I have worked the last couple of evenings on getting my start right with England.

I am now @ turn 60-odd and at war with NO-ONE. I am the most advanced and richest nation and I have one of the smallest armies, but I don't need them (yet!).

Here is what I did:

1) Build, build, build up all towns in Great Britain with money-making things and things that encourage growth. Any towns without generals set them to "Growth Build Policy".

2) I DID NOT attack the rebel towns to the east and west of Caen - Caen is the only territory I have on the mainland. In order to get your Council to not give you a mission to take the rebel towns, move an army near them - it does not seem to give you missions to take towns you have generals near.
My line of thinking here is that I want to make my territory easy to defend, and Britain, being an island, is just that.

3) Take all of the British Isles ASAP. I took York, then Caernarvon, then Inverness (was a rebel town, dunno if it is normally scottish), then dublin. I then attacked Scotland in their only remaining town of Edinburgh. (This was @ about turn 20-25). The pope told me to stop. I told the pope to shove it where the sun don't shine - he got over it! (Well he died, so standing got reset, but I was excommunicated at one point but who cares?)

4) Build as few troops as possible. Save your money. Personally I built nothing, but some stuff got built in settlements where I didn't have a general but you can take GB with just the troops you start with if you are sly. Asassins help here. As Scotland is a small nation, it is quite easy to assasinate your way through their family tree!

5) Expand trading as much as possible. I found some really nice amber mines up in the southern tip of sweden, that bit of land at the very top of the map to the east of the UK. The UK has lots of coastline and so open up those trade routes ASAP.

6) Build up your navy ASAP. Leave a bunch of ships in the English Channel (The thin bit of sea between London and the French coast) - these make a "bridge" of sorts that your troops can use to cross easily. You need a bit of a navy to protect your ports and the income they produce.

7) I ignored the call to the crusades, but that is only really because I wanted to play it that way.

8) Do not worry about the french going to war with you. Just make sure you have enough troops in Caen to hold out. They attacked me once or twice but with piddly armies as they had to defend too many cities on the mainland. I NEVER get attacked in the UK so I can afford to put 99% of my troops in Caen. Eventually, as I became the most advanced / richest nation in the world, they came begging for a ceasefire, which I charged them greatly for ;)

As I said, I have gotten to turn 65ish (In two or three evening's play - but I restarted quite a lot until I got the tactic down that I wanted to use), and I have built next to no army producing buildings or armies. However, all of the towns in the UK are mine and are at or nearly at full settlement size with plenty of income. I have no-one attacking me, I can play the game in turn based mode (ie on the world map) almost exclusively without having to resolve battles. That way I am spending all my time and money on ramping up production until I get to a point where I am maxed out and churning out the hardest troops like they were going out of fashion - then, watch out world!

QUESTIONS:
Do you NEED the catholic church? Can I not form the "Church of England" and convert to that? I figure you need a religion else there will be heresy / unrest etc, but I don't want to be the pope's lap dog.

At what point to gunpowder weapons come on the scene? Are my fully ranked up Retinue Archers (Best archers in the game) going to be worthless soon?

Is there a way to upgrade troops from one kind to another or is disbanding the only option? You don't appear to get any money or population from disbanding, so is there any way to get anything back when getting rid of unwanted units?


All in all, love the game to bits.