How should I play England?

[Bamboocha]

Hey guys,

I've just finished a game on Emperor setting with Washington (it ended in a pretty easy science victory, since I started out on my own continent. I spent most of the time building science buildings and making RA's. To be honest it was kind of boring) and now I want to play a game with England on a huge map. I'm not sure what kind of victory I want to go for yet, but I do know I want to experiment with naval units.

I do know that I have a few questions for you before I want to start playing as England.
1. What map should I play on? It's obvious pangaea won't benefit Englands naval focus, but should I go for earth, archipelago or continents? All three of them have their advantages and disadvantages, and unless I'm mistaken England has an ocean starting bias anyway.

2. How should I use naval units? This is a really big one because it's Englands speciality and something I'm unfamilliar with (the only time I ever use naval units in my other games is to escort a landing party if I want to invade another continent).

3. What techs, buildings, wonders etc. should I go after for my grand strategy?

I hope you guys can help me .

 

[Laurwin]

Hey guys,

I've just finished a game on Emperor setting with Washington (it ended in a pretty easy science victory, since I started out on my own continent. I spent most of the time building science buildings and making RA's. To be honest it was kind of boring) and now I want to play a game with England on a huge map. I'm not sure what kind of victory I want to go for yet, but I do know I want to experiment with naval units.

I do know that I have a few questions for you before I want to start playing as England.
1. What map should I play on? It's obvious pangaea won't benefit Englands naval focus, but should I go for earth, archipelago or continents? All three of them have their advantages and disadvantages, and unless I'm mistaken England has an ocean starting bias anyway.

2. How should I use naval units? This is a really big one because it's Englands speciality and something I'm unfamilliar with (the only time I ever use naval units in my other games is to escort a landing party if I want to invade another continent).

3. What techs, buildings, wonders etc. should I go after for my grand strategy?

I hope you guys can help me .

England has good ships, the unique unit replacing frigates, but they also require iron, which you really could use for the longswords or trebs.

Bottom line is that you need melee units, you cannot win in medieval era with only ships and longbows. Knights are ok, but you might not get enough horses or even iron, which does place limits to your army size in a sense.

I don't think England can really be played in a viking-ish way i.e. invade only coastal areas, hitting hard and fast and raiding the cities from the sea. For that purpose the ships-of-the-line are still a little bit too weak bombarders for a single turn city attack against prepared coastal cities. Unless your ships are well promoted theyll take soak up some dmg as well, and you can't stack the ships around cities the same way as modern 3 range battleships or carriers. I think the best you can achieve comparitively with ships-of-the-line is naval dominance, and on land some kind of defensive attrition war, with the Lbows in suitable terrain and naval gun support it could be very fruitful.

Pikemen and L-bows can survive but only with continued naval support IMO, if youre going up against a credible land power.

Frigates take away iron as you build them, so a safe choice would be to work to musketmen and/or cannons and leverage the military advantages from there?

 

[Fluffball]

The main attraction for me with England, apart from me being English is the Longbows. Ship of the Line is a nice bonus but it is situational and far from game changing although they might be more interesting if the AI could actually do a decent naval war.

Longbows on the other hand are devastating! With the added bonus of requiring no resources to build so can be spammed as much as you like.
A couple of melee with two rows of Longbows behind them can annihilate pretty much anything for quite a good chunk of the game and even as they become out of date they can still be placed behind your cannons for extra fire support until you learn artillery and can double stack them instead.

 

[Bamboocha]

@Laurwin & Fluffball: So wait, both of you are suggesting I shouldn't focus on naval warfare? With a faction that not only gets +2 movement on naval units but also gets a UU that's naval based? That's at least a little odd: doing that would leave me with a faction with no UA and only one UU.

 

[Rpger29]

If you play Archipelago, a strong naval focus will pay great dividends. I'd go for Great Lighthouse and if applicable, Colossus.

If you play Continents or Small Continents, the longbow supported with knights/longswords would be more my focus militarily.

I too am looking for even more advice on playing England. I've yet to play a strong non-archipelago map with them.

 

[KillingMeSoftly]

I disagree with the guys saying you shouldn't worry about focusing on naval units. Though unless you really like archipelago-style maps I recommend against it as it'll be much too easy as England. Instead you should play Continents, Small Continents, or Fractal. Both have plenty of water for you to work with.

Personally I love going naval but I'm partial to the Commerce tree, even though a lot of people on these boards say it's terrible. I think it fits England rather well, both from a thematic and game-play perspective.

The main reason that people don't like naval warfare is that ships are terrible at bombarding cities-- even though they should be great at this. The main reason is that ships don't have the Siege promotion. However you can circumvent this through promotions, and with Range (3 squares for all ships, 4 when Battleship) and Logistics (attack twice and move after). Triremes upgrade to Ships of the Line, so this is a good way for you to get a head start on these promotions. Once you have Range you won't have to worry about cities returning fire. Typically in my experience if you're attacking a strong contemporary city with walls or other defensive buildings then your era-appropriate ships will usually only deal 1 damage, or 2 if you're lucky. Thus you should always bring 3-4 or more ships if they'll be your primary bombardment force. With Logistics only a handful of ships can bring down just about any city if you spend some time hammering it from range before landing your troops. Amphibious promotion is also good for your land units if you're going to be doing a lot of invasion across the seas, that way you won't need to actually land your troops if the city is directly on the coast. You can have a few select units be your "Marines" and have Amphibious, keep these only for those kinds of landings while all your other units have more typical promotions.

Prime spots are along the coast with 2 or more sea resources, preferably with a luxury nearby (goes double if its a luxury you already don't have). If you pick up Commerce then these sites with 2 or more sea resources will become gold and production power-houses once you build Harbors and Seaports there. It becomes absurd if they're near river tiles especially once you can construct Hydro Plants, but those come much later. The great thing about Commerce is that you eventually gain +1 Happiness for every copy of a Luxury, even if you have it already. Thus it isn't much of a problem to gain extra copies, especially if a site has several. You can trade these to other Civs for more cash. You still keep the happiness bonus, too!

England's unique ability guarantees your fleet will always move swiftly and will allow you to defend a far-flung coastal empire, which is something you'd want to go for. With control of the seas you can cherry pick the best coastal city sites or simply take & puppet them from anyone. Deny them their navy and there's not an easy way for them to retaliate. Even if they attack your newly conquered/settled land you'll have a fleet of ships off the coast that can easily repel the invaders, as land units have a lot of trouble hitting naval ships. This goes double if you have Logistics because you can move in, hit two units, then withdraw out of range. Naval ships can also pick up a line of Promotions that vastly increase their damage against land units.

If your capitol has 2, especially 3 or more coastal resources then you should highly consider making the Colossus a priority. You'll be raking in so much cash it'll make your early conquest and expansion well funded. The Great Lighthouse is also a good choice as it makes your already swift fleet even faster. It's also good before you get the policy in Commerce that boosts naval movement and sight, as your ships with Range won't actually be able to spot an enemy 3 hexes away on their own. With both the Great Lighthouse and social policy even your later Battleships can exploit their huge range on their own.

The main issue with upgrades is that Ships of the Line don't upgrade to Battleships, but Destroyers instead. So unless you build a few Ironclads and work up their promotions, your Battleships won't have Logistics or Range. This can be mostly circumvented if you construct Battleships at a site with Military Academy, Brandenburg Gate, and if you go Autocracy.

Anyway, that's my advice. Fresh naval units aren't that great at bombarding cities, especially on their own. But if you have a fleet of well promoted naval vessels they're as good or better than cannons/artillery. Use them well as don't let them be sunk, they take work to get to that level. A great way to train your early ships is to declare war on the very first City-State you find, before you discover any other Civilizations or City-States. Build some Triremes and just constantly bombard their units and cities for constant XP. Just don't let your guys get sunk; Triremes aren't very durable.. get Range promotion ASAP!

Oh yeah, and regardless of the naval aspect, Longbowmen are great. Essentially mini-artillery that don't come with Indirect Fire promotion. They're super-awesome on the defensive and even better when besieging cities. Pikemen + Longbowmen are a great combo for taking cities while you're using all your Iron to produce Ships of the Line.

 

[Veneke]

There was a War Academy guide written on strategy for England. You can view it here: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=437948

Some replies to your questions OP:

1. England is weakest on a Pangaea, but they can still do well if you stick to the coastline. Continents or Small Continents is your best bet if you don't want to stack the settings in your favour. Go for archipelago if you're not concerned about that.

2. Against the AI your naval units will, barring an unusual development, destroy the enemy even without England's advantages. Remember that all naval units suffer a 60% str hit when defending against a naval bombardment, so naval units are rather fragile. One-shotting frigates with an upgraded Ship of the Line is not at all uncommon.

3. With regards to a grand strategy - getting the Great Lighthouse, Great Library and, if the start favours it, the Colossus are good early wonders to try and get. Also, considering all of your advantages are military focused England tends to lend itself to a domination victory. The guide linked above goes into this in more detail.


I think you underestimate both the Ship of the Line and the Longbowman Laurwin. Fluffball has hit the nail on the head. Longbow's are effectively Medieval Era artillery and when you consider that artillery are generally regarded as a game-changing unit as far as warfare is concerned that's not something to be wasted on defence.

Longbows+Pikes/Muskets+SotL's is your best combination. Longbows are your artillery (3-4 of these is usually more than sufficient), Pikes/Muskets can take cities/defend the Longbows (just maintain enough to hold the line so the enemy can't break through to the Longbows) and your SotL's create a beachhead. One thing to note here is that this combination only requires Iron for your SotL's.

I wouldn't worry about the horses as they don't really fit England's style of play. England excels at rapid transport between areas of operation and strong, but slow, movement from the coast inland during the Medieval/Renaissance period. Horses are simply wasted movement - not that you shouldn't build them if you have Horses just lying around, but if the choice is between a Longbow and a Knight, the Longbow wins out every time.

England doesn't do raiding warfare as well as Denmark, although it can achieve it with some micromanagement. England tends to lend itself towards a series of amphibious invasions with a well promoted army, in which coastal cities are captured and then left relatively lightly defended as the army moves to its next location or to a staging point.


Edit:

Got ninja'd by KillingMeSoftly, and I agree with almost everything he said. A few points:

I wouldn't be too concerned with the SotL->Destroyer upgrade. By that time, naval units will be doing well to do 1-2 points of damage to a city a turn and what matters is the number of attacks rather than the strength of the attack. In my experience, Destroyers will tend to do the same amount of damage as Battleships to high defence cities.

I'm not convinced about the Amphibious promotion. Certainly it's an advantage, but coastline attacks from England should pummel the coastline until you can walk in there rather than fight on the beaches. Which is rather unlike Denmark, where fighting on the beaches is kinda the done thing. That said, it can go either way and a few with Amphibious is probably not a bad thing.

 

[Fluffball]

Personally i'm not saying you shouldn't play naval, only pointing out that the naval bonus is not really good enough as a reason to choose to play England over any other civ, which is even more pronounced because the AI give mediocre naval opposition at best.

It's like blindfolding someone you wish to fight when they are already tied to a pole. It's going to make it a little easier but isn't going to change the outcome.

To put it into a gameplay perspective, when i don't play England i don't even notice the loss of the naval bonus but i really miss Longbowmen as Longbowmen are the game changer for England even though they are meant to be the naval civ.

 

[KillingMeSoftly]

I wouldn't be too concerned with the SotL->Destroyer upgrade. By that time, naval units will be doing well to do 1-2 points of damage to a city a turn and what matters is the number of attacks rather than the strength of the attack. In my experience, Destroyers will tend to do the same amount of damage as Battleships to high defence cities.

I'm not convinced about the Amphibious promotion. Certainly it's an advantage, but coastline attacks from England should pummel the coastline until you can walk in there rather than fight on the beaches. Which is rather unlike Denmark, where fighting on the beaches is kinda the done thing. That said, it can go either way and a few with Amphibious is probably not a bad thing.

Yeah, I pretty much agree. Destroyers with Logistics are generally just as good as Battleships with Logistics when hitting high-defense cities, as both are going to usually deal only 1 damage anyway. I like having a couple Battleships though, they're a bit sturdier and have further range, and are more effective taking out units. Hardly needed, though. Amphibious isn't really needed either since you can just wait until the city is at 1 health and capture with any unit. But an Amphibious unit(s) you can take the city a turn or two earlier.

Using Battleships and Amphibious units is really a question of whether you want to micromanage more for a little extra edge.

 

[Veneke]

Yeah, that's probably fair and you are more likely to micromanage an amphibious invasion than any other type of confrontation that you'll encounter.

 

[Dai]

The thing about naval domination is that England's bonuses aren't really necessary for it, because the AI generally neglects naval warfare, even on maps that favor it. A small number of up-to-date ships are all it really takes to have as much control over the sea as you could want, with rare exceptions. On top of that, naval domination doesn't make you win the game. At best, it lets you persistently harass the AI and serves a support role.

The Ship-of-the-line may be one of the most irrelevant UU's in the game. Most (though not all) UU either allow you a considerable military advantage in the era they're in (Legions, for example), carry promotions that make the units better forever (Jags), or give the unit important new capabilities (Keshiks), and the best often have some combination of all of these. The SotL has none of them. A swarm of SotL, even with the movement bonus, isn't going to get you anywhere. The AI is so bad at naval operations that small edges there are largely wasted, and they're not a particularly efficient way to assault cities. (I'm not saying that it's impossible to take a city on their backs, just that if you can do that, you probably could have taken the city as easily using the resources on more conventional units; an exception might be cities built on very small islands.)

England's most significant strength may really be the longbowmen, which is a remarkable unit that you should capitalize on as much as possible regardless of your strategy. I tend to see England's naval advantages as nice little perks, but it's hard to base a strategy around them. (The increased speed is pretty nice on water-heavy maps, as it allows you to get away with a somewhat smaller navy than you might otherwise want or need.)

 

[Veneke]

Naval domination alone doesn't let you win the game and in the normal run of things its focus is limited at best, certainly. England's bonuses not being necessary to dominating the oceans isn't really the point. The question is how to best play England not what's the best way to win the game, and the answer to how to play England is to leverage your advantage on the oceans in a way that other Civs don't. It's that kind of thinking that leads to the conclusion that the SotL is an irrelevant UU. It's irrelevant only because most strategies tend not to rely upon naval superiority.

On a minor note, the SotL is pretty impressive having +2 movement, +2 ranged str and reduced production cost. Would it be better with a free promotion or major ability instead of 2 minor boosts? Probably. I don't think anyone is suggesting that England doesn't need some attention.

England's advantages certainly pale in comparison to other Civilizations, and to make the most of them you have to utilize an atypical strategy. The point is that its doable, even if its an unnecessary complication. That said if you want to play England properly at the moment, that's what you have to do. The speed bonus btw isn't to allow a smaller navy per se, but rather to decrease the vulnerability of embarked units and increase the tactical flexibility of all of England's ships.

 

[jbevermore]

Sotl is pretty weaksauce, there's no real getting around it.

I don't really like it even from a flavor perspective. England has always had a strongly dominant financial sector, and I liked the stock exchange in IV much better.

As everyone else has said, controlling the seas is never hard. England is the weakest Civ in the game for that reason, in my opionion. Strong longbowman not withstanding.

 

[chazzycat]

it's not about whether controlling the seas is hard or not. Fact is, with Ships of the Line, you can hit harder and faster than regular frigates. Any strategy based on conquest of coastal cities is going to be significantly strengthened by using them. It's either going to be easier or faster, both of which are good things.

Also longbows.

That being said, I would not be opposed to some kind of financial benefit to their UA.

 

[Veneke]

The lack of a financial aspect to England is a bit surprising. Has anyone else noticed though that all of the European factions have two unique units rather than a unique unit and unique building? I'm not sure whether it's coincidence or a conscious decision, but it always struck me as odd.

I'd prefer to see a decent financial benefit for their UA and give the SotL +2 movement by promotion.

 

[MasterMishi]

if u have 6 iron, 5 frigates and a longsword can take coastal cities, even 6 and a pike

 

[Bibor]

How should I play England?

4-4-2




sorry, just couldn't resist

 

[ShahJahanII]

4-4-2
sorry, just couldn't resist

I don't get it...

 

[trueblue]

is the longbowman a secret reference to them playing the long ball?

 

[Veneke]

I don't get it...

It's a typical English football/soccer formation.