Zigzagzigal's Guides - England (Vanilla)

A colonial powerhouse, England settles and conquers far and wide to bring the economic and cultural riches of the world back home. Here, I detail English strategies and counter-strategies.

Legacy Guide

If you have the Rise and Fall expansion, click here for the updated guide.

This guide is no longer updated, but will remain for the sake of those without the Rise and Fall expansion.

Introduction

Note: This guide only covers content released prior to the Rise and Fall expansion. Content from any DLC pack released between the base game and Rise and Fall is marked as such.

The Royal Navy have made their preparations. With the help of a band of allied pirates we call Sea Dogs, we are soon to sail overseas. The distant shores are rich in gold and in cultural treasures. Through great wealth and great cultural strength, we shall influence the world like none before us. This promise of glory is what motivates our growing Redcoat ranks. Now, let us set sail, set sail to where the sun never sets.

How to use this guide

This guide is divided into multiple sections explaining how best to use and play against this specific civ.

• The Outline details the mechanics of how the civilization's unique features work and what their start bias is (assuming they have one at all).
  
• The Victory Skew section describes to what extent the civ (and its individual leaders where applicable) are inclined towards particular victory routes.
  
• Multiple sections for Uniques explain in detail how to use each special bonus of the civilization.
  
• Administration describes some of the most synergistic governments, civic cards, pantheons, religious beliefs, wonders, city-states and Great People for the civ. Only the ones with the most synergy with the civ's uniques are mentioned - these should be given more consideration than they would be for other civs but are not necessarily the "best" choices when playing as the civ for a given victory route.
  
• Finally, the Counter-Strategies discusses how best to play against the civ, including a consideration of leader agendas if the civ is controlled by a computer.

Note that all costs (production, science, culture, gold, etc.) mentioned within the guide assume a game played on the normal speed settings. To modify these values for other game speeds:

• Online: Divide by 2
  
• Quick: Divide by 1.5
  
• Epic: Multiply by 1.5
  
• Marathon: Multiply by 3

Glossary

Terminology used in this guide and not in-game is explained here.

AoE (Area of Effect) - Describes bonuses or penalties that affect multiple tiles in a set radius. Positive examples include Factories and Stadiums (which by default offer production and happiness respectively to cities within a 6 tile radius unless they're within range of another building of the same type) and a negative example is nuclear weapons, which cause devastation over a wide radius.

Beelining - The strategy of obtaining a technology or civic quickly by only researching it and its prerequisites. Some deviation is allowed in the event that taking a technology or civic off the main track provides some kind of advantage that makes up for that deviation (either a source of extra science/culture or access to something necessary for a eureka or inspiration boost.

CA (Civ Ability) - The unique ability of a civilization, shared by all its leaders. Unlike unique units, buildings, districts and improvements, civ abilites do not have to be built.

Civic cards - Another name for policy cards; you fill up your government with these for additional bonuses and can switch them for free every time you unlock a civic.

Compact empires - Civs with cities close together. This is useful if you want to make use of districts that gain adjacency bonuses from other districts, maximise the number of copies of the same district in the same area, or to maximise the potential of area-of-effect bonuses later in the game.

Dispersed empires - Civs with cities that are spread out. This is useful if you want to ensure cities have plenty of room for both districts and tile improvements. Civs with unique tile improvements generally favour a more dispersed empire in order to make use of them, as do civs focused on wonder construction.

GWAM - Collective name for Great Writers, Artists and Musicians. All of them can produce Great Works that offer tourism and culture, making them important to anyone seeking a cultural victory.

LA (Leader Ability) - The unique ability of a specific leader, which like civ abilities do not have to be built. Usually but not always, they tend to be more specific in scope than civ abilities. Some leader abilities come with an associated unique unit on top of the standard one every civ has.

Start bias - The kind of terrain, terrain feature or resource a civilization is more likely to start near. This is typically used for civilizations that have early bonuses dependent on a particular terrain type. There are five tiers of start bias; civs with a tier 1 start bias are placed before civs of tier 2 and so on, increasing their odds of receiving a favourable starting location.

Complete information on start biases within the game can be found in the Civilizations.xml file (find the Civ 6 folder in Steam's program files, then go through the Base, Assets, Gameplay and Data folders to find the file). If a civilization is not listed as having a start bias there, it does not have one, even if you feel like you keep spawning in the same terrain when playing as that civ.

Tall empires - Empires that emphasise city development over expansion, usually resulting in fewer, but bigger, cities.

Uniques - Collective name for civ abilities, leader abilities, unique units, unique buildings, unique districts and unique improvements.

UA (Unique Ability) - A collective name for leader abilities and civ abilities.

UB (Unique Building) - A special building which may only be constructed in the cities of a single civilization, which replaces a normal building and offers a special advantage on top.

UD (Unique District) - A special district which may only be constructed in the cities of a single civilization, which replaces a normal district and offers some unique advantages on top. In some cases, there may be minor disadvantages as well, but these are always outweighed by the positive features. All unique districts cost half as much to construct relative to the regular districts they replace.

UI (Unique Improvement) - A special improvement that can only be built by the Builders of a single civilization. Unlike unique buildings or districts, these do not replace a regular improvement. Some require a technology to unlock, and many have their yields improved with later technologies. "UI" always refers to unique improvements in my guides and not to "user interface" or "unique infrastructure".

UU (Unique Unit) - A special unit that may only be built by a single civilization, and in some cases only when that civilization is led by a specific leader. These usually replace an existing unit and offer extra advantages (and occasionally minor disadvantages as well in exchange for bigger advantages).

Wide empires - Empires that emphasise expansion over city development, usually resulting in more, but smaller, cities.

Outline (Part 1/2)

Start Bias

England has a tier 3 start bias towards coastal tiles. This makes it fairly likely your starting Settler will be adjacent to the sea. This makes it easier to make use of the Royal Navy Dockyard early on, as well as Sea Dogs later.

Civilization Ability: British Museum

• Archaeological Museums built by England have six slots for Artefacts, up from three.
  
• Theming bonuses for Archaeological Museums require all six slots to be filled instead of needing three Artefacts of the same era from different civs.
  
  • The era or civ does not matter for England; the theming bonus is only achieved when all six slots are filled.
    
  • The theming bonus doubles the culture and tourism output of the Artefacts present in the Archaeological Museum, as usual.
• Archaeologists may excavate up to six artefacts, up from three
  
• Cities with an Archaeological Museum may build a second Archaeologist. The two archaeologists are still capped at a maximum of six excavations between them, and using up the last charge on one will remove them both from the game.
  
• All of these changes do not apply for Archaeological Museums originally built by other civilizations, and English Archaeological Museums keep their advantages even if other civs capture them.

Victoria's Leader Ability: Pax Britannica

• Founding a city on a continent other than the one containing your capital grants you a free melee infantry unit.
  
  • This bonus does not function in duel-size maps as they only have one continent.
    
  • The free unit will be the strongest you can currently construct based on your technology and access to strategic resources.
    
  • The free unit will start will full health and can move and fight immediately.
    
  • Cities may be not be captured or received in a deal.
• Constructing a Royal Navy Dockyard in a city on a continent not containing your capital also grants you a free melee infantry unit.

Victoria's Unique Unit: Redcoat

An industrial-era melee infantry unit which does not replace anything

Research	Obsoletion	Upgrades from	Upgrades to	Cost	Maintenance	Resource needed
Military Science Technology Industrial era	Satellites Technology Information era	None	Mechanised Infantry (470 )	340 or 1360 or 680 *	5	None

*Purchasing units with faith requires the Theocracy government, which in turn requires the renaissance-era Reformed Church civic. This number does not take into account Theocracy's 15% discount on faith purchases.

Strength	Ranged Strength	Moves	Range	Sight	Negative Attributes	Positive Attributes
65	N/A	2	N/A	2	None	+10 vs. anti-cavalry units +10 on a continent not containing your capital Disembarking uses just one movement point

Notable features

• No resource requirement, unlike Musketmen
  
• 340 production cost, 42% higher than a Musketman (240) and 21% lower than Infantry (430)
  
• 65 strength, 10 more than Musketmen and 5 less than Infantry
  
• Maintenance cost of 5, 1 higher than a Musketman (4) and 1 lower than Infantry (6)
  
• +10 strength on a continent not containing your capital
  
  • This bonus is useless in duel-size maps as they will only generate one continent
• Disembarking uses just one movement point
  
  • After disembarking, the Redcoat cannot have more movement points remaining than its limit on land, minus one.

Outline (Part 2/2)

Unique Unit: Sea Dog

A renaissance-era naval raider unit which replaces the Privateer

Research	Obsoletion	Upgrades from	Upgrades to	Cost	Maintenance	Resource needed
Mercantilism Civic Renaissance era	Electricity Technology Modern era	None	Submarine (310 )	280 or 1120	4	None

Strength	Ranged Strength	Moves	Range	Sight	Negative Attributes	Positive Attributes
40	50	4	2	2	Unable to capture cities Does not exert zone of control	Ignores zone of control Invisible to enemy units unless adjacent to them May coastal raid, pillaging an adjacent land tile or capturing an unescorted civilian unit Can capture non-Barbarian naval units when destroying them, if adjacent to them

Positive changes

• Can capture non-Barbarian naval units when destroying them, if adjacent to them
  
  • The chance of this occuring scales based on the strength difference between the Sea Dog and the unit it defeats. Weaker units are more likely to be captured.
    
  • Captured units will start at 25 health.

Unique District: Royal Navy Dockyard

A classical-era speciality district which replaces the Harbour

Research	Terrain required	Required to build	Base production cost	Maintenance	Pillage yield
Celestial Navigation Civic Classical era	Coastal or Lake Must be adjacent to land.	Lighthouse Shipyard Seaport	27 *	None	25

*All districts increase in production cost over the course of the game. If you have fewer copies of a district in total than the average among all players, it will be 40% cheaper to construct.

Adjacency bonuses	Other yields	Great Person points	Other effects
2 for an adjacent city centre 1 per two adjacent districts (including the City Centre) 1 per adjacent marine resource (fish, whales, crabs, pearls, offshore oil) Adjacency bonus will be added to production with a Shipyard present	1 regardless of the presence of a Commercial Hub 2 if constructed on a continent not containing your capital	2	Enables the Harbour Shipping project Domestic trade routes to this city provide +1 International trade routes to this city provide +3 Allows its city to construct ships, even if the City Centre is inland New naval units built by the city spawn on this tile unless already occupied by a unit Naval units constructed in this city require only one copy of a strategic resource instead of two, where applicable Embarking land units onto this tile, or disembarking to land from this tile, costs no additional movement points and cliffs are ignored.

Positive changes

• -50% production cost
  
• Provides 1 trade route capacity, regardless of the presence of a Commercial Hub
  
• Provides 2 gold per turn when constructed on a continent not containing your capital
  
  • Duel-size maps only have one continent so this bonus cannot be used there.
• 2 Great Admiral Points per turn, up from 1
  
• All naval units constructed in this city have +1 movement point

Victory Skew

In this section, the civ is graded based on how much it leans towards a specific victory type - not how powerful it is. Any score of 3 or above means the civ or leader has some kind of advantage to the victory route above a hypothetical civ with no unique features. A score of less than 2 means some kind of aspect of the civ actively discourages a particular victory route. All values are subjective and may be edited in future.

Leader	Culture	Domination	Religion	Science
Victoria	8/10 (Good)	9/10 (Ideal)	5/10 (Decent)	4/10 (Acceptable)

Culture is a very effective victory path for England. Archaeology is already a reliable way to expand your tourism output, and getting twice as many Artefacts per Archaeological Museum and not having to bother with setting up theming bonuses is a great help. In addition, extra trade routes from the Royal Navy Dockyard makes it easier to get the 25% tourism bonus from having a trade route with another civ. Generally, it's a good idea to combine some warfare with culture so you can capture antiquity sites from other civs.

But what England is really strong at is domination. Both Sea Dogs and Victoria's leader ability can secure you a lot of units for free, while Redcoats are very powerful on foreign continents. Extra Great Admiral Points and naval movement from Royal Navy Dockyards will help you obtain naval supremacy. Both land and sea forces alike can be build and maintained easily thanks to the gold that stacking both Commercial Hubs and Royal Navy Dockyards can offer, and the production from internal trading.

Religious victories aren't a conventional route to victory with England, but considering international trade can help spread your religion and England gets more trade routes than other civs, it's not entirely without merit as a strategy.

Scientific victories could provide a backup victory path if neither culture nor domination are possible. England doesn't get much in the way of science boosts, but having lots of international trade routes combined with the Ecommerce policy card (available at Globalisation) can provide plenty of production to build spaceship parts with.

Unique District: Royal Navy Dockyard (Part 1/2)

Let's begin with the most powerful and usually earliest-arriving of England's uniques: The Royal Navy Dockyard. Practically everything a regular Harbour does, it does better in some way either directly (the extra Great Admiral point) or indirectly (the +1 movement for naval units for example).

Getting them built

Royal Navy Dockyards arrive at the Celestial Navigation technology. If you start on the coast near at least two sea resources, it's possible to beeline the technology but it isn't necessary to do so. Otherwise, it's often worth going to Writing first for Campuses and the science they offer.

Here's all the technologies you'll need:

• Sailing - Boost: Found a city next to the coast. Thanks to England's start bias, you can frequently achieve this on your first turn.
  
• Astrology - Boost: Discover a natural wonder. A bit luck-based but can often be achieved within a few turns. Keep in mind that units off exploring aren't keeping you defended back home.
  
• Celestial Navigation - Boost: Improve two sea resources.

Position your cities in order to optimise adjacency bonuses. Generally, you should settle your cities adjacent to both a river and the sea. A Royal Navy Dockyard should be on a tile adjacent to both the City Centre and the tile on the other side of the river to the City Centre. You can later build a Commercial Hub on that latter tile; it will receive a +2 adjacency bonus from the river as well as +2 from the Royal Navy Dockyard. An exception to this rule may occur if sea resources are positioned in such a way you can receive strong Royal Navy Dockyard adjacency bonuses somewhere apart from the City Centre or a river. Shipyards make the adjacency bonus of Royal Navy Dockyards add to the city's production, so their adjacency bonuses are more important than those of Commercial Hubs.

Because the district expands your trade route capacity and it's highly affordable, it's worthwhile for it to be one of the first things (if not the first thing) you build in new cities. Send some Traders over to the new city so they can set up internal trade routes for food and production, getting the district up and running quickly.

Trade route capacity

Normally, a city can add 1 trade route capacity if it has either a Commerical Hub or Harbour. Getting both will still only add 1 trade route. For England, however, Royal Navy Dockyards and Commercial Hubs can add trade routes even if the other one is present in the city. This doesn't quite double your trade route capacity, but it can get close to it, giving you an enormous boost to food, production, gold or anything else you use those routes for.

Using trade routes internally is a good way to get new cities growing. With use of policy cards like Triangular Trade (which convieniently comes at the same civic as Sea Dogs) you can still get a lot of gold out of them as well. While the production helps set up initial districts, the gold can be used to quickly acquire units and buildings where necessary.


Furthermore, the fact that stacking Royal Navy Dockyards and Commerical Hubs is very much viable can grant you huge adjacency bonuses. Commercial Hubs get +2 gold for an adjacent Harbour as well as from rivers. All this gold can make you one of the game's richest civs even without international trade. This is a captured city, where the City Centre isn't optimally located for Harbour adjacency, but I'm still getting a lot out of the fact I can stack the two districts..

If you're after a cultural victory, remember that having a trade route to another civ gives you a 25% tourism boost against them. England's high number of trade routes allows you to both trade internally and trade with them, so you don't have as tricky a choice to make unlike most civs.

Finally, as any Harbour you capture will turn into a Royal Navy Dockyard, civs that already have a Commercial Hub and Harbour in the same city for whatever reason will provide a considerable boost to your trade route capacity as you capture them.

Gold on foreign continents

It's a small bonus relative to the others, but building a Royal Navy Dockyard in a city on a continent that does not contain your capital gives you a +2 gold bonus. This bonus doesn't function on duel map sizes as they only have one continent, and tends to be effective sooner on larger map sizes where you don't need to cross oceans to find new continents.


Use the continents lens to work out which areas are eligible for the +2 gold bonus and which aren't. Remember that Victoria's leader ability will also give you a free melee infantry unit for settling outside your home continent as well, and another free melee infantry unit once this unique district is built!

Once you have Cartography and can begin to cross oceans, it's not a bad idea to set up some colonies on foreign continents, close to other civs. Aside from the extra gold and free melee infantry units, it'll also provide a nice forward base for your navy and army. It's true you'll anger those civs in the process, but you'll probably be waging a lot of wars soon anyway so it's not like that matters.

Unique District: Royal Navy Dockyard (Part 2/2)

Naval mobility

A rather helpful bonus - especially early on when naval units are slower - comes with the Royal Navy Dockyard's +1 movement speed bonus to all naval units constructed in the city. Getting a navy to a new continent can take a while, but the speed bonus should cut the journey time down by a few turns. If you can manage the Great Lighthouse wonder as well, you'll have a +2 naval speed advantage over everyone else. Sea Dogs will find this speed bonus useful to chase down weak enemy ships and to escape from tricky situations, especially once they have the Silent Running promotion allowing them to move after attacking.

Remember, however, that the naval mobility bonus won't affect naval units which were neither constructed nor purchased, such as those obtained from Great People or captured by Sea Dogs.

Double Great Admiral points

After all the other bonuses, getting two Great Admiral points instead of one might not sound like much, but remember this is in addition to the fact that England should build far more Harbours than pretty much any other civ. You don't need to choose between Royal Navy Dockyards and Commercial Hubs, after all. It's not inconceivable to produce Great Admiral Points four times as fast as everyone else, giving you the lion's share of Great Admirals throughout the game.

If you can secure both Santa Cruz and Yi Sun-Sin (both renaissance-era Great Admirals), you can get an early Ironclad Armada which complements your Sea Dogs beautifully when picking off weak enemy coastal cities. Note, however, that aside from pillaging and promotions, Ironclads cannot heal until you have access to coal.

If you have the Persia and Macedonia Civilization Pack, you can make a stab at the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus wonder. It's available at Defensive Tactics, which is directly on the path to Mercantilism, and makes all Great Admirals able to provide their retirement bonuses twice. That means you can get a retirement bonus sooner than you might otherwise do, as you can still keep the Great Admiral around for their strength and speed bonus. Probably the most powerful Great Admiral to get two retirement bonuses out of is Joaquim Marques Lisboa in the modern era - they provide a permanent -25% war weariness modifier per retirement. Halved war weariness without having to dedicate any policy cards isn't bad!

For more details on the most relevant Great Admirals for England, go to the Administration section of this guide.

Summary

• Get Royal Navy Dockyards built quickly in new cities
  
• Have City Centres, Commerical Hubs and Royal Navy Dockyards in a triangle to maximise adjacency bonuses, preferably with a river between the first two
  
• Use internal trade routes to help new cities establish themselves
  
• Set up bases on foreign continents for bonus gold and units, but more importantly as bases for your army and navy
  
• Extra naval mobility helps your navy avoid damage, chase wounded units down and generally save time
  
• England dominates Great Admiral accumulation, and gains greatly from the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus wonder.

Victoria's Leader Ability: Pax Britannica

I spy a new continent...


...and get a free Swordsman!

Victoria's leader ability can be great for helping you defend new cities without having to dedicate time to building up a new army - well, except in duel maps where there's only one continent and as such it doesn't function.

Before we get to that point, though, let's explain how it works. Obtaining a city on a continent not containing your capital gives you a free melee unit. You will receive a...

• Warrior if you meet none of the following conditions.
  
• Swordsman if you have Iron Working, access to Iron and none of the following conditions.
  
• Musketman if you have Gunpowder, access to Nitre and none of the following conditions.
  
• Redcoat if you have Military Science and none of the following conditions.
  
• Infantry if you have Replaceable Parts but not Satellites yet
  
• Mechanised Infantry if you have Satellites.

Note how Redcoats are included in that list. They're strong units when they arrive, but the production cost and the fact you can't upgrade another unit to them would slow down how fast you can build them. But thanks to this ability, you can get some Settlers ready to found cities on new continents and raise an army quickly! Train those Settlers ahead of time, and escort them to new continents ready to found a city as soon as you research Military Science. If you bring along a Sea Dog navy, you can pick off some weak enemy coastal cities, raze them and quickly refound them for a virtually free army. That also can cut down the amount of amenities you need.


New city and a new Redcoat. Those Barbarians won't know what hit them.

More details about using Redcoats themselves will be covered in their own section, but one useful thing to know is to hold off researching Replaceable Parts for as long as possible as Infantry are weaker than Redcoats when fighting on foreign continents.

You don't need to raze and resettle every city you take. Decent ones without Harbours present can still contribute to your military if you build a Royal Navy Dockyard there, and obviously powerful cities with strong infrastructures or lots of wonders are worth keeping around.

To save time getting a Royal Navy Dockyard up (and hence a second free unit), buy a Builder and use them to chop down woods or rainforest.

Summary

• Early on, the bonus helps keep new cities defended.
  
• Train Settlers ready for when you have Military Science.
  
• Use your navy to capture and raze small enemy coastal cities so you can resettle them and gain new military units.

Unique Unit: Sea Dog

The Sea Dog isn't any more powerful than the unit it replaces (though it will benefit from the Royal Navy Dockyard's speed bonus), but can potentially give you a huge navy for free.

Getting to Sea Dogs

Sea Dogs are fairly unusual among unique units as it arrives on the civic tree rather than the technology tree. Once you have Political Philosophy, Drama and Poetry and Games and Recreation, then you'll need these:

• Defensive Tactics - Boost: Be the target of a declaration of war. This happens pretty often, and if it doesn't, you've probably had a pretty easy start so that'll compensate for the lack of a boost.
  
• Recorded History - Boost: Have two Campus districts. Can be tricky considering how Royal Navy Dockyards and Commercial Hubs compete for your district slots.
  
• Feudalism - Boost: Build six farms. Easily done with a couple of Builders.
  
• Civil Service - Boost: Grow a city to size 10. Can be tricky to achieve in time; having a city with plenty of sea resources or room for farms will help.
  
• Medieval Faires - Boost: Have four trade routes active. Easy thanks to the Royal Navy Dockyard.
  
• Guilds - Boost: Build two Markets. Not exceptionally difficult considering England's incentive to build Commercial Hubs for more trade routes.
  
• Humanism - Boost: Earn a Great Artist. A tricky boost and one you'll often have to do without.
  
• Mercantilism - Boost: Earn a Great Merchant. If you've been building Commercial Hubs alongside your Harbours, this should be doable.

If you're struggling any of these boosts but think you may be able to achieve them, it might be a good idea to make a detour to Exploration for the Merchant Republic government. It also offers Press Gangs, which helps you build Sea Dogs faster - helpful considering their relatively high cost.

The role of Privateers

Privateers are the first naval raider unit, a class that also includes Submarines. They're a bit weaker than Frigates (40 strength and 50 ranged strength vs 45 and 55 respectively) but are invisible unless an enemy is adjacent to them. They also have the coastal raid ability, letting them pillage land tiles next to the sea. You can get all kinds of yields out of this (not to mention the fact that pillaging farms heals your unit).

Privateers may attack land units and cities if they're in range. They can't ignore city defences, so it'll take a while to wear them down (unless the city is fairly weak or lacks defences altogether) but they also don't have a penalty against cities like ranged infantry does. If your Sea Dogs don't have something better to do, wearing down city defences isn't a bad idea, especially considering their invisibility attribute makes it hard for enemies to retaliate. Make sure you bring some melee naval units as well, or some embarked melee land units, so you can capture the city.

Naval raiders also come with a decent set of promotions. Homing Torpedos gives them a +10 strength bonus against naval units, so your Sea Dogs can take on Frigates more effectively. Silent Running lets them move after attacking, which is great for keeping the unit hidden and avoiding taking damage. Wolfpack lets the unit attack twice per turn, which is extremely powerful combined with high mobility and moving after attacking.

Capturing enemy ships

First of all, here's three screenshots showing you how to use the ship-capturing ability:


Your Sea Dog must be adjacent to the naval unit you want to capture. It cannot be a Barbarian unit or an embarked unit. If you set it up correctly and are about to land the killing blow, you should see the percentage chance to capture the unit appear when you hover over it.


It's mine! Forming a fleet or armada with a Sea Dog is a good idea as the capture chance increases the stronger your unit is relative to theirs.


Unfortunately, captured Privateers don't turn into Sea Dogs. They also start with just 25 health, so be sure to get them to your home territory so they can heal!

Okay, with that out of the way, yes, the Sea Dog ability does work. It's just a bit more complicated than the description of the unit in-game suggests. You have to be right up next to the unit you want to capture (giving your Sea Dog's position away) and you can't capture Barbarians (so you can't just wait around a coastal Barbarian encampment).

It's worth remembering that ships you capture won't get the +1 speed bonus from being constructed at a Royal Navy Dockyard because they, obviously, weren't. That means captured ships can lag behind when you're sending your navy to new continents.

What this ability is great for is providing you with naval superiority without you having to spend much production or gold on a large navy (although watch out for maintenance costs!) If your enemy has a strong navy, you can pick off and convert any units that might have wandered off from the pack, or convert one of their front-line naval units and slow them down while they kill a unit they used to own (keep in mind that losing a unit increases your war weariness three times as fast as regular combat). If your enemy doesn't have much of a navy at all, well, you can use the regular Privateer advantages of coastal raiding and attacking coastal cities without them being able to retaliate.

Eventually, you'll need to pick up the Electricity technology - partly because of the useful Power Plant building and partly because it's on the way to Computers and the doubled tourism output it offers you - making Sea Dogs obsolete. It's not a bad idea to try and form Sea Dog armadas before that point to help for them to be a little more resilient (and more likely to capture enemy units). Any Privateers you capture should be promoted to Submarines. Once modern-era naval warfare becomes commonplace, Sea Dogs become fairly ineffective at naval warfare so they should mostly be used for getting the last hit on enemy ships for the chance of a capture.

Summary

• Units you capture should be brought to your homelands to heal
  
• If the enemy lacks a navy, just use Sea Dogs to pillage and attack cities with
  
• Form fleets and armadas with Sea Dogs so they can remain relevant for longer.

Victoria's Unique Unit: Redcoat

The Redcoat has 65 strength - 10 more than a Musketman and only 5 less than Infantry, and on continents other than your capital has 75 (5 more than Infantry and 10 less than Mechanised Infantry). They can handle pretty much anything prior to the atomic era and even some units then, and backed by Siege Towers (assuming the enemy doesn't have the Steel technology) or other siege support, they can do good damage to cities.

The Road to Redcoats

Firstly, let's look at how to unlock Redcoats. You'll need Military Science, an early-industrial era technology. It's pretty easy to beeline, but you'll generally want to get Cartography first so you can start settling colonies overseas. Education is also often worth getting for the science from Universities, and Mass Production for Shipyard production bonuses (as well as the Venetian Arsenal wonder, which is very useful in conjunction with Sea Dogs), but the more technologies you grab off the main track, the later you'll get your UU and the less effective it'll therefore be.

Here's all the technologies you'll need starting in the medieval era:

• Machinery - Boost: Own three Archers. Archers are good early defenders so this isn't a hard boost to obtain.
  
• Castles - Boost: Have a government with six policy card slots. Can be tricky, especially when you're heading for Mercantilism.
  
• Printing - Boost: Build two Universities. As they provide science, they'll help you move through technologies faster anyway. The downside is that Education is away from the technologies needed for Redcoats.
  
• Siege Tactics - Boost: Have two Bombards. Just ignore the boost; it's a pain to achieve at the best of times.
  
• Military Science - Boost: Kill a unit with a Knight. Although Chivalry's a bit off your research path, researching it is cheaper than the extra science needed to research Military Science without the boost. Just buy a Knight with all your riches and use it to kill a Barbarian with.

Assuming your navy is in a decent shape, start a war with a civ outside your home continent a couple of turns before you have Military Science for maximum effect. That gives you a bit of time to wear down their defences. With a captured city, you can raze to the ground and place a new one there once you have Military Science for a free Redcoat which can move and fight right away! You can either bring siege support with your navy or buy it in the city you've just captured, and get to work wearing down the defences of additional coastal cities. Eventually, you can start moving inland.

You may need to build or buy extra Redcoats at some point if the only coastal cities you can invade have very good land defences, or to simply reinforce your existing units once you move inland. But on the whole, you should be obtaining new units via Victoria's leader ability.

Strength

Redcoats have 75 strength when outside your capital's continent. That's better than an Infantry unit at a time when you'll be mostly facing Musketmen. If you were fast enough with your beelining efforts, or are fighting against a civ that lacks nitre, the units you face may be even weaker. This means even a small initial force from capturing a couple of coastal cities can do considerable damage, helping your army to snowball.

However, at home, Redcoats only have 65 strength. That's still good, but their high cost and the fact you can't obtain them by founding cities on your home continent means your defences might be a bit outdated in your homelands. Consider picking up Gunpowder shortly after Military Science so you can at least upgrade your old melee units into Musketmen.


Someone beelining Chemistry for AT Crews? No problem - as melee infantry units, Redcoats still have a bonus against anti-mounted. As an additional note, I built none of the Redcoats in this screenshot; they were all from captured cities.

Disembarkment

I can get further inland - especially useful considering all the cliffs around here limiting my access points.

As a relatively niche additional bonus, Redcoats can move or fight after disembarking. While Victoria's Leader Ability makes it possible not to bring an army to a new continent and simply obtain one from founding new cities there, sometimes the land forces in a new landmass are too strong for your new Redcoats to last long. That's where this bonus comes in handy. Escort a group of Redcoats over, and you'll find their ability to move after disembarking helps you slip in more units than usual. This helps with flanking bonuses and to push the front lines of war forwards.

Additionally, cheap disembarking is useful for dealing with cities that are not directly on the coast (but are close enough that they could build a Harbour district). In those cases, you can move from the coast to adjacent to the enemy city in just one turn.

Summary

• Once you have Cartography, it's a good idea to try and get Military Science as quickly as possible (this does not necessarily mean beelining it)
  
• Capture weak coastal cities in foreign continents with naval units, raze them and resettle them to obtain free Redcoats so you can start fighting further inland
  
• For landmasses with strong land defences, escort Redcoats over with naval units; their quick disembarkment helps you land them all quicker.
  
• Don't neglect defence in your home continent; Redcoats are less effective there.

Civ Ability: British Museum

Introduction

Really more like a Unique Building than anything else, England's Civ Ability helps you get more out of archaeology giving you an advantage towards cultural victory. Combined with the tourism boost you can gain from trading with a range of different civs, and the high number of trade routes England can have, cultural victory makes an effective backup path if domination doesn't work out.

Archaeological Museums arrive at Humanism, which is convieniently on the route to Mercantilism for Sea Dogs. You'll need Natural History to acquire Archaeologists and start obtaining Artefacts, which is only two civics more, but you'll probably want to take a detour to Exploration for the Merchant Republic government first if you haven't already.

To construct Archaeological Museums, you need Theatre Squares with an Amphitheatre present. You should construct some anyway so you can get to Mercantilism sooner. This can be a problem considering your incentive to have both Royal Navy Dockyards and Commercial Hubs in every city, so it's worth searching for housing and amenity bonuses to help your cities grow and support more districts. Food usually won't be a problem with extensive internal trade. There's only so many Artefacts available in the world, so you won't necessarily require Theatre Squares and Archaeological Museums in every city, but the more prepared you are for the moment you can start acquiring Archaeologists, the more Artefacts you can grab before anyone else.

The psuedo-UB in practice

Once you have Natural History, Antiquity Sites reveal themselves and you will unlock the ability to build Archaeologists. Saving up a bit of money to instantly purchase one isn't a bad idea if you don't need the money to buy military units, but they can be expensive. Otherwise, just build them - you can get both a free navy via Sea Dogs and army via Victoria's leader ability so your cities will be free to build other things.

Be careful about building two Archaeologists in the same city. Doing that costs twice as much, but you won't be able to use them to extract any more artefacts compared to if you only had one. The main advantage of doing that is to fill up the city's Archaeological Museum faster. Remember that Artefacts can only be moved once the museum is full, so if you only use one Archaeologist per city in a competitive race for Antiquity Sites, you may end up with a bunch of museums with four or five Artefacts and no theming bonus. It's a rare problem, but one that can occur.

To grab as many Artefacts as possible, there's a few things that can help:

• Simply buying them off other civs in trade deals. This can be expensive, but thankfully England tends to have plenty of cash.
  
• Have open borders with other civs, letting your Archaeologists enter their lands.
  
• Use the Gunboat Diplomacy policy card (requires the modern-era Totalitarianism civic) to give yourself automatic open borders with all city-states.
  
• Build (or capture) the Terracotta Army wonder, letting your Archaeologists enter the lands of other civs regardless of your relationship status with them.
  
• Invade other countries and take over their cities, giving you access to their Antiquity Sites. You should be engaging in war anyway, so this is a good way to tie together two different aspects of the English civ.

While having double the Artefact slots can be useful for increasing your potential tourism output, also of note is the fact English Archaeological Museums automatically theme themselves when full. This can save a lot of trouble when you keep getting Artefacts of the same civ or of different eras. More importantly, once you have the atomic-era Cultural Heritage civic and can start excavating Shipwrecks, it's so much less of a hassle to theme them (considering they tend to create Artefacts of different eras to those from Antiquity Sites).

There is one downside, however - theming bonuses only apply when you fill all six slots, even if you have three Artefacts of the same era and different civs present.

Miscellaneous points

Tourism from artefacts themselves can be boosted in one of two ways, both unlocked in the atomic era:

• The Heritage Tourism economic policy card, available at Cultural Heritage, provides a 100% bonus to the tourism yields of all Artefacts. It also applies to Great Works of Art.
  
• The atomic-era Great Scientist Mary Leakey provides a 200% bonus to the tourism yields of all Artefacts. She also provides you with 350 science for every Artefact present in the city you activate her in. A full English Archaeological Museum provides a one-off boost of 2100 science; enough to instantly complete any technology in the game even without a Eureka!

These bonuses stack additively with each other and the 100% theming bonus boost, and multiplicatively with other general tourism bonuses (such as the 25% tourism bonus for having a trade route with another civ).


Another point worth raising is that Archaeological Museums initially built by other civs are unaffected by England's Unique Ability, so they will only have three slots and have the usual theming bonus requirement of three Artefacts of different civs but the same era. Full Archaeological Museums can swap Artefacts, so swap between your captured museums and your English ones to fulfil those theming bonuses if need be.

Conclusion

What makes England's civ ability interesting is that, thanks to its interaction with other uniques, it helps you towards a backup victory path without being a distraction from the main one of domination. Sea Dogs come on the same line of civics as Archaeological Museums and Archaeologists, while the ability to obtain free units - both on land and sea - frees up production to build Archaeologists with. As you conquer land, you will gain access to more Antiquity Sites, and the culture from all your Artefacts can feed back into war by getting you to useful civics like Totalitarianism sooner.

Ultimately, England's civ ability doesn't change the mechanics of Archaeology all that much, but it's rather effective considered in the context of all the other uniques.

Administration - Government

The administration section covers the policy cards, pantheons, religious beliefs, wonders, city-states and Great People which have particularly good synergy with English uniques. Be aware that these are not necessarily the best choices, but rather options that you should consider more than usual if playing as England relative to other Civs.

Governments

Classical Era Governments

Starting with Classical Republic is a good move. Extra amenities will help you handle a growing empire more effectively, the bonus to Great Person Points can increase the odds of you getting some powerful Great Admirals like Santa Cruz and Yi Sun-Sin (or both, for a Ironclad armada in the renaissance era) and the arrangement of policy card slots is good for a peaceful start of the game.

Medieval/Renaissance Era Governments

Merchant Republic is ideal. Extra trade routes is always nice to have, but what's really powerful for England is the discount on gold purchases. City Centre-Harbour-Commercial Hub adjacency creates a lot of gold, and having lots of money available will help you to support your early conquests with unit purchases.

Modern Era Governments

Fascism is ideal for war-time. Though its reliance on military policy slots can be annoying, a +4 strength bonus for all units is worth it. You'll also receive a bonus to unit production, which gives captured cities something helpful to do as your conquests continue.

Communism can provide a reasonable half-way point between war and culture. The universal production bonus can get wonders up sooner as well as military units and the balance of policy cards is reasonable. Fascism is generally better for domination and Democracy for culture, but Communism offers flexibility.

Democracy is most effective if you've stopped warring to focus on a cultural victory and there's still some Great People left to pick up. Lots of economic policy card slots makes it easy to use the tourism-boosting cards.

Policy Cards

Ancient Era

Caravansaries (Economic, requires Foreign Trade) - Cheap Royal Navy Dockyards mean you can quickly expand your trade route capacity. Bonus gold per trade route helps you become quite rich even when trading internally.

Colonisation (Economic, requires Early Empire) - England does well out of founding a lot of cities - internal trading helps set them up sooner, while the bonuses for founding a city on a foreign continent become more effective the more cities you have there.

Medieval Era

Medina Quarter (Economic, requires Medieval Faires) - England's favoured civic route means you'll usually be late to Neighbourhoods. As such, this housing boost will be very useful until you can get to Urbanisation.

Naval Infrastructure (Economic, requires Naval Tradition) - Doubles Royal Navy Dockyard adjacency bonuses. Remember that Shipyards make the adjacency bonus add to production as well, so you'll get two sets of yields from this policy card.

Town Charters (Economic, requires Guilds) - Doubles Commercial Hub adjacency bonuses. A Commercial Hub adjacent to a river, City Centre and Harbour will generate 5 gold per turn, and that's not including additional districts or other sources of adjacency bonuses. Another 5 on top is rather nice to have around.

Trade Federation (Economic, requires Mercenaries) - This can help if you're a bit behind on science and culture, but it requires you to trade internationally instead of using internal trade routes for food and production. For that reason, it's generally useful in emergencies rather than as a policy card for general usage.

Renaissance Era

Colonial Offices (Economic, requires Exploration) - England's encouraged to settle and conquer plenty of cities overseas, and this helps to grow them a bit faster.

Logistics (Military, requires Mercantilism) - For your Sea Dogs, this will help build upon their speed advantage that Royal Navy Dockyards already offer them, making it a little bit easier to chase down enemy naval units and capture them. For Redcoats, this saves time when moving on from captured cities to the next target.

Press Gangs (Military, requires Exploration) - Neatly unlocked on the same civic as the Merchant Republic government, Press Gangs helps you construct Sea Dogs significantly faster. Form fleets and armadas with them to help them survive and improve their odds of capturing enemy units.

Triangular Trade (Economic, requires Mercantilism) - As each of your coastal cities can add up to two trade routes rather than one (ignoring city-state, wonder and Great Person bonuses) this essentially gives you 8 gold and 2 faith per coastal city.

Industrial Era

Colonial Taxes (Economic, requires Colonialism) - Been settling or conquering cities overseas? Enjoy a boost to gold income. This stacks nicely with other cards such as Town Charters.

Expropriation (Economic, requires Scorched Earth) - Resettling razed cities helps you get a lot of Redcoats, but you need lots of Settlers for that. This will help.

Grand Armee (Military, requires Nationalism) - Helps you build Redcoats faster. Usually not necessary, but if your only potential targets have strong armies, it may be necessary to build a few rather than relying solely on the army you get from founding cities and building your UD.

Modern Era

Collectivisation (Economic, requires Class Struggle) - If you're trading internally, this is a substantial boost to food.

Economic Union (Economic, requires Suffrage) - Doubles both Commercial Hub and Royal Navy Dockyard adjacency bonuses. This is great for maximising gold output (especially in conjunction with Colonial Taxes) and can offer some production via Shipyards.

Gunboat Diplomacy (Diplomatic, requires Totalitarianism) - Open borders with all city-states, regardless of standing. This allows you to send Archaeologists in and take their Antiquity Sites and Shipwrecks. Well, they weren't going to use them, were they?

Levee en Masse (Military, requires Mobilisation) - Accumulating lots of units from Sea Dogs and Victoria's leader ability can hand you a hefty maintenance bill. This helps to substantially lessen that.

Market Economy (Economic, requires Capitalism) - To maximise your tourism output, you'll need to trade with other civs. This policy card can make that even more lucrative by offering extra gold, science and culture.

New Deal (Economic, requires Suffrage) - Although the gold cost is harsh, this is a very useful policy card for England. England tends to be late to Urbanisation so Neighbourhoods may not be fully constructed by this point, making the housing bonus useful, while the amenities help to handle war weariness.

Atomic Era

Heritage Tourism (Economic, requires Cultural Heritage) - Doubles tourism from Artefacts (as well as Great Works of Art, but that matters less).

Information Era

E-Commerce (Economic, requires Globalisation) - +2 production and +5 gold from trade routes means essentially 4 production and 5 gold for every coastal city you own (although the production bonus isn't tied to the city which provided the trade route capacity).

Online Communities (Economic, requires Social Media) - Having trade routes with other civs provides a +50% tourism bonus, neatly tying England's civ ability and the Royal Navy Dockyard together.

Administration - Religion, Wonders and City-States

Pantheons

God of the Sea - A reliable choice for a naval-focused civ, offering +1 production to all fishing boat improvements.

Religious Beliefs

You can have one founder, one follower, one enhancer and one worship belief.

Jesuit Education (Follower) - This is rather helpful for getting more Archaeological Museums built; use faith to buy the buildings and gold to buy the Archaeologist.

Wonders

Later in the game, when Sea Dogs can win you free naval units and Victoria's Leader Ability grants you Redcoats, you'll have quite a bit of spare production to build wonders with. On top of that, having a lot of internal trade routes gives you strong production bonuses. So, despite England not having direct bonuses to wonder construction, they're certainly not bad at it.

Colossus (Classical era, Shipbuilding technology) - An extra trade route (including the Trader unit) is always nice to have around, considering you'll be looking for bonuses to maximise their impact anyway.

Great Lighthouse (Classical era, Celestial Navigation technology) - With this wonder, all your naval units constructed in a city with a Royal Navy Dockyard will have a +2 speed advantage over the units of all other civs. Getting this wonder also denies other civs the opportunity to match your directly-constructed naval units' speed (well, not without a combination of bonuses like the Logistics policy card and a movement-boosting promotion)

Mausoleum at Halicarnassus (Classical era, Defensive Tactics civic) - England's dominance of Great Admiral accumulation can be turned into something even stronger with this wonder, which is convieniently on the path to Mercantilism. With this wonder, all Great Admirals can provide their retirement bonuses twice. You can use one charge and keep the strength and speed bonus, or use both charges right away. Furthermore, Great Engineers receive an additional charge. Definitely a strong wonder for England to aim for. Requires the Persia and Macedon Civilization and Scenario Pack.

Terracotta Army (Classical era, Construction technology) - While you could spend time building this wonder, why bother risking production in the race to build it when you can capture it later? After all, what you'll generally want from this wonder when playing as England is the ability for Archaeologists to enter the land of any civ regardless of Open Border status, something you don't need right away.

Angkor Wat (Medieval era, Medieval Faires civic) - Royal Navy Dockyards and Commercial Hubs together encourage you to spam cities and build up their districts to capacity. Getting more population and housing in every city will really help you make the most of them. Requires the Khmer and Indonesia civilization and scenario pack.

Forbidden City (Renaissance era, Printing technology) - You may notice England has an unusually high number of effective policy cards around the same time. You may also notice Printing is on the way to Military Science (which unlocks Redcoats) so you can get a head start on building this wonder, and that this wonder offers an extra wildcard policy slot.

Great Zimbabwe (Renaissance era, Banking technology) - The placement requirements are a pain, especially considering you'll typically want City Centres, Commercial Hubs and Royal Navy Dockyards to form a triangle. Still, it makes trade routes from the city you built the wonder in potentially very powerful. And bonus trade route capacity is never a bad thing.

Venetian Arsenal (Renaissance era, Mass Production technology) - A major reason why picking up Mass Production before beelining Military Science might be worth your while. Every Sea Dog you build constructs two, letting you more easily dominate the seas.

Big Ben (Industrial era, Economics technology) - If you intend to use the Fascism government for its strength bonus, you might have to make some painful decisions about which economic policy cards to drop. Big Ben provides an extra economic policy card slot so the choice is less painful. It also doubles your current treasury, so save up some cash just before you finish it.

City-States

Amsterdam (Trade) - Can make international trading a fair bit more profitable.

Antananarivo (Cultural) - England can produce an awful lot of Great Admirals, and getting a culture bonus from that is useful. Requires the Vikings Scenario Pack.

Auckland (Industrial) - Makes coastal cities more productive. Requires the Vikings Scenario Pack.

Bandar Brunei (Trade) - Can be useful later in the game if you're pushing for more international trade routes for tourism.

Carthage (Militaristic) - Although usually England doesn't have much need for Encampments as Redcoats will be generally obtained through city captures, having +3 trade route capacity per coastal city is a very tempting prospect.

Kabul (Militaristic) - It may seem an odd choice, but consider that units you obtain from founding or capturing cities on other continents won't be constructed in a city with Encampment buildings, and hence won't have the experience bonus they offer.

Lisbon (Trade) - Very powerful for England - it makes your Traders on sea tiles completely safe from pillaging! Considering you may be undertaking a lot of intercontinental trade by the end of the game, that could save a lot of hassle.

Muscat (Trade) - You'll want Commercial Hubs in all your cities, and extra amenities helps you deal with war weariness.

Nan Madol (Culture) - Not a bad culture boost, considering you'll usually want to place Commercial Hubs next to the sea for Harbour adjacency.

Administration - Great People

Great People

As always, I'm only covering Great People with particular synergy with English uniques. All Great Admirals can be useful in some manner, but it would be redundant to list them all.

Classical Era

Gaius Duilius (Great Admiral) - Save his retirement bonus for when you have your first Sea Dogs. A Sea Dog fleet will have better odds of capturing enemy ships than a single one does.

Zhang Qian (Great Merchant) - Gain +1 trade route capacity, among other things.

Medieval Era

Bi Sheng (Great Engineer) - Certainly a Great Engineer to look out for. The Printing Eureka saves you time heading towards Military Science, while the extra district limit can be helpful for squeezing in another Theatre Square, ready for Archaeological Museums later.

Irene of Athens (Great Merchant) - Gain +1 trade route capacity, among other things.

Leif Erikson (Great Admiral) - An interesting Great Admiral to have, Leif Erikson's retirement bonus means you can ignore the Cartography technology in favour of a direct beeline to Military Science. You'll still want Shipbuilding, though, so it isn't a huge saving in terms of science costs.

Marco Polo (Great Merchant) - Gain +1 trade route capacity and a free Trader, among other things.

Renaissance Era

Mimar Sinan (Great Engineer) - With uniques encouraging England to build Royal Navy Dockyards, Commercial Hubs and Theatre Squares extensively (and Industrial Zones and Campuses still being very useful), there often won't be space for Entertainment Complexes. In addition, England's favoured civic route often makes them late to Neighbourhoods. As such, getting bonuses to both housing and amenities is particularly useful.

Raja Todar Mal (Great Merchant) - Makes internal trading provide gold.

Santa Cruz (Great Admiral) - You can use Santa Cruz to form a Sea Dog Armada, but consider instead seeing if you can secure Yi Sun-Sin as well. Securing both Great Admirals allows you to form an Ironclad Armada early, which will be highly effective for attacking coastal cities with.

Yi Sun-Sin (Great Admiral) - A renaissance-era Ironclad will complement your Sea Dogs very nicely. The combination of the two can pick off some enemy coastal cities while the free melee units you obtain can take the fight further inland. Be aware that the Ironclads will be unable to heal until you have the Steam Power technology, (except via pillaging and promotions) so don't go overboard with them.

Industrial Era

Ada Lovelace (Great Engineer) - Computers doubles your tourism output, while an extra district in a city could mean one more Theatre Square and hence one more Archaeological Museum.

Adam Smith (Great Merchant) - England gets a lot out of economic policy cards around this point of the game.

Napoleon Bonaparte (Great General) - The irony of Napoleon leading a Redcoat army aside, the two make a powerful combination. Redcoat armies on foreign continents have 92 strength; 7 more than Mechanised Infantry! Just make sure you have a spare renaissance/industrial Great General to provide extra strength and movement to a bigger number of units.

Modern Era

John Rockefeller (Great Merchant) - Makes trade routes provide more gold.

Sarah Breedlove (Great Merchant) - Having a trade route with another civ provides an additional 25% tourism bonus against them.

Atomic Era

Mary Leakey (Great Scientist) - Not only will you obtain masses of science, but Artefacts will henceforth provide three times as much tourism.

Melitta Bentz (Great Merchant) - Like Sarah Breedlove, having a trade route with another civ provides an additional 25% tourism bonus against them.

Counter-Strategies

A colonial powerhouse which can go to war effectively without having to spare much production, England can be vulnerable at home.

British Museum

England may get twice as many slots for Artefacts, but unless they dedicate production or gold to additional Archaeologists, they aren't any faster at collecting them at first. If you're aggressive with your use of Archaeological Museums and Archaeologists, you can still get a head start against England in the race for Artefacts. Grabbing the Terracotta Army wonder for yourself also makes things easier.

Alternatively, you can always invade England and take those super-museums for yourself. England's defences are likely to be weaker than their offensive power, leaving their homelands a bit more vulnerable than those of most war-inclined civs.

Victoria - Pax Britannica

This ability is useless if Victoria can't obtain cities outside her own continent. Warmongers should certainly consider an early rush to take her out before she can do so, while peaceful civs might want to settle in a way that it blocks her routes to new continents.

Victoria has to settle cities or build her unique district to gain free units. That means she'll need to bring Settlers far from her core. Keep an eye on where England's units are heading - there might be an isolated Settler you can capture for youself.

If you're in a war against Victoria and she's gaining units rapidly, use anti-melee promotions as much as possible to counter her army's composition.

Victoria - Redcoat

The sheer strength of Redcoats makes them scary to face in direct combat, but as Victoria's army composition is likely to depend heavily on them, you can give lots of units anti-melee promotions. Ranged units and Cavalry will be particularly good for this purpose as Redcoats are slow.

If Victoria is likely to invade you from the sea, consider lining your most vulnerable coasts with units (so long as she doesn't have strong naval ranged units like Frigates or Battleships). That stops Redcoats from exploiting their fast disembarkment ability, and also forces into amphibious warfare (for which they receive a -10 strength penalty).

If possible, take the fight to Victoria's home continent. Redcoats have 65 strength there making only three points stronger than Cavalry. They'll be 10 points stronger than Musketmen, but Redcoats are 42% more expensive to build than Musketmen. Musketmen corps are a little more expensive than Redcoats but will be able to fight them on an even footing.

Victoria - AI Agenda (Sun Never Sets)

An AI Victoria appeciates peaceful civs that are on the same continent as at least one of her cities. She dislikes anyone who's on a continent she isn't already on, and attempts to expand to all continents.

Victoria's agenda is rather nice if you're playing peacefully and start near her. The relations boost makes it less likely she'll try to rush you, letting you focus more on infrastructure.

If you start on the same landmass but a different continent, Victoria may dislike you at first but switch opinion later if allowed to expand. On the other hand, letting her expand into a new continent gives her extra gold and free units, so you might want to just accept those poor relations and invade England early on. Even just a little pillaging can slow them down.

If you start on both a different landmass and continent, make sure your coasts are reasonably well protected in the event of a naval invasion. Winning her over will be difficult without one of you setting up a city on the other civ's continent, but by this stage of the game it's often not worth it just for that.

Sea Dog

Sea Dogs are no better in combat than regular Privateers, so Caravels will be reasonably effective against them. If England pushes towards Natural History early, they'll probably arrive at Nationalism late; you can form fleets to make their job harder still.

If Sea Dogs aren't adjacent to your naval unit when they land the killing blow, they can't convert it. However, if they move adjacent to one of your units, they'll reveal themselves. Moving wounded naval units back may encourage England's Sea Dogs to chase them, and from there you can lead them into a trap (such as a line of Bombards).

Another way to force Sea Dogs to reveal themselves is to place naval units with a gap of two tiles between each one. Sea Dogs moving through the area won't be able to stay invisible (although a loose formation like that does make it easier for Sea Dogs to capture your units).

Royal Navy Dockyard

The obvious thing to say is "just pillage them", but England will often have a strong navy stopping you from doing that. What else can you do? Take the city spots which would have the optimum Commercial Hub/Royal Navy Dockyard adjacency bonuses (areas where the City Centre is adjacent to both the sea and a river). Those are pretty good city spots for most civs anyway (especially if you're Australia or Indonesia) so you don't need to go out of your way to weaken England. Even taking other bits of coastline can help; the fewer coastal cities England can build, the weaker their Unique District is.

On the other hand, England having lots of trade routes can be a good thing for you as well - it provides lots of traders you can pillage for gold. Use fast units for this purpose (light cavalry tends to work well on land; naval raiders on the seas).

Other Guides

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Compilation Guides

• Civ summaries
  
• Civ-specific tricks, secrets and clarifications

Individual Civ Guides

• America (Cultural/Domination)
  
• Arabia (Religious/Scientific)
  
• Australia (Scientific)
  
• Aztecs (Domination)
  
• Brazil (All)
  
• China (Cultural/Scientific)
  
• Egypt (Cultural/Religious)
  
• England (Cultural/Domination)
  
• France (Cultural)
  
• Germany (Domination/Scientific)
  
• Greece (Cultural/Domination)
  
• India (Religious)
  
• Indonesia (Cultural/Domination/Religious)
  
• Japan (Domination)
  
• Khmer (Cultural/Religious)
  
• Kongo (Cultural)
  
• Macedon (Domination/Scientific)
  
• Norway (Domination)
  
• Nubia (Domination)
  
• Persia (Cultural/Domination)
  
• Poland (Cultural/Domination/Religious)
  
• Rome (Domination)
  
• Russia (Religious)
  
• Scythia (Domination/Religious)
  
• Spain (Domination/Religious/Scientific)
  
• Sumeria (Domination/Scientific)

[SuspiciouspegasusTTV]

Also I was wanting to do some custom civ mods, but I have NO IDEA what Civ and leader abilities I would give them, One Idea I had was a Civ that gets faith for nuke kills and bonus faith for every missile silo/nuke this civ has(that or culture)

But honestly if I ever make Civ mods, I would want the Civs to have a very Unquie playstyle

[SuspiciouspegasusTTV]

Wait what? Thats awsome! Could you add those to this guide pls?

[Zigzagzigal]

Yep! You can also capture unguarded civilian units and tribal villages with coastal raids.

[SuspiciouspegasusTTV]

BTW heres something I found out, you can pillage barbaian outpost using coastal raiding(and it removes it just like it would if you sent some soldiers into the empty camp)

[Zigzagzigal]

Okay, it's taken a long time, but I've finally got around to fixing this guide. The big change is that rather than taking weak coastal cities directly, you'll want to raze and re-settle them for Redcoats. Vanilla Civ 6 still lets you get extra trade route capacity from RNDs, so that's nice. The R&F guide will probably be left for quite a while as I still think the changes made to England are controversial enough that the civ's likely to see changes again in the future.

[Zigzagzigal]

The problem is that England has ended up with nerfs as a side-effect of other changes, rather than out of any necessity. Moving trade routes from districts to their first buildings meant England lost the double trade route thing. There was partial compensation with the loyalty boost but it's not quite so interesting a bonus.

I think the most recent change is out of a misunderstanding. There was an exploit involving the ability and flipping free cities, but removing the functionality entirely when taking cities is a bad fix. It seems to be nearly universally unpopular as a change, so that's why I suspect it'll be reverted in the next major patch (with a fix for the exploit).

[Ornery Gentleman]

Your guide demonstrated how unique and fun to play this civ used to be. Used to be. It was all ready a huge nerf to take away about half of england's trade route potential by enforcing RND/Commerce zone trade route redundancy.. now, to remove Englands virus ability? That was easily their greatest stength before. I hope both nerfs are reverted! At least we have shaka for a similar virus effect to fill the void.

[Zigzagzigal]

Change in the 7 February patch:

- You can't stack Great Generals/Admirals any more.

[Zigzagzigal]

Changes in the Autumn 2017 patch relevant to England:

- Mercantilism is no longer so easy to beeline, indirectly nerfing Sea Dogs.

- Trade routes now spread religious pressure, so England is no longer a joke option for religious games. I'd still favour domination or culture though.

- The Angkor Wat wonder (requires the new DLC) makes developing your colonial empire much easier thanks to its empire-wide boost to population and housing.

[Yensil]

Ok so...is this a glitch?
http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561197999879843/screenshots/
http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561197999879843/screenshots/
As you can see these two artefacts are from different eras and the same civ, yet the museum shows as themed, despite being a regular museum. Is this a glitch? English museums are weird :|