Help With England

[Furious Mental]

Mercenaries? As England? Why? You can train retinue longbowmen and armoured swordsmen and you want mercenaries? Well whatever. The British Isles have nothing to offer in terms of merchant trading. Some parts of the map offer excellent trading opportunities- the Sahara, the Italian peninsula, the Middle and Near East. But as England, unless you want to go on crusading or whatever, your best bet is to take over Scandinavia. Frankly though there is little reason to use mercenaries as England. Ten retinue longbowmen and ten armoured swordsmen (give or take a couple either way. Dismounted english knights and billmen are dastardly if you change their retarded animation) will wipe out anything in my experience. Mercenaries might offer something to supplement them (and since England does not by default get armoured sergeants mercenary spearmen are useful at the start) but frankly if you hire whole armies of mercenaries you'll be doing yourself a disservice because they are expensive and generally worse than your own native soldiers. Get those archery ranges, pump out those longbows and build those woodsmens' guilds is my advice. Showering your enemies with bodkins and watching their cavalry impale itself on stakes only for the survivors to get their heads cleaved open by a poleaxe or a billhook is the best part of playing as the poms!