Rhye’s and Fall of England

UHV

Englands unique historic victory conditions are:

1. Be the first to circumnavigate
2. Found at least 3 cities in every continent by 1650 AD
3. First to enter Industrial and Modern era

Unique Power

Royal Navy: Naval units have 2 extra first strike chances.

Unique Building – Royal Stock Exchange

Unique Unit – Redcoat

The English Redcoat has a +25% bonus against other gunpowder units, which makes useful fighting those American rebels. Since I usually almost skip Spin and try to go from muskets to infantry I never had that much fun with Redcoats.

 

English Strategy

Rhye’s and Fall England is big fun playing, because of it’s enormous hunger for colonization. Also you’re unlikely to be pestered by war with the civilizations on the European mainland (no conqueror is coming for you) and your ports don’t even require open borders with someone else…

Here’s as quick summary:

• use your galleys already for the circumnavigate goal
• start building settlers early
• optimize for research (and get Liberalism!)

The UHV goals for England are clear and fortunately don’t rely on the behavior of other civilizations. It’s all up to you! So here’s what you gotta do:

Circumnavigate first

Settle Great Britain and Ireland or save Ireland for later and send one settler down to South Africa. I found that advantageous, because it’s easy to build a production center there. This will benefit your later colonization and help with loads of happiness from the resources there.

With this happiness you can build some wonders in London. The University of Sankore comes in handy, as it provides you with additional research capacity.

The galley at South Africa can already start heading further east along the coast of the Indian Ocean. There’s a lot of civilizations in Rhye’s and Fall of Civilization which have to circumnavigate first. The strategy here is basically a mixture of exploration (using your own caravels) and exploitation (of the AI players). So while you do your own scouting – as soon as you researched paper – buy the maps of other civilization. Give them whatever in return, but NOT your own map. If you do this every 5-10 turns you’re almost guaranteed to have the most extensive world map. Especially if your first galley survives until Arabia, India or even Khmer. Buy their maps for technology if need be! Circumnavigation is triggered when your most westward exploration overlaps with your most eastward knowledge of the map. These spots don’t even have to be connected!

The hardest part is the 2nd goal:

Colonize every continent with 3 cities each

Build settlers in GB and South Africa. I recommend settling North America first – ideally you can chop/whip one settler in your first settlement there. Remember to bring some crossbowmen for defense against the Natives.

Same can work in South America if you settle the food rich area near Rio (not sure anymore what the name of the city was). This might turn Spain against you though. Other than that, if your research was quick enough, there should be plenty of space at the NE coast of South America for you to settle.

Asia and Australia are further away, so you should go there first. But you’ll have to decide this depending on the technologies your enemies (mainly Spain, Portugal and Netherlands) have researched. If Portugal starts colonizing – prioritize South America. Asia remains the most difficult part, simply due to the number of civilizations emerging there. Japan will soon settle northern Indonesia while the Khmer will found Singapore. If there’s no more free spot (do some scouting with your caravels in time before your galleons arrive) you’ll have to make do with southern India and Kamchatka.

Australia and New Zealand are pretty awesome spots even for permanent (profitable) settlements. Northern American cities are real production powerhouses. Keep those cities and enhance them, boosting for research. Some of the other cities you might trade away or give up in a congress.

Be the first to enter Industrial and Modern era

Once you have made the colonization goal, the third goal is not a problem anymore. As your first goals had been based on technological leadership there’s no way you can lose this advantage. So make your colonies profitable and care for stability (courthouses!), then optimize for research. Wherever possible (or where cities outgrow the happiness limit) max out on scientists. This way you’ll be the first to research most technologies and can build all world wonders. This will only reinforce your #1 position.

Remarks on my strategy

It’s been a while since I played Rhye’s and Fall England. As you can see on the screenshots provided neither France or the Netherlands nor Spain do exist anymore. Portugal is merely the small island offshore. I think I wiped them out before colonization. Because what better way to make sure you will colonize everything, than to remove the competition? Use Germany as an ally and conquer Paris and destroy Amsterdam. Two gone. Conquer Madrid and destroy Lisbon. Four gone. You might watch out for the time though, because you have to found these 15 colonies before 1650 AD.

Here’s how the political map of the world looked like in the mid of the 20th century:

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The usual official strategy guides for Rhye’s and Fall England are still here:
http://web.archive.org/web/20090514073418/http://rhye.civfanatics.net/wiki/index.php?title=Rhye%27s_and_Fall_of_Civilization_-_English_strategy