[R&F] Civ of the Week: England

acluewithout

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  • Leader: Queen Victoria
  • Leader Ability: Pax Britannica. Founding a City and building a Royal Navy Dockyard on a Foreign Continents provides you with a free Melee Unit. Gain the Redcoat Unique Unit when you research Military Science.
  • Civ Ability: British Museum. Your Archaeological Museums hold 6 artifacts instead of 3, and automatically theme when all three [err, sorry, six] slots are filled. You can produce and maintain two Archeologists for each Archaeological Museum instead of one.

  • Unique Unit (Civ): Sea Dog. Unique Naval Raider, which replaces the Privateer (unlocks at Mercantilism, upgrades into Submarine). Same stats and cost as a Privateer i.e. Melee Strength 40, Ranged Strength 50, Attack Range 2, Movement 4, Cost 280, Maintenance 4. Can also % chance to capture defeated units (based on relative strength of units).
  • Unique Unit (Leader): Redcoat. Unique Melee Unit (unlocks at Military Science, upgrades into Mechanised Infantry). Melee Strength 65, Movement 2, Cost 340, Maintenance 5. +10 Combat Strength fighting on Foreign Continents and no disembarking costs.

  • Unique Infrastructure: Royal Navy Dockyard. Unique District that replaces the Harbour. Same stats and adjacencies as a normal Harbour, but half price (27 hammers v 54). Gains an additional Great Admiral Point [can someone please check this] and +2 Adjacency when built on a Foreign Continent. All Naval Units built in this Harbour gain +1 Movement. Provides +2 Loyalty on your own Continent and +4 Loyalty on Foreign Continents.
  • Leader Agenda: Sun Never Sets. Tries to expand onto other Continents. Dislikes Civs with cities on Continents where she has no Cities, and likes Civs with Cities on her Continent.
  • Suggested Reading List: So, so many posts. You don't need me to find them for you.
Notes:
  • Royal Navy Dockyard (1). In Vanilla, England receives a Trade Route when it builds a RND (just like everyone does who builds a Harbour, although England gets its Trade Route "faster" because its harbour is half-price), and gets an extra Trade Route for having a Commercial Hub as well (unlike everyone else, who only get one from either a Harbour or Commercial Hub). In RnF, England receives neither - Trade Routes have been moved back to Lighthouses and Markets (so England doesn't really get an initial Trade Route all that much faster any more) and because it doesn't get Trade Route stacking.

  • Royal Navy Dockyard (2). The RND only provides +1 Movement to Naval Units built in a Harbour. So, early Naval Units built without a Harbour don't get this bonus, and units captured by your Sea Dog also don't get the bonus. The Movement Bonus is also lost if you upgrade the unit (just like bonuses from Natural Wonders) [someone might want to check that too].
  • Royal Navy Dockyard (3). The RND +2 Gold on Foreign Continents counts as an Adjacency Bonus. So, in addition to providing +2 Gold, it also provides +2 Production after you build a Shipyard, and also counts towards the Heartbeat of Steam Dedication. The +2 is also multiplied by cards that multiple Harbour adjacencies, so increasing both Gold and Hammers. The Gold of a RND is also multiplied by Policy Cards that multiple Gold for Colonial Cities.

  • Free Melee Unit: your free melee unit is always the most advanced Melee unit you have researched, even if you don't have the resource for that unit (in which case it can't heal). You'll get a Redcoat if that is your most advanced Melee unit at that time. England previously received a free melee unit when it settled or conquered a City on a foreign continent, however this was removed and replaced with the current Mechanic post RnF for both RnF England and Vanilla England.

  • Other. England is one of only a handful of Civs that have two unique units. It also in a sense has multiple unique Infrastructures (RND and British Museum), although a few other Civs can claim that too (e.g. Rome quite explicitly has two - Aqueduct and Roman Fort; Khmer sort of has three, its unique Temple, but also Aqueducts and Holy Sites, sort of). Make of that what you will.

  • Previous CotW: Ancient: The Full Monty, Cree, Gilgabro, Greece, Hiccup Horrendous Haddock (Harold) the Third, Nubia, Egypt Classical: Kongo, Point Break, Price of Persia, Rome, Sythia, Medieval: China, Georgia, India, Japan, Khmer, Mongolia, Poland, Zulu; Renaissance: Indonesia, Netherlands, Spain, Mapuche.

  • Next week is Korea.
[edit: corrections]
 
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"When in doubt, nerf England"
- Probably Firaxis

My last reddit analysis

Pax Britannica. Founding a City and building a Royal Navy Dockyard on a Foreign Continents provides you with a free Melee Unit. Gain the Redcoat Unique Unit when you research Military Science.

Due to the increase in settler scaling in late Vanilla Civ 6, and also loyalty in Rise and Fall, this is now a very questionable ability since England wants to settle a lot of lands, and peaceful wide strategies are very weak in Civ 6. It can be very hard to take advantage of this especially if you get stuck on your home continent and have to learn shipbuilding (or worse yet, carto). You can never really tell when this bonus will help you and oftentimes the landmasses get taken by other AI and it becomes quite a pain. On the other hand, this is not a bad idea on maps with lots of islands especially if you lack resources. Late game, it may be a good way to chop and generate redcoats. The bandaid fix of making a dockyard restricts England to the coast, but it is there, and.... it's there. Enjoy your 4 extra gold I guess.

Civ Ability: British Museum. Your Archaeological Museums hold 6 artifacts instead of 3, and automatically theme when all three slots are filled. You can produce and maintain two Archeologists for each Archaeological Museum instead of one.

This ability is very strong because theming is very hard to control and England simply can grab whatever artifact it wants instead of spreading out to try and theme (and often failing anyways) There probably is very little reason for England to use art at all, except maybe for the Reyna city. At the very least this helps England finish off their culture victories, but it comes sorta late and for once actually justifies how strong it really is.

Unique Unit (Civ): Sea Dog. Unique Naval Raider, which replaces the Privateer (unlocks at Mercantilism, upgrades into Submarine). Same stats and cost as a Privateer i.e. Melee Strength 40, Ranged Strength 50, Attack Range 2, Movement 4, Cost 280, Maintenance 4. Can also % chance to capture defeated units (based on relative strength of units).

It can capture units..... ehhh. Sounds cool in theory but at the end of the day it doesn't compare to sea UUs that are actually stronger. But hey, you can upgrade them into submarines, so that's not a bad path.

Unique Unit (Leader): Redcoat. Unique Melee Unit (unlocks at Military Science, upgrades into Mechanised Infantry). Melee Strength 65, Movement 2, Cost 340, Maintenance 5. +10 Combat Strength fighting on Foreign Continents and no disembarking costs.

So we know England is geared towards cultural victories, which is why their unique unit is on the opposite side of the tech tree as the computers path and thanks to Civ 6's screwed up late game tech tree, it's very possible to obsolete the Redcoat before you can even build it.... although it is stronger and cheaper than the infantry on other continents. So this seems to be a great unit for domination victories or going after AIs that need to be stopped. I think it'd have more value if the AI was more of a threat to win. The problem with this UU is the same with the others that have to be hardbuilt... hardbuilding sucks. However, it's better in the sense you can get it from Pax Britannica, if you're still settling or building harbors this late... I don't really think so. Faith buying them seems like a real option though.

Unique Infrastructure: Royal Navy Dockyard. Unique District that replaces the Harbour (unlocks at one Builder Charge). Same stats and adjacencies as a normal Harbour, but half price (27 hammers v 54). Gains an additional Great Admiral Point [can someone please check this] and +2 Adjacency when built on a Foreign Continent. All Naval Units built in this Harbour gain +1 Movement. Provides +2 Loyalty on your own Continent and +4 Loyalty on Foreign Continents.

A decent economy booster and great to have on other continents. The loyalty is sort of a meme but half priced districts are always worth their value somehow, and getting more movement helps you with exploring. The Royal navy dockyard is pretty solid but hard to come into play earlier on due to boosting astro/celestial navigation being quite the crapshoot and of course that coastal bias doesn't make it easy to have enough population to build the needed districts.

Leader Agenda: Sun Never Sets. Tries to expand onto other Continents. Dislikes Civs with cities on Continents where she has no Cities, and likes Civs with Cities on her Continent.

AI Victoria tries to play England as the design suggested.... and of course it just doesn't work.

England's bonuses aren't bad, but they don't really add up in time as she gets nothing early on and also gets saddled with those poor coastal starts. England seems to be a "slow start, become slightly above average over time", which is fine if you're roleplaying, but doesn't really work well in a game that has specific victory conditions. The museums and the occasional free unit does prevent them from being in the junkpile, but I think it's kinda sad how this civ used to be one of the most fun to one I just groan at when I draw them randomly.
 
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I think England is quite strong if foreign continent is just nearby. And when you can survive until redcoat there will be nothing can stop you.
 
One of the few cool things about the iPad version is that we still have Olde England there. You can play Vickie as she was originally made.
 
It can be very hard to take advantage of this

I definitely recommend island plates or archipelago with this civ.

While it seemed a little cheesy to make a map choice just for playing this civ, it really is the best choice for an enjoyable game. I chose island plates and my game turned out fairly well and I was making tons of money/gold. I like money making civs. Their gold generation alone puts them above Mapuche in my opinion. +2 gold doesn't seem like a lot, but with half priced harbours you will be utilizing more trade routes than you might normally run. Only reason I didn't have a super early cultural victory was because Gorgo was in my game, and she was a beast.

I will verify the movement/upgrade thing when I get home.

Very map dependent civ. I wouldn't even bother playing this civ on Firaxis Europe map, that would suck. If you don't find another continent in 25 turns of exploring you may want to reroll.
 
I don't see America on that list. Have we covered them before? O_o

Thanks for the summary of the various changes to the Royal Navy Dockyard. It was so hard to keep up with all the changes.
 
@Archon_Wing I thought your Reddit write up was excellent.

Unless you’re playing them as a blank Civ, I think England’s only real strategy is indeed peaceful expansion. In some ways RnF makes peaceful expansion easier with all the faith purchasing settlers and free Builders (provided you’re not fighting loyalty of course). England is (a little) better at peaceful expansion than the average Civ because of its half price Harbour and extra gold (and sometimes production) on foreign continents, although it doesn’t have anything much to find negative loyalty with (and nor do other colonial themed Civs - eg spain and Dutch all have very weak loyalty bonuses).
 
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I don't see America on that list. Have we covered them before? O_o

Thanks for the summary of the various changes to the Royal Navy Dockyard. It was so hard to keep up with all the changes.

They are being done in eras with the era a civ fits into being decided by its UU IIRC so America will be one of the last to be covered
 
I definitely recommend island plates or archipelago with this civ.

Unless, of course, you still get spawns where the other islands still count as your continent. :S
 
Unless, of course, you still get spawns where the other islands still count as your continent. :S

That happened in my game, mostly stuff above me and a little bit West were my continent, luckily the other continent wasn't too far away. Several of the islands I settled were considered my continent.

Okay here's a question about England. I'm not sure if this changed R&F. Why can you build 2 archaeologists with England? You only need to build 1 as 1 has all 6 charges you need. This is a noob trap, and like a noob I fell into it and built 2 archaeologists in 1 city to see what they did. I see no purpose to this, unless you think you can get artifacts quicker this way, but I doubt you would save much time (and would need to gold purchase these).

Also this may be known by most, but I found out that conquered or loyalty flipped cities that build an archaeology museum can only dig up 3 artifacts, but they will be already themed, so it's not too bad, but still annoying.

Here's my start. If you play this save, the 2nd continent is fairly close. Island plates is the map type. Standard size.
Spoiler :




I bought Mary Leaky for 21k gold just on the turn of victory, sure would have been nice if she was available earlier. Mary Leaky is THE great scientist to get for England. Keep an eye out for her.

Final Ranking was Winston Churchill (#4). How appropriate.

Slowest cultural victory in my civ of week games other than Japan, India, Sumeria, Norway, and Egypt. But Gorgo was in the game, and she was aggressive and fairly strong and accumulated a LOT of culture. I needed a lot of tourists to surpass her. So had she not been in the game, I would have gotten a much faster victory. As it was, it took a lot of work to overcome her, ended up with a lot of national parks, seaside resorts, and themed museums. So I can't say she's worse than Lautaro. Her gold generation is much better than Lautaro which in my opinion makes her better period. I give her a C-. She needs a little work, but isn't as bad as people say. Free units help you not worry about defense and building units for defense. Though I prefer ranged for defense, but a unit is a unit. Though I started getting too many units. I could have disbanded them to increase my gold generation even more, but I didn't bother and kept most of them around. Never cared about upgrading most of them.

Of course she's map dependent, if you are stuck in the middle of a continent, you are in bad shape. She's not as good as she used to be, but certainly not the worst.

I was pretty happy with my gold generation this game, some of the highest gold per turn that I've managed. Colonial taxes helped a great deal with that. Make sure to use this card if you are able to settle other continents.

My final screenshot: I was collecting great admirals to see how many I could get. I would have retired them, but most of the bonuses wouldn't have done much for me my game. Loyalty, small amounts of gold, pillaging rewards (I was in no wars other than the very beginning), maybe an ironclad or battleship. None of it I needed. I accumulated 9 great admirals. Birmingham was my super tourist city in terms of art, writing, and music.

Spoiler :


  • Leader Ability: Pax Britannica. Founding a City and building a Royal Navy Dockyard on a Foreign Continents provides you with a free Melee Unit. Gain the Redcoat Unique Unit when you research Military Science.
  • As mentioned above in my post, free units are fairly useful, nothing to scoff at. Good for defense freeing up money/hammers you may have used to build defensive units. Not as useful as ranged units, but a unit is a unit. Redcoats I never used in battle in any civ6 game I have played, so not much to say about that.
  • Civ Ability: British Museum. Your Archaeological Museums hold 6 artifacts instead of 3, and automatically theme when all three [err, sorry, six] slots are filled. You can produce and maintain two Archeologists for each Archaeological Museum instead of one.
  • This may be her best ability, but only useful for one victory type, so it's not that great. Kind of shoehorns you into one victory method. I mentioned above about the 2 archaeologists, what's the point of that? Can anyone answer that? I only need to build 1 for all 6 charges.

  • Unique Unit (Civ): Sea Dog. Unique Naval Raider, which replaces the Privateer (unlocks at Mercantilism, upgrades into Submarine). Same stats and cost as a Privateer i.e. Melee Strength 40, Ranged Strength 50, Attack Range 2, Movement 4, Cost 280, Maintenance 4. Can also % chance to capture defeated units (based on relative strength of units).
  • I built 3 of these for the boost to electricity, but never used them in battle. Not much else to say about these. Anyone have an idea what % chance you have to capture?
  • Unique Unit (Leader): Redcoat. Unique Melee Unit (unlocks at Military Science, upgrades into Mechanised Infantry). Melee Strength 65, Movement 2, Cost 340, Maintenance 5. +10 Combat Strength fighting on Foreign Continents and no disembarking costs.
  • As mentioned above being in the bottom half of the tech tree kind of sucks. If you are going culture, and why not with those awesome museums, you are probably going flight/computers which means you may be ignoring the bottom half of the tech tree until flight/computers is done. After I research those 2 techs, only then do I pick up Steel (for Eiffel Tower). I built one for era score, never used him.

  • Unique Infrastructure: Royal Navy Dockyard. Unique District that replaces the Harbour (unlocks at one Builder Charge). Same stats and adjacencies as a normal Harbour, but half price (27 hammers v 54). Gains an additional Great Admiral Point [can someone please check this] and +2 Adjacency when built on a Foreign Continent. All Naval Units built in this Harbour gain +1 Movement. Provides +2 Loyalty on your own Continent and +4 Loyalty on Foreign Continents.
  • Probably tied with British Museum for her most useful ability. Of course terrible if you have cities that can't build these. As I mentioned in an earlier post, I was making very good money with her. Probably not more than my Cree game, but probably more than my Persia and Poland games.
  • Leader Agenda: Sun Never Sets. Tries to expand onto other Continents. Dislikes Civs with cities on Continents where she has no Cities, and likes Civs with Cities on her Continent.
  • Annoying agenda. Not a whole lot you can do to satisfy her agenda. Unless she expands onto your continent you are out of luck.
 

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I like England since they are very strong at Culture victory IMO. I won on turn 278 with them on Immortal difficulty before on a large map, which was pretty quick for my victory times. Their unique Archaeological museum is so powerful, it's almost OP IMO.

I don't do domination so not having a foreign continent near my starting location isn't a big factor for me.
 
Gains an additional Great Admiral Point [can someone please check this]

No idea how to check this. The city screen shows +2 great admiral points for both my capital and Teayo (which is on a different continent). But that may be just a standard screen for the unique district, and may not update with map conditions. The only way I can see to verify this is to maybe start another game and check great admiral point generation before and after.
The only other way is to add them up manually which I tried:
99 I'm not exactly sure how Pingala's second promotion works, but I doubled London's great admiral point stuff. Including the one from Colossus. And I may have made a few minor mistakes but 99 is what I come up with when counting all RND as 2 points. The great people screen shows +108 great admiral points per turn.
12 is the number of cities on other continents that have a RND so that comes up with 111. I'm 3 points off somewhere. So the best answer I can give is maybe to probably.

I'd have to check when the game was young to make it easier, it's more difficult when I have cities and wonders everywhere.

The Movement Bonus is also lost if you upgrade the unit (just like bonuses from Natural Wonders) [someone might want to check that too].

Sadly, this still seems to be the case. At first it didn't seem like it. I upgraded a quadrireme from North of Sheffield to a battleship. The civilpedia lists movement of a battleship of 5, but my movement had 6, so it seemed like it kept it. But after checking my Mapuche save, his battleships also had 6. I'm guessing the mathematics boost? At first I thought that was silly since surely you need mathematics to build battleships, but looking at the tech tree, it seems you don't need mathematics to build a battleship. :crazyeye: The quadrireme before upgrade had movement of 5 which I'm assuming is 3 (base) + 1 for mathematics and +1 for RND

upgraded battleship:
Spoiler :


battleship bought with cold hard cash
Spoiler :
 
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I’ve posted about England many times in other threads, and really don’t have much to add. Other people have also made some very good observations too. I really don’t want to rehash things, but I do have a few random thoughts which I’ll put down here rather than create a new thread or post elsewhere.

Changes Overall. I think the main impact of the various changes to England is to have made them just way to focused - they really are focused on building Ancesteal Hall and peacefully expanding, and then nearing down on a Culture Victory (I like the British Museum, but it does have the problem of only being useful for CVs as its only other benefit - generating culture - comes too late to be that useful ... also, kind of weird you can build more than one British Museum given that there is only one IRL ... and that England has a unique Building called a British Museum ... I mean, come on guys...). England is not even a viable Domination Civ anymore - it’s not a good Naval Power, and it’s only other edge is the Redcoat which although strong, comes very late, is slow (being a melee no cav unit) and must be hard built.

Sea Dog. England’s Sea Dog and the original Pax B (unit on conquest) had a funny sort of synergy in that they both (in theory) let you snowball militarily. Sadly, this never quite worked though because the Sea Dog is so weak. I also think the Sea Dog is just the wrong unit for England. The Sea Dog should really be a unit for Elizabeth I (who should totally be an alternate leader, with maybe some Spy abilities) and the unit just comes too early for Civ which is otherwise geared around an Industrial Era power spike. A more general England unit should have been a Ship of the Line or Dreadnaught.

Naval Strength. I’ve always like the design choice that England doesn’t actually get a bonus for Naval e.g. like in Civ 5 with its +1 movement for all Naval all the time. Instead, England’s Naval power is linked to getting +1 through its RND, having more Great Admirals, and having Harbours that are better at producing units (at least in terms of hammers). Where I think it goes a little wrong though is you’ll often build Naval before you have an RND, so your most experienced units don’t get the bonus, and there is no synergy with the SeaDog because captured units don’t get the bonus. Then worse, you lose the bonus when you upgrade units. The basic idea here is pretty solid, but I think it should be +1 movement when you build or upgrade in an RND.

Naval Units (again). The sort of useless Unique Naval unit (Sead Dog) is also a bit of a problem for England being a good Naval Civ , although perhaps the concern was that a stronger UU combined with +1 movement and Great Admirals would have been too powerful. I think perhaps the solution would have been to have England’s UU earn culture or science from kills rather than a straight combat bonus (this may have been the logic of the Sea Dogs unit capture ability rather than a combat bonus for that unit). Indeed, I think the Sea Dog earning Culture on kills would make that unit much better and thematic rather than capturing units, although I still don’t think the Sea Dog is the right unit for a general English UU optically.

Royal Navy Dockyard. I still really do like this, and think FXS we’re right to give this to England as a unique district. Should it give loyalty? I don’t know - it still feels like a kludge. But if it is going to give loyalty, I think it’s a pity it doesn’t give loyalty based on its gold adjacency - that would have been much more dynamic, making adjacency more important, and letting you boost loyalty via adjacency policy cards. It couldn’t be a 1:1 relationship, otherwise England would have crazy loyalty, but perhaps loyalty being half gold adjacency, or gold adjacency -2 would have worked.

(As an aside: England was one of a few Civs given loyalty boosts (some old, e.g. Spain, some new, e.g. Dutch), although England is the one one which got a loyalty boost which replaced an existing ability in Vanilla (loyalty basically replaces the trade route stacking). Overall, all the loyalty bonuses for all those Civs seem fairly weak and are not all that dynamic (i.e. you either get a small bonus or you don’t, and you can’t do much to increase it etc.). Read into that what you will.)

Rework. I've argued that England should be reworked a few times. I think a few other Civs fall into this category too - America (because it’s Leader Bonuses are just very boring and passive), China (because they’re both a little too turtle, particularly relative to China’s military history), and maybe Spain (at least unless Religion gets a re-work). I think FXS could make an England redux work as part of giving England a second leader - ideally Elizabeth, which would give the Sea Dog a better home as her Leader UU, and also allow for another Civ with some early spying which I think the game needs.

... anyway, I’ve said all this before. But what I wanted to add is this - one reason I think England should be reworked is it seems like a missed opportunity not to have England (and Vicky in particular) synergise better with the loyalty system and Governors. Both those seems just seem very “England Colonial Golden Era” to me. Anyway. I just think there has been a big missed opportunity with England and RnF.

...I’d also add that if the next Expansion does focus on the late game, and specifically Industrial power and or colonial cities, then that would surely also militate in favour of a more general rework for England (and indeed some other Civs too).

Hopefully for everyone’s sake (including me) that’s the last I have to say about England. You know. Until the next patch, expansion, ... post that mentions England... oh dear...
 
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I like England. I liked them prenerf. I still like them. But I'm primarily a culture player and I always make at least 3 privateers anyway (because i enjoy pillaging, killing coastal barb camps, and getting the eureka for electricity).

The "free melee when conquering a city on another continent" nerf didn't bother me because I didn't do all that much conquering after the ancient era.

The trade route nerf was a little more painful, but at least it was offset by a loyalty bonus on RNDYs.

My favorite thing about England is how your Tourism growth delta just skyrockets once you get Archaeologists. 6 artifacts per museum AND automatic theming? Oh heck yeah! God help you if I got the Terracota Army.
 
I would be a very happy man if, in the course of adding an elizabeth type leader, they move the sea dog over to her and give england generally a dreadnought UU. Comes with the ironclad (or maybe industrialization) and is basically a ranged naval unit to sit between the frigate and battleship. Just let me beat the crap out of everything on the coast. I'm not asking for a return to the Ship of the line, as fun as that was...
 
The changes to how you get the melee unit hasn't really put me off playing England. For me its more about that they feel very beta. Lost movement for ships when you upgrade them and that conquered cities get normal museums. And vice versa, if you conquer an English city and build a archeological museum there, it gets 6 slots. Things like this should have been fixed. I'm generally quite happy with how the game works, but this is an exception - it simply isn't good enough, not OK.

And the Sea Dog sucks. Other naval UUs are fine but this one sucks.
 
Uhhh, sea dogs do not suck, especially an Amada can last all game and a sea dog amada happily takes out a battleship. Damage something first with battleships then amada it... it’s nasty.The issue is there is no competition
 
@Victoria Hmm. Maybe you’re right, but the old salty Sea Dog seems a bit problematic to me.

First, it’s not really better at anything a normal Privateer can do because it doesn’t get any direct stat boosts. So, if youre using a Sea Dog as a Privateer - to raid or war - then it’s no different to someone else’s non-unique Privateer. (There’s maybe some nuance here in that all English Naval vessels should be stronger than the average Naval unit because +1 Movement and Great Admiral, but I think my point is still generally correct.)

Second, I think Sea Dog capture ability is based on combat strength. So, given the Sea Dog doesn’t get combat bonuses, I think it really only works well capturing weaker units. You need to have got a GA or be ahead enough to have sea armies etc. But then what’s the point? You’re already ahead! And that also means you can’t really use the Sea Dog to take on a stronger or more advanced opponent (eg compare RedCoats that let you take on Infantry). So, I can’t see you using this unit to capture say Frigates (at least not easily) which is their contemporary., which makes them less useful then I’d like.

Third, even if you get the old salty Sea Dog to work, its capture ability doesn’t really synergise with England’s other abilities, eg captured units won’t have extra movement because not built in your Harbour, and the Sea Dog basically gives you more units when you don’t need them (if you have Sea Dogs you probably already have a Navy). Added to that, the units are damaged and can’t heal unless you get them home, so it’s a bit rubbish overall.

That all said, I did like how the Sea Dog and the original Pax B sort of synergised in that they both (in principle) allowed for snowballing large sea and land armies. Pax B giving units on City Capture clearly was never a bug - it was thoroughly baked into England’s design.
 
Pax B giving units on City Capture clearly was never a bug -
You're just saying that because it was literally in the text of Pax Britannica. How could anyone have known?! :lol:

My only support for this crazy idea is that the 2016 first look video curiously does not actually say what the Victoria leader ability is, while e.g. America's does. So maybe they were waffling internally?

I have to believe they will eventually make england great again. They saw that military tactics UUs needed help, at least. It's almost a completely vanilla civ if you play on your own continent.
 
I have to believe they will eventually make england great again.

#MEGA

England is very close to a Blank Civ period - it’s basically just half price Harbours (which admittedly are cool, if not as cool as they were). Maybe some extra gold via Harbours if you can peacefully settle on a continent split. That’s really it.

The only other two strong elements are Red Coats, which are very punchy but come late and now don’t really synergise with much, and British Museum which, well, doesn’t really change how you play England as a Civ - it’s just a “better” Museum, and comes to late for its culture yield to have any impact. So, the BM really just lets you win harder or at best a bit faster once you’ve already got through the bulk of the Culture tree.

I dunno. In some ways, it might have been silly to significantly rework England or other Civs until the next expansion, assuming the next expansion will itself develop Governors, Gov Plaza and Loyalty more (surely it will) and introduce new mechanics.
 
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