Expect the drop-off to be real and plan for it rather than being surprised by it. In most countries, English competence concentrates in big cities, university towns, and tourist circuits, and falls away quickly in small towns and villages, where you may find nobody in a shop, station, or restaurant who speaks any. The exceptions are countries where English is an official or education-system language, where even rural areas manage, but those are the minority.
Rural language barriers are also softer than they sound. Commerce is ancient technology: pointing, written numbers, calculators held up for prices, and gesture get you through buying, eating, and finding rooms everywhere on earth. The situations that genuinely need language, medical issues, transport connections, anything involving officials, are where preparation matters: download your translation app's offline pack before leaving the city, carry your destination and accommodation written in the local script, and screenshot key phrases.
Two rural-specific tips: young people and schoolteachers are your most likely English speakers in any village, worth seeking out when stuck; and rural patience is generally longer than urban patience, so interactions stay friendly even when slow. Travelers consistently report the countryside as the warmest part of the trip precisely because communication becomes a shared game rather than a transaction.