Playing as Great Britain gives you both big advantages and some big disadvantages. For starters it takes 3 turns to get 1 unit on to French or Battalion Soil. So any attack has to be planned 3 turns in advance or you will fail to capture any territories Since 3 turns can make the difference between winning and losing, attacking France or Belgium as a means to getting onto the main land is probably not the best idea you can come up with.

Great Britain players should instead look towards either the Diplomatic game for a solution or try taking other countries first. Since the Diplomatic game takes time, there is big chance another country will have conquered the nation you planned to annex and the Diplomatic game only really develops into a useful tool late in the first Era or in the second Era.

So the first move I would recommend is to take over Alentejo by force whilst taking the Diplomatic approach to taking over Spain at the same time. This is not only achievable but it gives you an easy foot hold in Europe and gives you access to other parts of the world where Great Britain's influence is not great enough to reach at this point in the game.

From there you can try and take over Morocco if the French do not beat you to it or try and take on the smaller southern European states. Heading slowly towards Rome and the Two Sicily's (Napals). Once you reach Napals and you get an area of influence of 2 or more you should be able to take over parts of Africa.

At this point you will have enough resources and people to start planning to take out France.

Taking Denmark and Hanover first is the route I took, I found Hanover to be a great place to fight off the French having destroyed 9 French armies at the bridge in that region using only 3 armies of my own.

That's 9 armies that could not make it back to the French capital to defend it when I landed fresh troops from Great Britain at the closet French port.

My armies in Spain then proceeded to cut off any remaining French armies in the south from their capital and this allowed me to conquer France pretty easily. I had a line of armies stretching from Denmark to Spain that divided the French forces leaving just 3 armies in the French Capital to fight off my attack. Because the regions I occupied was close to the French Capital, I was about to swap badly beaten up units with fresh ones each turn too.

Conquering France frees up any states they controlled who suddenly become independent. At this point you should make Alliances with them to protect them from others later and allow you take them over your self in due course.

Once you have conquered France you should be strong enough to conquer the rest of Europe. However I will leave you with this tip. Choose your next conquest carefully. Its possible to defend your entire Empire by taking over just Hanover, Helvetian Republic and Lombardy with Denmark being good idea too but entirely optional since any force coming from Denmark must travel through Hanover. With 3 armies in each country that means you need at least 9 units to make your Empire safe and have a force to conquer countries with at the same time. A bear minimum would be 3 armies, one in each country. Which may be all you have left after defeating France.

IF you conquer other countries you will need more armies to defend the same area. So adopt a policy of keeping your defensible borders as small as possible. This limits where the AI can attack you and gives you an easy method of moving fresh troops from France or Spain to those areas as needed.

A good example is Hanover defends Batavia and Denmark from attacks by anybody except Russia which can attack Denmark from the north if it chooses too.

To the south there is a region that defends the Papal States and the Two Sicily's (Napals and Sicily) as well as another smaller nation to the west. Holding these key nations will help you when defending and give you good launching points for offensives in the rest of Europe. Especially against Austria.

Written by giskard