France

[Mete Han]

I just did a series of tests with voulgiers and venetian heavy infs.
I took both, none-upgraded, and pitted them, both with spear wall on/off. I tested this for 3 times each, and voulgiers were victorious in 5 cases out of 6 total trials. One loss was because voulgier general died first and the unit routed.
Voulgiers won mostly because VHI routed of general death, but the numbers were a bit in favor to the voulgiers as well. With both the 2h bug and shield-bug fixed i think this proves that voulgiers are better than most ppl assume them to be.

I just did another experiment pitting them against zwei handers, and voulgiers took care of them with much more ease. AP and spearwall mixed together is just too good. Their charge is 5, which doesn't suck much either.

All my experiments were done on grass terrain with Very Hard battle difficulty.

Of course, voulgiers are more expensive than VIH, but they can stop cavalry charges much better than VIH so its well worth it. They're weak to missile due to lack of shields but you have DFKs for that, and Dism. chivalrics in multiplayer as well.

With upgraded voulgiers in line, scots guard in back, aventurier in front, and lancers at flank and mounted french archers - my basic french army setup - its hard to beat. And it's so versatile too. You can practice my french-ed up version of macedonian phalanx line with voulgiers and cavalry, or you can add/substitute dism.feudals and dism.french knights for shock value, increase french mounted archers, etc.... just so much versatility and lacking in no category - Unlike Englsh who have piss-poor cavalry, and better ranged than HRE. Although the lack of musketeers is disheartening, you don't exactly need gunpowders all that much as heavy cavalry tactics work fine without gunpowder.

Wait..I don't even play French that extensively yet Ive become an advocate of their roster. Must be the lancers hands down, lol.

I did the same test voulgier vs the venetian heavy inf. with spear wall off and both parties were attacking 3 out of 4 times vfi won by a big margin and lost once by a very small margin. with the spear wall on the voulgiers lost both of the two tries. but I don't have the patch though. but still i am somewhat impressed, the voulgiers are a little better than their statistics.

[Mete Han]

The fun with th French is in the overall strategic situation. Fighting at all fronts is really a big challenge. As for the army the DFK are not to weak compered to the another heavy infantry. Scots guards are exelent even thou they dont have a shield, but they come from a huge stone wall only. And they are the only catolock nation with the possibility to play as the Mongols, with troops only from the huge sites- chandarms, french archers and scots guards. And they have very easy axes to armored sergeants, feudal and noble knights. France can easy play any game stile you want. So yes there is fractions ho have samethimes better units, but none is fun and challenging as France. O, and by the way I am not seing this because I am french- i am Bulgarian and my ancestors kick their bottom in 1205 .

even if you were french i would trust your judgement mate

[TheLastPrivate]

You need to have the voulgiers 3-rank deep and in a long, wide formation or they'll get overrun from the sides by pretty much anything. The problem is that they have smaller unit size compared to other pikes/spearwalls, so thats a downside i guess. HOWEVER, a great thing is that they don't have swords so they don't screw up formation and run around like a fake swordmen like pikes do..

[c4stigator]

As France, you're pretty much surrounded by Catholic factions, and you wont be able to invade anyone without invoking the Pope's wrath. However, the HRE will usually get excommunicated, so use that as a chance to snatch some easy territory. To make this even easier, try and get a French pope and boost your pope-o-meter to the max, then call a crusade on Frankfurt and take it with a free army.

[Robespierre]

Can that be done? you can call a crusade on an xcommed catholic faction? cool
i love voulgiers, so i have been playing France again. that Constance is a winner. send her to seduce His Popefulness, offer an alliance, then call a crusade on Cordoba as soon as the core force is ready under the heir at Toulouse. thus you by-pass the Spaniards. then send them all off to Afica to play Beau Geste and make money. When war with the portugese ors paniards comes, as it surely will, you will have them surrounded and can put a quick stop to the fighting, thus doing away with all catholic opposition to the west.

[Zaleukos]

I've found that the inevitable European backstabs can be delayed substantially by not taking Dijon, Metz, and Bern. Bern and Metz are magnets for the HRE, and Dijon both for the HRE and Milan. If you reach it Antwerp is another magnet (for Danes, Scots, and sometimes English).

Bordeaux, Rennes, Bruges, and Zaragoza are safe though.

The surest way to get into a war with Milan or the Iberians is to grab Ajaccio.

And while I know that the game doesnt have historical ambitions it's a bit funny that the English almost never backstabs the French (medium campaign setting). That is UNLESS you take Caen, in which case they start landing senseless raiding parties near Bruges and Antwerp:p

[Robespierre]

yes. i have taken Bruges and Dijon and Metz, but i left Antwerpen and Bern for my rivals to break their armies on. the Hre were already excommunicado when they made their attack, so looting their property is the way to keep those build queues running smoothly. taking Antwerp would bring the whole North together as one against me, so the Hre can keep it till last. Frances' strategy in this game is thoroughly mediterranean (sp?),Tyrrhennian even( ut melius quidquid erit pati, seu pluris hiemes, seu ultimam quae nunc oppositis debilitat pumicibus mare Tyrrhenum.) Horace.but good control of the Milan sector depends on taking out a slice of the Hre territories as well.

[Nepereta]

France and princesses..

I have finally started playing france ( using mod Stainless Steel) after playing M2TW for ages and I have found you can trade Caen in exchange for a marriage alliance of that nice french princess I even got cash too anyone else try this in vanilla? That princess rocks I suppose she has potential of being an uber diplomat for a short while I am guessing marrying her inhouse will get various 'wife is cool' traits. On the subject of marriage I found grabbing a spainish (the barcelona faction) princess was pretty good as they where willing to pay me to marry her which was kinda odd ( perhaps its just the SS mod) or may be the fact she wasn't anything to special (just 3 hearts)?

[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.

[Voltigers]

I guess being smack dab in the middle of all other European countries, France has the inevitable fate of total war. This gives the game its meaning but after awhile it got frustrating for me. At first I allied with all my neighbors so I could consolidate all of France and take any other rebel settlements bordering my faction. I allied with the Moors as well. The English didn't seem like a threat and I didn't want to reduce my standing with the Pope so they kept Caen but nothing else on the mainland. In the end of my rush for the rebs I even conquered Zaragoza and Valencia to the spite of Spain and Portugal, who were my allies. The HRE made a move for Metz but I pulled a fast one and sieged it before they did. Later with the help of reinforcements I got the settlement. When I saw Bruges and Antwerp I tried to get there before others but the garrison in Bruges proved to be stronger than I thought causing me to be too late for Antwerp.
After having stabilized my empire, the Crusade for Antioch was called by the Pope and having everyone else as allies I decided to send a couple of crusader armies in order to form another empire in the Middle East and finish the game without incurring upon myself the Pope's wrath. On the way I saw and conquered Cagliari and Ajaccio, turning the latter into a city. Two and a half armies were on their way past Crete when the news of Venice's success reached home and they were on the Holy Lands without a cause. I thought I could get Jerusalem but the Egyptians surprisingly beat my sieging army (about half a stack). The other two armies landed, one including my prince Louis, and while one army was running around purposelessly waiting for time to pass so the Pope could commission another crusade, the prince captured Alexandria. My standing with the Pope at this point was high enough to ask for a crusade should the time come but this reduction of forces in mainland France, since I sent most of my troops away trusting my allies, lead to their taking advantage of the situation. The HRE attacked the small garrison in Metz and captured it, Milan came for Marseilles and got it, Spain bribed Zaragoza and conquered the poorly defended Valencia. At this point the annoying Council of Nobles wanted me to annex Caen and my diplomatic endeavors ended my alliance with the English. Just when I thought things were starting to look up as I got Metz back from the HRE, the English came for Paris. My king died defending his capital but to no avail. My army ready for Caen had to make a detour for Paris but got the job done. In the meantime, Portugal got a hold of Bordeaux losing it the next turn. I gave Alexandria to the Egyptians for a ceasefire and my army in the Middle East started to look for rebel settlements. Prince Louis who was governing Alexandria became King and is on his way back to show the Milanese the Marseilles Route. My army that reconquered Metz moved in onto Staufen and the HRE after losing that settlement decided to stay inactive even though we're still at war. Denmark's siege of Bruges and Milan's siege of Toulouse were aptly defended. I killed a Pope who was Milanese and hated my guts to elect a Venetian(my allies) Pope. This new Pope hates me too but I got London and intend to erase the English off the map. I have another army moving into the Iberian peninsula but I am not sure about this one. Spain has not done anything after it got Zaragoza and Valencia and the Portuguese are busy with the Moors, I guess. I am open to your suggestions for my next move since I tend make mistakes when I am excited for conquest.

Soemhow I am feeling you are having a real good time, playing as France. Do tell me how you deal with the Mongols as french, because Mongols are too mobile as an army

[Iavorios]

Yes the Mongols are mobile (as they should be) but you dont have to be. You have armored sergants, scots guards and a hell of a knights. O and DFK, how basicly dont have the habith of dieing. And a HUGE empire. So it is a litlle laborios, but not realy hard, even ot VH\VH.

[Ratwar]

I'm playing on H/H just for reference.

France is without a doubt an interesting play. They’re one of the few Catholic factions that can easily become a super power by only attacking rebel settlements. This is due to their large number off starting of provinces (5, only Germany has more) and easy access to Rebel Land (6 Rebel Provinces start off on the French boarder and another two or three are within easy reach). This has several affects on game play, some player dictated and others AI forced.

For the French, quick expansion is really a requirement. Sure, you start off quite large, but over 50% of your territories are inland, reducing their income from trade, and of the two settlements that are on the Mediterranean one is a Castle and the other is under developed. Without expansion, your ‘Empire’ will be poor, and facing a potential four front war (England in the North, HRE in the East, Milan in the South, and Spain or Portugal in the West). These competitors will also be going after many of the same settlements as you, so it is best to move quickly in securing them. Personally, I use a three prong strategy to expand: Louis and his army siege Bordeaux, a militia force is dispatched from Rheims and Paris to take Dijon, and a third army Is rapidly raised in Angers to take Rennes. After these Settlements are secure, Louis is transferred over to the East to take Bern, the militia army moves to take Metz, and the Angers army is used to hold the city, deter the English from attacking, and preparing to form part of the army that will advance on Bruges.

Now, with all these three armies require training, upkeep, and providing little to no real income from sacking the small rebel villages, money becomes a problem. In the early going, France really doesn’t have that much economy. The land based trade and farming that exists will not finance you rapid expansion for very long (especially once the other major powers in the region decide they want your newly conquered territory), so you’ll need to invest every available cent into infrastructure. You first order of business should be Marseille, since it is your lone port city and Paris. As I alluded to earlier, these two settlements alone will not bring in that much wealth, but since four of the bordering rebel settlements are coastal, it won’t be much of a problem to grab a few more ports. Plus three of these rebel territories are already cities, and the lone castle Bordeaux is an excellent choice for conversion to a city, as it is bordered by three castles, two of which you already control.

Once you’ve got out of the early game (for our purposes here, once Bruges and Zaragoza have fallen to a major power), you’ll begin what amounts to the ever-present cycle of ‘Total War’ caused by having too many territories. That is to say that your land grab will have pissed off all your neighbors. That is to say that taking Metz angers the Germans, Milan wants Dijon, Spain/Portugal will attempt to force you off of the Iberian peninsula if you expanded on that direction, and Scotland/England want Bruges. Now in my most recent game, I got an early marriage alliance with Spain, so they left me alone in Zaragoza and I bought Caen from England and they’ve left me alone in Bruges for the moment. Scotland (who’s also at war with England) keeps landing near Bruges and recently Portugal decided to attack, but both of those fronts have been quieter than I expected. At this point, you should have the finances and production to expand as you chose.

Troop wise the French faction is quite boring in the early game. They’re basically the standard western faction assortment of decent spearmen, serviceable archers/crossbows, and mailed knights (The roster is almost exactly the same as HRE in the early game). You’ll find yourself fighting that old Hammer/Anvil strategy, though the frontal cavalry charge does have a role if Scotland invades or Milan decides to spam Crossbows with little backup. As time progresses, the French find themselves in a much more unique situation. Their heavy cavalry is second to none, and the presence of mounted longbowmen and the Scots Guard give them a lot of flavor.

[HolyGateKeeper]

Haha, nice work Paul. I'm getting extremely well with France.

[Viking Prince]

I have never commented in any of the M2TW Guide threads previously, so why not start here. I had just reinstalled M2 Gold Edition on a new hard drive. Why not play a short campaign to unlock the factions? It had been a long time since I had played without using a modifcation, so it was nice to just take a fresh look (doing so with vh/vh).

As many have already stated, France is surrounded by Catholic factions and will be involved with warfare from the very early turns. This means diplomats, lots of diplomats. I place them on 4 stations -- near the English, Italy, Baltic, and Toulouse. Constance started out by taking florins in exchanage for trade and alliance with the English. I had plans for her to do a tour for a series of alliances, but I had an offer of marriage too good to pass up. A 4 star, 4 chivalry, 4 piety, and a good amount of loyalty that would max out with the marriage. Goodbye Constance and hello to a new family member.!

The diplomats are the key to early survival. The Sicilians and the Moors attack Marseilles and Toulousse respectively. The attacks are trivial, but only if you have good garrisions and diplomats to cut the deals. Let them attack if you think the odds are favorable and try to get a ceasefire if not. Do not bother for longterm tribute deals though, since they will simply return and break the tribute deal.


Continued:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

I had 4 shots with Sicily early in the campaign with 5000 florins on the first three ceasefires. On the fourth ceasefire, I was happy to get 3000 since I was still at war with the Moors and the English. I did lose the starting General in defense of Marseilles on one of the defensive battles, but otherwise it seemed to work well. On the fourth war, Sicliy was finally excommunicated. My alliance with Rome and good standing finally paid off. I called a Crusade on Sicily and that seemed to have solved the problem. They remained distracted with Milan and Venice (which also seemed to keep Milan busy as well)

The Moors were a differant story though. They always seemed to arrive when the Toulouse garrison would send off reinforcements to Marseilles. I was lucky to simply get ceasefires, but I never did have to fight a battle to hold the castle.

The English broke their alliance thorugh my own fault. The Council had advised on strengthening Angers and I ignored the advice. On the last turn to provide the reinforcement, the English attacked. Paris was well stocked with the usual militia plus a couple of mercenary crossbows, two balistas (build this building as a priority, you will not regret it), plus a couple light cavalry and one unit of heavy cavalry. The Pope must have given a cease combat order because the English withdrew back into Caen. The army from Paris followed up and sealed the English in for a long seige. They weathered out the seige which gave me time to fill out the army with more castle infantry. The Pope never intervened (maybe the continuing tribute had a hand in this). Caen fell when the English finally sallied. They were crushed.

My initial expansions were Prince and company from Toulouse into Bordeaux, attacked, sacked, and converted to the urban line. The General and army (except a peasant archer) at Angers seiged and waited for a sally to take Rennes. The General and spears from Rheims oins the captain led army to attack and occupy Dijon. I had intended to then move onto Metz, but changed my mind. There really is not time to upgrade and develope before the HRE wants to take it. I redeployed and decided Bruges was a better target. I let the Bruges garrision to sally and the 4 spear, 4 cav including the general were sufficient. I also grabbed the rebel town of Zaragoza after Spain (or was it Portugal?) had softened it up to the point that there was only about 80 men left in the garrison.

That is the other reason for priests and diplomats. I use them as spies doing double duty. I find the chances of opening gates are not really a good use of resources. My spies are used defensively to help keep out the enemy spies (mainly in Touslouse, Mareilles, and Dijon)

You will notice that some settlements are attacked and others are seiged into a sally. There is always a play off between expending the resources to take the settlement quickly to balance the cash flow versus keeping the army intact to be available if needed. I always like to keep a force available near the English, near Marseilles and also near Toulouse. This requires florins to pay the men which also means slower builds to also maintian cash to quickly bulk up when the nearly continuous wars break out.

At some point, I had secured the borders of the French nation and stopped the southern boundary warfare. It was then on to take out the English. My final journey was into Iberian peninsula which ended the short campaign. I was never at war with the Scottish, the Danes, the HRE, and the Milanese. My 25 settlements were the basic french plus the low countries and related adjacant rebel held settlements except Metz, the English startng settlements plus York, the Iberian peninsula eliminating Portugal and Spain, plus a short Crusade into Cairo plus two other Egyptian settlements.

I took the advice of many of the other posts in this thread. The French are fun to play in the unmodified out of the box and fully patched game. They are fun because the combination of cavalry, weak missile units, and 3rd level castle infantry mean very even openfield battles. With the constant incursions, you will have more than your share of open field battles.

[Prussian to the Iron]

On campaign level VH, I can say that France really gets kicked around ALOT, at least in the early game. Pretty much all of Europe has it in for you (in the first 30 turns, I've been attacked by Spain, England, the Moors (repeatedly, and they make peace after I destroy their armies), Portugal, Milan, Sicily, and Venice. It wouldn't be so bad, but there is no shortage of places you can be attacked from; the Moors, Spain and Portugal typically attack through Iberia and up from the south of France (though the Moors are prone to naval invasions near Bordeaux), England and possibly the HRE can attack from the north, Milan, Sicily, and Venice usually either attack near Dijon or land troops at Marseilles.

I'm having a ton of trouble staying afloat in this campaign; I think if I was in a pinch I could retreat all my forces and defend my capital if need be, but typically I just end up moving armies back and forth between borders. If I take a Milanese town, I get attacked in the south. If I move to stop them, Sicilians ship some guys over and take the Milanese city back. And so on. I would just build multiple armies, but the income I'm stuck with won't allow it.



Aside from the strategic difficulties, I find the Frenchies to be very capable in field battles. the cavalry is top-notch, and the early spearmen can hold their own with some assistance (either an incline or a flanking attack by your cavalry). They don't get any good archers though, which I hate, especially since I don't like crossbowmen. Sieges are absolute bloodbaths: on medium battle difficulty (yeah, I know, but if it made the A.I. smarter rather than give it stat boosts, I would put it up to VH), assaulting a 500 man garrison with 2000 men results in 1000 casualties.


I do wish sometimes that I had picked hard instead of VH for the campaign difficulty. The A.I. is so freakin aggressive on VH, and you don't get a moments rest.