My First Guide- Created by ~Admin~Kestrel~

GuitarHeroMatts completely not-noobish guide to the British


Please note that all of my subsequent guides will be focused on sup games, therefore I will not discuss any treaty or deathmatch strengths and weakenesses here unless they also exist in sup games.

Generally, most people find that the British are a good all rounder of a civ, with an above average military and a very versatile and flkiexible economy that can be jumpstarted in a number of ways.

Military
Units
The British military is worth noting, as it’s slightly different from the conventional set up. The ubiquitous skirmisher is here replaced by the longbowman, which is cheaper but does just as good a job following the Yeomen shipment. At first, the Longbowman doesn’t seem very economical as it costs 20 more food than a crossbowman, but has essentially the same base stats. However, the ROF is superior (3 for the first shot, then 1.5 thereafter for the same opponent, as opposed to the 3 that the Crossbowman has in all situations) and they have a much larger range, which makes them slightly better at targeting hand infantry than the short range Crossbowman. It is also worth noting how they have a much higher hand attack than that of a regular skirmisher, meaning that should hand infantry close in the Longbowman will have a slight advantage compared to other skirmishers. When fully upgraded, although they have less HP than a conventional skirm, and less than half the bonus to heavy infantry than a Skirmisher would have, they have a slightly higher attack and the superior ROF to gun units gives them more or less the same crucial stats, whilst the 26 range means they can engage any heavy infantry and most ranged cavalry (except the Portuguese Genitour) getting the first shot and maybe another one in before the opponent can counter, which makes them excellent at defending a town center that being raided, or alternatively raiding settlers themselves, picking off the villagers that run towards the TC from outside the range of the tower. Generally, the longbowman is a superb and integral part of the British military, with the only disadvantage being the wood cost in long running games, where wood becomes harder and harder to acquire.

Apart from the unique Longbowman, the British military line up more or less matches the conventional set up, with every unit except the archaic pikeman having a number of good cards and techs raising them to above average (such as the Cavalry Combat card, boosting both Hussars and Dragoons to the second best in the game, maybe...) The British cavalry is very strong for a conventional set up, as there are some good cavalry cards and Hussars can be upgraded to Royal Guard. At first, it would seem that the British would have some trouble countering cavalry later on in the game with the lack of Halberdiers, but the excellent Dragoons and the Royal Guard Musketeers make this easier. Grenadiers are here throughout the game, and are some of the best in the game due to some excellent shipments (such as Improved Grenades and Musketeer/Grenadier Combat) and so can greatly help the British siege in later ages and in the meanwhile kill some enemy Musketeers and Pikemen. Because of the splash damage, these Grenadiers will excel at killing heavy infantry and even weak Ranged Infantry, such as Strelets, despite the penalty they have towards them! Although at first the Rocket may seem a good alternative to the Heavy Cannon, its actually a lot less accurate, has a slightly smaller range and deals less damage to both buildings and infantry. However, this is compensated by the superior unit shipments for these, where two can be repeatedly sent and three can be sent at one time. These are always useful, as unlike other artillery pieces these can only be produced at a slow rate despite the economy, so this makes the Rocket just as good when the shipments are utilised.

Military Strategies
In the early game, there are two distinct routes u will go down. One is a pure musket rush, where u send 700 wood early to get all of ur building sup and then put all of ur villies onto food and coin 4:1 (so that surplus food means more villies) and spam musketeers, which works well with Brits because of the good Age 2 tech shipments (after these they are effectively as good as unupgraded Ashigarus, but with a decent hand attack) This is good as uve got a lot of siege attack in age 2, as well as the ability of killing cav, pikes and small amounts of crossbows (In 6 Musketeers vs 6 Crossbows, the musketeers win with 5 left) As such, they can also be good for map control, and they can help defend trade posts and building sites should the need arise. If you sent 700 wood, this also means that you should be able to switch to cav if need be, and make some raiders to damage the enemy eco. And the high amounts of food and coin coming into your economy mean that you can always make fewer troops and pull a semi FF. You can even build an artillery foundry and train grenadiers to quickly destroy an enemy base or a squadron of musketeers. As such, the musketeer rush is very versatile, and is most commonly used by expert players such as NaturePhoenix and Braidon. But generally, this falls into the rush category unless you specifically want to boom simultaneously, as having all of those settlers on food and coin decreases your wood production and can slow the production of manor houses.

The other military route is the double barracks longbow/pikeman rush, where basically you age up with the 500 food politician, send 700 wood, build two barracks and start to spam longbows whilst also training villies and building manor houses to up your eco. Really, this only works if u can boom at the same time, but as settlers are gained whilst you are building houses to support troops, this should be fairly easy. The good thing about this strategy is it can easily fend off the famed 10/10 rush and Ashigaru spamming, whilst letting you boom to 40 settlers at around 9 minutes. Then once your superior eco lets u win with masses of longbows, you can start spamming pikemen to help with sieging the opponent, destroying his fb and eventually his TC. And, as wood is coming in quickly, housing wont be an issue and by 15 minutes it’s perfectly possible to have a full pop cap (50 settlers, 150 military in this case) if things are going well. Then, if the opponent starts to boom to counter, you can just send in squadrons of pikemen to level his TC.

However, as this strategy requires you to gather almost no coin (otherwise you won’t be able to maintain constant production of longbows in the early game), so generally once the player feels that they need to age, the longbow/pike rush will switch to the musketeer/hussar rush. At this point, most players will send 700 coin so that they can advance age quickly, or train two batches of hussars quickly. However, coin production will increase quickly due to the large number of villagers and the ease in upgrading coin production from the market. Generally, this strategy is less used by expert players, but as distinct units for distinct purposes are used, it’s easier to manage for a new player and requires less tactical knowledge to pull off. However, generally if the game is dragging on, all routes will lead to making lots of musketeers, hussars and petards (or falconets, depends on the situation), try not to spam longbows when everyone in Industrial, as ull have mostly food and wood gatherers and little coin, so in these late ages it leaves you with few alternatives and ultimately they will spam cav and you’ll have to adapt quick. Alternatively, upon entering Fortress you can build forward Artilery Foundries at his base and spam petards complemented with the upgraded Yeomen.

Naval Military
Between the European civs, the British have one of the best navies in the game, second only to the Spanish in certain situations. This is because of the large number of shipments available at the harbour, which specifically boosts naval capability, most of these available from Age 2. Shipments like Offshore Support and Improved Warships are available from the Colonial Age, meaning that maps like Amazonia and Ceylon won’t be any difficulty for the Brits at all. Once the British gain control of the water, the number of extra attack shipments (including Naval Gunners and Team: Monitor Combat) mean that it’s gonna stay this way unless the opponent has specifically filled his deck with naval cards. This ease at controlling large areas of the water means that the British can fight effectively on almost any map, and the extra naval power opens up different rush options on maps like Indochina and Carolina. Generally, avoid the 1 Galleon shipment as the British, when building up a fairly large navy you’ll be gathering a large amount of wood already, and it would save you a lot of coin just to build a barracks on the other side with a settler in a caravel. Then u could always build a stable, artillery foundry, outpost, or even manor boom on that side. It’s just more versatile. And cheap too. Monitor Combat is great in long run team games too, when fully upgraded a single long range attack from a Monitor boosted with this should take out a Wonder. In conclusion, the British navy excels as it is easy to propagate (the Britis will chop more wood for manor houses anyway, so this makes a fishing fleet a snap with Schooners) and some top notch shipments make it easy to dominate the sea if you manage to eliminate any opponent opposition early on. Admiralty is a must in any naval situation that could overrun, stronger warships will do nothing against 5 Frigates!

Economy
Generally, the British have an outstanding early game economy, and it’s generally expected in sup games for Britis to have a higher score than the other players. The key contributors for this great economy are very good shipments (such as 5 villagers and 8 villagers) and the British Manor. Basically, for an extra 35 Wood per house, you get an extra villager, which is outstanding early on (with the starting wood on most maps, this means that the Brits can start with effectively two more villagers then everyone else, three on maps like Deccan, Carolina and Yellow River) and will certainly give you an edge. Generally, the rule with the British is to get about 16 to 18 villagers when you are about to age up, then switch all villagers to wood so you can build 3 more manors (so thats 19 to 21 villagers in Discovery) and save enough for a barracks as soon as you advance, This gives the British a better early game economy than the Spanish, Portuguese (on land maps) Ottomans, Native Americans, Indians and Chinese in particular, meaning that you will have a slight advantage over these civs.

Once in Colonial, it is absolutely imperative to send 700 wood as your first shipment, in almost every circumstance, so you can build even more houses quickly, a market, a stable/barracks depending on your strategy, or an outpost to defend your villagers or for map control. This should hopefully give you a 10 villager headstart on some of the more economically slow civs at this point (particularly Spanish, Ottomans and Indians) which can be exploited to the hilt. After this, shipments will either be made of military shipments (in the case of a known 10/10 rush, or something like that) or more settlers (constant production from the town center, 12 manor houses and the 5 and 4 settler shipments should give you around 50 villagers in 10 minutes, which will beat any rush) but really depend on the situation.

Apart from manor booming, the British economy is more or less conventional, except for the presence of livestock. Although this option seems appealing (with several unique British shipments that greatly boost livestock) any attempts to go massively into livestock seriously early in the game will seriously impede any attempts at a manor boom or massing longbows or musketeers, and will often lose you the game. Dont get me wrong, British livestock is great for injecting life into the ecomony, but food spent on masses of sheep is highly impractical when it can be spent on more settlers or soldiers, things that are immediately useful especially more so in the case of a rush. Rather, the British livestock should only be used once you have placed yourself in a comfortable position from manor booming, with about 50 villagers, ready to go into Fortress Age, at least two barracks and a stable/artillery foundry and optimally a good wall around your base. Although this certainly isn’t easily achievable in a sup game, livestock booming massively will only hinder you if you are missing any of these factors. At this stage, if youve planned ahead knowing full well that you were able to boom and wall up, you should have a specific deck with Wool Staple Ports and Fulling Mills in it (this emphasises how really youve got to know that you will be safe enough to commit to this successfully) Send these two cards only once you are in a comfortable position (Fulling Mills first, then Wool Staple Ports) and train sheep (never ship these from the Home City, another shipment would certainly be more useful; even commiting two shipments to this is quite risky if it fails) like mad. Once all of the sheep have been made, resume a normal game, and pressure the opponent, make sure he hasn’t massed troops or done something that youll regret livestock booming for. Then, once the sheep are ready, this is in effect about 3000-6000food waiting for you that can be gathered at nearly the rate of a crate. Livestock booming is risky, but if it succeeds then the game is yours, unless the opponent has settler spammed in the mean time...

The British naval economy (Fishing Boats) is fairly average, with all of the required shipments (Schooners and Fish Market) being present, with Whale Oil helpful for the musketeer rush or a fast age up.

General Summary of the British
In conclusion, the British are a good civ to choose in most situations. The free settlers from housing and a generally above average military will welcome any new players and propagate them with a (hopefully) boosted economy early on. The ubiquitous Longbow will also welcome new players, being a very efficient skirmisher early on and when massed able to counter lets of threats and assume many roles. However, there is also plenty of challenge for experts here, micromanaging each type of unit and each distinct military strategy to make it the most effective against their opponents. Because the Brits are more inclined to gather a lot of wood early on, it’s also easier for players to set up outposts and trade posts early on, ensuring good map control for the rest of the game. And once experts can learn to simultaneously manor boom and rush at the same time, the British will be in a much better situation than almost any other civ, with a far superior amount of settlers and the longbowman, an excellent tactical device in the early to middle game with its excellent range, attack and ROF. Generally, once you get used to playing the British it comes naturally and as the more mundane tasks are somewhat managed by manor booming for more settlers and using the longbow for multiple roles, it leaves more room for individual styles than most other civs will offer immediately.

Also, it’s worth noting that the following shipments are absolutely mandatory for any game with the Brits, assuming you have a Lv40 HC or higher.
· 3 Settlers

· 5 Settlers

· 700 Wood

· Yeomen

· Fort

· 8 Settlers (especially steming from the musketeer rush)

· Both Factories

· 3 Rockets (exceptional and much better value than 2 Heavy Cannons, despite the small drawbacks of the unit)

My next guide will be on the French in sup games. Good luck trying out the British!


Any comments?

This is sorta a strat I tried to use when I play. But you have worked out some of the kinks. Looks good to me a very very untrained eye.

Thanks for the feedback! What I should do next is make a section on things not to do, so other people dont make silly mistakes whilst trying this strat.

Very good idea!