Played last night as Robert the Bruce leading the Scots. Fascinating game! I took Liverpool right away before the English could get to it, which gave me a good strategic position in northern England for later. Then I focused on taking all of Ireland so I could use it as an economic base while making the Scotland cities focus more on military units (sequence cycle of 1 military, 1 building, gearing the buildings for military production or defense like castles). Tech-wise I focused on discovering gunpowder and chemistry, then steel, so that I could invade England with higher-tech units (grenadiers and cannons versus Henry VIII's macemen, knights, longbows, and catapults). Nottingham was easy to take--almost TOO easy, but it didn't stay easy for long. I hadn't plundered his horses and iron right away so he quickly had large numbers of knights wearing down my grenadiers, and used his diplomacy to get the HRE and all the HRE's client kingdoms to declare war on me, so soon Scotland was swarming with the HRE's knights, musketmen, and catapults.
Ultimately my own production pace won the day--lots of hills in Scotland kept productive and supported by seafood, which I managed to defend with high numbers of galleys. I sent swarms of grenadiers to clean up the HRE's forces and convinced Barbarossa to make peace, after which I renewed my push to London, establishing a broad front along a line north of Bristol. I sapped Henry's strength by his repeated attempts to sally north across the river out of London to kill my grenadiers, but they held fast. Cannons blasted London's city walls down to zero defense bonus, after which I sent my stack to a position across the river, then raided London, taking it. I healed up my invading force in London, with my defensive line keeping the English away from their iron mine. With the stack healed, they marched westward and lay siege to Bristol. Yet again Henry wasted many units trying to dislodge the siege, and using the method of wearing defenses to zero, then blasting with two of the least experienced cannon (sacrificing them) and charging in with grenadiers for the final asault, won each of the remaining cities. Henry had Riflemen by this time but not in enough numbers to stave off my overwhelming force.
Finally all of the British Isles were under Scottish rule, and I felt satisfied with that. I was way behind the rest of the civs in technology and economic prowess by that time, and a conquest of Europe seemed a bit too daunting a task to be fun, so I retired at that point, but still, WAY fun!
