English Civ
English civ is not a very good civ when it comes to higher-level play. But it would be a perfect civ for any new player. Actually not just for the beginners but even for people who have put in 100-150 hours as well.
I'm currently in the process of finishing my placement matches for the 1st ranked season. So far I've played 4 matches and have won only 1 (on hill & dale, imperial age push with canons and elite level army).
On this page, I just wanna leave everything that I learn about the English civ before I either transition to another civ or become so good that I start to see issues with English 😂
References
In the notes below you will see shortcuts like TC or vill so just to explain what all that is you can read this section.
TC - Town center
vill - villager(s)
When I write something like 6-0-0-0/2 this basically means - 6 vill on food - 0 vill on wood - 0 vill on gold - 0 vill on stone - 2 vills are building(something)
Everywhere I will mention something like "make a house" you will see something like
qqorqrbeing mentioned in the bracket. - That is the shortcut for that building i.e if you select a vill and pressqqit will give you a house then you can just place it wherever you want.
Build Orders
Decent Beginner level order
I'm not sure what to name it but this build order is pretty decent if you don't have TheViper level macros/micros.
What we will do in this build order?
We will focus on getting to the feudal age somewhere between 3:10 - and 4:00. Once we are in the feudal age we will try to build a basic level army that can include the English longbowmen and some spearmen. Now from there, you can either go for villager harassment or maybe some sort of tower rush or just try to boom and get to the castle and/or imperial age.
Order
6-0-0-0 vill on food, put around 2-3 vill in TC queue, and start moving your scout to gather sheep. - Usually, 2/3 sheep are just around the TC so just get those first and then go on a long trip with scout.
1 new vill to make a house(qq) and then mining camp(qr). Once both of those are built move that vill to gold -> 6-0-0-0/1
1 new vill to gold, near the mining camp -> 6-2-0-0/0
Another new vill to gold -> 6-3-0-0/0
2 new vills to the nearest tree to TC -> 6-3-2-0/0
Make sure you are moving your scout and getting sheep
Here you have the option either don't make vill and wait to reach 400 food and 200 gold. - Most people prefer to just add the vill to a queue. But make sure not to add too many vills in queue if you are just near the 400 food limit.
Once you have the resources place the Council hall somewhere near your TC. - Move 2 food vill to make the council hall. - I'm saying council hall cause 99% of the time that is the best landmark to go with.
So at this point you should have around 1-2 vill in TC production queue, 4-3-2-0/2 and time should be somewhere between 3:10 to 3:40 - If any of the above cases isn't true for you then you can definitely practice doing the whole flow again and getting the timing as well as resources as close to what is mentioned above.
After you've got the council hall make sure to have more vills on food and wood as compared to gold. This is because you'll be either making barracks and then spearmen/MAA or you'll be making longbowmen's all they require more food and wood as compared to gold.
Another thing to keep in mind is that it's important to drop down the blacksmith as soon as your resources(wood) allow. This is so you can get all the upgrades for your melee units and probably one of the most important upgrades i.e siege engineer(especially if you plan to do early ram rush).
I also just want to state that my approach/build order is the best out there but I think I've seen the majority of players/streamers recommend similar build orders for English so that is why I just like to assume that hitting feudal age in between 3:10-4:00 with approx 14-16 vill is a good way to start making archers/spearmen/MAA(men-at-arm) and then decide what to do.
Early Wheelbarrow
I've seen don artie do this build order in almost all the games in which he plays as English. The first time I saw it was on AussieDrongo's channel when he was casting one of don Artie's golden league matches.
In this build order, don hits feudal age somewhere between 6:15 - 6:40 but he had a somewhat pretty stable economy and around 20-25 vills, with a wheelbarrow, already researched.
Order
2 vills on food, 2 on making mining camp(qr) to nearest gold, 2 to closest treeline making lumber camp(qe) - 2-0-0-0/2/2 -> 2-2-2-0/0 - Keep moving the scout
1 new vill to make mill(qw) either to closest berries or dear patch. - The best case would be if the mill is pretty close to TC or toward the back of your base. + This will help in the future when we start transitioning to farms. - Use any of the food vills to make a house close to TC
All new vill to food until you have something like 8-2-2-0 composition - By this time you should have enough gold to get a
wheelbarrowupgrade from the mill. so get that - Make sure to keep making new villsJust keep managing your scout and making new vills until vill composition is something like 11-1-3-0 - Once something like this happens move the majority of vills from food to wood -> 3-9-3-0 - At first, I was confused about why this was being done but then I realized Don was planning to get the wood a bit higher so then he can immediately transition to farms.
Once you have a decent amount of wood for 6-8 farms bring back the wood vills to make new farms(qa) near your mill - composition could be similar to 6-7-3-0/0 with majority of food being farming
If you are getting confused with numbers like composition was 3-9-3-0 = 15 vill and then I said 6-7-3-0=16 vill and thinking how did 1 vill grow, well it's important to constantly make new vill, so while all the farms being built or you were moving your scout or whatever, the TC should be making a(or multiple) vills
At this point, the time should be around 5:00 - 5:15 and you should have composed something like 6-10-2-0/1/1 - 6 on food(farms), 10 on wood, 2 on gold, 1 building council hall, 1 making barrack - I notice don Artie was hitting feudal age around 6:10 - 6:40
Now a lot of people seeing this would obviously notice that a 6-minute time isn't a very good time to hit feudal age because if your opponent has already hit feudal age around 4/5 minutes they could be rushing on you. But in the matches that I observed I didn't see Don having any issue with this build order.
Once they had the council hall & barrack. They queued spearmen and longbowmen and were also making blacksmiths. And right after blacksmith, they started getting those melee units to upgrade.
Personally, I don't want to use this build order because:
This requires a lot of management of vills and scout + At least at this point I'm unable to move around my base with crazy speed/shortcuts
In the majority of games that I play there are always people trying to just bring a few amounts of infantry into my base to harass my vills. So I feel like hitting feudal at 6+ and then going for longbowmen and spearmen might not be that good?
Early barrack/MAA
I've deen DeMuslim use this build order a lot. You can see them doing it here. Basically, the idea is to delay the feudal age a bit but have a super early barrack and around 2 MAA(men at arms) at enemy base harassing the vills.
Order
4 on food and 2 making barrack(qs) -> 4-0-0-0/2 - Once that is done move both of the builders back to food -> 6-0-0-0/0
1 of the food vill to making lumber camp(qe) - Keep making new vill -> 6-1-0-0/0
New vill to wood near lumber camp -> 7-2-0-0 - Make house using any of the food vill
If you have enough food at this point produce an EMAA(early men at arms) - You can make 2 EMAA as well but try to limit it and don't mass produce them at this point.
Move the EMAA to the enemy base and harass the vills - This is one of the issues I feel at my current level, going blind with EMAA on an enemy base is hard. Time would be around 2:00 - 2:20 and the possibility that my scout had found the enemy base is difficult. So moving EMAA blind on the map is tough again.
Go heavy on wood and food without having vill on gold - Time(approx): 2:30 - 3:00 - composition(approx): 5-8-0-0
After this make a mining camp(qr) and start gathering gold. - composition: 6-8-1-0 - Time(approx): 3:30 - 3:40
Now keep making vill and adjust the older vills as well. - composition: 10-2-4-0 - Again this number is just kind of approx basically you need to now focus on getting to feudal age. So try to manage vill in such a manner that they are gathering food and gold at the highest rate possible all that while also trying to keep the wood gathering going. - Don't completely halt the wood gathering
Again if all went well then by the early 5th minute you should have placed your council hall near your TC. - Build council hall using your 3-4 food vills. - composition(approx): 5-7-4-0/3 - You should have your council hall between 6:30 - 7:00%
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