'm not sure about Hereford. The production bonus you get with a leevee is massive but the city can't grow very large so a lot of potential is unused. Maybe this is one of the rare cities that are better when not next to a river, like 1W.

 

[Chep]

well, size 10 isn't that bad and yes, 1W would be a better city, but then it might be tough to cover Mercia with your culture, don't you think?

unless you put in an additional city in East Anglia, yeah...But I'm not convinced that it is worth it, since you'll definitely be far above 10 cities and each additional city increases your tech penalty :/
if I were to settle I think I'd go for the corner (South, East, East of the Timber) and give that city the Laterna via great engineer and possibly the Torre as well.

The problem is France...I currently own 7 or 8 cities in France and will have to fight the Norse because they start settling in Scottland and Ireland.

Too bad I can't just give the French cities to my vasall Burgundy

 

[Wessel V1]

IIRC the tech penalty only occurs when you have 14 or more cities in RFCE. You have to take the time modifier into account too so the penalty is less severe. I wouldn't mind going over 14 cities at all.

 

[ezzlar]

10 cities for tech penalty what I have heard.

I would move Exeter one tile to the east and Hereford one tile west.

 

[AbsintheRed]

Yep, it starts after 10 cities
It's not that significant though after the first few cities after 10

 

[Chep]

while a fun and interesting game (for a while the top4 civs were: me (protestant), cordoba (muslim), byzantium (orthodox) and germany (catholic) ) for the most part, it feels a lot less "powerful" than with Spain.
Still, owning England and France there is not much that can really prevent you from winning.

IF anyone's interested here's a save of 1688 (overwrote the 84-save by accident).
Each atlantic access resource not owned by me is at all times threatened by multiple pirate ships and my current goal is to plaster the complete Iberian shoreline with packs of 3+ pirate ships.
Apart from that there is not much to do than just wait for the research to go on
(okay Sweden still has a theoretical chance to win...)


concerning Herford: while it is a nice enough city the way I built it, I now agree with you that it can be settled further west, by 1450 you should have enough culture to fill Mercia anyway.

total:
6 cities on the British Isles, 8 in France for the last 300 years...doesn't really feel like playing "the English", more like "the north-west-Europeans"

 

[Swarbs]

My personal strat with England is to have London one tile SW, next to the horse and cow, then found Bedford 1S of the timber and give it the sheep so it can produce loads with sulphur, timber and iron. London loses production from the iron and food from the fish, but you can make up for it by farming the river tiles and workshopping the two grasslands in the BFC to the west.

Alternatively, you can stick London on the horse. You lose one hammer from the horse, but get it back and more by getting food from the fish to support more workshops, tho at the cost of losing the three grasslands to the west.

IIRC, moving Hereford one tile W loses the levee, but the extra food from the fish makes up for it, by allowing you to work more mined hills. Another benefit is that your first border pop covers most of Wales, so fewer annoying Welsh longbow barbs when playing hard difficulty, and with Bedford you will still cover Mercia easily.

 

[Hamir]

Personally I think the British Isles map needs tweaking.

There's no logical way to build the important towns without either having big overlap or leaving resources out of range. I'm not suggesting cities need a fat cross each but it's frustrating having to build cities so close to each other when there is so much land to work with.

Before the most recent map change (a while ago) you could build/conquer London/Bristol/Chester/York/Edinburgh/Wick/Dublin/Belfast and it would be a really solid set of cities that covered the core of the British Isles without huge overlap and without missing many resources.

Now the map looks much better, but it feels like you have to squeeze a lot of cities in a couple of tiles apart to get all of the resources, or do things like build London on the south coast like the post above suggests. I mean that fish on the west of Wales is really awkwardly placed, as is the crab 1E of the Isle of Man.

My suggestions - see below and attached for screenshot

Britain:

• 1) Put the fish west of Wales 1SE, in the range of Bristol
• 2) Move the timber 1S or 1SE so that you could build Peterborough (or better still rename it Lincoln) on that spot
• 3) Move the inaccessible crab 1S so that it is in range of a small North Welsh town (you could even rename it Conwy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conwy)

Ireland:

• 4) Move the crab from the West Coast of Ireland 2N 3E so that it is in the range of Belfast. At the moment it makes more sense to build a city on the NW corner of Ireland as it has 2 food resources and a river - that would be in Donegal, only the 12th biggest county in Ireland http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Irish_counties_by_population
• 5) I don't think the shape looks quite right - you could make the tile 1W of the dye a coast to signify Galway Bay http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galway_Bay
• 6) Consider adding a lake 1W of Belfast to signify Lough Neagh the largest lake in the UK (and one of the largest in Europe outside of Russia/Scandinavia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_lakes_of_Europe)
• 7) Consider adding small rivers for both Belfast and Dublin - both cities were founded on rivers and rely on them for water supply.

With those changes you could still build fewer cities in different combinations if you wished, but if you wanted you could build 11 sensible cities and cover most of the ground.

Sorry for going on a bit (and for the shoddy MS paint job)

 

[Swarbs]

[*]1) Put the fish west of Wales 1SE, in the range of Bristol
[*]2) Move the timber 1S or 1SE so that you could build Peterborough (or better still rename it Lincoln) on that spot
[*]3) Move the inaccessible crab 1S so that it is in range of a small North Welsh town (you could even rename it Conwy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conwy)[/LIST]

Not sure if these ones are necessary - Cardiff (on the grass hill) and Exeter (S of the sheep) give good coverage of the fish in Wales and resources in Wessex, and both were more important towns than Plymouth, Conway and Bristol in Norman times. It also saves the player having to build another city just to get resources. The only change I would make there would be to move the coal onto a hill in Wales, to reflect the importance of coal mining to the Welsh economy.

Cambridge is a better and more historical site than Peterborough, and also works the left tiles in East Anglia, so not sure the timber should be moved. The crab is a bit annoying, but you don't really need an additional food resource in England imo - medieval England wasn't vastly populated when compared to France and others.

I agree that resources in Ireland are a bit screwy, but then that reflects medieval Ireland not being particularly hospitable to large scale settlement. Personally I wouldn't change Ireland, as if you make it too easy to settle then you make it ahistorical, and it's too easy for an English player to build up a massive army. I think it's fine as it is, as it forces you to either accept Dublin, or raze it and invest in two new settlers to build Belfast (1S of your city) and Cork (1E of yours).

 

[swinnend]

Let's leave exact city placement and talk more generally about strategy: is it best to build up on the British Isles, and then make a move for the French possessions, or is it best to get all your troops together, and try to crash France by taking Paris?

Or do you manage to get and hold all necessary regions with a strong France existing?

 

[Swarbs]

England for me is all about being opportunistic.

If you get war with France on spawn then try to use your extra lancers to grab another coastal city or two in Bretange or Piccardy then give France a cheap tech to make peace.

If you don't get war on spawn then just gradually take over the Isles whilst building up a force of lancers. Wait for France to DOW on another civ or vice versa, then as soon as one of the combatants loses a city that means their stacks are committed and weakened. So make a quick dash for a couple of cities you can take and hold, and possibly for Paris if it's poorly defended. Again, make peace and build up your forces ready for another opportunity.

You have plenty of time, and once you get Longbows and workshop your cities with Apprenticeship you'll be able to build a massive army quickly. Get the Teutonic Knights as well if you can, as they are cheaper and stronger than normal knights. Run a priest in a city as early as possible so you have one ready when the techs are researched.

By 1400AD you should have a big enough stack to take down France. The main thing is to try and avoid them being vassalised by a strong power like Germany, as that can make it really difficult particularly if you're playing Emperor level. But at Monarch level once you have the workshops your knights and longbows can deal with almost anything.

 

[Chep]

In my last game I also went for the "build up and then conquer"-way.
I attacked once I had sufficient Knights. Also I think I bribed Burgundy or Germany into a war with France (or waited untill they had one).
But if they declare war on you, use the lancers to try and take one or two more cities.