Civilization Bonuses:

Team Bonus: Archery Ranges: 20% faster

• Town Centers cost: -50%
• Foot archers: +1 range Castle Age, +1 Imperial Age (for +2 total)
• Shepherds work 25% faster

Q) Are the Britons Infantry the best?
ES_Sandyman:   A) I've answered it five or six times I think. Yes, British infantry receive all infantry upgrades. To put this in perspective, there are four civs which have infantry equal to the Brits (i.e., all upgrades). Two civs which have special infantry civ advantages, but don't get all upgrades, so it's kind of a toss-up on whether they're "better". Finally, two civs have all infantry upgrades AND get special bonuses, so are clearly superior to the British. Of course the remaining four civs are inferior.

However, the bare bones description above miss an important point, which is that all other civs' infantry is inherently inferior to the British because of the British secret weapon -- kick-ass archers. 20 British infantry backed up by 10 British archers will handily defeat 30 of any other civs' infantry.

ES_Sandyman:  The English get all of the ships and ship techs except for the cannon galleon.

Q) We already know the Britons get the best infantry unit, the Champion. Do they get the best upgrades, all the upgrades?
ES_Sandyman:  A) The Britons get all Blacksmith research items.

Unique Unit:

• The Longbowman:  A foot archer with incredible range.

From AOKH forum:
ES_Sandyman:  We have said many times that the archers are toned down from AoE.

Archers have certain natural enemies, and are best-used vs. those enemies. You always want to emphasize your units' strengths, not their weaknesses. Archers are not good at destroying enemy towns or fortifications. They are excellent at defending your own town (esp. when garrisoned). They are good at killing infantry and villagers. They suck vs. siege and cavalry. A huge army composed solely of archers is no longer terrifying.

Longbowmen, as a super-archer, have all the strengths of a normal archer unit magnified. Their bonuses are so good in fact, that they can do certain things that no other archer can do -- for instance, longbows can outrange towers and most siege weapons, defeat handgunners, skirmishers, & light cavalry one-on-one, and they're one of the few uniques units that can take on samurai and come out victorious (though with heavy losses). But they are not invulnerable. Like all archers, they're weaker vs. cav (Paladins kill even elite longbowmen), they're weak used in small groups (except maybe for killing villagers), and if good-quality infantry can get to grips with them, it's all over for the archers.

Incidentally, I did a test of Longbows vs. Teutonic Knights, to see what would happen. I started 20 Longbows at their max distance from 20 TKs. The longbows won, but several Knights got through, and killed 5-6 longbowmen before they were shot down. I admit I didn't bother to try to do the back-up and shoot harassment fire with the longbows. This is actually pretty impressive for both units -- longbows can usually kill fully-upgraded champions without losing a single guy, and TKs can get up to most any other kind of archer and kill him, despite the hits.

The most amazingly effective combat I've seen in all AoK was when I was marching against a bad guy (sorry, can't remember who played him) with a force of app. 20 champions. I was backed up by Matt Pritchard, who had around 15 longbowmen. The evil bad guy was using his civ's UU, which happens to be a foot unit which is specially effective vs. archers (gulp).

As we came towards his town, a gigantic force of his UUs came up over the hill at us, outnumbering my own & Matt's units combined. It looked grim. His UUs were as good as or better than my champs, and Matt's longbows would drop like flies if they got in among them. I quickly shook out my champs into a line and got between the UUs & Matt, who lined up about a half-screen behind me.

The UUs & my champs fell into a big melee. My guys were dropping like flies. His guys were dropping, too, almost as frequently. (I suspect he had forgotten to get the last armor or weapon upgrade). Meanwhile, Matt was bombarding the bad guys with his arrows, and they really started to fall. He tried to get around me to get at the longbows who were tormenting him, but I was able to stop too many from getting around my flanks. Pretty soon my melee was over -- I still had about half my champs left. However, now he had 5-6 UUs in the midst of Matt's guys. I charged my remaining (heavily wounded) champs into the fray and killed the UUs before they'd managed to KO more than 3-4 longbows. The situation was now thus -- his whole army was dead. I had about 8 champs. Matt had a dozen longbowmen. We marched into the undefended town and made his villagers very sad indeed. He didn't have enough towers to stop us (not that he'd have succeeded). If he'd had more towers, we'd have had to pull back and wait for the battering rams to come up, but in any case, he was screwed.

Kind of long-winded, but it gives you an idea of how combined arms can act as a force multiplier.

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