Aidez-Moi

[Henry707]

Hello All,

I'm a pretty experienced player but I must admit I'm struggling to find the right path with France. I'm turtling a little, so I'm sticking to roughly to modern France in area. I've kicked the English out (as every good Frenchman should) & have excellent relations with the pope.

My problem is finding the right operational set up to defend the damned place. Is it better to have 2 armies say north & south & then small garrisons?
My problem is that as France you can be attacked almost anywhere, the coast from Spain or England, Scilliy landing in the south, Milan, not to mentioned Denmark burning all my Celine Dion tapes in Antwerp.

The French have an interesting unit mix - the Scots Guard look pretty good & I see what people mean about the horses being useful. The merchant horsies are really problematic - great as they are milita so you get a good unit which can be maintained for free - downside is that the moment they leave barracks they start costing you more garlic than grandpere can eat with his cornflakes. Leave them out with a standing army & it does cost a lot of francs.


Soooooo, although money is not a big problem etc etc I was wondering whether anyone had any ideas or experience in the ideal military set up for France & army composition?

Any help appreicated.

Merci

Henri

[Iavorios]

France is fun, but as you said it, it is hard to guard all those borders. So don't- instead blitz. First you must concolidate your land's, ally with England(and everybody else you can) and wait. Remember to keep a small force in Marseille, to stop Sicily and Milan. Ant to be very good friend of the pope.
After the first 20 turns HRE or Milan, or both are excomed from the Pope so start a crusade. If HRE is not excomed, they will be if they attack you. And they will. Whith the first crusade try to capture north Italy and west Germany. Capture Venice with a suprise attack and a good spy. Remember, that after you weaken HRE Denmark will attack you. Secure Bruge, Anverp and Hamburg (if haven't done this yet) and let them be. After this around turn 35- 45 you will have a strong eastern border and will need to armies to keep it. One in Venice and one in Hamburg. Expect heavy sieges in Venice. West and south are easy. On south you have Toulouse and on west is only english Caen. On the after hand on VH/VH difficulty Scotland constantly attacks Bruge and Caen, but a full stack of militia troupes and a general will hold them. After you deal whith Italy and HRE i recommend to take Britain next. Until then hold on defensive to the spanish and the mors or Portugal. Early on crusades to the Holly land are useless. A good trick is to call a crusade to Tunis if Sicily is excomed, because the Pope really doesnt like to target Palermo or Naples, but nothing can stop you to sack them on the way. After securing France, Britain, west Germany and Italy you can go for Iberia and north Africa. Make a lot of assassins. O and dismounted noble knights are useless. Use DFK.

[moonshiner57]

As France I would usually keep a smallish army in the southwest to discourage Portugal from attacking. Having an alliance with them was always a top priority of mine - that, and securing the border with strong castles at Bordeaux and Toulouse.

That usually leaves 2 standing armies, both full strength - one in the northeast (Metz) to ward off Danish or German invasions and one in the southeast (Marseille) to defend against the Milanese. These armies would have 4 knights, 6 mounted seargents, 5 spearmen and 4 archers or crossbows. The cavalry superiority works very well in disturbing the enemy formations, who can then be picked of by concentrated charges against isolated units. Whatever reaches the main battle line will be decimated by archer fire, fixed by the spears and charged to death from behind. Vive la horsies!

One problem with that setup is the lack of a castle in southeast France - I could never take Bern and so it takes a long time to reinforce the cavalry near Marseille.

[Henry707]

Merci Form,

C'est formidable!

I haven't been using as many horses - I'm such a skinflint I always end up de-mobbing to save some francs!!!

I will mend my ways & get more four-legged friends into the team.

Henry

[Monsieur Alphonse]

You can check the Guides section. There is a good thread about France. Because France doesn't have good archers until late in the game I would advise to go heavy on heavy cavalry. France is a good faction to practice your cavalry skills.

[Brutal DLX]

Ah, mon roi Henri, I'm glad to help you out by sharing some of my wisdom accumulated over several French campaigns:

First, like you do, I like to stick (at least until late-game) to the historical borders of France (more or less), so leave Antwerp to the HRE or the Danish (depending on whom you are at war with and who's the bigger threat) and garrison Bruges with 3 spearmen and two crossbows, that should be enough to ward off small to medium siege armies (as we all know, the AI is inept of conducting them properly). Also leave Metz to HRE, instead focus on aquiring Dijon (usually the Milanese take it first) and turn it into a castle, this will be your main stronghold on the eastern border. Now, Toulouse will be your main southern stronghold, and since we turned Dijon into a castle, we can afford to turn Bordeaux into a city to generate some more income. Also garrison it with the standard amount (maybe plus one merchant cav) of troops. The only city you should have a considerable standing army in is Marseille, keep at least 12 units in there.

Now, for additional defense, I would suggest two mobile armies (that can also take care of those pesky rebel stacks), one in the north and one in the south. Those armies will be composed of cavalry only (since that's what the French are renowned for), take 3 or 4 feudal knights/mailed knights and some mounted sarges (size depending on your income but not too large, that would be overkill). The charge you can deliver with them will be enough to knock out many of the half stacks the AI so loves to send in for invasion, if there should ever be a situation where there is a full-scale invasion, you can pump out more units from Toulouse or Dijon (or Angers) on demand. For a full field army I would suggest ~ 5 armoured sarges, 3 crossbows, 3-4 Dismounted Feudal Knights plus your cavalry wing that you already have in place. With that army, you can defeat anything the AI can muster against you. Later you should upgrade to Chivalric/Noble Knights + Bardiches and Aventuriers of course, and in late game Lancers and Gendarmes along with pikes and gunners.

Now, although you didn't ask, also some grand strategy hints for playing as France (and not rushing it):

Naval invasions don't need to concern you that much, as long as you don't share a border with the invading nation. You can always get a cease-fire in such cases, so keep a diplomat in the lands of the usual suspects (i.e. England/Scotland, Sicily, Denmark, maybe Venice). With this, you can get some peace of mind and can focus on other things, namely on getting some Vassals. First target should always be Milan. If you march into Italy with a sufficiently large army (say 2, 3 stacks) and beat them soundly (avoid excommunications), maybe taking Milan or Genoa, you can almost always get them as Vassals, thus removing the need to guard Marseilles. If that fails, wipe them out, keep their cities to yourself or give them to the Papacy, as it will be unlikely that they will attack you (plus you get a buffer between you and Venice)
Now, the situation in the west needs to be analysed: Usually the HRE will lose to a Polish/Danish/Hungarian coalition and if that happens, you have two options: First, you can join in and take the rest of their settlements, possibly getting the HRE as Vassals too. Second, you could try to ally with the HRE and keep them as a buffer state between yourself and that said coalition. By trying to let the HRE have Bern, Metz and Antwerp at least, you can seal yourself off and if you help the HRE defend those settlements, you will have a good chance that they won't backstab you, plus the fighting will be in their lands, not yours, on top of that you can get cease-fires quickly since you don't share borders, thus you can even trade with Denmark in between a little war.
Now, we also have to keep an eye on Spain/Portugal. If one of them takes over the whole peninsula, France is usually in trouble. If that happens, you will almost always get dragged into a long stupid war that will, in all likelihood, force you to conquer most or all of it to get peace. If you are not prepared or unwilling to do this, your best bet is to not let that happen by constantly monitoring the situation in Spain and assisting either Portugal or Spain so that none of both can get the upper hand over the other.
If you still don't have enough to do with that, you can look forward to going on a crusade to Outremer, where you can pillage, burn and loot without compunction to increase your treasury. When the dust has settled, you should hold sway over most coastal areas there and getting some good additional revenue by placing your merchants on the resources there. You shouldn't expand much more there, instead turtle and wait with further expansion until after you see where the Mongols appear. By fighting them, you will have some nice battles where the ability and chivalry of the French Knights will be tested to their limits. This should give you a lot to do, and, it might be smart to set the time scale to 1.0 to get some more turns to allow for a more immersive, relaxed campaign that doesn't favour rushing.
In late-game, you could seek some exciting battles with the Timurids and in the Americas, and it's the time where you should try to meet the victory conditions by aquiring some more provinces through conquest and/or vassalage (which I prefer).

[Henry707]

Thanks so much Brutal - that's really helpful. I think I will change the timescale for my next games - the jours pass tros vite pour moi!

I think I need to re-visit my castles - I have Caen, Bordeaux & Metz as castles & one other I can't remember - that's 4 castles - maybe too many.

What do you think about the merchant cav? They are very expensive to take out of their horseboxes but look good parading round the city. It's just so tempting as they are free upkeep once in the paddocks!

The good news is that the pope thinks I'm the best thing since Serge Gainsbourg bagged Jane Birkin so all is well there!!!!!

Thanks again..

Henri

[Brutal DLX]

Thanks so much Brutal - that's really helpful. I think I will change the timescale for my next games - the jours pass tros vite pour moi!

I think I need to re-visit my castles - I have Caen, Bordeaux & Metz as castles & one other I can't remember - that's 4 castles - maybe too many.

What do you think about the merchant cav? They are very expensive to take out of their horseboxes but look good parading round the city. It's just so tempting as they are free upkeep once in the paddocks!

The good news is that the pope thinks I'm the best thing since Serge Gainsbourg bagged Jane Birkin so all is well there!!!!!

Thanks again..

Henri

lol
Anyway, glad to help!

Well, castles are good to have, and unless you have edited your files, you can't convert larger cities back to castles, so I wouldn't be too hasty to convert castles to cities before mid/late game. But 4 castles is indeed a bit much for the historical French territory, I would suggest turning Caen into a city, so you can 3000+ income from there.

Merchant cav, well, they are not that bad, but keep them in your cities mostly. For that kind of upkeep, you can get Knights in your field armies that can deliver some more punch. However, having one (or 2) merchant cav in cities that regularily get besieged is always a good idea, because, if no general is present, you will at least have a retrainable cav commander that can make quick sallies if some ballistas or catapults are overconfident and advance too close to the walls without any cover. You can really disrupt a lot of siege assaults that way.

So, hope you will enjoy your campaign, but keep the Pope friendly, that's the key to having a relaxed, fun campaign! (Excomms and crusades against you can cause your vassals to turn against you which will force you to fight them all over again!)

[Grog]

I recently played a long game as france using a expansionist framework subject to max chivalry house rules.(occupy/release, no declaring wars, aim to maximise rep etc)

Early on I used a lot of spear militia/cheap spears/peasant archers backed up with cavalry, although I did rush all rebel provinces and got the heavy ones (bern/bruges) quite early, although danes beat me to antwerp. I had traditional pyrennes border SW, so kept toulouse/bern as castles (and the one below caen) and had the rest as towns. I allied pope/england/denmark early, england got into an early war with the scots, which allowed me to grab ireland/inverness from the rebels, which I (much) later bargained with the english for caen.
I also crusaded earlyish for antioch with one stack(faction heir+young general overland), as I wanted to focus my expansionism in the east ready for the hordes, while making a strong western allied core.

Once you have the militia buildings in large cities, France gets a lot easier. until then I'd max out free spears in towns and keep a roaming cav army(general+3-5 units) on active fronts. Once you have scots guards, things get easier, just garrison free spears/pikes and snap train 3 scots guard if enemy appears; although I prefer the heavy x-bow once available for offensive work.

I went spear/peasent archer heavy until DFK/crossbowmen were slowly phased in, I'd add 2-3 units of siege/cannon once available. I'd also carry a few milita units in all my armies early game, as occupy + 2 milita means you can move on faster..


Later on my composition shifts to a heavy armour core, protecting siege/range and cavalry support.
ie: fighting mongols turn 80 around the holy lands, my stack would be:

2-3 spears/voulgier, 6 DFK, 5-6 arbusquer Xbow, balance of siege/general/heavy cav - I used templars from aleppo until chivalrics appeared when gaza/acre went citadel.

I'd protect 3-4 trebs with a frontal wall of 2 voulgiers (castle pike) in spearwall. I'd have DFK set a short charge back from spears/siege, flanked either side by xbows (level line of sight at bunched incoming HA essential). I'd then have 1-2 units of DNK for those sneaky flank attacks hanging near the back, then my general + cavalry support float about where needed.

Against the Timurids I'd change slightly again, mainly adding more DNK's (2H poleaxe) as they are good flank charging elephants that get snagged in the twin spearwall, a silver chevron DNK with max weaps/armour is around defence 16 and attack 24/6, so quite useful as long as not directly tanking. I'd also swap out trebs for 3-4 basilisks, max range fire gunnery soon sorts the panzerphants out. I also swap some Xbows for Scots guards, to panic elephants with fire when they get closer.

I generally face the horde with 2-3 widely deployed stacks like this, I usually try to hit an isolated stack 1v1 open field, or leave my armies deployed openly around the edge of the horde move area as bait. I'll also have smaller reinforcement/retraining stacks supplying the battlefield, and a cav army of 5-10 units + general for hunting down all the hordes prisoners I release.

[imnothere]

Southwest - Portugal/Spain - take and hold mountain passes. Or just take the two Spain provinces and hold it - the AI will keep attacking and getting annilated there.

North - Britain / Scots - Make them into your trading island outposts the first chance you'd get. But you can do just as well by ignoring them if you can show the Germans, Italians, Danes and Polish How-to-bliztkrieg.

Eastern Front - Germans, Italians, Danes and Polish. Key points - Northern Italy, Flanders, somewhere in Germany. This is where most of your military resources will be sucked in.

Own preference is to hold the Spaniards and the Portugese in line (alliance if possible but they usually backstab me anyway), bleed the HRE and everyone dry on the Eastern front by sacking the cities, give it back to them and then take it again, and launch Operation Sea Lion on the Britain.

Options are then either to goto Eastern Front, Italy or Spain. I usually choose Spain, booting every else out of the province and block the Gib-strait with a few ships.

To tell the truth, I never like Eastern front. So I took out Italian fractions just to bring in line with all my other southern Spanish provinces.

Also, to have more fun, I have edited the starting gold for everyone at 10,000 each(inc me). Turks, Byzantine, Egypt, HRE has alot more, which explains why I am cowering in my castles under sieged by higher-tiered AI units...

[Henry707]

That's quite a good idea, more money for everyone to help spice things up.

On a note of caution, because I didn't really know the French batting order, I pumped out all different kinds of units seeing how they did. Mon Dieu, I ended up with so many different bits & pieces everywhere - you know sometimes you just need to standardize as much as possible to make re-training & support easier.

I discovered the Scots Guards - like them - then I got the Aventuerio blokes now these garcons seem to kick some B£"! Crossbow, armour & good in the ruck + nice picture & not bad cost - love them in a manly way.

I've never really used any pikes, I did in MTW when they were really something for defending but their stats in MTW2 just put me right off.

I've tried not to expand in my game too much so no Eastern front as such, I'm pretty much sticking to the old garlic-producing regions I love.

Henri