France

[frogbeastegg]

France is playable right from the start, without the need to unlock it or edit any files.

[Zoltan]

Hi all. since I see no one has bothered to write a guide for France, let me give it a try. I've already posted a few AAR in the main forum, but now here's a few tips that may hopefully prevent you from making some of the mistakes I did.

Faction Overview

While the French are one of the "big" faction in this game, with a large natural territory, they are definitely not among the easiest to play. A plethora of enemies means you will often have to run around to defend one town or another. Your resource are decent, but not plentiful enough to allow you to field many armies at once.

As the Campaign briefing states, french has a pretty good cavalry from early to late game, but their early melee infantry is rather lacking. As for archers, what they have in the early and mid-game is basically useless, and you'll be much better off with mercenaries.

Another thing you should know about the French is they breed like rabbits on steroids. They also tend to adopt an almost disquieting number of handsome young men, which raises a few interesting questions about their strictly fatherly sentiments. Well, maybe that's just my campaign. At the present I could almost station 2 generals per city I have, even after losing a few to some nosy inquisitor.

Last but not least, you get the infamous french accent and some funny, if somewhat cliche, battle speeches.

Starting Position

As the French, you start with 5 towns, which is large, but you can more than double that count in the first few turns. You start with 3 towns : Paris, Reims, Marseille, and 2 castles : Toulouse and Angers (pronouced Anjeh: sounds like the -an from 'France' and the ge from 'general'). You also have one cardinal near Angers, one princess near Paris, and one spy near Dijon. You should also have one ship in the Mediterranea.

Around you are plenty of rebel settlements, which are more or less easy picks: In the east : Dijon (town) and Metz (castle). West : Rennes (town). Southwest : Bordeaux (Castle). To the north but better defended are the two merchant towns of Bruges and Antwerp. A valuable addition to your territory but it comes at a cost. Finally if you sail from Marseille, Ajaccio and Cagliari can be made into a small additional source of income for little trouble. Cagliari can build silver mines too. Bern and Zaragossa might also be possible takes, but I think they're more troube than they're worth and will certainly land you in trouble with Milan and Spain respectively.

Then English castle of Caen is a major threat to your inner territory and should be you first non-rebel objective.

Early Game

In the early game, I opted for a very aggressive, expansionist strategy. The battles themselves should not be beyond what a reasonably experienced player can handle, but it will leave your cities very exposed and tempting to an enemy attack (sometimes purposefully), so you may choose a more sedate pace if you don't feel comfortable with that.

1st turn : Get your spy inside dijon, then siege it with your troops from Reims. Siege rennes with your guys from Angers, and move your troops near Toulouse to attack Bordeaux. Leave your general and troops in Paris for now, you don't want the english to attack you just yet, and they will as soon as they see Paris undefended. Maybe just move one unit to help the guys in Rennes. Start building some cheap militia units in Reims.

2nd turn : you should be able to take Dijon this turn, especially if your spy opens the gates for you (see "Tactics"). Rennes is also a possible but you're not in a hurry. Bordeaux is the thoughest nut to crack, and you will probably want one or two mercenary spearmen to help you clean up the walls. Wait til you have enough siege equipment to attack.

After Dijon is taken, reinforce you men a bit with fresh troop from Reims, and move on immediately to reims. You can be at the gates by the 5th turn, and even take it straight away with some help from your spy. So with a bit of luck, Metz, Dijon, Bordeaux, Rennes should all be yours by the 5th or 6th turn.

I recommend making at least Bordeaux a town : you've got plenty of castles in there and it can be a very nice trade/farming cash cow. Metz might be a good idea too, but it might help keeping it a castle to defend against the HRE. Sack a castle if you're going to change it into a town. Towns grow population faster so it's not much of a worry, and you'll lose some buildings in the transition anyway. You need the money.

Now you should regroup your armies in Reims, leaving about 4 units to defend Metz, and possibly a general. Keep recruiting cheapo units in Paris and Reims, you need some to take either Bruges or Caen (depending if the english attack you) and also to man the crusade that the pope should launch around the 8th or 10th turn. On the south front, you can start mounting a naval expedition to Cagliari (silver mines yay!), you're not going to need too many troops for that one so leave a few units to defend Toulouse.

Then I suggest you leave your king + about 8 crappy units in Reims, and move your main force north to siege Bruges (don't forget your spy!). Leave only 2 militia units in Paris and a general in Angers or Rennes with a basic force. The English will most certainly try to attack Paris at that point, whatever your diplomatic status with them. Move your force from Reims to a spot near Paris, so they can act as reinforcements should they assault, but don't attack yet. You want to get them to attack you and lower their rep with the pope, so you can then take Caen without getting excommunicated.
Quickly take Bruges if possible, then move your army back to dissuade or repel the English.

After, (or even before) that episode, the Pope, who by now is getting senile and has accumulated a variety of benign urological ailments, should declare a crusade upon Antioch just to relieve his frustration. Your standing will probably be low with him, so participating is not optional. Put the seven crappiest units you can find on it, and I recommend choosing your King or heir, Louis to head it: they have a little too much predisposition to heresy, so you want to either raise their piety thanks to the crusade, or simply have them meet a heroic death at the hands of the infidels. I recommand starting from Reims and crossing the HRE,where you can recruit plenty of excellent crusader units and are less likely to get stuck. Bring a spy with you if possible.

That crusade is a long shot for you : most other factions have a good head start on you, so you have to get moving immediately to stand any chance. That is if you actually want to succeed of course. You'll get a nice bonus even if someone beats you to antioch so you can just have a relaxed stroll across europe, and then hire some ships to get you home afterwards.

Play a game of cat and mouse with the English to get them to attack you: leave cities weak (with reinforcements nearby) or armies on their border to provoke them. With a bit of luck you may even get them excommunicated. When their standing with the Pope is low enough, attack and grab Caen as quickly as possible. If possible, do it while their army is outside the town (spies!) They should accept a ceasefire after that.

Sooner or later you will get attacked by HRE and either Spain or Portugal so be ready for it too.

Tactics

Did I mention cavalry? Yes, I rather thought I did. Your cavalry in the early game is actually nothing special, pretty much the same as the other western powers, but since your infantry is so weak, you're better off making extensive use of it. It is also well adapted to the french strategic game, where you may need to reinforce this or that city in a hurry.

First: prefer open ground battles, and avoid fighting in forests or mountants as much as possible. The cool thing with having a cavalry army is that you often get to choose where and when to fight. A good formation for the early game would be about 25% heavy, 25% light cavalry, and 50% crappy infantry (usually militia pulled out of your towns for the occasion), with just a couple more solid units such as sergeant or mercenary spearmen to hold your flanks. I almost never pack ranged units, they're not much help in this combat style, and the oponnent will almost always outclass them anyway.

First, as the enemy will usually try to pepper you with arrows, charge your cavalry straight at him. That will make them stop firing and retreat behind their infantry line. You can engage and make a few kills where possible, but stay well clear of their infantry. You cavalry will need a few seconds to turn away and run, so keep a bit of distance, it is much harder and costly to pull away when egaged whith a unit of spearmen. Retreat you cavalry to the sides, then behind the enemy, and charge your infantry straight in. Once melee combat is joined, attack the enemy's flanks from the rear. Focus you heavy cav on heavy infantry units, and your light cav on any exposed archers or light infantry. You can quickly route the enemy's flank and curl up your own around the enemy's remaining formation, to support your weaker center units. You have to be quick because militia has a lifetime of about 1 minute against any serious opponent.

If the enemy has any cavalry, gang up on them 2 on 1 in priority to quickly dispatch them. Usually for 1 heavy cav unit, charge 1 heavy then one light cav to dispatch them with minimal losses.

If a charge in the back is not enough to rout an already engaged enemy unit, don't hesitate to pull back and charge again.

Now what about sieges? Believe it or not, but you can take an enemy fortress with a cavalry army and no artillery. Your best friend is called the spy, don't hesitate to move 2 or 3 of them in before a siege! Not only do they open the gates for you, but they allow you to pull off a surprise attack, so at the beginning of the battle the enemy forces will be scattered all around the town. They will usually have one unit guarding the gates, so it's a good idea to try and lure it away. Just start moving some towers towards the walls, and the guys will scramble up their to help the defence. Now run your most powerful cavalry units straight through the gates, and pulverize whatever is left behind. Try to move you cav away from the gates, and send your infantry to clean up behind them. The guys on the walls will come back down, so try to engage them with your infantry while they are still disorganised, then charge you cavalry in from the other side. Don't leave survivors.

Then, once you are safely in, the remaining units will come at you randomly from all sides, so try to take them out one by one. Manoeuver your cavalry through the streets to get behind them, else any heavy infantry in a narrow street will be able to maul you. Don't leave routers cause they will reform and come back.

That was the quick and risky option. The slow option is to just wait until the guys try to sally out, and then rip them apart on the open field.

Economy and Agents

For the early game, the very first thing I built everywhere is a dirt road network. It's fast, cheap, and will allow your army to respond to threats quickly. 2nd thing: first and second level of farm upgrades in all towns. I mostly focused on economic development as the first steps, being satisfied with the military production of cavalry and militia infantry. After the economic buildings come happyness buildings, starting with churches. It is likely that you will be attacked on several fronts at once it the not so far future. You need a strong economy more than anything else to resist that.

As for trading, france obviously have plenty of wine, and as per monopoly rules, the more merchants you have on them, the more money they will generate. Your earlier development should not take up that much money, especially if you sack a couple cities, so you can start building 2 or 3 merchants around the 5th turn. Let them level up a bit on the wine, and maybe trying to seize some weak foreign merchant's assets (which gives you money, yay!). Late on you can move the to the silver deposits in the HRE or gold in Hungary, and replace them with young ones at home.

Your Cardinal, I suggest you keep with your heir at all times. I've found that my heir easily gets that Pagan Sorcerer retinue, and maybe the cardinal's strong piety can prevent that. Also use him to burn any heretic that comes in your land. If and when you have the money, you can make a few more priests and send them to Moor lands through spain. Also if you take Ajaccio or Cagliari, you may get a mission to improve their piety level. A church and 3-4 priests should do the job.

To be continued tomorrow, I'll add some economy tips, then move on to diplomacy, a very sensitive issue with France, the Pope, and the middle game.

I think I actually did very poorly as a Diplomat in my campaign, so any tips from you guys will be welcome too.

[Andres]

Diplomacy

In my French campaign on M/M I allied with alot of nations, including the English with whom I allied in turn 1. After 40 turns, they are still loyal. (I must add here that I'm playing at a slow pace. I secured the modern day France territory, captured Ajaccio and have gone on a crusade towards Jerusalem, so maybe England doesn't really feel threathened). A very useful ally is the Pope. Allying with him will make give your Pope-o-meter a huge boost. A very useful tip when entering negotiations: haggle. If you are negotiating, you'll see this line at the bottom of the scroll, mentioning "Very demanding", "demanding", "balanced", "generous" or "very generous". Adjust your offer so that it becomes balanced or maybe a bit demanding. After that, you haggle. Lower you demands a little bit. It takes a lot of rounds before you get rejected, so don't bother. Keep haggling. If the opposite party refuses you offer straight away, they are not likely to accept anything, so don't bother either. Both Spain and the HRE refused an alliance. Later in the game they both proposed a "pay tribute or we will attack". I counteroffered them with "please do not attack - accept or we will attack". Since I had a strong military force (I built up a nice crusader army at that time) they accepted.

If you want your relationships with a certain faction to improve, make a generous offer. One faction you surely want to make a generous offer too, are the Papal States.

Oh, and don't exterminate the population of a settlement if the majority of the inhabitants are catholics, not even if it's a rebel settlement. The Pope will not be happy with it (in my case, I exterminated the population of Bordeaux, the General was The Merciless guy and as I like to role play my family members, I thought it to be appropriate to let him exterminate. The Pope got upset and two turns later there was a level 9 inquisitor in my Empire...)

[Zoltan]

Hi,

I've restarted a french campaign from scratch a couple of times, for the first few turns, just cause I like to do things over until I get them right.

Thanks to the diplomacy tips from Andres. My relationship with my neighbours is much better this time around. The English seem content that I let them live in Caen, HRE is rather friendly, and I've manage to get a Spanish princess to marry my heir for a good alliance. I'm using the French princess, Constance as a head diplomat. She first made friends with the English, then the germans. Only the milanese rascals, while friendly at first, later had their relations degrade for no apparent reason, then attacked me each time around 10, 12 turns in.

Try to build a merchant in Paris in the first turn. The english have one from the start and you'll probably see him pop up on one of your resources as soon as you have trade relations with the them. After that, don't hesitate to send your merchants east to constantinople, and your priests south to moor lands, or east to the holy land to level them up. Keep your cardinal in france to deal with any heretic (or witch.. BURN!)

The crusades too seem a very random occurence. I've seen it launched at the 10th turn sometimes, and sometimes more areound the 20th or even later. Keep an army ready to go from the 10th turn or so if you want to stand a chance however.

[Dalrogad]

I have a strategic recommendation for the French - do not waste money on Dismounted noble knights - the ones with the large two handed weapon (can't remember what it is). They put the stats of a dismounted feudal knight to shame, and more importantly - they are "good against armor". With the high armor class, but inferior attack of the DFNs, the French DRN should crush them.

Well I had two companies of DRN's get massacred by a company of dismounted feudal knights and a company of spear militia.

I find that merc spearman, with merc knights and french feudal knights, and merc xbowmen, along with 1-3 generals makes for the best "french" army available. Even the most advanced frnech units are little better than the merc units available right from the early game.

If anyone has any explanation or answers to these baffling details, please let me know. But as it stands, my strategic recommendation is as stated above.

[PaulTa]

Armor piercing? High attack, low defense? Hmmm, sounds like a flanking unit instead of a head on unit. (That little insight took about fours hours of studying complex problem solving graphs and spreadsheets, a team of trained professionals, and a crystal ball)



Ok, now the reason I first decided to post-

The french late game isn't something I'm quite familiar with yet, but a french start is something I have down.

Ok, France, Hard/Hard, a little sleep.

First off, you have a bunch of different generals in a few high loyalty settlements. The high loyalty without a good sized garison is something that ought to be taken advantage of. Take all of your generals and as many men as you can comfortably spare on the FIRST turn and head for the nearest rebel settlement. That means Dijon, Rennes, Bordeaux, and that town right above riems that is to the right of Caen (the name escapes me apparently). Hire mercs to bolster troop size for the settlements that have a decent garison, like TTRARTITTROC (Also known as that town right above riems that is to the right of Caen). Siege out everything, as you can't afford to lose a bunch of troops in costly assaults, (especially siege out TTRARTITTROC).

Ok, so you've gone past the first turn or two and noticed that your money is starting to hit the negatives, with no hope in sight. Well, the lack of hope is just an illusion. You can crank the taxes in Paris and Riems without rebelion, even if you have a tiny little garison. Once again, the high loyalty comes to the rescue. If you still can't seem to get out of the red and stay there while you siege out half of Europe, you probably had a few more merc units than I could find. Still, that isn't a problem because in a few turns (probably one or two by the time this happens) you'll start to take out towns and forts one by one. Don't sack, as the value isn't worth it, and slowly kick back and watch your income rise while your empire expands by about five settlements.

Some No No's...

-Don't send out troops without a general unless you absolutely have to.

You'll find that you have a few starting groups of troops that don't have generals. Immediately pair these guys up with the nearest general. As where your settlements and even generals have a high loyalty, your captains do not. Secondly, you can't afford to lose any battles, so all of the extra heavy cavalry and morale boost that you can get your hands on helps.

-Don't assault.

Like I said earlier, you can't afford to lose any troops. Your about to be spread pretty thin with most of your troop concentration on your borders (which is about optimal anyways), so you can't afford to have a weak link in there.

Some Definite Do's...

-Make the best of your diplomats and princess.

What I mean by that is, go straight to Caen with your princess on the first turn, or wait for the english diplomat to find Angers. Spread all of the goodies you have to offer out and demand money for them. Trade rights, Alliance, and map information will provide you with a whole lot of extra money that is crucial to your rush for half of Europe.

-Use what the French are good for.

This means cavalry. By not assaulting and waiting it out, you get to utilize the effectiveness of your mailed knights and bodyguards. Set up your charges right, aim for infantry instead of the archers (with hopefully the archers in front. Nothing is more sweet than a mailed Knight unit charging at infantry and catching those crossbowmen up the arse with a lance). Try to thin out enemy mailed knights with crossbows/archers.


Now at the end of this, you are at around 1090 with ten settlements and enough florins to secure good relations with neighbors, the pope, and a mountain of gold to build an empire on. Not to mention, you've also grabbed up most of the nearby rebels before other nations could get them, so you aren't going to be at a disadvantage on the land side of things.

From here, you can either teach those bow-wielding normans not to cross the crown, show the empire who's boss, or teach the spanish and portuguese how to eat lances and speak french.

Tell me what you think.

[Mek Simmur al Ragaski]

Well this is what i'd to if i was France

Expansion
Take Bordeux, Rennes and possibly Bern, or Zaragoza. Taking Bordeux will provide a solid defense to your rear or your frontline, and Rennes will stop English expanding too far, so if you take them out of Caen, they will prove not to be a problem.

Trade and Diplomacy
Seens as though you a fairly near central Italy, it might be a good idea to either send a diplomat or constance down there to get some trade rights or allies, then she will have full charm and you can consider stealing a general.

Papal Favour
I would suggest gifting the Papal States a town, possibly Rennes or Bern, somewhere where an attack is likely, Bern will almost certainly be assaulted by the Milanesse.

War
The factions you will be at war with are likely to be England, Portugal and Milan, and possibly Spain, just fortify your borders and crush them and you will be fine.

[shinderhizzle84]

oh my freaking god.......

this is the perfect example of a total failure lol.


i was playing m/m as the french. I was ranked number 1 in the world and was mass producing chivalric knights by roughly turn 35. I had over 30000 florins and owned all of modern day france besides caen. i also owned the two medditeranean islands, cagliari and the other one whos name escapes me right now. Anyways, i was pretty much a freaking beast. It all started with the English, who, at turn 31, i think, turned on me (i was their ally) and attacked bruges. I easily defeated their army of two longbowmen (idk what the AI was thinking). I attempted to take caen with prince louis, who, by this timehad full dread and full command and a crapload of dfk and chivalric knights. Believe it or not, a random danish assasin came outta nowhere, killed my prince, and then my kickass army two turns later turned to rebels. darn. But im not even close to getting started. a couple turns later, denmark got excommed. Since antwerp was right next to bruges, and it was under danish control, i figured i might as well dominate them. I sent 3 spies in to antwerp, and built ANOTHER huge dfk and ck army with my new heir, who was pretty decent, although he had chivalry instead of dread. I besiege antwerp...and click end turn. Now, here's the fun part (Not for me). HRE made an alliance w/ denmark and Milan. Hre took metz from me with their best general (at least, i hope he's their best!!) They then besieged Paris, Rheims and Dijon. My three biggest money makers at the time. I had low garrison b/c all my garrison was besieging antwerp lol. Then comes the red death. And by red i mean denmark. 4 full stacks of denmark armies dominate my new faction heir, defend antwerp and then take bruges. England takes rennes and angers. Spain and Portugal (lmao) come from behind and take toulouse and bordeaux. Now i'm left with Paris and Marseille, and my two underdeveloped island cities. Not for long though. I made an alliance w/ milan at first, and it held up until turn 41, i think. They attacked marseille and one of my island cities (the one w/ the silver mines) and invaded them. Voila. All i've got is Rheims (they took Paris later and i was able to win back Rheims, although it was heavily sacked and damaged by the hre...and i had been deep in the red for about 8 or 9 straight turns) and the northern island city. Oh yea, i have tunis now lol, because i had been crusading in jerusalem, but i pillaged every egyptian city, eliminating them, and was on my way to tunis when all this hapened in about 6 or 7 turns (i don't recognize the beginning of this chaos until about turn 37 i believe when i unsuccessfully attacked antwerp). i must've accidentally changed the difficulty settiing to vh/vh lmao bc this was ridiculous. I was fighting a 5 front war, i think, and my army was large, yes, but it was spread out widely across europe, and a lot of unlucky things happened (about half of my generals randomly either succumbed to bribes or died or w/e and then their troops succumbed to bribes lol).


so.....who wants to laugh at me first???

PS: I've given up this campaign lol. I've just started a new campaign with denmark. If you can't beat 'em, join 'em....i guess...

[Iavorios]

I love to Play as France in this gam, and i have more than 6 sucsesfull long campains with them on VH/VH only. So in order to win you must have few things in mind:
1- turteling as France is nearly inposible. HRE, Denmark, Milan, England, Sicilians, Mors and so on will attack you right untill turn 40, no matther what you do. So be ready and take the war to them. In fact I dont feal secure (relativly) untill i have 20 provinces in Western Europe. Once the war frency starts you will go in to total war until you conguer allmost entire western Europe.
2- Make the pope hapy. Use crusades to the maksimum, fight only excm. nations. In case you fight another good catholich plane for a blitz war in one- to turns. This means you will need siege equipment, spies and assasins.
3- Use a lot of spies to guard your generals and cities, to spy on the enemy and to open gates in sieges. I allways try to have a spy in each of my cityes and castels all the time. Use a lot of assasins to kill enemy assasins, inguisitors and heretiks. And whatever else you like. In all my games Paris is building assasins quild.
4- Caliary and Ajacho are a AI magnit. Everybody wants them. So give them to the pope. he will love you for it and half of the catholicks will be excomunicated becouse of thise 2 puni islands.
Otherwyse your early game is very good. i just need more agents.