England: Faction Overview

England begin the game as the dominant but by no means uncontested power. The English recovery from what can be a slighty desperate position at the beginning of the game is aided by their excellent selection of units. The English infantry is very solid with few weaknesses. Armoured Swordsmen are just as capable as Dismounted Knights and are cheaper. Armoured Sergeants can backbone your armies. They will protect against cavalry while still being more than capable against other infantry. Billmen might not be able to withstand sustained melee but they are very cheap and their armour piercing attack makes them ideal for flanking duties while Armoured Swordsmen & Sergeants hold the line. The Dismounted English Knights offer a sturdier (& more expensive) version of the same capabilities. The Billmen are also available as armoured militia units which makes them invaluable for defending vulnerable cities.

The real forte of the English is in their archers. Their Longbowmen deliver armour piercing death from a huge distance while remaining safely behind anti-cavalry stakes. The Yeoman Archers & Retinue Longbowmen are not easy to retrain while campaigning but they are extremely powerful and can decimate enemies from long range. Do be aware that while Yeoman Archers & Longbowmen can place stakes, Retinue Longbowmen cannot. The Sherwood Archers are a special unit that can only be recruited by getting a Woodsman’s Guild. You get this by building lots of archers at a castle building. Later the English acquire Arquebusiers but their archers are far more effective.

English cavalry in the vanilla campaign is not worth getting excited about but in this campaign, it is less of an issue in the Britannia campaign where other factions are equally disadvantaged in terms of cavalry choice. The Knights Templar are the best cavalry available but are somewhat difficult to get as Templar Guilds don’t become available until Prince Edward returns from crusade.

All in all, the English don’t necessarily have the best of any type of unit but the do have the best unit balance in the Britannia campaign by far.

Table of Contents

• Campaign Overview
• Recruitable Units
• Constructable Buildings
• Back to Faction Information Page

Campaign Overview

The English begin the campaign in a fine looking position but a quick glance over your cities will let you know that all is not what it seems. Your Irish, Welsh & possibly northern provinces are on the verge of revolt. In Ireland, your best option is to withdraw & consolidate your troops and let the revolts happen. With your combined armies, you can then take these rebellious provinces back. You will almost certainly have to exterminate every town you capture and quite possibly the castles too. Trim castle is the key to re-conquering Ireland. It has a port on the east coast and thus easy access to England by sea. If you take Trim, you can begin the slow process of pinning down the rebellious Irish and taking their cities & castles. Without Trim castle, your units become more difficult to re-train.

While all this is going on, the Welsh will be causing you problems much closer to home. Cardiff will almost certainly have rebelled within the first few turns and you’ll have to marshall units from all over England to hold the Severn border. Even when you lose Cardiff, the Welsh will still only have 4 provinces, two of which will be castles. If the Welsh start expanding, you could be in difficulty. It is important to keep them inside the “pocket”. Consider using an amphibious operation to land troops behind the front lines and take either of the two Welsh castles.

If you have lost your northern provinces to the Baron’s Rebellion, you face an unusual foe. Their units & capabilities match yours exactly. Even if you are having difficulty fighting them, an amphibious operation similar to that suggested above could recapture key provinces quickly.

The Scots are a tenacious foe. You are likely to have already defeated the Welsh and the Baron’s Alliance before you face them. The Scots are strong in infantry but pikemen can be slow & inflexible. A combined arms approach will crush them. Luckily, many of the Scottish provinces are castles so it is easy to retrain your units.

The Norwegians are another infantry strong foe but their forces are scattered. It is all to easy to island-hop and take those provinces. Even if they establish a foothold in Scotland, they are not too difficult to beat as you will have secured the remainder of the British isles by then.

Recruitable Units

The following table contains all of the units that England can recruit in Multiplayer and Custom Battles. For the Campaign, use the “All” period with the following corrections:

• Units in (Brackets) are mercenaries and therefore cannot be trained in campaign, although any general can recruit them in the field if he has space in his army and there are some available.
• Units in [Square Brackets] cannot be recruited in campaign, they are for Multiplayer and Custom Battles only.
• Units in Italics can only be recruited in certain regions (eg. The New World) or after a certain event (eg. The discovery of gunpowder).

Constructable Buildings

Cities

Castles