Great Britain - Information & Discussion

[Lazy Knight]

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EMERGENT FACTIONS: SCOTLAND | IRELAND
*The UNITED STATES FACTION INFORMATION & DISCUSSION can be found HERE

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Britain
British Line Infantry renowned for their shooting skills, their melee abilities do not hold up to that. Britain's other branches are good, but not dominating.

Britain has to play in many theatres around the world in order to establish as a dominant power. Its European forces are meant to lead invasions overseas and defend their European allies on the mainland. Melee oriented Scottish troops support the British. Overall strong and thus boring to write about.

[Society]

So far this has been the single most challenging campaign I've ever been in.

It's 1713 now, my navy is stretched to its breaking point dealing with the spanish, french, and pirates.

In 1702 the king of spain dies, triggering a somewhat late war of the spanish succession.

By 1705 I have conquered Gibraltar and marched on into Spain proper. The Spanish are holding out and refuse to give in, and will not accept peace.

In 1708 the French seemed unable to allow me to pummel their ally any more and declared war on me. At sea my navy is getting hit on all sides, and my shipyards can hardly keep up with the losses. In a single turn my navy of four fourth rates fought three naval battles, destroying or capturing ten ships which were sold for prize money.

1710 Madrid falls, but the Spanish refuse to give in to peace. An army from Florida makes a naval invasion of South Carolina, but are beaten. Along the gold coast my shipping is being raided by Spanish privateers.

Between 1710 and 1713 little land is exchanged but the seas are the real battlefield. My navy, with the acquisition of three french fourth rate ships of the line is now able to hold on to the channel with some certainty, the threat of naval invasion from france is passed. Things are now REALLY dicey for me as the Austrians, who were keeping spanish italy under control have been invaded by Prussia. Sweden invades Hannover by sea, bypassing the Danes.

Currently I'm only able to balance the books by selling off my technologies to my allies and hoping none of my ports in the Americas get blockaded. Honestly, 1.4+is 2.1b is freaking awesome.

[Goatbuster3000]

Nice little summary you've written. Definitely sounds fun. I will have to attempt a British campaign once, as all of my campaigns have hence been land-based.

[strickland911]

How many turns per year do you use?

I am using GB as well. I have captured Paris and Alsac lorraine in 1713 (two turns per year). So no more french.

Then. UP declares war on my protectorate (War of Succession). So I join the Thirteen Colonies.
I invaded Amsterdam and gave it to Hanover. But Hanover is getting pwned by Wuttemburg so I land another army there. After taking out most of wuttemburgs army, I requested for peace and they accepted. No worries now since hanover has a nice military.

After about ten turns, Quebec have declared war to my protectorate Thirteen Colonies.

Quebec is now pwning them. Cherokee and iroquios as well.. I can't help them because all of my funds are going in the war with the Maratha. (Colonizing them)

The game is damn hard. and hard= FUN

and now I'm at war with Spain :/...Damn all my efforts. I gave them some Carribean settlements as well to remain our peace.

[RuleBritannia]

You forgot to mention the unplayable and easy battles due to broken AI.

Funny how people exaggerate campaigns to make it look challenging, and it always seems to be those involved in the said mod that exaggerate it.

Either way, the campaign does sound good. Has the Campaign AI been making trade agreements, etc., as CA said they would? The improved diplomacy was probably one of the most important issues CA said they'd address.

[The Vicar]

The best part of this? That there was a message from one member of the dev team, Society, to me, another member of the dev team, which said:

"This is the hardest campaign I've yet played."

So no propaganda, mate. He's serious when he says it.

[Society]

Everything I described are things done on the campaign map. "Guerilla war" is a more colorful way of saying "large numbers of small armies" (which, btw, the ai uses perfectly well) On the seas they're actually doing things much better... (IS currently uses vanilla naval changes while they decide how best to alter them and keep the good things CA did, and discard the bad)

In Spain, again, mostly half-stack battles. Keep in mind this is really early. Spain was forming rather neat lines and charging after four volleys. During a counter siege (sieges are still stupid, grappling hooks...) My men actually used those cannons (at long range too!) to decent effect.

Did I win nearly every battle? Of course. The AI forms lines while I do neat things like use an oblique order to pressure their right flank and cause a rolling rout. I really challenge anybody to name an RTS that has a challenging ai which does not cheat. This isn't CA's problem (btw, IS is using vanilla ai atm) in my opinion, as coding battle ai is a . Nobody gets it right.




All that aside... the campaign continues.

1713 ended with the Dutch invading and annexing Westphalia after it was conquered by France.

1714 I am now uncontested master of the seas around Britain, have landed an army in Newfoundland. Faced with regular soldiers, the rabble surrendered. (yes, if you vastly outnumber an opponent, they surrender now) Acadia was also conquered by my colonial militia. Spain remains obstinate. Rebellions occur frequently.

1715 After occupying Havana, Spain capitulates. During ensuing negotiations Spain trades its Italian possessions for its own freedom and that of its colonial holding, Cuba. The Italian posessions were ceded to Austria in recognition of their sacrifices. The war with France continues to drag on...

[Lazy Knight]

Merged this into GB Discussion

[The Vicar]

We're not talking about AI in this thread, people.

This is a thread to discuss gameplay aspects specific to the faction of Great Britain.

I'm sorry to have to delete some posts, but let's keep this on-topic.

Move along.

[RuleBritannia]

Wow, great to see the "care for all factions". Great Britain, a major faction, gets a quickly-made, 3-4 line description and no faction image, while even Morocco, a very obscure nation during the time, gets a massive thread.

I'm sorry if this is off-topic, but what's with the lack of care for Great Britain? It's all either Prussia or someone else, but no attention is ever given to Great Britain.

Seriously, what's the deal with this?

[Disaray]

Is this realy all you have to do? Come here and about insignifigant things like the British game discustion thread dosen't have a picture and only a little description? Fact is the Brits have a number of new units and will have a several changes made to them on the naval side. I don't know where you are coming from with all this ignoring Britan nonsense, fact is CA got things with the Brits more or less right so there wasn't much that needed to be changed.

Now how about contributing to the conversation?

[Sun Devil]

Probably because Britain, like he says, is boring gameplay wise (and this is a game, after all). Strong shooting inf, strong navy, average elsewhere. What more needs be said?

[JMSlayer]

Wow, great to see the "care for all factions". Great Britain, a major faction, gets a quickly-made, 3-4 line description and no faction image, while even Morocco, a very obscure nation during the time, gets a massive thread.

I'm sorry if this is off-topic, but what's with the lack of care for Great Britain? It's all either Prussia or someone else, but no attention is ever given to Great Britain.

Seriously, what's the deal with this?

Great Britain is arguably the strongest faction in the game vanilla, and I'd say it's still the strongest faction in IS. Morocco received a large description with multiple pictures because the IS team practically redesigned that faction. Furthermore, your words describing Great Britain as a "major faction" does a rather excellent job of describing why a lengthy thread is unnecessary. Most of the people on this forum know who Great Britain is, and are aware at least roughly of the army composition and the political climate there. I don't know jack **** about Morroco, personally, and the thread on it gave me a desire to play a faction I otherwise would have avoided. A length thread on GB would be nothing more than a historical circle-jerk, imho.

Finally, if you have an issue with the dev team's allocation of resources, I whole-heartedly recommend you give a different mod a spin. Alternatively, you could create a post of your own and PM it to one of the staff, I'm sure they'd have no problem replacing it. Complaining about the dev team not going into great length about namesake faction is childish.

[Erunion Telcontar]

Relax Brit. Great Britain is going to be looked at again by the IS team. When we fix it up even further, we'll probably have a nice long opening post.
In the meantime, we just wanted to open a thread where people could talk about Great Britain. If you'd like to see this expanded before it gets redone, why don't you write up a description and pm it to LazyKnight? If it fits in with the other faction descriptions, he might include it.
Unfortunately, we simply don't have much time between testing and updating to do much of this stuff. You'll notice that the Prussian/Moroccan thread opener's were Copied and Pasted from a different thread, which was done when we had more time. (The IS 2.04 release thread.)
Patch 1.4 means a lot of work for testers and modders, so give the poor guys a break. They can either spend time writing about the best known faction in the world, or they can spend time making all the factions better.

[britishballer]

the upcoming scottish grenadiers from danova would be a lovely addition. his scots and irish brigades also look amazing. i know ppl have been upset at not real announcements/changes for GB so there is an idea. no complaints from here tho - keep up the amazing work!

[RuleBritannia]

I've noticed that British troops are somewhat underpowered in terms of melee. British troops were some of the best-trained soldiers in the world, even today this is still true, but only 4 melee attack seems rather stupid. Even Light Infantry have more attack than a British Line Infantry Regiment.

It'd be more realistic if they had 7 or 8 melee attack, not 4.

[Swerg]

It's the historical stereotype of British infantry. Good at shooting, bad at melee. They've applied that elsewhere too.

[Notees]

Maybe English line could use a slight upping? 5-6 maybe?

[Lazy Knight]

We'll rework Britain soon™. Currently we had it intended to use scots for melee. (Stereotypes, yes I know)

We have not really got a concept on what exactly will be done, but we'll come up with one.

[RuleBritannia]

It's the historical stereotype of British infantry. Good at shooting, bad at melee. They've applied that elsewhere too.

That's what my complaint was before with this mod; stereotypes. In reality, British troops far surpassed all other infantry, even Prussia at times, as the British had excellent training, high-quality weaponry and ammunition, and the best navy.

To make the game historically accurate, British troops should get an increase in melee attack considering for most of the 1700s they were the second-best infantry in the world, and from 1800 on they were the best troops in the world, and even today they are arguably the best troops in the world in terms of training.