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.