There’s not much mystery about this, 12/10 is too strong and it became the standard build order for all French mains. Opening simply gives you too much advantage, it’s unfair and needs to be balanced.
What do you think? And what do you propose to change it?
I would like to share some additional thoughts on why I believe the France 12/10 presents a significant balance concern in the current balance.
The 12/10 tempo allows France players to age up between 2:00 and 2:20, making it one of the fastest age-up times achievable. This rapid progression, combined with various strategies including Age 2 rush, native rush, fast fortress, fast industrial, and revolt strategies, creates balance issues.
Additionally, France 12/10 is generally resilient against early rushes. The ability for a France player to ship 3 Hussars at the start can effectively counter most early-game aggression by allowing them to raid opponent villagers.
Given these factors, I hope the developers will consider these insights. Ideally, reducing France’s starting resources specifically by removing 50 food from their initial crates could help address these balance concerns.
I also would like to ask rework of native shipment upgrades for france because having a musketeer with 200 hp, 25 melee damage, 40% melee resist at 7 minute mark is objectively a balance concern.
TAD sepoy, now with double the armour and hand attack, with 4.5 speed. Why is this unit even a thing
Maybe move that Royal Embassy card from age 1 to age 2? So players can’t just send it in transition and takes a spot in age 2.
Yeah the 12/10 is fine, ashi with 2x the armor and a charged attack plain busted.
Should be nore expensive and less armor like 10% or 20% but no melee bonus vs cav. Or give it negatives vs light infantry Would still.be a great way to raid and open with, and not be able to run down light/heavyinfantry with ease and kill cav trivally.
like, what’s the purpose of halbs and other “heavy” melee infantry when DE adds speedy muskets that outrun them and have equivalent melee and double the armour. I just don’t get it.
Cover mode?
20 characters
This thread made me curious about such BO with French, but what is the best card order?
3 Coureaur-Ancient Regimee card-Fencing School-wilderness Warfare-Auxiliaries?
i’ll take stagger mode over slow-as-fudge mode any day
Now that I think if it, complaining of the French 12/10 makes really no sense. In this faster meta the following civs do similar strats. The french 12/10 is roughly worth 15 vills, aging 245 255 hittinfage2 sub 4 minutes or close. So does:
Port- 11.2 to 13.6 effectively but 25s faster
Brit gmt- faster to 3 and eq eco if manors build in transition
Japan tori gates- better eco but bound to infantry to open
Haude- either 14/20 farm with slow age2 or 15 vill fast age into fast ff or top level rush
Aztec- 14/20 plus WP into the imfamous rush
Spain -with capitalism worth same vills but less popular than 15 age up
Ottoman- imfamous unrushable otto FF/FI of 12/10+capitalism
Malta- can be 14 or 15 vill age up same time depending on market or TP start
There’s the less common indian 12/10 should sepoys not suck will return and even italian 14/10s being played with
Seems less a france problem and moreso a symptom of the ever increasing tempo meta that is ranked anymore. Killing frances viable option into the above or its own 12/10 does nothing to solve these types of issues just boosts some civs over others. Imho
in the next patch, which will come in 2026, 3 CBDs is removed from French, it is a buff
Everything said by this user about France here is very wrong any person who plays Aoe3 knows that French 12/10 is simply 2:05 2:20 minute mark the deviation is too large so this user is either trolling the forums or spreading misinformation to people with lack of information about the game, I hope moderators will look into this
The user in question was wrong to say that they start aging at those minutes (probably unintentionally) since he later says they end aging below minute 4.
A mistake is something you can point out and demonstrate to him (and this mistake is easy and quick to correct). There is no need to require moderation for these issues.
Because french vill is more pop efficient, 12 french vill is more than 12 regular vills, 3 french vill shipment is also bigger than regular 3 vill shipment. That’s the obvious reason behind it
But EuRoPeAnS nAtIvEs are the best introduced ones and american and asians should be like them.
Reason 1 I dont like them:
I consider the 12/10 to be much stronger than any other fast build, because it’s the build that gives you the most villager equivalents, you always have guaranteed TP, and you have some very strong early shipments that give you an exaggerated advantage imo.
Furthermore, I think that France is very versatile, if we remove the 12/10, the civilization will still be just as good strategically, just a little slower. That it is that fast, I repeat, gives an advantage that already surpasses what is fair and balanced.
Also remember that most competitive maps always offer livestock and safe TPs, so I think the crates and even the number of villagers should be reworked.
By the way, I would like us to discuss France and avoid talking about other problems such as the Portuguese 10/10 or the rapid Aztec advance, other threads should be created on this subject. The only thing I want to say is that as a player who likes to play standard, countering the huge advantage of the French 12/10 is much more expensive and difficult than countering the other rapid age advances, mainly because of what I said, the huge economic advantage, which does not suffer as much.
Calling mods on an opinion you disagree with seems low.
I’m insufficiently familiar with the French 12/10 to comment on it at this time, but @platypus_slayer1’s overarching point that a lot of civs are aging faster seems perfectly valid. The meta has shifted away from eco and towards tempo. I think there’s little doubt that said shift will benefit some civs over others.
I think Port’s 10/10 is probably one of the less problematic ones (it’s an old build and Ports rarely rush), though the trickles from TCs did buff that build in particular for little-to-no reason.
Disclaimer: For anyone keeping track at home though, I play Portuguese quite a bit and arguably have an interest in them not being nerfed.
¿Y si en lugar de 3 coureur le dan 3 colonos normales?
How is comparing the speed of the 12/10 with other 12/10s or fast ages off topic? Its entirely relevant to discussion of the power of this openings eco and power. Balance requires a build be weighed against other civs no? If spains and otto 12/10.is a bit slower but safer to age3, is the 12/10 of france a problem? You’re worried of TP but every ranked map currently gives the opponent a TP. So if you want to demonstrate france OP, youd want to show how.the 12/10 results in better results than other fast tempo to the point of uncounterable “OP” level. I dont think complaining of other builds is on topic but aoe3 isnt a vacuum so youll have to compare france to other meta tempo to have discussion. One that people may disagree on but hopefully can remain polite on
Fwiw reviewing stats, frances win rate remains 48-52% at all levels across 1 year of patches sans 2k elo where right now its 62% with… just 46 games. Unless france dies.to.aztec rush 75% of time is 100% accurate needs alot more data. Statistically insignificant but other data.clears.alpha suggesting for most players france remains balanced.
He likes to use the word “objectively” to cover up his subjective opinion, just like when he says “Germany is objectively OP” but obviously it is his opinion
