Zigzagzigal's Guide to England (BNW)

The only Civ with two unique ranged units, England is a devastating opponent to face in the mid-game. This guide goes into plenty of detail about English strategies, uniques and how to play against them.

Introduction

Note: This guide assumes you have all game-altering DLC and expansion packs (all Civ packs, Wonders of the Ancient World, Gods & Kings and Brave New World)



While various groups including the Celts, Romans, Anglo-Saxons and Vikings have inhabited Britain, one of the world's largest islands, the Norman invasion of 1066 would help establish a distinct English culture, mixing elements of Germanic and Romance cultures. The 13th Century would see the power of the monarchy weakened in the Magna Carta and the complete conquest of Wales, the 14th Century would see the beginning of the Hundred Years' War (and their infamous rivalry with France) and the 15th Century War of the Roses would lead to the famous Tudor monarchs. Henry VII (the victorious in the war of the Roses) would be followed by Henry VIII, who split from the Catholic church. Under the rule Henry VIII's daughter, Elizabeth I, England would build colonies in the "New World" of the Americas, repel a Spanish invasion and begin to establish itself as a major world power.

In 1707, national bankruptcy in Scotland would lead to unification with England, forming Great Britain. The first nation in the world to industrialise, the loss of the Thirteen Colonies in North America did little to slow down Britain's expansionism - by the early 20th century, a quarter of the world's land and over a fifth of its population was in British hands. But this rested on Britain staying out of the frequent conflicts that raged across Europe, and come the Second World War, a lack of a foothold in mainland Europe made it impossible to stem the advance of Nazi Germany - at least, until they found an unlikely ally in Stalin's Russia. After 6 long, cataclysmic years of war, the course of Britain would forever change. After a long campaign of passive resistance in India by Gandhi, Britain's most populous and profitable colony would gain independence. Over the 20th century, Britain's influence in the world may have declined, but the standards of living for many have seen significant improvements. But now, can the union hold? May England return as a distinct nation once again? And is there even an English identity which joins 53 million people together? For in this brave new world, you are not to lead the British, but only the English, and that is a question you must answer. Reunite the English, and build a civilization that can stand the test of time.



Before I go into depth with this guide, here's an explanation of some terminology I'll be using throughout for the sake of newer players.

Beelining - Focusing on obtaining a technology early by only researching technologies needed to research it and no others. For example, to beeline Bronze Working, you'd research Mining and Bronze Working and nothing else until Bronze Working was finished.
Finisher - The bonus for completing a Social Policy tree (e.g. Free Great Person for Liberty.)
Meatshield - A unit that can soak up damage on behalf of another. Standard melee units are often good at this job.
Melee Units - Throughout this guide, "melee units" typically refers to all non-ranged military units - whether on the land or sea. "Standard melee units" refer to Warriors, Swordsmen, Longswordsmen, Spearmen, Pikemen, Landsknecht and replacement units for them.
Opener - The bonus for unlocking a Social Policy tree (e.g. +1 culture for every city for Liberty's opener)
Spotter - A unit which allows a ranged unit (usually a siege unit) a line of sight with its target. Typically, siege units have a higher maximum range than their sight radius, hence the need for spotters.
Tall empire - A low number of cities with a high population each. "Building tall" refers to making an empire a tall one.
UA - Unique Ability - the unique thing a Civilization has which doesn't need to be built.
UU - Unique Unit - A replacement for a normal unit that can only be built by one Civilization or provided by Militaristic City-States when allied.
Uniques - Collective name for Unique Abilities, Units, Buildings, Improvements and Great People
Wide empire - A high number of cities with a low population each. "Building wide" refers to making an empire a wide one.

At a glance (Part 1/2)

Start Bias

With such a high coastal emphasis, England receiving a coastal start bias is obvious. Your UA is mostly about sea-based movement, and your Ship of the Line UU is naval, so without coastal access, you can't use half your uniques.

Uniques

England's strongest in the mid-game. The Longbowman's in the medieval era but is still very good into the renaissance, their UA is probably strongest in the renaissance and that's the era the Ship of the Line comes.

Unique Ability: Sun Never Sets

• +2 to all naval units (both military and civilian) and embarked units
  
• When any Civ enters the renaissance era, gain 2 Spies instead of 1.

Unique Unit 1: Longbowman (Replaces the Crossbowman)

A standard ranged unit

Technology	Obsoletion	Upgrades from	Upgrades to	Production cost	Purchase cost	Resource needed
Machinery Medieval era 2nd column (7th column overall)	Industrialisation Industrial era 1st column (10th column overall)	Composite Bowman (100 )*	Gatling Gun (220 )*	120 *	460 *	None

*Assumes a normal speed game.

Strength	Ranged Strength	Moves	Range	Sight	Negative Attributes	Positive Attributes
13	18	2	3	2	May not melee attack	+1 range (Range)

Positive stay-on-upgrade changes

• +1 range (Range)

Unique Unit 2: Ship of the Line (Replaces the Frigate)

A naval ranged unit

Technology	Obsoletion	Upgrades from	Upgrades to	Production cost	Purchase cost	Resource needed
Navigation Renaissance era 2nd column (9th column overall)	Electronics Modern era 2nd column (13th column overall)	Galleass (80 )*	Battleship** (420 )*	170 *	720 *	1 Iron

*Assumes a normal speed game.
**Requires 1 Oil resource.

Strength	Ranged Strength	Moves	Range	Sight	Negative Attributes	Positive Attributes
30	35	5*	2	3	May not melee attack	None

*Does not include the +2 moves from England's UA. Total moves: 7

Negative changes

• Upgrade cost of 420 rather than 390 in normal speed games (+8%)

Positive one-off changes

• 30 strength, up from 25 (+20%)
  
• 35 ranged strength, up from 28 (+25%)
  
• Costs 170 production, down from 185 (-8%)
  
• Costs 720 gold, down from 770 (-6%)
  
• Costs 80 gold to upgrade to, down from 180 (-55%)
  
• 3 sight, up from 2

At a glance (Part 2/2)

Victory Routes

Note these scores are a matter of personal opinion based on experiences with the Civilization. You may discover a way of utilising the Civ more effectively in unconventional ways.

Cultural: 6/10
Diplomatic: 6/10
Domination: 10/10
Scientific: 6/10

England is an almost single-minded Civ focused on domination, though their extra Spy gives them a bit of flexibility - it can help out with cultural, diplomatic or scientific aims.

Similar Civs and uniques

Overall

For another Civ good at mid-game domination on both the land and sea, look to the Ottomans. While England has strong individual naval units, the Ottomans can easily support a huge navy and depend on sheer numbers in the sea.

Same start bias

The coastal start bias is the most common in the game. Aside from England, it's also the start bias of Byzantium, Carthage, Denmark, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, the Ottomans, Polynesia, Portugal, Spain and Venice.

Similar to the UA

Denmark, like England, has a bonus to embarked unit speed. In their case, it's only a +1 bonus instead of +2, but disembarking doesn't end the turns of their units making them faster at moving through snaky landmasses.

For naval combat units, faster speed is only found on a single unique - Portugal's Nau which has one more movement point than the generic Caravel. As such, in nearly every circumstance English naval units will be faster than those from other Civs.

England's extra Spy is the only unique bonus to espionage in the game, but having an extra Spy to steal technologies with is akin to Assyria's unique ability giving them technologies from conquests. Both help you out at catching up with the technological process of other Civs.

Similar to Longbowmen

The only other Crossbowman UU is China's Chu-Ko-Nu. While Longbowmen have the Range promotion, Chu-Ko-Nu have a promotion that acts identically to Logistics, but has lower ranged strength. Despite having different bonuses, both Crossbowmen UUs function very similarly as the backbone of a medieval army.

A full comparison can be found in the guide to China.

Similar to Ships of the Line

Ships of the Line are one of three unique ranged naval units that dominate their eras, the others being Byzantium's Dromon and Venice's Great Galleass. Dromons are restricted in usage due to the fact they replace the only naval melee unit prior to Astronomy, meaning they need land support to take cities, while Great Galleasses have a relatively small window of usage. Both of them are also tied to Civs with other priorities in their respective eras - Byzantium will be trying to found a religion while Venice will be trying to expand their trade routes. They're also both more expensive than the units they replace. Ships of the Line, however, are cheap, extremely fast, very strong and aside from a technological diversion for Longbowmen, don't have any distractions that might limit their usage in their era.

The Broader Picture

Normally, I write how to deal with overall strategies in the UA section, but the nature of England's UA doesn't lend itself well to explaining the overall route.

Welcome to England! In your hands is a nation that excels at evading damage and dealing lots of it. Unlike many Civs, its UA isn't really the most important thing to focus on; it's all about the UUs. The Longbowman is essentially medieval-era Artillery, allowing you to take down cities without the unit being hurt itself, while the Ship of the Line completely dominates naval warfare in its time.

So, let's get started.

Pre-Longbowmen

Like any UU-focused warmonger, it's important to get to your UUs quickly and launch them while other Civs' armies are less-developed. Don't be tempted just to beeline Machinery though - there's other stuff you need to deal with first.

Start off with appropriate Worker technologies, Writing and Sailing. Writing keeps your tech rate up, and Sailing gives you 6-move Triremes as well as allowing sea-based trading. Taking Optics after these technologies gives you a decent shot at the Great Lighthouse wonder, which makes your naval combat units even faster and extends their sight radius. Taking Bronze Working at some point will also be useful for locating iron spots - you'll need iron for Ships of the Line.

Now, you can go and beeline Machinery, and build up a force of Longbowmen. Build some Horsemen or Knights to go with them, and you've got yourself a mighty land army ready to deal plenty of damage with.

Don't be tempted to hold off your Longbowman attack until Ships of the Line are avaliable. That'll take far too long. If you lack iron in your starting location, try to target opponents with plenty of it if possible. Consider puppeting or razing cities you capture - it'll make National Wonders much easier to build, in particular the National Intelligence Agency, which goes well with your extra Spy.

Longbowmen to Ships of the Line

Once you've got Machinery, clean up any useful technologies and push towards Navigation. It's a good idea to build the Oxford University to help reach the technology sooner - if you time it so you complete it once you've got Astronomy, you can then instantly grab Navigation. Navigation gives you the powerful Ships of the Line.

Ships of the Line are faster, cheaper, and can see further than normal Frigates, and both attack better and defend better than pretty much anything on the seas until Ironclads - they can stand up fairly well to even them. The downside is that like regular Frigates, they need iron, and that they can't capture cities (so bring along some Privateers for any coastal city-taking you do.)

At this point, Longbowmen are still relevant, giving you dominance of the seas and also significant power on land. Still, the age of the Longbowman won't last forever as their low strength will leave them vulnerable, so at or before the time Artillery become avaliable, upgrade them to Gatling Guns. They won't be able to attack cities outside their attacking range any more, but they'll have twice the range of other Civs' Gatling Guns.

The late-game

If your UUs haven't quite managed to conquer the world by the late-game, there's two routes you can go. One way is to complement your former-UU armies with other units and conquer the world with conventional warfare (with a little help from your UA's naval speed bonus.)

Alternatively, if a domination victory really doesn't look likely, you can use England's extra Spy to help towards a peaceful victory - steal technologies towards a scientific victory, use your Spies as diplomats for tourism bonuses towards a cultural victory, or get extra delegates from Diplomats or rigging City-State elections to help towards a diplomatic victory. The scientific and diplomatic routes will generally be easier than trying to win by culture from such a late starting point.

Summary

• Push towards Machinery early on, but you don't need to beeline it
  
• Use Longbowmen with Horsemen/Knights to capture iron-rich areas
  
• Use Ships of the Line with Privateers to capture coastal cities
  
• Use your combined naval and land strength to try and get a domination victory
  
• Your extra Spy can be used to help towards backup victory routes

Unique Ability: Sun Never Sets (Part 1/2)

England's UA comprises of two very different components; one stronger earlier on (the +2 naval movement,) and one that takes effect later in the game (the extra Spy.)

+2 naval movement

All your naval and embarked units have 2 more movement points than any other Civ. This is most powerful in the early-game, where naval units have a relatively low number of movement points, but remains useful throughout the game.

+2 embarked movement



Let's break down England's UA further, and first look at increased embarked movement. Once you've researched Optics and hence are able to embark units, they'll move at twice the speed of any other Civ's embarked units (except Denmark's) and as such can often move faster by sea than on land. This makes exploring coastlines or managing cities on a long coastline much easier, and cuts the travel time needed to reach new continents.

In addition to saving time, faster embarked speed is excellent for evading enemy units. 4 moves is faster than a Barbarian Galley and the same speed as a Trireme, as an example.

Later in the game, Astronomy and Steam Power will make your embarked units even faster. Because your UA offers a fixed +2 speed bonus, the difference in movement speed will become less pronounced as the game goes on - from double speed after Optics to 50% faster after Steam Power.

Here's a table to make sense of all this.

Technology	Base embarked Speed	Equivalent to*	English embarked Speed	Equivalent to*
Optics Classical era 1st column (4th column overall)	2	None	4 (+100%)	Trireme Caravel
Astronomy Renaissance era 1st column (8th column overall)	3	Galleass Ironclad	5 (+67%)	Frigate Privateer Submarine Carrier Battleship
Steam Power Industrial era 2nd column (11th column overall)	4	Caravel	6 (+50%)	Destroyer Nuclear Submarine

*Not all units of the respective speed are listed. Those listed are units of similar eras, not taking into account uniques or other ways the speed may be different from normal.

As shown in the above table, most Civs' embarked units when left out in open waters will generally be slower than the naval combat units of the era. England's, however, generally match their speed. This means you can potentially use a low number of naval escorts when moving a large army - just take enough to be able to scout out the region in case of enemy units.

+2 naval civilian movement

"Naval civilians" refers to Work Boats and Great Admirals. Both of these will have 6 movement points per turn rather than the usual 4. For Work Boats, this is mainly useful if you're bringing them from one city to another (as the default 4 moves is enough to reach and improve any coastal tile within the city's radius usually.)

For Great Admirals, the increase in speed allows them to keep up with your faster naval combat units. It's also useful for exploration if you can generate a Great Admiral prior to Astronomy, as they're the only pre-Astronomy unit that can cross oceans.

+2 naval military unit movement

This is the core of England's UA. You will nearly always have a speed advantage at sea over other Civs, which has these advantages:

• Faster exploration
  
• You can reach enemy lands sooner
  
• You can withdraw injured units to friendly lands sooner (and hence heal them faster)
  
• It's easier to surround units to make use of flanking bonuses
  
• Naval ranged units with Logistics can perform hit-and-run attacks from a bigger distance away, allowing you to attack coastal cities with more units than before
  
• Units that are slow for their time (Galleasses, Ironclads and Battleships) no longer have a speed disadvantage and hence a major weakness is covered

Above: With the Exploration Opener and the Great Lighthouse wonder, all your military naval units have 4 more movement points to other Civs without either, making them basically impossible for enemies to chase down without some kind of ambush. There's no real need to take the Mobility promotion to take it up to +5; +4 is powerful enough already.

Below: These speed bonuses are particularly effective on Ironclads. As their base movement is doubled in coastal tiles, your UA will offer them 4 extra movement points there instead of 2. Add the Exploration Opener and the Great Lighthouse and they essentially have 14 movement points in coastal tiles, or 16 with the Mobility promotion.



Having lots of speed is nice, but why, you may ask, does it need to be taken up further with the Exploration Opener or the Great Lighthouse? The main answer is that you need to ensure you keep that edge. If another Civ takes both and you have neither, your speed will be equal. If you take both, even your slower naval units will outrun the faster enemy unit of the same era (or at least match their speed) no matter what speed bonuses they put in place. Another reason is the sight bonuses associated with the wonder and the Opener, which will be covered later in the guide.

Unique Ability: Sun Never Sets (Part 2/2)

1 extra Spy

Normally, when any Civ enters the renaissance era, everyone will get their first Spy. England, however, gets two - making them the only Civ in the game with a direct bonus to espionage.

Technology theft and defence

At first, a good move is to place one Spy in your capital city (or any other city likely to be targeted by enemy Spies) and the other in an enemy city with a high science output. This allows you to both steal technologies and protect against theft at the same time - something no other Civ can do until they enter the industrial era.

As a warmongering Civ, you're best off using additional Spies you get to steal enemy technologies. You can focus on the military side of the technology tree while using your Spies to soak up the more peaceful technologies, helping you to keep a militaristic edge.

For a slightly different approach, you can flood an enemy full of your Spies if you want to guarentee the theft of some of their technologies. So long as they're in the same era as you, they have more cities than Spies and they don't have the National Intelligence Agency (if the second condition is true, the third will nearly always be) you can ensure there's one of your Spies they won't be able to kill. This comes at the cost of not being able to defend yourself against enemy Spies, but it may be a necessary step if one major opponent is giving you a significant amount of trouble.

Spotter Spies

Aside from stealing technologies, one great use of Spies is to act as spotters, giving a line of sight to your Longbowmen, Battleships, Artillery or other such high-range units to attack cities with without being attacked themselves. It takes a few turns after placing a Spy in a city before they can carry out this function, so if you're likely to take a lot of cities quickly, you'll need plenty of Spies for the task. England can spare the Spies more easily than other Civs.

Diplomatic Ends

An extra Spy can also be useful to help get things going your way in the World Congress. You can rig the elections in an additional City-State, or use your Spies as Diplomats to more Civs than anyone else.

The latter function is probably the more useful one to England. Lots of Diplomats allows you to influence the voting decsions of a high number of Civs without having to maintain City-State alliances. For votes that Civs are fairly indifferent to, it's not expensive to get an agreement from them to vote your way.

The National Intelligence Agency

Aside from your UA, there's one additional way of getting an extra Spy - the National Intelligence Agency. It also levels up all your Spies (and new ones immediately start at level 2) in addition to reducing the effectiveness of enemy Spies in your land (potentially freeing up one of your counter-Spies.) Similar how to getting the Exploration opener or Great Lighthouse wonder helps to help preserve your naval speed advantage, building the National Intelligence Agency ensures you have more Spies than anyone else.

There's a catch though - you need a Police Station in all your non-puppeted cities. The solution? Puppet or raze what you conquer, and have some money aside for buying Police Stations in your smaller cities if needed. This route is by no means mandatory, but having two more Spies than most Civs is quite an advantage.


Above: Modern era, 5 spies. In the information era, you could have as many as 7 spies - or perhaps up to 7 extra United Nations delegates with the Globalisation technology if a domination route doesn't pan out?

Summary

• Your embarked units can generally match the speed of other Civs' naval units of the same time, meaning they don't need as many escorts
  
• Your naval combat units can generally withdraw safely from the front lines without fear of being chased
  
• You can pretty much always chase down a retreating enemy naval unit
  
• Take the Exploration Opener and/or the Great Lighthouse to help preserve your naval speed advantage
  
• 1 extra Spy means you can keep up technology-wise in the late-game slightly more easily than other Civs
  
• Consider puppeting cities you conquer to make it easier to pick up the National Intelligence Agency and hence have 2 more Spies than most Civs

Unique Unit I: Longbowman

Introduction

Longbowmen can fight cities without the city being able to attack them back, essentially making them medieval Artillery. A force full of Longbowmen together with a Horseman or Knight to act as a spotter and last-hitter (ranged units can't capture cities, so using a fast melee unit to get the last hit on a city is a good idea) can easily and safely cut through enemy lands.

It's not a bad idea to build plenty of Archers and Composite Bowmen prior to picking up Machinery, so you can just upgrade them all and get an instant Longbowman army. The sooner you launch your attack, the more powerful it'll be, so know where you intend to invade first (preferably somewhere with plenty of iron.)

Medieval Artillery

Longbowmen are the only units prior to the late industrial era to have a range of 3 straight away. The problem with this is that it's higher than the unit's sight, meaning to make use of the full range you need a spotter. That's not too hard - just move a unit so the target's in sight at the start of your turn, and move it back again at the end of it.


Above: Run-in-run-out spotting in practice.
Below: You can see hills and mountains from further away than other tiles, meaning if your target is on one, you don't necessarily need a spotter to hit it from the full range of Longbowmen.


Unlike most units with a range of 3 or more, Longbowmen do not have indirect fire. This means positioning is important. Try to attack cities from an angle with plenty of open terrain. If a city has lots of forested or jungle-covered hills, it's probably best to leave it be until later on, when your enemy is weaker and you can take your time.


Above: The forested hill to the right of the selected Longbowman is blocking it from being able to hit that enemy Knight. Being on a hill, it may fire over other unforested hills.

So, Longbowmen offer a powerful means to weaken your enemy without them being able to easily respond. In addition to this, their high range allows them to severely injure would-be attackers before they get too close, meaning they can get by with a low amount of backup from other types of units.

Special promotions kept on upgrade

• +1 range (Range)

This is one of the most powerful keep-on-upgrade situations around. Ranged units beyond Crossbowmen usually have a range of 1, which makes them particularly vulnerable to melee attacks even with their decent defending strength. However, any Longbowmen upgraded to Gatling Guns and beyond gives a range of 2, allowing you to protect them behind front-line units, withdraw them from harm more easily or just to more easily hit opponents without having to run right into them.


Above: With that marsh and the hill between my Gatling Gun and Samoa, it'd be risky to run in and hit if the unit only had a range of 1. With a range of 2, however, it's no problem.

It's a good idea to grab Ballistics reasonably early as the combat strengths of units you'll be facing will increase rapidly in the modern era, making Gatling Guns highly vulnerable if you put off upgrading them. There's not quite as much of a rush for getting Nuclear Fission to upgrade to Bazookas, but the upgrade cost at that point is incredibly cheap for a substantial increase in strength.

Unique Unit II: Ship of the Line

Introduction

In the renaissance era, naval combat becomes much more significant than in previous eras. With the ability to cross oceans, naval-only assaults on cities becomes a much more realistic prospect than before. Frigates can erode the defenses of enemy cities, ready for Privateers to get the last hit.

Both Privateers and Frigates are powerful units in their own right. Privateers are strong against cities and can capture enemy ships, while Frigates have the highest damage output of any non-unique renaissance-era unit.

Now, enter the Ship of the Line. Not only is it incredibly strong for the renaissance era, but it's good in comparison to industrial-era land units (and can even stand up to Ironclads.) Thanks to your UA, it's incredibly fast, and on top of all that, it's cheaper and has additional sight.

Building Ships of the Line

Ships of the Line have a slightly cheaper production cost than regular Frigates, which also means it's cheaper to upgrade Galleasses to them. Similar to how upgrading Composite Bowmen to Longbowmen once you have Machinery is a good idea to instantly have a force of them, you can build plenty of Galleasses ready for upgrading once you have Navigation.

The problem is, you need iron to build Ships of the Line, as is the case with regular Frigates. That's why it's a good idea to try to conquer iron-rich areas with your Longbowmen armies ready for Navigation.

The strength

With a base strength of 30 and a ranged strength of 35, the power of Ships of the Line is more in common with industrial-era units than renaissance-era ones.


Above: Despite lacking defensive bonuses, Ships of the Line are strong enough to act as meatshields - drawing the attention of enemy ranged attacks so your Longbowmen can fire upon their cities in peace.

Being ranged units, Ships of the Line are excellent for battering down enemy city defences, though they cannot take cities themselves. Bring a couple of Privateers with your Ships of the Line for this purpose (and you might be able to steal some enemy ships in the process - Galleasses as particularly good to take as they upgrade to Ships of the Line, while enemy Frigates are probably best-off destroyed as they won't turn into Ships of the Line when you capture them, hence costing you iron for a unit worse than what you could have.)

Now, how to make that high strength even stronger? The Bombardment line of promotions. With all three, your Ships of the Line fight at essentially strength 70 when attacking land units - basically atomic-era strength as early as the renaissance! If you're performing a combined land/sea assault, this will be excellent for clearing the way to move your land units in.

Sight

Above: Notice how far the sight range stretches? Ships of the Line have the same sight radius as Caravels while being slightly faster, so the only real reason to build Caravels is to save iron.

With a base sight of 3, Ships of the Line can make excellent spotters for your Longbowmen, or even for themselves if you give them the Range promotion. That's not hard to do - while the Range promotion requires Accuracy or Barrage III for land-based ranged units, for naval ranged units it only needs Bombardment or Targeting II.

Alternatively, it may be more effective to work towards the Logistics promotion. In addition to letting the unit attack twice, it lets it move after attacking, allowing hit-and-run attacks. This essentially fufills the same purpose as attacking units outside their range, with the added bonus of a second attack.

In conclusion...

Ships of the Line are more or less a one-size-fits-all naval unit (with the exception of taking cities.) They'll beat any same-era or earlier naval unit they face (even Korean Turtle Ships have a hard time against Ships of the Line) and work well against land-based units, too.

Special promotions kept on upgrade

None. Use your Ships of the Line while you can!

Ships of the Line upgrade to Battleships, which require oil rather than iron. Research Biology reasonably early so you know where oil spots are, and don't be afraid to research Electronics quickly - it may render your Ships of the Line obselete, but Battleships are better in every way (aside from having slightly less sight, but if you have the Exploration Opener or the Great Lighthouse, that shouldn't be a problem.) Be sure to bring some Destroyers with them to scout out for Submarines or to get the last hit on cities.

A problem with the upgrade path of Ships of the Line is that Battleships cannot be upgraded further, and by the very late game, their strength is actually quite poor. Missile Cruisers are better in nearly every way, aside from their lack of indirect fire. As such, try to win the game before information-era combat or be prepared to build your fleet from scratch.

Social Policies

England's Social Policy route is rather straightforward. Starting with Liberty is a good way of ensuring you can get plenty of iron for Ships of the Line, and helps support the empire you conquer. Afterwards, dip into Exploration to build on your naval advantages, and once you enter the renaissance era, go into Rationalism to keep your armed forces up to date.

Liberty

Opener

Liberty's Opener allows all your cities to expand their borders immediately without needing a Monument. Of course, you can build Monuments and use that extra culture to offset the increased Social Policy costs from having more cities.

Republic

Extra production in every city helps set up sooner. It's particularly good for coastal cities, where production tends to be low (but you'll need plenty to churn out Ships of the Line at a respectable rate.)

Collective Rule

A free Settler helps you track down good city spots. You'll want to secure plenty of iron, or at the very least a coastal spot with decent production for churning out Ships of the Line. If you can't find any iron near your start, don't worry - your Longbowmen can capture it.

Citizenship

Faster Worker speed helps to repair tile improvements in cities you've captured as well as to help develop your new cities faster in the first place.

Meritocracy

Meritocracy helps you to deal with unhappiness concerns. If you're taking cities overseas, it's a good idea to keep a coastal city so it can build a Harbour, connecting those captured cities to your trade network and hence giving you some extra happiness. Occupied cities aren't affected by the 5% reduction in unhappiness from the population you have, but puppeted cities are, so if there's a city you want to annex, it's worthwhile to keep it puppeted until you have enough gold or production to get a Courthouse up quickly.

Representation

A free Golden Age is nice, but the main advantage of this policy is its requirement for the finisher.

Finisher

You've got a few options here. Great Admirals can cross oceans before other units, which is useful if you want to scout out an enemy ahead of Ships of the Line. A Great Prophet may help you secure a religion where you may otherwise not get one, or a Great Engineer could do the same for a Wonder. And then there's always the tried and trusted Great Scientist. Placing an Academy with them is a good way of getting to Machinery and Navigation sooner - they're nearly on opposite ends of the tech tree, so it helps to have a high science rate.

Exploration

When the renaissance hits, switch to Rationalism. If you have spare policies after Rationalism and your Ideology, it may be worthwhile to return to Exploration to finish off.

Opener

You may have a speed advantage over other Civs already, but it's important to keep the speed advantage high. As the game goes on, naval units become faster, and +2 moves gives you less of an edge. That's not to mention the fact other Civs could eliminate the speed difference by taking this Opener along with the Great Lighthouse wonder. As such, taking the Exploration Opener is a wise move, even if you go no further in the tree.

Naval Tradition

Happiness! The happiness boost this policy offers comes at a crucial time, where you're likely to have launched your Longbowman wars and need to offset all the unhappiness from conquests.

Maritime Infrastructure

Coastal cities often suffer from poor production, but with both this policy and Republic from the Liberty tree, they can get off to a great start and be ready for constructing Ships of the Line in no time.

Merchant Navy

Naval buildings are now cheaper, saving you money you can use to maintain more units (or perhaps to pay for the high upgrade costs your UUs have.)

In addition to that bonus, the East India Company now offers culture and production to the city it's in. If you've mostly been puppeting and razing cities you conquer up until now, you've got a good shot at making use of that bonus. Build it in a coastal city for maxmimum impact.

Treasure Fleets

This policy is a great source of cash, and it doesn't matter whether you can manage long-distance trade routes or not - so long as they're sea based, they'll now be worth 4 more gold.

Navigation School

Even for one of the game's most naval combat-focused Civs, it's probably best to go for Treasure Fleets first. As it's worth switching to Rationalism as soon as the renaissance arrives, it may be quite some time until you get around to this policy, and even then, the cultural-focused Finisher doesn't give you a great incentive to spend a Social Policy where you could get a more powerful one. Still, if escorting Great Admirals is slowing your navy down, grabbing this policy could be worthwhile.

Finisher

Unfortunately, Exploration's finisher isn't that useful for you (unless you're trying to use England's extra Spy to help with a cultural victory.) The best use of it is probably just to deny cultural players from grabbing some hidden antiquity sites.

Rationalism

Opener

Keep your happiness positive, and you're rewarded with a global 10% science bonus - so conquer carefully and not excessively.

Humanism

If you want an immediate science boost or have tall, specialist-filled cities, you can go for Secularism first. Otherwise, Free Thought works well for wide or puppet empires, and Humanism's on the way. More Great Scientists means more science, which is always good.

Free Thought

If you're working a lot of trading posts for cash to help maintain your huge navy, you can now get science out of it to help keep a technological edge. Universities aren't too hard to get in most cities and are themselves better at producing science now, too.

Secularism

If you're going for the National Intelligence Agency to make full use of your UA, you'll probably have either a tall empire or a core of moderately tall cities along with puppets. Tall cities means lots of specialists, which you can make plenty of science out of with this policy.

Sovereignity

Now, you can get some cash back from science buildings, which again can be used to support all that unit maintenance.

Scientific Revolution

It may be hard to get Research Agreements going, but even if you can't get any going, this policy's still worthwhile for Rationalism's Finisher.

Finisher

Use the free technology to keep an militaristic edge over rivals, to help you conquer the world.

Ideology

Autocracy suits England's style of domination the best, though Order's a perfectly workable alternative if you've got a large number of cities or will need to hold plenty. This guide shows the best choices from the first inverted pyramid of tenets, so that's 3 tenets from level 1, 2 from level 2 and 1 from level 3.

Level One Tenets - Autocracy

Industrial Espionage

With one more Spy than any other Civ, you can get more out of this tenet than anyone else. In the late-game, you can beeline militaristic technologies while using your Spies to soak up the rest.

Elite Forces

Until they have the Supply promotion, naval units have a hard time healing up away from your own lands. As such, once they've been damaged, they'll be left weakened for a considerable amount of time. Elite Forces closes the strength gap between wounded units and those at full health by 25%, which is particularly useful for that naval scenario, but is also good for your land-based units, too.

Fortified Borders

This is an affordable, maintenance-free source of happiness. If you're in the business of puppeting the cities you capture, remember that puppeted cities are particularly likely to build defensive buildings, and unlikely to build experience buildings (Barracks, Armouries and Military Academies.) As such, if you have a particularly high number of puppeted cities, this could get you more happiness than the level 2 tenet Militarism does.

Level Two Tenets - Autocracy

Total War

Late-game naval warfare is much more complicated than it is earlier in the game, and as such you need a broad range of naval units. You can't simply rely on Ships of the Line upgraded to Battleships - they're highly vulnerable to Submarines. Total War gives you plenty of production and experience to help build a navy to complement your Battleships, and gives you a decent edge on land, too. Together with a Military Academy, you can get a new Ship of the Line, Battleship or Missile Cruiser straight to the Range or Supply promotions, or one promotion away from Logistics.

Nationalism

Of course, all those new naval units to support your former Ships of the Line will cost a lot in gold maintenance, so that's where Nationalism comes in.

Level Three Tenet - Autocracy

Clausewitz's Legacy

Now, you've got a huge, well-promoted naval fleet. And plenty of former-Longbowmen. It's time to take over the world once and for all. Get your armed forces prepared, and take this policy once you're ready - its limitation to 50 turns means you won't want to take it too early.

Religion

Religion is useful for England's game but is by no means a necessity. This section outlines the best religious beliefs for England by each type in decending priority order. Highly-situational beliefs are not listed, though taking a faith-based Pantheon isn't a bad idea if you want to improve your chances of grabbing a full religion.

Pantheon

God of the Sea

Coastal areas frequently struggle for production, and this Pantheon is incredibly effective at covering that issue. Combined with a Lighthouse, you can make sea resources have incredibly good yields at a rather early stage of the game.

Faith Healers

To heal up naval units, typically you'll need to bring them back to your own lands. Even with your UA's speed boost to them, that takes them out of combat for quite a while. By using Faith Healers, you can heal them up much faster, bring them back to combat sooner and speed up your conquests.

In addition to that usage, Faith Healers is also excellent if you're using mounted or naval melee units to get the last hit on a city after your ranged units have battered it down. Such units will tend to take heavy damage from the attack, and hence take a while until they can be safely re-used. With Faith Healers, that's not the case.

Messenger of the Gods

If you're likely to be taking a lot of cities and puppeting them rather than razing them, you may struggle somewhat for science as each city you own increases technology costs, but puppets produce less science than other cities. This Pantheon lets you pre-emptively account for that, and also helps you get your UUs sooner.

God of Craftsmen

This can act as a backup if you can't manage God of the Sea, offering a small amount of production to cities fairly easily.

Founder

Tithe or Church Property

Tithe is usually the stronger of the two beliefs as it doesn't require your religion to be a majority in other cities, allowing you to still get something even if you're sandwiched between Ethiopia and the Celts. Both are still useful though, giving you gold for buying units or covering maintenance costs.

Initiation Rites

Converting newly-captured cities to your religion (or spreading your religion to Civs that don't have one) isn't too hard, giving you a quick rush of money with this belief. Because it only works once per city, this belief trails off in effectiveness later in the game, but if you're making good use of your UUs, that won't be a problem.

Follower

Pagodas

Maintenance-free happiness, faith and culture. The only catch is you can't place these in puppet cities. Oh, and the fact this belief is highly competed over due to its power.

Mosques

More faith but less happiness than Pagodas, and makes a good backup or complement to them.

Asceticism

This is an affordable way to get happiness, especially if your empire consists mostly of puppet cities (which you can't buy faith-purchased buildings such as Pagodas in.) Shrines are very cheap and have a low maintenance cost, and getting to 3 followers in a city isn't difficult.

Cathedrals

Another backup if you can't get Pagodas or Mosques. The Great Art slot isn't particularly helpful as militaristic empires are typically better off using Great Artists to start Golden Ages than making Great Works, though then again, you may capture a few Great Works and need somewhere to put them.

Guruship

If you desperately need production, Guruship will help here. In new cities, you can get them started quickly by buying Workshops with gold, then filling the specialist slot for a strong production base, ready to get through other buildings quickly.

Enhancer

Religious Texts or Itinerant Preachers

Both of these allow you to maintain religious pressure more effectively without having to spend faith, freeing up more for Pagodas, Mosques and suchlike.

Just War

If you can manage to spread your religion to rival cities before declaring war, with this belief you'll make the war much more one-sided. This rests on you having a decent faith output to be able to afford plenty of Missionaries, however.

World Congress

The World Congress is always a challenge for warmongering Civs to deal with, as generally most Civs will vote against your own interests. At least you have a slight consolation - your extra free Spy can rig elections in an extra City-State, meaning potentially one or two more delegates than other warmongers in the same situation.

Note "priority" refers to how high you should prioritise your votes if it comes up, not how much you should prioritise putting them forward. If someone wants to implement an army tax, you should prioritise to vote no, for example. If you could put forward a vote, then it'd be a bad idea to put Standing Army Tax on the table. Note also that voting choices can vary depending on your game.

Arts Funding

Low priority
Vote no

Great Writers, Musicians and Artists aren't as useful to you as Scientists, Merchants and Engineers.

Cultural Heritage Sites

Medium-High priority
Vote no

Embargo City-States

Medium-High priority
Vote no

It's easier to track trading units heading towards City-States than ones heading into the territory of other Civs, and hence it's easier to avoid them being pillaged by Civs you're at war with.

Historical Landmarks

Medium priority
Vote no

International Games

Medium-High priority
Vote no

International Space Station

Medium-High priority
Vote no

Natural Heritage Sites

Low priority
Vote no unless you have a Natural Wonder of your own

Nuclear Non-Proliferation

High priority
Vote no unless you have no uranium of your own, another Civ does and they're likely to use it

Your Nuclear Submarines have a speed of at least 8 thanks to your UA (or up to 11 with the Mobility promotion, Great Lighthouse and Exploration Opener) making them extremely effective at getting Nuclear Missiles into enemy lands without them even knowing where they came from.

Scholars in Residence

High priority
Vote yes unless you're the leader technologically speaking

Sciences Funding

Medium priority
Vote yes

Standing Army Tax

High priority
Vote no

World's Fair

Low priority
Vote no

Wonders

Being a mid-game warmonger, there's a little bit of a window for building wonders in earlier on, and there's some throughout the game which are useful to pick up.

This section has a selection of the most useful wonders for England, arranged alphabetically in each era.

Ancient Era

Pyramids (Liberty Only)

The Pyramids are a highly-uncompetitive wonder, meaning it's easy to pick up. With the faster Worker speed it offers, you can clean up pillaged improvements in cities you conquer in no time, and keep your cities well-developed.

Statue of Zeus (Honour Only)

A wonder to capture rather than to build. With it, your Longbowmen will fight against cities at 20.7 strength, and your Ships of the Line at 40.25 - the former slightly weaker than a Longswordsman's base strength, and the latter slightly weaker than a Trebuchet against cities.

Temple of Artemis

A tempting wonder as it'll help you build Longbowmen faster, though building a wonder so early in the game is a huge risk. Still, if you're building tall in order to secure the National Intelligence Agency, the 10% food bonus on offer here is rather handy.

Classical Era

Colossus

The Colossus helps strengthen your economy to help you maintain your huge armed forces, though its position on the tech tree is rather awkward. It may be a wonder to capture rather than a wonder to build.

Great Lighthouse

One of England's highest-priority wonders, getting this guarentees you a speed advantage over every other Civ at sea no matter what they do (well, aside from them capturing the city you build this wonder in.) The extra sight is also lovely for exploration.

Medieval Era

Machu Picchu

Provides an extra source of money to help maintain your armed forces.

Notre Dame

10 points of global happiness helps to support mid-game conquests often held back due to unhappiness concerns.

Renaissance Era

Porcelain Tower (Rationalism Only)

While you may struggle to get any Research Agreements going, a free Great Scientist is still a free Great Scientist.

Industrial Era

Brandenburg Gate

With a Military Academy, you can build new Ships of the Line, Battleships or Missile Cruisers with an instant Range promotion, or one promotion away from Logistics. You'll be able to build new Artillery with March or one promotion away from either Range or Logistics as well.

Modern Era

Neuschwanstein

Got lots of puppet cities spending their time building defensive buildings despite being far away from danger? Turn that into something useful. Neuschwanstein makes Castles produce gold, culture and a little happiness, and gives some itself. The happiness and gold will be good for supporting conquests while the culture is good for keeping up with ideological tenets.

Prora (Autocracy Only)

Prora is a good source of happiness, which you'll need to support conquests.

Atomic Era

Great Firewall

Building the Great Firewall in your capital or a high-science-producing city will eliminate the need for having a counter-Spy there, freeing up an extra Spy to join the one from your UA and the one you may have from the National Intelligence Agency. What you do with these extra Spies is up to you.

Pentagon

Upgrading ranged units is fairly expensive (aside from upgrading Machine Guns to Bazookas) so a reduction in such costs may be useful.

Pitfalls to Avoid

England is a fairly straightforward Civ, but like any Civ there's mistakes to be made. Here's a few.

Neglecting iron

Few units are as dominant at what they do as the Ship of the Line. It's basically the Winged Hussar of the seas. Neglect taking iron spots and you lose all that potential. If you don't have any near your starting location, use your Longbowmen to capture some.

Putting off Longbowman invasions until Ships of the Line are avaliable

While Longbowmen and Ships of the Line are in adjacent eras, they're also nearly at opposite sides of the tech tree. As such, it'll take quite a while between you picking up Machinery and Navigation, and therefore there's no point to delaying launching wars until both your UUs are avaliable. The time in which both units overlap is relatively small, so start the wars with your Longbowmen and bring in Ships of the Line later.

Bringing lots of siege units with Longbowmen

The main strength of Longbowmen is that they can attack cities from outside their ranged attack radius. Siege units prior to Artillery don't have that ability, and are destroyed rather easily. Why spend production on building a unit that won't last when you can build lots of Longbowmen which will survive?

Forgetting to bring melee units with either UU

Both your UUs cannot capture cities. Horsemen, Knights or Lancers should support your Longbowmen, while Privateers go nicely with your Ships of the Line to get the last hit on cities.

Refusing to upgrade Longbowmen

True, Gatling Guns have 1 less range. But they also have over double the defensive strength and over 50% more ranged strength than Longbowmen. Once you're facing enemy Artillery and air units, the low defensive strength of Longbowmen is just too risky.

Single-mindedly heading for the National Intelligence Agency

For a Civ with 1 extra Spy, the National Intelligence Agency is powerful, but you shouldn't just avoid founding or annexing cities solely for the reason of making it easier to build it. If you have no iron, need some and there's a spot with plenty, don't hold back from taking the spot because it'll make it harder to build a Police Station in every city - take it!

The Sun Sets: The Counter-Strategies

England, like the Ottomans, are a dominant military force at land and by sea, but they have weak economic support.

Playing against the UA: Sun Never Sets

+2 naval movement

The extra movement English naval units have makes them hard to catch, but there's two ways around this problem. One, is to surround the English fleets by coming in from multiple angles, leaving them nowhere to escape to. The alternative is to close the gap. If you take the Great Lighthouse wonder and the Exploration Opener, you'll match their speed assuming they don't also have the Exploration Opener. If they do, then you can just give your military naval units the Mobility promotion to help catch up.

Of course, like most naval-based Civs, you can simply work around England's UA by attacking them by land.

1 extra Spy

England's extra Spy allows them to keep one Spy defending against technology theft and one stealing technologies at the same time, once someone enters the renaissance. As such, even if England has a technology lead, you may need to watch out for their Spies.

Probably the best way of dealing with lots of Spies is to encourage England to use them defensively. Placing a Spy in one of their smaller cities will either be a safe way to take technologies, or encourage them to recall one of their Spies to work as a counter-Spy there. If you know there's a counter-Spy in an English city, just move on to another city. By using lots of Spies defensively, England will lack the potential for stealing technologies, rigging elections or having plenty of Diplomats that it could have.

Playing against Longbowmen

Longbowmen, like Crossbowmen, are particularly vulnerable to Knights, which can move from outside their range to attacking them. Knights have a strength of 20 vs the defensive strength of 13 Longbowmen have, letting you take off quite a chunk of their health easily. Defensively, the speed advantage you have thanks to roads is excellent for hit-and-run attacks.

The best place to fight Longbowmen is where there's lots of forested hills, though areas with lots of rough terrain will be good anyway. That'll get in the way of their range, so even if they can see your units, they won't necessarily be able to fire upon them.

As ranged units, Longbowmen cannot take cities themselves. If you manage to take out all the melee units they're attacking you with, they'll be forced to withdraw.

Playing against Ships of the Line

Until Ironclads, nothing can really stand up to Ships of the Line - except Ships of the Line themselves. And thanks to Privateers, there's a way you can get some. Try to surround lone Ships of the Line with Privateers so they can't escape, and keep fighting them until you capture one. Heal it up, and you'll have a chance against the mighty English Navy.

If you're defending against Ships of the Line, keep your land-based melee units away from the coast so they don't get bombarded, and ensure your coastal cities have good defences. Try to take out their naval melee units so they can't capture your cities. Like with Longbowmen, having no "last-hitter" unit will encourage them to withdraw.

Strategy by Style

Early-game Aggressors - Watch out for ranged units and fast Triremes. Otherwise, England isn't a particularly difficult opponent.

Mid-game Warmongers - Do not attack England by sea. That's obvious. Attack them by land, and bring plenty of Knights/Lancers to take out their Longbowmen.

Late-game Warmongers - England is likely to be vulnerable to air attacks as neither upgraded Longbowmen nor upgraded Ships of the Line (Battleships, in other words) defend well against them. Submarines and armoured units will work well, too.

Cultural/Scientific Players - While defensive technologies are often at the other side of the tech tree to cultural and scientific ones, you may need to take that detour in the mid-game. For scientific players, keep in mind England's Spies can easily outnumber your counter-Spies - be prepared to build plenty of Constabularies and Police Stations to help handle that.

Diplomatic Players - Chivalry is needed for Banking, so it's likely you'll have Knights ready to deal with Longbowmen. Send Spies into England's cities to encourage them to use them defensively, so you can then rig City-State elections in peace.

Other Guides

If you like these guides and want to send a tip, you can click here![ko-fi.com]

Meta-guides

These guides cover every Civ in the game and can be used as quick reference guides.

• Civ summaries (Gives a brief overview of how each Civ plays)
  
• Civ-specific tricks, secrets and clarifications (Compiles the lesser-known features of each Civ)

Civ-specific guides, in alphabetical order

All 43 Civs are covered in in-depth guides linked below. In brackets are the favoured victory routes of each Civ.

• America (Domination)
  
• Arabia (Diplomatic/Domination)
  
• Assyria (Cultural, Domination and Scientific)
  
• Austria (Cultural, Domination and Scientific)
  
• Aztecs (Domination/Scientific)
  
• Babylon (Scientific)
  
• Brazil (Cultural)
  
• Byzantium (Cultural/Domination)
  
• Carthage (Diplomatic/Domination)
  
• Celts (Cultural)
  
• China (Domination)
  
• Denmark (Domination)
  
• Egypt (Cultural)
  
• England (Domination)
  
• Ethiopia (Cultural/Scientific)
  
• France (Cultural)
  
• Germany (Diplomatic/Domination)
  
• Greece (Diplomatic/Domination)
  
• Huns (Domination)
  
• Inca (Scientific)
  
• India (Cultural/Scientific)
  
• Indonesia (Diplomatic/Domination)
  
• Iroquois (Domination/Scientific)
  
• Japan (Domination)
  
• Korea (Scientific)
  
• Mayans (Scientific)
  
• Mongolia (Domination)
  
• Morocco (Diplomatic)
  
• Netherlands (Diplomatic, Domination and Scientific)
  
• Ottomans (Domination)
  
• Persia (Diplomatic/Domination)
  
• Poland (Domination)
  
• Polynesia (Cultural)
  
• Portugal (Diplomatic)
  
• Rome (Domination)
  
• Russia (Domination)
  
• Shoshone (Domination/Scientific)
  
• Siam (Diplomatic/Scientific)
  
• Songhai (Domination)
  
• Spain (Cultural/Domination)
  
• Sweden (Diplomatic/Domination)
  
• Venice (Diplomatic)
  
• Zulus (Domination)

[giorgie44]

An excellent write up !

[Duke Elswich]

An excellent write up! Great detail and yet readable, well done.

[Zigzagzigal]

Unfortunately at this point it's been so long since I've played Civ 5 it's hard for me to properly assess the situation. I think my internal logic was probably that the production needed for the wonder comes at a time where production would typically be diverted towards units or military support buildings.

[BuyThatAltye]

Wondering if you'll possibly reply to this comment

Is there a reason why great wall isn't a wonder that's listed here to consider building? it seems like a really good wonder that synergies a lot with England

-Longbowmen's extra range allows for more opportunities of "killzones" when the enemy can't advance as fast as usual
-Deters land invasions even more; invading by navy also isn't attractive because of ship of the lines
-Wonder unlocked on the way to workshops if you wanted to do internal trading

[Half a century]

I see your point - thanks for the guides and your answer! ...

[Zigzagzigal]

It's a competitive wonder and arrives at a time England is usually busy with warfare. If you can get it, that's great, but considering how much England relies on their UUs, it's quite a risk to take.

[Half a century]

Is there a particular reason why England shouldn't build Leaning Tower of Pisa? It's on the tech path towards Brandenburg Gate and it'll mean more Great Scientists, if one succeeds in getting it ...

[Zigzagzigal]

Thanks!

[Poop]

Your guides are fantastic, they've entirely improved the game for me.

[Conagher]

Very indepth, well done. Might I question the lack of the Halincarnus o Masonry. It generates near infinite money throughout the game, allowing for easy cover-ups of any missing money due to your military or otherwise. Ina ddition, if you can't win by War, try for the palace before other people get the idea to; with your spies and the palace, as well as the National wonder of counter espionage, + if you're lucky the great firewall, you can control the existance of the congress itself via citystate and diplomatic trade. Lastly, nobody ever seems to turn down a good gold payout, so if you know someone hasn't gone freedom, beat them over the head with money until they do what you want them to congress wise. Alternatively, warmonger specifically. Piss off one civ against another, side with one and wipe it out.