England strategy ideas

[killerkebab]

I would post this in the main strategy thread, but there appears to be a heated debate as of late, not to mention 550 posts to read so I thought I'd quickly ask if any experienced players have tried this, or if there are better ideas

Play as England. Usually I send a settler south towards Winburg ASAP and then send the galley back to north Africa to find Mali - to make a trade for Divine Right. Once this is done I usually plan to build the spiral minaret to help pay for all these expensive colonies. This particular game, I ran into a problem - Arabia completed the Spiral Minaret in 1040AD. I decided on a new, very circuitous plan:

Beeline to astronomy for galleons, build some trebuchets, pikemen, and knights and once you have galleons race towards Egypt. I attacked Alexandria and Cairo and my economic situation improved in a flash! Since all our colonies (especially the early colonies) are coastal, having the Great Lighthouse under our control greatly improves our situation.

I was also surprised to find out that Egypt is in the British citymap (the cities renamed automatically). I guess this is possible without galleons too, but I was afraid galleys would get sunk in the Mediterranean. Do you all have different strategies to make money in the early game as England? Bear in mind this is the first time I've played monarch difficulty, and I didn't manage to take Egypt before 1540AD. Since I have Egypt, is it worth making a move for Jerusalem?

 

[BurnEmDown]

If you are going for a UHV then try to not conquer too many cities.
Alexandria and Cairo are very profitable for conquering but any other cities should be colonized, not conquered.
Yes Egypt is in the English stability and warmap, which removes and instability you might get from conquering (unlike some other palces which you might consider to conquer).
The Alexandria trick is very good and can be done with pretty much all Atlantic Europeans, however TGLighthouse is obsolete very quickly, and with England's UHV you'll want to tech Scientific Method ASAP which will obsolete TGLibrary, so make the most of it when you have them.

 

[Cethegus]

My strategy is pretty simple; specialize on churning out as many great people as quick as possible (preferably scientists) and after founding Academy on at London, settle them there. This will give your capital more production - insignificant still - and centralize your empire around enstrengthening the "big spot". By the time you'll become a superpower, it'll become quite inevitable that you'll start settling more and more Great Merchants.

Good tip though. Egypt never appealed as much as it should have for me.
(Also, I'd rather change the English UHV so that you could capture other countries colonies as well as found them yourself and still win. Conquest of Egypt or the Gold Coast would be so much interesting that way.)

 

[BurnEmDown]

I actually like it this way, it makes you try to expand peacefully and for example you wouldn't try to get the conquistadors to conquer Incas and Aztecs, which is historical.
Egypt was late enough to not be included in the UHV.

 

[Panopticon]

I build London and Dublin and flip Inverness. That's it. Grow big cities, leverage population into specialists. London makes Scientists, I use Inverness for production and I induce Dublin to (slowly) become the gold centre of the Empire. Settle SE Africa with the two extra settlers, build an active defence against Zulu Impi. Mass production of settlers around 1500. Settle Canada before the French. Build as few unproductive cities as possible until the UHV is within sight to ameliorate the large empire penalty - perhaps settle 3-6 cities on the second-last turn of your game. India and parts of South America aren't in high demand, so they are good for this. The point of this strategy is to have three excellent cities in Great Britain and Ireland that can sustain your expansion, so you don't need to build city infrastructure outside Europe, South Africa and Australia. Or leave Australia for the last turns and build good cities in India or Argentina.

 

[dragodon64]

I guess for the Americas peaceful settling makes more sense, but for Asia (in 3000BC), there is little historical, or even useful, free land left to settle, plus the jewel in the crown is usually completely settled. If you want a British India for the UHV, you have to raze and rebuild large parts of India, which doesn't seem quite historical to me.

 

[star15389]

For the England UHV, the script checks every time you found a city to see it if it's the third one you have on the continent. So you can capture Delhi and Mumbai and then found Madras, and that will count as three cities in Asia.

 

[Panopticon]

For the England UHV, the script checks every time you found a city to see it if it's the third one you have on the continent. So you can capture Delhi and Mumbai and then found Madras, and that will count as three cities in Asia.

Nope, it checks every time to see if you've founded three cities on the continent yet.

 

[killerkebab]

Panopticon: I should probably point out that I am not playing for the UHV at this time. This is my first go at monarch difficulty and considering the UHV took me four attempts on Viceroy I don't want to go through that again.

I've been tempted to remove Inverness, in favour of Dundee (1 tile South) - simply put, Dundee/London/Dublin can cover every single resource in the British Isles and surrounding seas except for the crab south of Plymouth. Unfortunately, to many people the removal of our own cities is cheating.

What does everyone think of sending one settler to Winburg, and the second to Madras in the first turn? To get to India without ocean we need to declare war on Arabia. The Arabians rarely have a navy in the early years and it means we can have a good colony right from the start of the middle ages.

 

[Power_of_Beer]

Unfortunately Spain is usually unwilling to open borders, and France also won't do so right in the beginning. Same religion and some tech gifts solve this problem, but it often takes some time for christianity to spread to you.
Winburg however is a very good spot but you need at least 1 defending and 1 offensive unit for all those annoying impis or it will never develop. Once grown in size its good to start military actions against India, South-East Asia or Africa.

Another tip for your main cities in England (London, Inverness, Dublin): Don't mine the iron spot near Inverness, so you can produce tons of cheap warriors for happiness and against the plague.

 

[Panopticon]

Panopticon: I should probably point out that I am not playing for the UHV at this time. This is my first go at monarch difficulty and considering the UHV took me four attempts on Viceroy I don't want to go through that again.

I've been tempted to remove Inverness, in favour of Dundee (1 tile South) - simply put, Dundee/London/Dublin can cover every single resource in the British Isles and surrounding seas except for the crab south of Plymouth. Unfortunately, to many people the removal of our own cities is cheating.

What does everyone think of sending one settler to Winburg, and the second to Madras in the first turn? To get to India without ocean we need to declare war on Arabia. The Arabians rarely have a navy in the early years and it means we can have a good colony right from the start of the middle ages.

OK - if you are playing for Space victory etc then you should simply go for Durban/Winburg and some other city with early settlers, then the standard American cities of New Orleans/Denver/Chicago/Duluth. What other city? Vikashapatnam provides problems because it's not part of your trade network until Astronomy due to Arabia, but it's probably easier to improve than any other African site. Using WorldBuilder to manipulate the scenario is indeed cheating, but nobody's stopping you if you want to do that.

Unfortunately Spain is usually unwilling to open borders, and France also won't do so right in the beginning. Same religion and some tech gifts solve this problem, but it often takes some time for christianity to spread to you.

10 Gold usually works.

 

[Ready_set_go]

Yea, I got to agree with Panopticon on that. Unless you, for some reason demanded something, which would be, well, not smart, then 10 gold will give them the +2 "Our Trade Relations are good etc.." Then, open borders and your on your way. I usually do that to get to Dublin faster.

 

[dragodon64]

Dublin is in Ireland. Are you talking about Durban, South Africa?

 

[BurnEmDown]

He could also mean Dublin, Ireland. You see it is much faster to get OB with France right away and then move the settler (in a galley) from the channel and then north into Ireland than move the galley north and around Scotland and then south to Ireland.

 

[ICNP]

Actually I managed to complete Englands' goal of British India without having to settle a third city. I had conquered one and settled 2 more (both which had been burned to the ground). Really if it was possible to allow Britian to just conquer or Vassalize India instead of burn them to the ground it would be much better.

Oh and for my game I went: London=Gold, Manchester=Production (usurped by Phily and Detroit), Inverness=Science (University of Glasgow!). I never really god much out of Plymouth and Limerick.

 

[Ready_set_go]

Dublin is in Ireland. Are you talking about Durban, South Africa?

Like BurnEmDown said, I mean Dublin. Saves you a turn or 2 to get there.

 

[killerkebab]

My first game as Monarch, 1740AD:
- In North America I have Vancouver, Toronto, Duluth, and New York
- In India I have Madras
- In Africa, Winburg, Cairo, Alexandria, and Lagos
- In South America, Buenos Aires and Montevideo (though the game called them Hurlingham and River Plate, respectively)
- In Australia, Sydney

I'm trying to stretch the British Empire to its historical limits (maybe further ) but I have a few issues:
- Since Canada is very icy and it is difficult to settle cities I take it my cultural borders will never encompass what we know today as Canada
- It is 1740 and I don't have Hong Kong, Manila, Brunei, Bombay/Calcutta, Kuala Lumpur, et cetera

Now I realise a full empire is one of the biggest challenges in the game, and I also realise I probably played a very bad game. However, can an experienced player tell me if what I am attempting to do is impossible so I don't waste my time?

 

[BurnEmDown]

Try to focus in the early game on getting Astronomy ASAP and then send out settlers non-stop. If you can keep your economy from collapsing while settling a new city every 4 turns or so you should be able to do it.
Even if you don't care about the UHV, try to get the first 2 conditions to start a free GA, do this by circumnavigating as soon as you get caravels and optimizing your settling priorities for 3 cities in each continent first and only then more cities if you want.

 

[Panopticon]

It's definitely possible to get the British Empire at its fullest extent, but
1. it's very costly because the empire stretched so far and
2. you probably need to use the 20th century to get it, so it's not historically accurate.

In theory, the best start would be to play for the UHV, while replacing the South American aspect with a bigger focus on North America before 1776.

Northern Canada is not very habitable and Britain didn't really have settlements there.

 

[PPK]

I have a few questions, as I'm also playing an England game at the moment.

I'm playing on emperor for the first time. I'm not sure if I'm going for the UHV yet (we'll see if I make it in time). It's 1550 AD and London still has 35 turns of settlers until I have them all, and astronomy is about 20 turns away so I'll try to synchronize, upgrade the galleys, and start colonizing but I think it's gonna be a very tight schedule.

I was wondering what the general strategy should be about america. Should I found the key american cities, enjoy the productivity while I have them and let them go in 1775? Because I was thinking it's probably possible to backfill around their spawn zone and have them squeezed between the coast and an army of redcoats. But then that would probably divert ressources from the third UV goal and make it plausible that someone else will get to the key eras before me. It's a trade off but securing america would turn the empire into a superpower for the rest of the game even if that means missing out on the last UV goal. And I have yet to play a really dominating game on emperor, so the option is interesting...

So far I've managed to stay slightly ahead in score with the 'London powerhouse' gambit (massed specialists, spiral minaret, u of sankore) but Turkey and Rome are very strong. And whoever said something about not mining the iron to produce warriors, thanks a lot! That's just awesome. I've had my three main cities at around 20 pop from 1100 onwards (although it does make for a slower start, as the large cities are a maintenance drain your weak economy will struggle with for a while - but it's definetely worth it). It's clearly what has allowed me to keep a competitive tech rate with only three and a half cities (Windburg isn't particularly helpful...) against the AI's bonuses.