you may have:
300 wood or 200 wood
100 gold or no gold
200 food or 100 food
4 crates or 5 crates.
obviously, 300 wood + 200 food is the best , you can get unstopped vils production, and you can build 2 houses, or build a TP first. this setup gives british a very fast and versitle start.
in contrast, 200 wood + 100 food + 100 gold is clearly the worst. you have 100 gold which will not be of any use for another 5 minutes, you will have 50 wood left over which you cant do much with for 2 minutes or so, and if you choose to build a manor house asap, you will expereince some TC idle time after first vil is made. if you get this setup, you will have to work more than twice as hard to get the same effect as the former, most of the time it is impossible.
considering british is one of the worst civs right now, I would like to ask ES give them fixed 300 wood start, or 7 vils + fixed 200 wood start.
NOTE: I know the different starting crate effect is present with all civs, but no other civ receives such a strong impact.
Strategy by Ultimitsu
Guns and Biers
British Anti-FF explosion
For TWC only Ottoman FF on non-water non-TP maps
For Vanilla only Dutch Fast Colonial Uber Bank