BRITONS

The Britons (500 On) Following the withdrawal of the Roman legions to Gaul (modern France) around 400, the British Isles fell into a very dark period of several centuries from which almost no written records survive. The Romano-British culture that had existed under 400 years of Roman rule disappeared under relentless invasion and migration by barbarians. Celts came over from Ireland (a tribe called the Scotti gave their name to the northern part of the main island, Scotland). Saxons and Angles came from Germany, Frisians from modern Holland, and Jutes from modern Denmark. By 600, the Angles and Saxons controlled most of modern England. By 800, only modern Wales, Scotland, and West Cornwall remained in largely Celtic hands.

The new inhabitants were called Anglo-Saxons (from the Angles and Saxons). The Angles gave their name to the new culture (England from Angle-land), and the Germanic language they brought with them, English, replaced the native Celtic and previously imported Latin. Despite further invasions and even a complete military conquest at a later date, the southern and eastern parts of the largest British Isle have been called England (and its people and language English) ever since.

In 865 the relative peace of England was shattered by a new invasion. Danish Vikings who had been raiding France and Germany formed a great army and turned their attention on the English. Within 10 years, most of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms had fallen or surrendered. Only the West Saxons (modern Wessex) held out under Alfred, the only English ruler to be called "the Great."

England was divided among the Vikings, the West Saxons, and a few other English kingdoms for nearly 200 years. The Viking half was called the Danelaw ("under Danish law"). The Vikings collected a large payment, called the Danegeld ("the Dane's gold"), to be peaceful. The Danes became Christians and gradually became more settled. In time the English turned on the Danes, and in 954 the last Viking king of York was killed. England was united for the first time under an English king from Wessex.

In 1066 the Witan ("king's council") offered the crown to Harold, son of the Earl of Wessex. Two others claimed the throne: Harald Hardrada (meaning "the hard ruler"), King of Norway, and Duke William of Normandy. The Norwegian landed first, near York, but was defeated by Harold at the battle of Stamford Bridge. Immediately after the victory, Harold force-marched his army south to meet William at Hastings. The battle seesawed back and forth all day, but near dusk Harold was mortally wounded by an arrow in the eye. Over the next two years, William, now "the Conqueror," solidified his conquest of England.

During the remainder of the Middle Ages, the successors of William largely exhausted themselves and their country in a series of confrontations and wars attempting to expand or defend land holdings in France. The Hundred Years War between England and France was an on-and-off conflict that stretched from 1337 to 1453. It was triggered by an English king's claim to the throne of France, thanks to family intermarriages. The war was also fought over control of the lucrative wool trade and French support for Scotland's independence. The early part of the war featured a string of improbable, yet complete, English victories, thanks usually to English longbowmen mowing down hordes of ornately armored French knights from long range.

The English could not bring the war to closure, however, and the French rallied. Inspired by Joan of Arc, a peasant girl who professed divine guidance, the French fought back, ending the war with the capture of Bordeaux in 1453. The English were left holding only Calais on the mainland (and not for long).

Dominance by Age

Dark Age:

The increased gathering rate of Briton Shepard allows for a relatively smooth start assuming that sheep can be found. If sheep continue to be found, a skillful Briton player will have the 500 required for the Feudal Age upgrade fairly easily for anything but the earliest feudal times. No other bonuses are in play.

Feudal Age:

While not the fastest civ, they are faster than most. With faster archeries to make up for slowed archer production, you can mass a feudal age force more quickly than other players. With the increased build time (:27 to :35) of the Archer as well as other balancing measures of the XPack, players have had to adjust their Feudal attacks. While the Briton Feudal archer trains faster, it is no more effective than any other archer from that time period since foot archer range bonuses do not kick in until Castle Age.

The Britons were one of the best anti-flush civs as they are fast to feudal, can make Skirmishers fast, and once in Castle Age can make a new TC even if you have seriously hit their wood supply. The window of opportunity for the Flush is much smaller with the Britons that it is for most other civs. However, with the new reliance on stone, and reprioritization of Feudal Attacks on stone, the Britons have lost some of their resistance to Feudal attacks.

Castle Age:

While the longer build time of the Xpack TC delay the benefits of cheaper TCs, the wood savings are still instant. A typical Castle Age attack will involve rams and as there will be more wood available to the Briton player, the Rams can be expected sooner. Take a look at The Late Castle Attack article on MFO for an example of an attack that works nicely. The Briton player has two advantages in this strategy: extra range on Crossbowmen and a greater wood supply for Rams. The Briton player will be one of the first to mass early rams while booming at home due to their cheap TCs.

The foot archer range bonus coupled with the first range tech (Fletching) make Briton Crossbowmen particularily useful with a range of 7. The +2 range advantage over a TC allows the Briton player to attack into a TC to support a Ram attack without receiving return fire. If the victim tries to ungarrison a few vils to kill the ram, each vil dies in 8 shots. By having 7 range, they can stand ground in somewhat of a circle just outside a TC and completely shut it down as anything that pops out if it is showered with arrows. Other civs need to pay for Bodkin Arrow to have the same effect.

With their increased range, Briton archers (Crossbowmen and Longbowmen) make nice support units for friendly Knights. Since standoff units can fight without taking damage themselves, it is quite possible for the Briton player to mass archers quite openly while fighting. Backed up by a garrisonable building in instances of overwhelming force (mass knights or mangonels) and anti-Ram forces, the Briton player can establish a relatively solid foothold over a large area in Castle Age.

Cheap TCs also allow a Briton player involved in heavy naval fighting to more easily slip in a TC while still producing ships. While this doesn’t directly effect the naval fighting, it does allow a better boom as the player continues to produce ships.

Imperial Age:

Briton power continues to build in the Imperial Age. They have a reasonably full arsenal of military options, all of which can support the best archer line in the game. The Briton player can get his ranged juggernaut rolling and begin to dominate the Imperial battlefield. After the gold is spent, they still have fully upgrade Halberdiers, Skirmishers, and Light Cavalry. The only post-imperial gold technology missing is Guilds.

Some of the popular options in include:

1. The Bargain Force - Pikemen/Archers

The largest benefit here is the price tag. This force fares amazingly well at a really cheap price. It can be very hard to stop unless you have fully upgraded Paladins with some sort of ranged support. The low cost also means that you are likely to quickly upgrade this force through the blacksmith. The drawback is that it is lacking against an enemy Treb army. One course of action is to feather the darn Treb to death, but with the high PA of an unpacked Treb this can take a while.

Some weaknesses are that this army moves rather slow as well as being somewhat supceptible to smart Onager use. Ability to quickly move to react to distant actions is limited as well. In addition, a player who has reached population limits will not be able to quickly make another army at home if a group of 30 enemy Champions march into their land. This is an important consideration for the Briton player, as they should seek to try to confront the enemy head on rather than avoid it.

Skimishers can also be added as an additional component, especially if faced against an expected archer force (i.e. another Briton player). Benefiting from the same upgrades as foot archers, the Skirmisher is a very good filler unit for facing other Archer civilizations.

2. The Cost Effective Force - Champions/Archers

The benefits are that this is force is still very inexpensive for how well it performs. The addition of champs give this force a little more punch as Champs do a fine job of ripping down buildings and enemy Trebs. There really is no weakness to this force, considering the cost, and this is perhaps why you will often see it in competitive game play.

3. The High Budget Force - Cavaliers/Archers

If you can afford it then you are really going to start kicking some butt. With a monk or three around you can prolong the lifespan of your cavalry. The nice thing about cavalry is that they are both fast and strong so they can often return from battle to get healed rather than the poor Champion who tends to get returned on his shield. Other obvious benefits include the ability to make strong strike forces on enemy Trebs, raid his economy, and come back for a quick home defense if you need it. Price is the big obstacle here and you will have a really hard time getting all the upgrades you want for your units with this force.

4. The Cheapest Force - TCs/Archers

The TC/Arbalest creep that was popular in AoK has been neutered in the XPack. The increased stone cost and build time of a TC makes destroys the concept of TCs as cheap disposable bunkers. While it is still hard to remove a 2400HP archer when he is planted down on the battlefield, the initial risks and decreased reward (since their is a smaller area of fire) of this tactic may relegate this one to the trashcan.

However, the usefulness of garrisoning existing archers to greatly enhance the firepower of long-reaching castles continues as a useful way to utilize archers on an archer-unfriendly battlefield.

5. Raiders - Light Cav/Arbalests

While the Britons lack Hussars, Briton Light Cavalry are still good raiders for areas not protected by Castles or Pikemen. Only the lack of Boodlines and its 25% increase in HP show as a weakness. Since Cavalry techs may be a low priority for the Briton player, make sure not to overlook to usefulness of Husbandry. While Husbandry has been toned down from AoK (from 1.50 to 1.65, instead of 1.80 Movement Rate), the extra speed is useful for getting into gathering areas faster and with less damage.

Due to the extreme range of Briton archers, they can temporarily shut down enormous areas of an enemy’s econ that are lightly defended and distract opponents. The ability to shoot over walls helps reach areas that Light Cavalry may have a hard time reaching. The decreased range of TCs allow archers to more safely traverse enemy territory. More than in AoK, Villager raiding is an effective tactic and the Brits have some good options here.

6. Late Game options - Skirmishers, Halberdiers, Light Cav

As mentioned before, Britons can fully upgrade their Elite Skirmishers, Halberdiers, and Light Cavalry. While not possessing any useful gold collection bonus, the Britons do not have a reliance on the gold-heavy units that a Cavalry or Gunpowder civ might have.

FAST-CASTLE for BRITONS

In this description, we assume you find all the usual resources (berries, 8 sheep, 2 boars, a forest and a Gold Mine and an opponent) in time. Further we build villagers non stop (when possible).

Villager - Task:

DARK AGE

1-Scout 2-3 build a house each

When you found your sheep all 3 vills go to eat the sheep.

4 sheep 5 builds mill near berries 6 berries 7 build house, then berries 8 berries 9 wood (stragglers) 10 wood (stragglers) on the same strag as vill 9 11 wood (stragglers) different straggler 12 build house, build lumbercamp, wood 13 wood (stragglers)

Move vill 9, 10, 11,12, 13 to the lumbercamp when it's finished

14 wood 15 berries 16 berries 17 build house, lure boar

This is the ideal moment to loom, of course if you are not able to build a vill or need boars earlier you should research loom at another time.

18 sheep/boar (if the boar already arrived)

Make sure one villager stays on the sheep, you don't want that food to be wasted

19 build a farm right next to the TC 20 build a farm right next to the TC 21 build a farm right next to the TC 22 build house, lure new boar 23 build a farm right next to the TC

The boar-lurer build a farm after he delivered the 340 food-creature to the hunters at your TC.

24 wood 25 wood

At this moment you should have at least the required food to feudal and you press the feudal button.

Note: While Feudaling:

Immediately (depends on map's size), 2 berry-pickers become forward vills (after dropping resources of course).

One vill build a barrack.

The rest stays on the task until berries or boar run out, move some to wood and 6 towards a Gold Mine, don't build the mining camp unless you have enough wood.

You can build an additional farm if you are high on wood and low on food

FEUDAL AGE (between 11:55 - 12:05)

4 of the 6 villagers near the Gold Mine (with some gold perhaps) build a market, the other 2 build a Mining camp as soon as you have 100 wood (after starting the market and the range).

The 2 forwards build an archery range.

You should have enough food to queue 2 villagers and still have the 800 for castle age. If you are low on food, build only 1 villager (you can be even faster).

When your market is finished trade 200 stone for gold (this will give trouble if too many people use this strat and the trade rate decreased, but it never happened to one of us).

The villagers you build should go to wood and perhaps one on gold (depends on the distance of the camp and the gold your market builders have collected yet). The 6 builders near the Gold Mine go to gold.

After your 2nd villager is done you press castle button (and reach it between 12:45 - 12:55).

CASTLE AGE (between 15:25 - 15:40)

You should have the resources to build at least 1 knight, queue a few vills, build a defensive TC near wood /gold (maybe both) and get a forward TC where you can protect your forward vills and archers until your knights can take over supported by the archers in case he builds spears. A forward TC close to his main Gold Mine is really nice.

Attack his other resources with your army (knights) and use your TC as a save haven.

Boom at your home base, you should build new farms with the first vills produced in castle age since you are not very high on food.

Don't forget to get a monastery, a blacksmith and a siege workshop.

Conclusion:

This strategy should lead to an economic advantage over your opponent. Further, you can quickly cover resources all over the map while keeping him/her busy defending. Don't make the mistake to go for the Imperial-boom, since a good castle attack can do much more damage then a race to imperial (rams are great to kill TCs, monks are great to defend them against knights, archers can kill the pikes/infantry that attacks your rams).