he British are an amazing boom civilization. They excel at building a great economy very quickly however they get off to a rather slow start and thus are very poor at rushing or early attacks. Even more so they lack early powerful attacking military shipments, hence you will most likely be on the defence in the early game. Playing as British, everything is centred on getting as many villagers as possible and finding a place for these villagers to work safely, you must become a master of turtling. This is the mindset you must have when you play as British and it is very important that you remember this at the start of each game.
I will soon have a guide to turtling up by the end of the week, that will show you some very cool ways to use units like, minutemen, walls, culverins, falconets and longbows. The are units that lots of people regard as useless but really they fill there role perfectly if you use them right.
The Manor Boom (Easy)
Essentially all British strategies should be based on some form of a manor boom. Therefore it is probably the most important thing to learn first. British have the unique bonus of getting a free villager with each house they build. However their houses cost an extra 50 wood. The best thing about this bonus is it allows you to generate a huge number of villagers in colonial, by spamming lots of houses very quickly, i.e. 'Manor Booming'
The idea is that you propel yourself off to a huge starting economy that will slowly but surely take off the longer the game continues. If you do a big enough manor boom you can easily double the amount of villagers your enemy has going into fortress. If you can defend yourself before the inevitable fortress attack comes and manage to repel it with minimal damages, you are set to economically dominate the entire game, however economy is only half the equation of course you've got to play catch up on military.
Manor Booming
Ideally you want to start manor booming during the age up to colonial. Once you collect your 800 food to age up, transfer all your villagers to wood and start building manors. Once you are almost about to age up, transfer at least 6 villagers back to food (to enable constant villager production from your TC) and continue to spam down manors each time you get 150 wood. That's all there is to manor booming.
Now, there are many options available to make manor booming even better. These are due to HC cards that have various effects on manors in general. These are the 'Team Fast-Building Houses' card and the 'Virginia Company' card.
There are many variations to manor booming. Recently I have began shipping ATP and trying to spam trade posts for XP, and then manor boom. At any rate, the ability to produce 20 settlers independently of your HC at fast rate is the main advantage of using British.
Team fast-building houses is a level zero card so when you first start your British HC, it is probably best to use it. Houses build almost instantly and enable your villagers to spend less time building and more time cutting wood. However once you reach level 10, you really want to get rid of the fast building card in favour of either the Virginia Company card or 700 wood. The Virginia Company card is very underrated since people often scoff at the small 35 or so wood it saves on each house. However since the manor boom is an exponential boom (i.e. it starts of slow, but once it gets going it gets faster and faster) the 35 wood saved enables you to get the boom off much quicker.
Recently I have favoured skipping Virginia Company and getting 700 wood instead to help with the houses, however I'm not sure which is better. Feel free to experiment on what you think is best.
Balancing Economy and Defence (Difficult)
So far I've spoken about manor booming but I haven't talked about the minor thing that often happens to British players... they get rushed! This is actually happening a lot less now due to the craze over FF strategies, but nevertheless unless you are playing a no rush game, you are going to have to start thinking about slowing your boom and getting a few defensive units.
How many do you need? When should you get them? What units should you get? Should I get them from the HC or build them from a barracks?
Unfortunately the answer to these questions only come with experience. If you don't boom enough, you are wasting the British advantage and will most likely pay for that in fortress age. If you boom too much, you may find you get crushed by a rush, or you can't make it to Fortress age in time to defend yourself and your economy. It took me at least 50 games before I could learn to judge how to balance my boom and a further 50 games to get to the point where I can pull it off almost flawlessly every game. However occasionally there is still a game or two that I mess it up and overboom and get myself into all sorts of trouble.
As a quick guide, try as much as possible to only rely on shipments and your free tower for defence (i.e. your 6 longbow and 6 musketeer card) Start of by shipping the longbow card at around 5:30 and then if your enemy isn't pressuring you or he is Fast Fortressing, don't bother with any more military, minutemen can deal with a sudden surprise attack long enough for you to ship muskets afterwards and build a barracks/stable. I personally like to build my free tower a good distance away from my base, so that I can spot an attack coming in and quickly take appropriate defensive measures. 30 seconds is enough time for you to get a barracks up collect enough gold for minutemen and shift your villagers to a safer location, the tower helps greatly for that!
Learning the balance isn't easy and requires scouting as well as checking the enemy deck, and predicting what the enemy will do. I guarantee you it will be the main area you have lots of problems with for a long time as British, but once you finally grasp the concept (from trial and error) then you will eventually become a natural at doing it. Checking the enemy deck is extremely important.
If possible, get a clan mate or someone who wants to practise rushes, and play a set of non rated games (if you really don't want to lose a lot at first). If you are brave though, just jump right into competitive online play. Always watch replays of when you overboomed and lost and see what you did wrong. Maybe you should have shipped the musketeer card instead of 5 villagers... if you don't look at the replay you may never know why you lost!
*tip*
I strongly advice that on maps with Lakota, Mayan and Aztec, that you get up a trade post ASAP and use a native shipment to defend. Not only do you prevent your enemy from getting one, but you get a much better defensive army. I would go as far as to say on any map with a Lakota camp, take it as if your life depended on it. (because it does!)
Securing Resources (Moderate - Very Difficult)
So you have mastered the manor boom and you even know how to balance your boom and defence perfectly. If done well this will get you to the 8 minute mark in very good shape, with a far superior economy to your enemy. But now what? You've got LOTS of villagers... but have you secured somewhere for them to work safely? Having 40+ villagers doesn't matter if they spend half the time running all over the place to avoid attacks, or you get half of them killed because they got shot at while running back to their TC. This is a bigger problem than you think, since all those villagers will very rapidly deplete the resources near your base, however unlike Portugal, you do not have a free TC to place to secure resources.
This problem can be partially solved by resorting to mills for food early (you will have lots of wood). However the main resource that you must secure is a very large patch of wood. Maps like Rockies and Texas will provide the greatest challenge since there is often not any nearby trees. But you must have access to a large patch of trees as British and you need to do everything it takes to secure it. Recently I've began building a wall right around the patch of trees during the age up and putting my tower in the middle of the trees, trust me, it is so important that it is worth doing this sometimes! I've even started walling my entire base like a 'noob'!
Great Plains (lol!)
Argh! A map so lame it deserves its own section. Don't get me wrong, I am not such a loser that I only play maps that I have an advantage on (eg. New England ^_^). I love playing on maps that present a challenge, eg. Bayou (very little space to turtle, no trade routes, hard to wall) and Rockies /Texas (securing resources is very tricky, trees or hunting sometimes hard to get at). However the line really has to be drawn somewhere, and Great Plains is so far beyond this line that it is just a dot.
I personally never play on Great Plains as British (or any other non-rush civ) Every single feature on this map is so anti-British that the map must have been designed by Napoleon himself.
Hardly any food nearby? .... Check.
No nearby trees? ... Check.
OP natives in abundance? ... Check.
A trade post right next to your base just waiting for a rusher to ATP it? ... Check.
A trade route that runs straight thru your base ensuring you cannot wall or turtle properly? ... Check.
Complete lack of choke points to wall? ... Check.
If you are matched up against any of the four main rushing civs, play this map at your own risk, I know I've got better things to do...
II. The British HC
In terms of cards, the British have a pretty ordinary set. While not extraordinarily powerful, they generally have very few useless cards. Among their best cards would be.
Cavalry Combat (+10% HP, +10% attack to dragoons + hussars, GET THIS CARD TO STOP FRENCH OP CAV!)
15 Jaegers
Estates (Manors can build settlers)
2 Monitors
British get very good Mercs and have the ability to spam 27 Jaegers along with up to 19 highlanders to make up for their lack of a powerful Fortress age unit. This along with mercenary loyalty can be a very effective combo.
Generally at low levels you want to focus on wood cards and definitely the free natives card. Then you want to focus on gold and then factory cards and then mercs and then the 2 falconet card. Food cards are generally useless for British.
I am still undecided on eco cards. While no doubt they will be highly beneficial in the long run, I find that sending them slows me down enough that the enemy can make sure that there is no 'long run' and that the game ends with me dying to a rush. Maybe I need to work a bit more on my defence, but feel free to experiment with wood cards and mill cards and even the militia card. The same for sheep cards, I find that although they have potential to be really good, they slow you down too much early game to be worth the effort. Maybe if I can somehow work them into my late game it could provide an even bigger boost, but again its just a though and shows that British have lots of different potential strategies.
Manor Boom -> Mercenary Fortress Attack
Minimum HC Level: 25
Essential cards:
The idea of this strategy is to make use of Mercs to fill the gap left by the British lack of powerful hard hitting Fortress Age units. As with all British strategies, it looks to take advantage of the British early economical boom opportunity and then quickly gather a powerful defensive/attacking force comprised of Mercs before your enemy can take your economy down.
As usual I won't post a build order just give a replay and a few pointers. This replay will be an interesting one because it is one that I actually lost, but as you will see, it was a game that I could have easily won had I only attacked the TC 5 seconds earlier. Anyway the main thing is to look at how well Brits are able to stand up to even the mighty German Merc FF and see how to do it, so the fact that I lost isn't really a big deal, the replay clearly shows how viable this strategy can be. These replays are 1.03 replays but I've tested them with 1.04 and they seem to work fine, I haven't used the Mercenary Attack Strategy for quite some time now, since I personally prefer the Fast Industrial one which we will get to next and is in my opinion a better strategy.
Turtle Manor Boom -> Fast Industrial
Minimum HC Level: 10
Recommended HC Level: 20+
Essential Cards:
This strategy is similar to the Mercenary Attack strategy except instead of spending lots of gold and relying on mercenaries, you ship ordinary units or a fort to defend and then use the saved gold to head straight into Industrial where you can use mercantilism to help you ship all of your industrial cards in to defend. However since you will be using non-merc units (mainly longbows and cannons) to defend, your army lacks the power to take the enemy down in an all out fight. Therefore you must turtle well with the few units you have to repel the bigger and stronger enemy army.
First you must manor boom as before, then you will use the huge momentum the colonial manor boom will give you to enable you to head straight into industrial, yet still maintaining your economic advantage. Once there you need to get factories up ASAP and once you have established a good defence with rockets from your factories, ship the estates card and watch your eco skyrocket!
The good thing about this strategy is that you main resources will be food and wood. As long as you secure a good patch of wood to build mills you will be okay. As before the essential balance between military and eco is important, more so now because without a doubt you will be outnumbered for the majority of the game. If you you are heavily outnumbered when you reach industrial, ship the 3 rocket card first to give you some breathing space. Never fall into the trap of following a set build order... adapt, adapt, adapt!
Trading Resources
British economy can be very hard to manage. Sometimes you have too much of one resource and not enough of another. Add to the fact that your strategies must keep changing throughout the game and it is hard to know what units you will end up building later on. Don't be afraid to sell any resource you have a lot of, to get one that you really need. Sometimes saving just 10 seconds of time by selling resources at the market to get that vital unit out quicker is the difference between life and death. My favourite is to sell food for gold to age up only if I have LOTS of hunting. This way you save your gold mines for the long run.
Checking the Enemy Deck
Not many people seem to know how to do this essential tactic. By pressing F6 and clicking on the enemy flag you can look at the enemy HC and their deck. This is extremely useful for trying to guess the enemy plan. You can only see the enemy deck AFTER they have selected their deck, so the best time to check is at the 2:00 min mark.
If you get owned online trying my strategies, I shall deny that it was my strategy and this webpage will self destruct along with all evidence.
no images happy...lol