So real. Every game I just get balled up. I dont have enough wood or enough food. My army is never big enough. Anyone who plays mostly to only french can you tell me or give me an idea what I can do to do better?
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Scoot your opponent and counter unit , runby with knight and gg
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I agree. With recent updates french has become really hard to play with. I have made another thread explaining why abbasids buffs are unfair especially for french here. On top of that french never received any buff, only nerfs. Civ has become much more 1 dimentional. Just keep spamming rams archers and spears and there is not much french can do in feudal.
I usually play 2v2s so its much more playable there because french has really good compatibility with most civs. Also opponents are not at my throat the moment we age up because maps are large.
But in 1v1 french is mostly on disadvantage and have to make first move to get advantage. Knights get shredded by spears. French is second worse civ in high elo and has some of the worse late game.
I spear damage jn late game is too much against knights especially horsemen. This is why you rarely see knights lategame. They have mostly become a unit to pick off villagers. This is why most late compositions are infantry + siege.
One last thing i wanted to mention was pathing. One of the reason why knights cannot do damage is they cannot get inside infantry. They get blocked by units so badly. I think they should be able to run through army. They are riding a **** horse.
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It depends on match up, map, and a lot of other factors.
On open maps french is in a very good position. They struggle a bit more in some camp maps like french pass or hybrid maps due to how easy is to deffend and wall
Thing is french is very predictable most times and most people have figured out how to counter their early aggression and their archer+knight combo. So you can use that to your advantage and create new ways to apply pressure or mix things up a bit.
The best thing I can tell you is to focus on having a good macro and scouting and reacting accordingly, most people dont use their scout as much as they should, specially if you are the aggressor. If you see barracks and stable for example dont just commit to knight+archer and add some spearman of your own, you can also scout for exposed vills and which angle is best to attack, etc.
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Thank you! So basically if I am understand correctly if I dont attack first as french I pretty much dont stand a chance?
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It depends, there isn’t a straight answer for this. For example against mongols or english you wont always be the one attacking first, this is were scouting comes.
You don’t necessarily have to attack first, however in most match ups you have to be the one dictating the pace of the game. This could mean you rush and attack early(knight rush or knight+archer combo), or you can raid with a few units while aiming for a timing attack, either mid to late feudal or early castle timing with maa.
This all requires scouting and adapting and also playing lots of times to test what works and what doesn’t.
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This might not be 100% accurate anymore as I haven’t played the game for a couple of weeks, but when I was active I played plenty of french and imo you could focus on using the knight healing capability and free melee damage upgrades. To me the french are centered around aggression on most match ups. This imo is a very good example on how to play the french in many setups (first match, french vs abbasid). Just take look at what ressources he’s trying to deny from his opponent, when he builds what buildings and how he counters his opponent. It is very micro intensive though. But I geniuinely don’t think that the french civ is as beginner friendly as stated by the game. The healing capability of the knights only fully takes effect when being a very active thus skilled player. Also, often enough it is quite useful to go for professional scouts which also are quite micro heavy.
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It depends. French is consodered a beginner friendly because of how similar the civ plays out to previous aoe4 titles, also their bonuses come automatically so you dont really need to do anything to get access to them. However to win games you gotta have a good level of understanding about how other civs bonuses works too and what strategies they can do so you can work around that and counter them.
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Thanks again guys and girls! I noticed late game the past two games that they are super weak
French late game with a strong eco behind it is actually really good. The thing is the french dont seem to have very viable long term economic builds on land, apart from wrecking your opponent’s eco so yours is better.
2TC early as french is usually bad as it opens a huge window for rhe oponent to do damage. Also Chamber of Commerce is bugged when it comes to traders bringing gold, and booming with that landmark is only viable in large team games(3v3 or 4v4) when you know the opponent wont pressure you, your eco goes ballistic if you can pull it off though.
I think either chamber of commerce or trading in general could be buffed a bit so its more viable, especially on 1v1, it would give french a good eco option and a different approach to the 2tc build. Maybe traders could cost 50/50 instead of 75/75 it could be a start.
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I also noticed when I play I never have enough wood. Ever. I cant find the perfect balance as french with Food/Gold/Trade and Wood.
I really hope you don’t mean trade as in trade carts.
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One big benefit of French is the special building which amasses any resource of your choice without you doing anything - this is extremely helpful if you want to build a tonne of ships at once, for example, or need stone for castles. French also have very wide ranging and strong siege so if you use a combination of castles everywhere and sieges you can make progress. My partner always chooses French and wins by putting castles all over the place, including the opponents town centre…
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Game completely revolves around around timing. If you are pushed back and can’t hold resources for longer this landmark is useless. I think its similar to having 2 or 3 relics. But this one is still the best landmark. Second options are pretty much useless for french.
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Thanks for the help guys! I still keep getting crushed but I am working on it
I’ve been maining French the last few days and have won 11/13 games so here goes. Start with 8 on food then 4 to gold and 5-6 to wood after that. Also go double scout and get all the sheep and see what’s coming. Put down a SoC around 5-6 minutes ( late probably I know ) then just start pumping out knights and build a archery range and slowly raid their villagers. This is basically the standard French start and probably one of the easier more op strats to learn that shouldn’t take too much skill too pull off. Also get wheelbarrow as soon as you can.
This is just the standard french start, and very easy to counter.
Just put a tower on french gold and then your strategy is over.
As abbasid, when I play vs french I ever try to put a tower on french gold and the opponent reaction is hilarious, obviously he doesn’t expect to be hostigated, and then his feudal push is notoriously worse.
Yeah it 's very basic but works in the lower elo’s still if you’re struggling with the civ/ can’t get wins. Ideally in time you learn more diverse strats as you rise in elo and it stops working. Honestly as French I think you should be towering your own gold as soon as you can anyway.
Honestly I’ve countered your strat as a French player lol. Someone tried this to me the other day but I had my own tower up first then just built scouts and horsemen and turned their tower rush around and still won the game. As you rise in ranks tower rushes like that also become less effective since players don’t just get mad and yell and instead actually counter it. What you described was being used a lot against French in road to wolololo tournament last weekend and I saw some pros counter it almost every time. Just back off the gold that’s being denied and leave it alone if you don’t have a tower up already. You may have to change your rush plans but it’s hardly game over. You’re also using 100 wood by putting a tower on my resources that you could be using towards something else in your own base/ your own units. Not to mention the idle villager time by sending them across the map to my base instead of using them to collect resources.
Yep, put a tower in your gold is a counter against a counter.
But french usually are too concentrated in early agression that forgets to protect his own resources.
Almost 70-80% ranked games I’ve played were against a french, I’ve mainly played as abbasid, and in every game putting a tower in their gold gave me the game, in platinum.
Just in an occassion the player reacted well and went fastly to the other gold and put a tower. But in the other games they just didn’t know how to react and I went to castle and spammed MaA and rams.
Also don’t forget that you can send 3-4 villagers early, put the tower in the gold and then steal the gold to get to feudal. This way you will lose less idle time.
Obviously in professional players it’s different.
Lmao someone did that last part to me too. Thing is I had two gold spawns and one in the back of my base so I just backed off, built another mining camp then mined gold there and burned down their mining camp and chased it off, so was the 100 wood for the camp worth it after that? The only thing that’s really got me as French once was when a English player MAA rushed me with a tower early and towere’d up both my gold’s and had maa in my base already. This was my first time reacting to a tower rush though so I probably just didn’t scout and waited too long to start countering it.