England Strategy

[C0ckney]

A couple of little tips for the crap England player

1) At the start get out of your allaince with Spain ASAP

2) make an allaince with the following (in this order) Lorraine, The Palinat (sp), Hesse and Hannover. Give them money do whatever it takes to get allied with these people. They will give you the power you need to beat France and Spain on any level (I am now playing at maximum AI agressivness), don't put troops in Calis.

3) When France declears war in 1494-1498 they will head straight for Lorraine so send your army over to northern France under Norfolk and take some provinces, although you should make that your army has plenty of cannon and is about 25 in total size (10/10/5 would be a good size), steal everything in sight, when the French start to beat the Germans (under no circumstances allow them to annex Lorraine) agree peace, at this stage I try to extract some money but if you feel very confident get Picardie or normandy. Now this war tends to drag on a bit and maintaining naval superiority is very imporatnt so when Cabot comes along put him at the head of the navy, exploration can wait, try to patrol the waters around England and Ireland and pray that France or her allies are too busy in Germany to bother invading.

4) The French are likely to declare war again within 5-10 years so be ready, fortify England (make sure there are no unfortified provinces) and Ulster, also build the army back up to strength. When they do declare war send the army to France (personal I like to go to the South but the North works good as well) and take whatever you can agree peace take a province or 3 and make sure its all finished by the time the Gemrans have been slapped down.

5) The most important thing is to keep this allaince togerther, with you can defeat the French and Spanish whenever they declare war and usually walk away with some new provinces

[Grumbold]

I have to contradict the previous post. Under no circumstances waste your explorers or conquistadors on European duties. Their combat bonuses are totally ineffective in Europe so they are actually worse than normal commanders except for having a higher attrition bonus.

How you deal with European diplomacy is a matter of personal taste. You certainly cannot afford to allow France and Spain to remain hostile to you unless you are part of a strong alliance of countries that border them. If they are not distracted by easier to attack opponents they will come and make a mess of Ireland or Southern England and your troops cost a lot more than theirs do and you get less tax income.

[Allemand]

I agree with the part about breaking the alliance with Spain. Then I ally with Austria, Hannover, Hessen, and either Brandenburg or the Hanseatic League (or maybe Denmark). This alliance is aimed at Spain more than France; because of the geography only Austria can help against France (which is good because you don't want your allies getting beat up too much).

The best move after this might be to attack and annex Scotland, which will probably be a French ally, and let France take Calais and give them a couple of ducats to seal the deal (but no more). Losing Calais will get France off England's back for many years, and annexing Scotland (in a separate peace, of course) is a fair exchange.

Trying to take and hold French provinces would be a drain on England's resources, as France would be a perennial enemy, and English infantry costs 12d per thousand while the French pay only 8d. This alone dictates making a permanent peace with France. Another good reason is you don't want France as your most hated enemy when you convert to Protestant (about 1515-1525).

Spain is a juicier target while she holds the Netherlands and is building an empire in America. If you want to take England on an early adventure, Spain is the way to go. The German states can help this by invading the Netherlands. But the loss in stability has to be considered.

Explorers are too valuable to waste in naval battles (and I think Grumbold is correct about them being practically useless in Europe). J. Cabot is only around for about four years, so you need to use him to discover as much as possible either in America (preferred) or the South Atlantic.

[johnmcd]

In my current game (I am Austria) I have just watched Scotland slowly annex all of England bar two provinces...

Also, I understood that max aggressiveness actually made the game easier and the computer was always going to war before it was in anyway ready to. Any comments?

[C0ckney]

Explorers do much, much better than normal (random) commanders in naval battles, conquistaodrs also outperform ordinary commanders in most circumstances.

The reason I say exploration can wait is that you have two colonists when Cabot comes along so you may as well wait and steal maps, the Spanish are very good for this. With the allaince I sugessted you can beat France and Spain every time (although not together), French troops will head staright for Lorraine, your German allies head straight for Paris leaving you free to steal everything in sight , with the Spanish you and the Gemrans simply reduce Benelux.

While this happens France and Spain won't think about invading England, however their minor allies may do, so make everything has a fort and you will be laughing. The minor powers (including Scotland) tend to send small armies without any real siege capacityso you can leave them in England should they invade and happily carry on the war in Europe

The only problem I have found with my strategy is that my badboy is now so high that every time I declare war half of Europe decides to fight me, so I just have to sit back and wait for them to declare war.

[SnowFire]

It's a bit of a chancy strategy you propose. I far prefer to let the French have Calais, sit back, and improve my provinces. I will usually start my colonization with Cabot (get Wabana and something), but for the most part those early years are spent taking apart Scotland and being at peace and preparing to recover from the conversion to Protestantism. Then you can go nuts with colonies and stuff, and start wars against the Dutch and the Spanish to go burn their trading posts. Much safer strategy that's just a wee bit slower, except it gets boring when your income is so high from your colonies.

P.S. It all depends on the person. The Russian conquistadors have movement 5, and 0 fire and 0 shock for instance, so they completely suck for leading real armies... but Drake is both a great admiral and an explorer.
[This message has been edited by SnowFire (edited March 20, 2001).]

[C0ckney]

Yeah it is quite risky, but I have found it works better (for enjoyment value anyway ), it all depends on what you want in the game, I don't really siting around waiting for colonies to grow, I prefer to get stuck in, in europe.

I am going to see if the strategy works with the new 1.08 patch which hopefully should fix some of silly AI behavior.

[Grumbold]

Initial reports would suggest that England fighting France early is likely to get a bloody nose but that is from only a handful of games. Countries are less likely to accept individual peace agreements or surrender when their alliance is winning ground on other fronts even if you have captured their capital.

[Allemand]

I played England yesterday, using 1.08, and beat France (well, sort of). I defeated two French armies that landed in Kent, and won a naval battle against the French. Calais fell to Navarro, so I made a separate peace with Navarro and gave them Calais. Then when I negotiated with the French I had one star and they paid me some money. Not bad, since I already had Scotland.

[C0ckney]

Never give up calais it is you most important base in Europe, France are harder to beat with the 1.08 and have massive resources, but they can be defeated with a little skill and pacients. One good tactic for the first war is to wait till France is besieging Calais whne they assualt it land the army is Calais they will fail in there assualt and your army will drive them off the field, pursue and wear them down, then use a siege army to steal things
[This message has been edited by C0ckney (edited March 24, 2001).]

[Allemand]

quote: Never give up calais it is you most important base in Europe

I prefer to give it up, then concentrate on taking goodies from other countries. Spain has richer targets, for example.

[SnowFire]

Just a reminder, if you control an enemy's homeland province, they have a permenant Casus Belli against you. So if you are going to keep Calais, then there's no harm in going on a rampage against France. But it's a bad idea to keep Calais but not actively pursue France, because otherwise they can start a war with you for free every time (which can be bad).

[Jonny]

Here's my England strategy:

1) Start building up an army of about 30000 men and putting them on your border with Scotland.

2) Declare war on Scotland ASAP or the French will probably get an alliance with them, making them harder to annex.

3) Conquer Scotland.

4) When France decalres war on you, let them have Calais. This will keep France off your back for a long time.

5) Send an army to capture Tripolitania and the territory to its left (Tunisia, I think) so you can have a Mediterannean port, which can come in handy.

6) When Cabot comes, send him west to discover North America. It is good if you can find Newfoundland with him, as the territories there have less, if any, natives.

7) Build colonies in North America. Be sure to wipe out any natives in the territories you colonize, to be safe.

8) Build up your infrastructure. (The three economic improvments, fortress, and manufactory)

9) Continue as you wish.

Jonny

[Chronus]

Hmmm . . . this is unfortunate.

I've been going back and forth on whether I should buy this game or not. Now it appears that, as people get more acclimated to the game, each country has a specific strategy to follow in order to win. Is this true? I don't want to be "forced" to follow a one (or two or three) and only strategic path that brings on the win. Is there enough variety to explore different strategic routes (that work well)?

[Aragon]

I played england once.. was mister nice guy.. diplo annexed scotland in mid 1500's.. abandoned calais.. focused on colonies.. boooring


About a week ago i tried england again.. militarily annexed scotland within a year.. and ended up conquering almost half of france and the Spanish netherlands-Gotta love that Norfolk