Nobody plays France?

[TheImp]

I'll get the game on monday. And i intend to play France. And my friends around will play France too.

First of all, because we are french, and secondly because we like armies mixed with heavy cavalry and good artillery, and france is one of the best for that.

[Ciaran]

I´ve done a Late French campaign in XL, and I liked it a lot. True, the French are the vanilla faction as far as their unit roster is concerned, but I like it nevertheless, simply because those units suit my style best. And the exp. 1 Chivalric Knights from Tolouse shouldn´t be underestimated.
Their strategic position is slightly better than the HRE´s, bordering on two sea areas and having less rival factions as immediate neighbours, and they don´t seem to attract the same amount of hostility as the HRE does.

And they get Jeanne d´Arc - I had her leading a unit of Swiss Armoured Pikemen.

[Solo]

Position is better than Empire but remains rather difficult, once you get your hands on rebel settlements expect to get attacked by all surrounding nations. I currently have nine wars (most are inactive but i dont get any trade) due to domino effect of diplomacy. All started because of Metz, Empire didnt enjoy my intervention and attacked right away. Funny thing is Metz rebelled against their army, and the full stack keeps containing them. Apart from that most south factions will have a hard time containing feudal and templar knights often leading to giant manslaughter. Danes are the toughest i ran into i think but only had one siege so far (buggy as always so im not sure its relevant).
Oh and my advice on first thing to build : churches !

[Richard I Coeur de Lion]

Well I'm playing as France and I'm having a hell of a good time, I'm actually prefering it to my English campaign and believe me as an Englishman that hurts

My alliance with the HRE as stood firm since turn 1, I managed to annex Caen from the English and I slowly expanded my empire from there. Spain, Milan, & Denmark have all declared war on me at some stage but have all accepted ceasefires after I gave them a good spanking.

My biggest problems are coming from the Mongol hoards who have wiped Egypt out and have a load of units wandering the holy lands. They re-took Jerusalem from me but I've since managed to capture Antioch and Adana, whilst my crusade was sailing down there I stopped off and took Rhodes to give me a staging post for future incursions.

I'm loving the unit roster of the French which is far more interesting than the English whom I pretty disappointed with. Whilst on the subject of units does anyone know what the difference is between Chivalric Cavalry and Noble Cavalry, they both have the same stats, the same abilities, the same unit pictures, they both cost the same but the Nobles have higher upkeep!?

[Furious Mental]

England at that time was run by a bunch of French people anyway.