English Pros and Cons

[GrizzGolf]

So what are they? What’s the most common build order with them and what are the pros and cons of this civ?

[Earl Greyman]

pro: Farm is cheap, you could afford more farm than others if you cant or lazy to get enough sheep with your scout. Age up come with free double archery at feudal age so you can build a bunch of longbows faster instead of spending them building barracks or archery, you could snipe some villagers at early weaken their economy, their attack range is longer than any other unit at early game and hard to be countered if reach certain numbers, 2nd TC at castle age can boost your economy faster than others, "farming gold" at imperial age without traders could save your day in some condition.

con: Imperial age doesnt provided you anything great compare to other civs and your longbows is totally useless at late game even they got fully upgraded.

TLDR: Godlike at early game, sucks at late game.
TLDR2: feudal age get blacksmith and upgrade infantry build siege, some rams and bunch of longbows could do ez fast end

[Harris]

+ don't need professional scouts
+ don't need to fish
+ don't need to trade
+ don't need relics
+ don't need to contest map resources much
+ sustainable late game through indefinite gold
+ huge feudal power spike
+ all-rounder
+ exceptional defense
+ counter ranged cavalry users
+ armed vills
- average, slow economy
- one trick pony
- overreliant on longbowmen that scale poorly into late game
- poor choice of unique units/upgrades
- trivial siege
- average walls for a turtle civ

[Cacomistle]

Their early game is pretty good because longbow are stronger than other archers and they get a landmark that's basically 2 free archery ranges.

Their mid game is pretty bad because they have no real economic bonus until they're forced to farm. Considering all the food on the map, this bonus takes a very long time to pay off. They do have a tc landmark to help with their eco, but still a tc is a long term bonus whereas some age 3 landmarks start paying off immediately.

Then their late game is fine. I'm gonna diverge on a lot of the opinion here, I think a lot of people just braindead spam siege every game, and English isn't particularly great at that. But I think they're one of the best civs in the game to do basically anything else. They get by far the best late game food economy, their late game gold is only equaled by rus with 5 relics and hunting cabins or HRE with 3+ relics, and they have the only archer unit which I think is actually still useful late game which gives them a pretty decent counter to a player spamming spears to protect their siege. I think the trick is just trading early and often as english in late game instead of letting it get to some slow deathball.

I think players like beastyqt for example who like slow deathball playstyle have found english to be weak, but then when you see them in the hands of player's like hera or demuslim who favor less turtely faster playstyles english often even seems to compete with the likes of Chinese late game by never letting the game get to that sort of turtely state where they have access to all the gold they could want and can safely mass 10+ bombards.

In short, fight early, turtle and boom mid game, come out in early imperial with large non siege based army (they have amazing food eco so the last thing you want to do is spam units that cost no food) and keep on constant pressure so the opponent can't spam bombards.

I get why people say they're weak late game but as much as I hate siege and find it incredibly boring I don't think its broken enough as to be some unbeatable necessity that should always be blindly built and English late game is very well suited for literally anything but siege spam.

[Subtle Butt ( >ω<)っ ♡]

Very powerful early game with access to longbows and early M@A as well as your vills being better at fighting. Longbows pretty much destroy any ranged unit including HC/Streltsy. Easy transition to farms and gold farming is really good at Imperial. Network buff is very strong and gives you easy map control.

Their biggest problem is having a bad siege line up. Ribaulds need a price reduction or range increase or maybe both to be worth using over mangonels. Their siege can do good especially with the network buff but outside of the network, its completely generic. The AoE trebs are terrible compared to bombards. Maybe if the upgrade gave them 100% accuracy like Warwolf in AoE 2 or maybe a castle age tech.

Overall, English is an all-rounder good civ not really weak in any phase of the game except when it becomes an imperial siege war. You cant do anything vs culverins, longer ranged springalds and Chinese bombards. And thats every civ except for a mirror match up or Delhi (which they'll have other things to compensate)

[Major Sparkles]

Originally posted by Harris:

+ don't need professional scouts
+ don't need to fish
+ don't need to trade
+ don't need relics
+ don't need to contest map resources much
+ sustainable late game through indefinite gold
+ huge feudal power spike
+ all-rounder
+ exceptional defense
+ counter ranged cavalry users
+ armed vills
- average, slow economy
- one trick pony
- overreliant on longbowmen that scale poorly into late game
- poor choice of unique units/upgrades
- trivial siege
- average walls for a turtle civ

This pretty much sums it up.

[Harris]

Saying this time and again, English is a weird civ. A "defensive powerhouse" (c) on paper, you need to actually drop turtling and cosplay Mongols if you want to get any value out of them. It's feudal push into castle push into imperial push. Just had a 4v4 as English on Dry Arabia, and we won probably because we were pushing for the whole time.

Then there's arty issue. There's nothing bad that siege dominates post-Medieval. If anything, that's realistic. What's problematic is that in the world where everyone gets some sort of siege advantage, English is average. A trash aoe damage upgrade for trash trebs that are barely used even during castle as a waste of resources is a joke. I ever saw trebs used to annoy me turtling, and once, comically, to deliver a final blow to my wonder in the closing seconds of the game.

English would be S tier if ribaulds were a straight upgrade over mangonels, but as it stands, it's just a weird unit that costs like a bombard and is very hard to get any value from. As such, your choice is a comp of longbows and springalds to counter mangonels. And maybe m@a for the frontline.

[Nanoswimz]

Pros: good early ram-bow push.
Cons: everything else. Bow is useless in siege stage, no special siege unit, no landmarks that boost warfare or economy. French is english on steroids.

[GrizzGolf]

Alright thanks everyone!

[Aluminum Elite Master]

Originally posted by Cacomistle:

Their mid game is pretty bad because they have no real economic bonus until they're forced to farm. Considering all the food on the map, this bonus takes a very long time to pay off. They do have a tc landmark to help with their eco, but still a tc is a long term bonus whereas some age 3 landmarks start paying off immediately.

The quote gets at one of the bigger take-aways I have looking at the English.

While Delhi and Abbasids get foraging bonuses, Rus gets hunting bonuses, French get quicker villager production, HRE get early inspiring prelates... I mean, while every faction gets some pretty immediate econ bonus, the bonus for Eng is delayed.

And like the quote says, the TC landmark is something you invest in that pays off only after it's been up and running for a bit.

The English economy is just a basic vanilla economy until you hit later stages. Hence, like the quote goes on to say in all of what I cut off, Eng feels like a side that in reality should fight early with their longbows and men-at-arms and only turtle up way later. Faster farming and enclosures are great to have, but if you don't interrupt your opponent's econ early on, it's going to be a struggle getting to those later Eng econ boosts in decent shape.

[Cacomistle]

Originally posted by Aluminum Elite Master:

Originally posted by Cacomistle:

Their mid game is pretty bad because they have no real economic bonus until they're forced to farm. Considering all the food on the map, this bonus takes a very long time to pay off. They do have a tc landmark to help with their eco, but still a tc is a long term bonus whereas some age 3 landmarks start paying off immediately.

The quote gets at one of the bigger take-aways I have looking at the English.

While Delhi and Abbasids get foraging bonuses, Rus gets hunting bonuses, French get quicker villager production, HRE get early inspiring prelates... I mean, while every faction gets some pretty immediate econ bonus, the bonus for Eng is delayed.

And like the quote says, the TC landmark is something you invest in that pays off only after it's been up and running for a bit.

The English economy is just a basic vanilla economy until you hit later stages. Hence, like the quote goes on to say in all of what I cut off, Eng feels like a side that in reality should fight early with their longbows and men-at-arms and only turtle up way later. Faster farming and enclosures are great to have, but if you don't interrupt your opponent's econ early on, it's going to be a struggle getting to those later Eng econ boosts in decent shape.

I think you can alternatively play quite greedy as English though. Like if you go immediate tc then go up to castle age, you have strong defensive bonuses to protect yourself with, and you don't need map control so inability to push out and take say a 2nd or 3rd berry bush or hunt matters a lot less to you. There's a mid game area where the opponent will likely have a better army, but its hard to push English so its not necessarily easy for them to do anything with that better army before your eco kicks in.

I only see hera really do that commonly, so its kind of hard to say how well it works. For example it was looking pretty good against rus (who will fall behind in long term eco with their standard build, but if they tried to for example go 2nd tc in feudal along with english they just give up everything that makes the civ good), but then I feel like rus can just go for say a maa siege push instead of the stnadard horse archers and English have a lot of trouble surviving, or maybe just harass and go 2nd tc themselves (which won't really put them behind much in eco because they've got the relics and likely still get sacred sites).

I still feel their late game is better than people think it is, so if both you and the opponent play greedy (and they're not like Chinese HRE or Delhi on a map with 3 sacred sites), you're in alright shape and can probably have the advantage in late castle early imp and maybe late imp (when gold runs out).

I think if you wanna learn how English is played, right now Hera is the best player to watch, maybe DeMuslim. I have seen both do quite well with mid-late game English where many players seem to think they're weak. The aggressive just rush them English I think anyone can figure out.