England 1.18 Monarch/Normal

FraggleJock

Warlord
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Jun 25, 2017
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Been having more success than failure with England atm by ignoring Scotland and Ireland [Ipswich-Lancaster-Bristol}. Sending an archer and your knight to Byzantium and stealing Athens when you can gives you a spring board to Egypt early. This seems to pay off better than cleaning up the British Isles. I've also been researching the lower half of the tree and trading from the Turks/Norse everything as soon as they offer it, Hitting the renaissance via Heritage then chasing Exploration. Academia, Economics in that order gets me into the Carribbean ¬1420 which regularly beats france so you get to take basse-terre and Dominican Republic(on the Amber is my preferred site, and bonus points if you teleport French settlers for Port-au-Prince) Don't hit the trading company until I have Ballistics. and need your fleet in asia to move the armies together quickly. the Mughal artillery will kill you unless you hit their huge stack with every unit that spawns FIRST. 2 stacks doesn't cut it need all three. (it's much easier if the French collapsed the mughals, Indies or Indians get massacred)
 
I have also started a game as English on Monarch difficulty, although on Marathon game speed.
You should try to get Rome as the shrine will boost your economy.
If you get open border with France (which you should), you can send a few units there waiting.
When usually Holy Roman starts their conquest, there is a big chance they fails their first attempt, and you can scoop in and take the city.
Rome is also a great city for military unit production with its wonder.
Both land units and later ships can be produced here.
With Trafalgar Square and and a drydock it also becomes extremely easy to push out the 25 level 2 ships you need.
I agree on waiting with Trade Company as Asia is not part of UHV 1.
Focus on Africa and America first for UHV 1.
I agree with the 3 core city setup, but push them a bit further out with [Ipswich-York-Bristol].
Raze the Scotland independent city to allow more space for York to grow.
After Dutch spawn you will want to capture Amsterdam ASAP to not limit Ipswich growth.
More to come...
 
I used to do York, but now do Lancaster. Lumbermills + iron hill city about equal with iron mine+ grassy city and after you get coal the mined plains is better.. It also brings the Iron online faster and allows the workers to focus on the south without the slog through the forests
 
I feel like this might be just a bit overly complicated. On monarch/epic speed everything is incredibly achievable without cheese or tech beyond just good play. I guess I haven't tried on the newest updates. Redcoats are honestly good enough of india and everything in my experience. They are incredible units. Africa is usually under powered in terms of defense so waiting until closer to the deadline worked just fine for me. Build the railroad as our conquering army marches north from South Africa.

The big catch is trying to stop the tech leader from sniping you. I just used my navy to blockade and collapse the Moors (with econ stability drop) who were my competitors for techs.
 
I understand that stability is a problem & it's better to stuff the core, but not settling London makes me cry. Did any of you guys achieve UHV with one core city? Should I wait for the (probable) core expansion to Scotland in future patches?
 
Been having more success than failure with England atm by ignoring Scotland and Ireland [Ipswich-Lancaster-Bristol}. Sending an archer and your knight to Byzantium and stealing Athens when you can gives you a spring board to Egypt early. This seems to pay off better than cleaning up the British Isles. I've also been researching the lower half of the tree and trading from the Turks/Norse everything as soon as they offer it, Hitting the renaissance via Heritage then chasing Exploration. Academia, Economics in that order gets me into the Carribbean ¬1420 which regularly beats france so you get to take basse-terre and Dominican Republic(on the Amber is my preferred site, and bonus points if you teleport French settlers for Port-au-Prince) Don't hit the trading company until I have Ballistics. and need your fleet in asia to move the armies together quickly. the Mughal artillery will kill you unless you hit their huge stack with every unit that spawns FIRST. 2 stacks doesn't cut it need all three. (it's much easier if the French collapsed the mughals, Indies or Indians get massacred)
I will say this reads just like an old school way-outside-the-box RFC strat and I kinda love to see it.

Curious if Athens lying in the Ottoman Expansion Area has led to any difficulties. Much of Caribbean is also Spanish Expansion so wondering about that as well. Not that either outcome would be GG but I could see them being irritating in the least.
Also "teleport French settlers for Port-au-Prince": beat them to settling by one turn and yeeting the units off the island to gosh-knows-where? 🤣
 
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Spain it's "Oh you have an Armada" no problems.:lol:
The Ottomans usually get involved with too many wars to make a proper effort with Athens and Egypt and the hill(forest) NW of Athens is a solid defensive chokepoint for both the Ottomans and those crusading idiots of the Reformation.

I understand that stability is a problem & it's better to stuff the core, but not settling London makes me cry. Did any of you guys achieve UHV with one core city? Should I wait for the (probable) core expansion to Scotland in future patches?
I have won with settling London but you do need the other two simply for stability purposes it gets pretty horrific even with the 2 extras (Razing some idiot AI dumpster cities doesn't help). Ipswich is more it gets those two extra tiles on the continent and after when you keep playing it can have the Delta works!!
 
Spain it's "Oh you have an Armada" no problems.:lol:
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This, innit?
The Ottomans usually get involved with too many wars to make a proper effort with Athens and Egypt and the hill(forest) NW of Athens is a solid defensive chokepoint for both the Ottomans and those crusading idiots of the Reformation.
I dig your moxy, kiddo.
 
For getting the 25 level naval units. Drydock + military instructor settled, works as well. Making it easier as two cities can make em.
 
For getting the 25 level naval units. Drydock + military instructor settled, works as well. Making it easier as two cities can make em.
Running Colonialism also gives +4xp to naval units.
 
I usually have The Domincan republic, Lancaster, Athens and Alexandria all pushing them out/ Drydock. colonialism and Fanaticism. don't even bother with Trafalgar. but I need all four to met the deadline as I'm building Ironclads and steamships. It cuts out the problem of obsoleting your victory fleet so you can happily smash up every navy up to the UHV 2 deadline without further investment. and they are coming out with 10xp it's pretty sweet.
 
I usually have The Domincan republic, Lancaster, Athens and Alexandria all pushing them out/ Drydock. colonialism and Fanaticism. don't even bother with Trafalgar. but I need all four to met the deadline as I'm building Ironclads and steamships. It cuts out the problem of obsoleting your victory fleet so you can happily smash up every navy up to the UHV 2 deadline without further investment. and they are coming out with 10xp it's pretty sweet.
10XP - aka Steam-powered Cruise Missiles?
 
I gave this up as I found the English core to small to sustain all the cities needed for the final UHV.
 
It's not, there's enough space. I've done it on monarch. I believe I ran London + Manchester. The key is that the colonizing is now in two parts. You can wait until the industrial era to begin your massive second wave of colonizing. I won't lie, I was teetering on the brink of collapse for a bit, but after the digital age the core pop was enough for all of my india, australia (which I fully settled), new zeeland, and african cities (englands historical colonies except nigeria).

Canada being freed is honestly a blessing. Although I had settled all the lower canada before they spawned.
 
I gave this up as I found the English core to small to sustain all the cities needed for the final UHV.
Did you try keeping the population of most of your non-core cities low? It feels rather unnatural, and honestly pretty bad when some of them have such great tiles, but it does the job.
 
It feels rather unnatural, and honestly pretty bad when some of them have such great tiles, but it does the job.
Indeed I think it's a historically accurate mechanism. You'd like to limit excessive growth of your overseas colonies, otherwise they'll ask for independence.
 
I know that keeping cities small and useless helps and of course I maximized core pop.
Its just that I know England's core got smaller with 1.17 and as the same time the city requirement more then doubled.
 
Stability balance is between slow sustained expansion for the temporary stability boost (slowly accumulating population penalties) and bursts of expansion upon entering new ages. It is a fun line to tread.

The colonial game is the real life pyramid scheme england played till Ww1.

I find the planning and logistics part the most difficult - have to slowly build and time workers and stuff far away in a steady manner to avoid production surges and shortfalls.
 
The best working strategy would be to just found/conquer a few vital cities before the deadline for UHV1.
Place the remaining settlers to be ready to found the remaining needed cities inside America's core just before the deadline.
The cities would flip to America and you would not need to keep upkeep or overextension penalties from them.
This way you achieve UHV1 and limit overextension from UHV1.
But it this really the way you want us to play? A bigger core would allow England to keep the cities which are founded for UHV1.
 
Have you tried that strategy and does it not affect UHV3? I'm curious because I'd like to see if it would impact economic progress which would consequently impact my tech progression.

What I usually do is focus on getting Firearms, Exploration, Optics, and Geography ASAP (I don't like colonizing with xbows lol). In the meantime, I start pumping out Settlers, Xbows/Arqs, and Cogs/Galleons to prepare. Once I get Exploration, I upgrade the colonists and start colonizing ASAP, founding one city every few turns or so so that my eco wouldn't tank too quickly.

If founded and improved early enough, some of the colonial cities could actually help train navy for UHV1, especially after getting Geography (+2XP Colonialism) and Hydraulics (+4XP Drydock). I like the production output of Jamestown/Washington and Cape Town to assist Edinburgh and London (and sometimes, Dublin too) in churning out that navy for the UHV.
 
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