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.