How should I play the games as English?

[Ferrum]

Been playing the game for a while, but I always had a hard time playing as English. The Franch wants to kill me, the HRE wants to kill me, and the ♥♥♥♥♥♥ pope also is a ♥♥♥♥ to me. My only foward base on Europe is Caen and I can barely expand with the HRE and Franch on me.

I playing without mods, in medium difficulty. I manage to kill the Scot off and control Britainia, but my Europe base is getting hammered constantly. My economy is also suffering becuz all the money goes to the war effort. I didn't sack the settlements for money, in fear of having more enemies on me. I got trade right with most of the faction in Europe too.

[Darisas]

On medium difficulty the AI is very weak it should not pose any challange at all. You should read some guides or watch videos and see what are you doing wrong. Once you control Britainia the game becomes very easy unless you do it super late.

[Ferrum]

Originally posted by Darisas:

On medium difficulty the AI is very weak it should not pose any challange at all. You should read some guides or watch videos and see what are you doing wrong. Once you control Britainia the game becomes very easy unless you do it super late.

I have seen some guide or videos on playing as english (mostly form Total War Forum). However, I don't know why the AI just keeps hitting me with constant attacks. The French is not a big threat to me, but with the HRE on thier side. My military just can't keep up with it. I constantly have to fight in 5:1 or 3:1 odds with these two major powers fighting on me.

[Inardesco]

Originally posted by HotSoup:

Been playing the game for a while, but I always had a hard time playing as English.

England = easy mode

Basically, if your entire ecomy is being drained by your upkeep in Caen you'll need to reform your ecnomy.

You have plenty of ports so your economy should be sufficient. Take Bruges/Antwerp and the other city in Normandy. Once that's done you can move inland.

[Ferrum]

Originally posted by Inardesco:

England = easy mode

Basically, if your entire ecomy is being drained by your upkeep in Caen you'll need to reform your ecnomy.

You have plenty of ports so your economy should be sufficient. Take Bruges/Antwerp and the other city in Normandy. Once that's done you can move inland.

My economy is the main problem, when I play as England. Even turning all but one settlement on Britainia into towns, my economy is still bottlenecked by my military upkeep. This is more so during the earlier periods, where things are still growing.

I had taken Bruges, but had to give it up in the end, when 2 full stack HRE come knocking, while my main force is attacking the French down South. The worst part is that the Pope is French now, which made things even worst.

I saw many guides that said England is easy, because it is mostly insolated. However, maybe my luck is just so bad that I ALWAYS fail as I play England.

[Inardesco]

Well, the thing that you want to do with England, is consolidate the British Isles, get up a major powerhouse economy, take Scandinavia and invade Europe.

If the AI is beating you in siege battles, either you're defending them poorly or they simply outclass you by miles in troop quality. 3;1 is the ratio ascribed in history for the attacker/defender ratio in siege battles if the attackers want to have a decent chance of winning.

Basically, if you've got 20 troops in a settlement, you won't need all 20 troops to actually defend said settlement against a 20 troop attacker.

[Fishing4Trains]

Try not to fight too many foes at once, use all available measures to placate the most dangerous enemies until you have dealt with France which is not that hard to do. Use your diplomats and Princess - award gifts, arrange marriages, even donate them your grottiest city in France - they'll appreciate that and you can always get it back later, make sure you leave a spy behind though!
DO NOT fight France, HRE and Scotland at once, the English Amry was good, but not supermen...

[Armchair Civilian]

spam the best longbows you can, keep upgrading your archery ranges.
14 longbows, 5 cav + general can wreck any army they send at you, especially if you're defending a bridge.
On the open field, arrange your bows during the deployment so you can make a semi circle of stakes, as soon as battle starts re-form them into a line - all enemy cavalry will die of stake poisoning and they slow infantry down enough for the bows to annhilate them with minimal losses.
Sooner rather than later france will request a ceasefire - counteroffer that you get Angers in return and they'll prolly go for it, now you have Angers without fighting for it ;)

[glenpritchard2008]

Never seems to be much of a problem being England. 2 ways to do it. 1) make an Alliance with France, and marry their princess to your heir in turn one. take York, then Rennes, then consolidate the British isles (taking Scotland too). By that point, you should be strong enough to fight France easily. If that's too much, ally with France in your first turn, and give them Caen. then move all your troops back to Britain and consolidate. Once you've done that, as long as you keep a few ships it should be fairly easy to defend Britain, and if you get bored you can always join in a few crusades!

[kekkuli]

Wut? just conquer whole of britain, and then rest of the world. Spam lots of armoured swordsmen or whatever they were, and longbows.

[Nexim95]

The irony is that England is probably the easiest faction to play...

[NekRon99]

If economy is hurting, are you trading with as many other factions as your diplomats can reach?

[Inardesco]

getting trade with every faction out there is useless since you'll never be trading with Egypt from Britain because there's simply no connection between the two.

As Britain, the only feasible trading partners would be Scotland, France, Denmark/HRE depending on who got to Bruges/Antwerp first and perhaps Spain/Portugal depending on who got to Rennes/Bordaux first.

Any other nation is just pointless untill you expand further and start to gain land/sea connections with them.

[Ol' Snaggle Tooth]

Conquer all the UK,have Nottingham as your only castle...Focus on economy buildings/public order buildings in the cities (markets,town halls,farms,churchs etc,,) Forces in Caen should take Rennes and hold those 2 settlements,while the UK cities generate dat dolla....then invade the Scandi countries(from forces from Nottingham) -convert them to cities-more dolla...conquer Hamburg (keep as castle to defend the scandi cities) after 20-30 turns you should be able to crush all even if youre outnumbered.

[Ferrum]

Form what I see in the comments, it seems like I have to restart the 4th time already. My diplomacy is a mess. French, HRE and the Pope are Allies, which means even just one of them send half a stack of troops to my castle at Cean, I have to defend againt a full stack of enemy troops.

[Ferrum]

Originally posted by Kibble Of Flibble:

Conquer all the UK,have Nottingham as your only castle...Focus on economy buildings/public order buildings in the cities (markets,town halls,farms,churchs etc,,)

I already did that before even taking any settlements in Europe to hopefully build a strong economy. Problem is all those buildings are still in development, when the French and the HRE attacking me. Which means I can't build ♥♥♥♥ and all my money had to go to building a large army.