As an English main, what strats or thinking do English players use vs other civs?
Vs English I know what to do. Actually vs every civ its pretty much the same. Train longbows and either be aggressive or defensive. Against most civs you’re being def and trying to castle.
What do people do vs each civ when playing to gain an edge?
As English you should be aggressive and try to end the game in feudal, or at least damage your opponents economy a lot. England has a very high winrate in feudal and a low winrate in castle age and imperial. So play to your civs advantage. This is true if you play against Russia, or any other civ.
When using English I always scout if they are getting an early stable. If yes, you need to delay your push slightly and get longbows and spear before pushing. If not, go pure longbows initially. Then you try to kill as many villagers as possible, and add a few towers to get your network of castle bonus. Continue adding barracks and add either spears against cavalry or men-at-arms against archers.
If he adds a second TC you ram push his second TC and then kill him. If he tries to fast castle off 1 TC you kill him. If he plays feudal defense on one single TC you kill his economy and ram his outer buildings but avoid killing his TC unless you are sure you can kill it. Basically your goal is contain him and strangle his economy.
If you have him surrounded and have strangled his economy, but can not finish him in feudal, then you go castle age and immediately continue your attack. Add mangonels and upgrade your maa and longbows and end the game.
English is tempo civ where their largest advantage is non-stop aggression. Other civs have a stronger economy if you let them sit back and boom, so you attack non-stop in order to equalize the economy.
Play a Rus to understand their strengths. Play the campaign if you can.
When you do play the Rus, you would know that all the Animals they kill in the game let them get gold. Kill all the animals you see. Deprive him of getting animal kills.
When you play Rus, you would know Hunting Cabins play an important role to their production. Priority kill when against Rus is to kill all the Hunting Cabins you see.
When you play Rus, you would learn that their first Landmark… the Golden Gate is the center of their production. Snipe it fast. Dont let it live and Rus would fall to their knees.
And by the way, Rus dont have Stonewalls. Stones are not precious to them other than making castles/upgrade the civilization.
I’ve been going a second scout every game and lose a slight advantage of fast fuedal. This said it allows me to get more sheep and have better map awareness. I’m finding most games that go long I lose because I atk instead of let them come to me.
Most decent players counter the archers and its suicide to atk them and extremely hard to harass eco without taking loses.
Towers are a hard sell being aggressive with so much wood going into long bows.
The longbow spear delay sounds interesting.
So is it default atk upgrade and decide to ram or sit back?
Going blacksmith into barracks if needed. Mongo’s so OP but so wood heavy. lol never enough wood.
Ya I was thinking of going for the close hunt due to this. I’ve been going double scout and I kill the hunts. Really kills my sheep gathering though. Plus there are so many wolves on a map it doesn’t seem to slow them down at all.
Didn’t know that building was so important. Good to know. So ram rush that building seems good.
Hmmmm maybe I’ll start using one scout to pull any wolves I see and the other to gather sheep plus kill deer and go for near hunt with vills and go a longer game denying as much as I can early. Use the longbows to harass a second hunt with a tower. Possibly even go 1 vill on wood from the start and delay Feudal even more so I can throw a tower at a hunt with one longbow upon aging up.
The Rus game may be a def play at home base mining and a race to kill boars and protect hunts with longbows/towers.
That or just go aggro… I feel they counter Longbow so easy at the base.