English Strategy? What to do next?

[Orollo]

I've played about 70 years as England. In that time I've conquered all of Britain (Including Orkney) and Ireland created Great Britian and established the colonial nation of Newfoundland.

In the begining I decided to abdondon my land holdings on the Mainland and ceded them to France instead I've focused on Naval Supremecy and securing Britian and Ireland which I have done. So the question is what to do next?

Suggestions?

Also I have a question, I have Art of War and Res Publica, and I'm wondering if I can order my colonial nation to colonize? I know post Art of War I can give them Military objectives.

I have all od Exploration Ideas, Most of Expansion Ideas and some Defensive Ideas.

I was thinking about trying to annex what's left of Britanny and maybe try to get back on the mainland. Barring that i want to devolop a naval presence world wide. I've go One colony finished in the Carribean and another building with a colony just south of modern day Cuba buidling as well as One in Africa.

So should I maintain the Anglo-Portuguese Allaince? Or should I break the pact and try to take them out? Has anyone tried to invade Iberia from England?

 

[BaronNoir]

Okay, I played two complete games with England, so here what I would say

-For income, always watch the English Channel trade note (and watch it with tradeships...lots of them)
-Keeping an alliance with the Portuguese/Castille is a commendable objective, However, for colonial heavy games, you will clash with their colonies, so it's a tall order to say the least
-I would personally not got on the mainland, as British manpower can't cope with any serious war. (However, if you remain on the islands, you are virtually invincible : even without naval ideas, the Royal Navy with decent admirals is virtually invincible thanks to unique decision and ideas). You need to pick carefully CB with enmemies, however, : Imperialist CBs are not very useful for Britain, Colonial CBs can be devastating

For colonial games, it might be better to pick quantity over defensive, as quantity have a Policy allowing one extra colonist...not to mention that England have the equivalent of several rows of Level 9 Fortresses (the Channel).

 

[Wildcat_PL]

As England you want your rivals to be France, Portugal, Spain. If you outgun them in navy your set with power projection. Embargo, send privateers. Explore, dont let them go big in colonies - destroy, steal, conquer. You can easily be in permament war with those 3 nations, just to deny them colonies. I one hold them in all in 3 wars for 110 years.

With the new english channel trade node you might consider having a march on the continent. If not to get the income yourself but to deny it to France and netherlands. And with that income that march can help you in defence quite well. Consider Normandy and Flandres. You dont want them to send colonist or it will ruin your borders. Also grab Gibraltar and build a march there - it will let you in supply to blockade entire coast up to Province (south France). One of berber provinces might be even better if you don't care abhout gameplay.

Focus on key trade nodes first: Ivory Coast (control of trade flow from entire india/indonesia/china) Caribbean, Chesapeake and Canada. Then its usual colonisation/conquer untill you reach australia. Next key trade node to dominate is gulf of aden. (grabing local provinces might be not necessary) and mallaca. You will be swimming in money here.

When it comest to north america you might think about only 3 colonial nations. 13 colonies, mexico, and canada. Feed luisina and california to 13colonies or mexico. you can easily let iberians colonise south america - ivory coast will steal their profit anyway, and big mexico will defend itself nicely.

 

[Mikalos]

i love power gamey bullshit

 

[ecrurudesby]

I'm playing an England game too; at about the mid 1600s. I suggest you focus on the entire NA coast and the Caribbean for colonisation; eventually taking the two trade heavy provinces on the African Gold Coast, hoping you don't get beat to them by the two Iberians. You can really limit the amount of money that goes to Seville and in particular Bordeaux by dominating these places.

In my game France never got a province in the Carribean OR North America, just some crumby land in Guyana and Argentina, and their trade node is pitiful. I was fortunate to get a lot of the Caribbean and took a lot of the rest from Spain/Portugal in wars to the point where I can have the entire Caribbean to myself easy in one more war. I also own the entire NA coastline from west Florida upwards (apart from one or two natives and four insignificant Norwegian provinces). I went Innovative > Exploration > Expansion > Trade. With all those colonial lands + Trade Ideas + lots and lots of buildings in the home Isles while my tech was ahead of time, my income is just stupidly high. I can afford three level 3 advisors, 100+ heavy ships, 100 regiments (75 force limit) without breaking a sweat.

Personally the only reason I would annex Brittany is for the trade power in Bordeaux. France pushes my shit in on land (I won one land war against them, because I had Austria and her allies with me; the other similar war, we managed a white peace at -10 warscore). If I used my unworldy income on regiments and transports I could probably give them a a good hiding. But I prefer to focus on overseas expansion like the UK should. On sea the only nations that can contend with you are Portugal and maybe Castille, though I find Portugal's navy is far, far superior of the two.

Speaking of Portugal, keep the alliance as long as you can, but eventually they will break it. It's not if, but when. And you need to fight them to get their Caribbean and possibly African provinces. I invaded Portugal once; again, England can field huge armies fairly soon, and you'll have to use superior numbers against the Iberians, unless you have multiple Military Idea sets.

 

[Orollo]

In my game Austria has me rivaled I've been trying to fix that but it hasn't quite worked. I picked my colonies in the Carriben with the thought of taking out Catile and Portuguese colonies on the same Islands. I'm allied to both Portugal and Castile. The Iberian wedding didn't happen and it looks like Aragon will eventually control all of Castile.I was thinking of invading a weak Castile and taking out an already weakened country. Obviously I wanted to play a heavy colonization game. I think I'm going to try to get Aragon and Austria on my side and help Aragon kill Castile and hopefully fight France.

Thanks for your time.

EDIT: What do you think about taking Iceland from Norway?

 

[BaronNoir]

I would add that as England, it's quite useful to capture early on Madeira or the Canarias. The AI often send the bulk of their warships in colonial theaters. For virtually any theatre other than North America, the path home of those fleets cross Cape Bojador....

 

[Aries666]

If you want a CN to colonise quickly, barring tech requirements, it's their monthly income that will determine if they will do it or not so lowering tariffs and giving subsidies can push them along so you take a short term loss for long term gain. However, because CN settler growth is so low it's porbably better to raise tariffs so you can afford extra colonies which will be ceded to them when complete.

 

[BaronNoir]

In my game Austria has me rivaled I've been trying to fix that but it hasn't quite worked. I picked my colonies in the Carriben with the thought of taking out Catile and Portuguese colonies on the same Islands. I'm allied to both Portugal and Castile. The Iberian wedding didn't happen and it looks like Aragon will eventually control all of Castile.I was thinking of invading a weak Castile and taking out an already weakened country. Obviously I wanted to play a heavy colonization game. I think I'm going to try to get Aragon and Austria on my side and help Aragon kill Castile and hopefully fight France.

Thanks for your time.

EDIT: What do you think about taking Iceland from Norway?

Like the other scandinavian islands, they are very poor...which means they don't cost much to core.

 

[Denkt]

As England you can easly go trade and make more money then rest of europe put togther with rather little conquest of land.

Best military ideas for England is quality and quantity mostly for policies however quantity helps navy to.
Quality, trade combo give one of the strongest policies in game 20% trade efficiency.

 

[BaronNoir]

England should almost never engage ennemies on land (that is, ennemies with the tech group Europe) : if you have allies in Europe (you don't need them), blockade the opponents harbours or seize islands.

 

[Sandmann]

I got France in a PU by winning the Hundred years war yesterday, how long will the integration take when it is available?

 

[Gaamel]

I got France in a PU by winning the Hundred years war yesterday, how long will the integration take when it is available?

Around 80 BT x 15 = 1200 dip points. (Dunno if France can inherit Burgundy as a PU slave though). With a dip rep advisor you should be at best at 5/month, so 1200/5 = 240 months = 20 years (maybe less with influence/diplomatic, but I doubt these are good ideas for England)

 

[Mikalos]

I got France in a PU by winning the Hundred years war yesterday, how long will the integration take when it is available?

forever, with rebellions, and a game focus that leaves you with a nice redoubt in the british isles from the channel and your wooden wall, but no army to actually fight in france

winning the HYW is cool, but not worth the effort

 

[Sandmann]

forever, with rebellions, and a game focus that leaves you with a nice redoubt in the british isles from the channel and your wooden wall, but no army to actually fight in france

winning the HYW is cool, but not worth the effort

Integration gives unrest? How much?

 

[Malefidus]

I always agonize over what to do when playing England.

I've just won the hundred years war in 1454 with only 4 loans which were paid back almost immediately. I've got Leinster lined up for diplo-vassal and they've got claims on the other two Irish minors so all good there. Beautifully the Subjugate Scotland mission came up after occupy Paris so I'm just waiting for my AE to drop a bit before bringing them into the fold.

My biggest woe is deciding on what order of Ideas. I normally go diplo, mil, adm due to how the need for MPs goes. I want to play the colonizing game so may go Exploration, Quality then an Admin idea as yet undecided. I'm thinking Humanism for when the reformation hits and to go nicely with England's accepted cultures bonus?

With England I look at all the Dip idea groups and think, yep I could use all these except Espionage!

Any ideas on what order everyone generally goes? Once France is tamed Europe will hardly be a problem. Burgundy will get slapped as soon as they start another war then no one else will really trouble me. I will play true to Great Britain's strategy and intervene to keep anyone in Europe getting too strong.

 

[dstarsboy]

I just finished a GB campaign and it was fun. I took the route, at first, where I went full colonial and left the mainland Europe. I basically just had wars against Spain and Portugal over colonial territory until i had almost all of the colonies and a foothold in India and China.

But it became sort of boring and i really wanted to get back into mainland Europe, possibly get the Paris achievement. So worked my way through Norway, Sweden, Denmark and started getting involved in the HRE politics again and it became a lot of fun but I ran out of time.

So my suggestion: If you've done the trade/colony game a few times already with Venice or Portugal or whoever, try to focus getting GB some Europe action, it's a more rewarding feeling.

 

[BaronNoir]

Integration gives unrest? How much?

Indirectly. Diplo annexated or Integrated provinces start with very high Autonomy.

 

[mudcrabmerchant]

I might aim to take the important trade power provinces that are in your node but not under your control - IIRC all of the Netherlands are, and whoever owns those provinces, probably Austria, will take a ton of your trade money, especially as the game drags on and they build the higher-level trade buildings that greatly increase provincial trade power.

Keep a large standing army, and be prepared to support the Dutch in their independence war when they break away from Austria. Try not to be at war with anyone else at the time. I forget when exactly the Dutch revolts occur, but it should only be a few decades from where you are now, if it hasn't happened already.

Once the Netherlands are secure, vassalize them. Or, if they've been conquered already, steal a few provinces from Austria and release them. Wage wars as needed to gain all of the Dutch/Flemish provinces with trade power modifiers that are in your node (Antwerp and Holland should be the big ones, I think Zeeland has a modifier too). Then, diplo-annex them.

They might be difficult to protect in wars, though. If you stick to just the trade-power provinces though, and create a buffer state that holds the rest of the area (maybe a march?), then you might not lose too much warscore from them being occupied, and you could just write them off as lost to the enemy should you ever get involved in a land war. Provided the enemy isn't fighting for those provinces in particular, and so doesn't have them as a wargoal, then as long as you don't lose anything else, they probably can't force them from you in a peace deal if you're the war leader.

And as long as nobody else gets the trade power from the node, you should be fine.

 

[BaronNoir]

Some people must be better than me with ground warfare (my key conception for it being ''attack lower tech groups''/''attack undefended islands''/''attack 3 to 1 in plains'', but I would definitely says that for England, it's easier to build 100 frigates than conquer Antwerp (easy) and hold it for centuries while making everyone in Europe angry because of those colonial wars (hard).

You can win wars against Spain and Portugal in France. But when even clear cut victories end up with you losing 30k Manpower....