Of the 8 Civs, the French are the only ones the public have not been able to play during the beta tests. Anyone else curious about how this civ plays or found any additional info from an interview?
Based on the description, the French, like the English, appear to be designed to be accessible to previous Age players, The economic bonuses are pretty straightforward (cheaper gather points, tradecarts can return any resource), and its military bonuses are buffed versions of existing units.
The Royal Knight = buffed Knight, one age earlier than other civs. I’d imagine this would be useful for matching Mongols and countering longbow rushes Arbeletrier sounds like longbows but instead of palings for defense against cav, they have shields for defense against… longbows? Edit: several people correctly pointed out that these are crossbows with a special shield deployment. Cannon is a bombard that doesn’t have to deploy.
Age II Landmark: Chamber of Commerce (similar to something from closed beta?)
Age III Landmark: Royal Institute (similar to the Abbasid House of Wisdom?)
Age IV Landmark: College of Artillery (similar to the Chinese clocktower landmark?)
With its economic design seemingly very approachable, and military bonuses easily understandable, I can imagine that the French will be a very popular civ as in previous Age games.
While the Rus were not available in the stress test, there was that show match from RBW5 that displayed their gameplay. The only French info we have is from the website. We just have to wait until Friday to get more info.
The bombard not having to deploy seems pretty pointless, since they nearly instantly pack-up and deploy for other civs anyway. Maybe it makes it even worse for long distance travel since it won’t be able to pack up and move faster (?)
For all the people around here preaching how much assymetry and depth the civs offer, this sounds like a straight downgrade to AOE2 franks or the AOE3 french.
Or maybe they are too generic to be popular, just like the English.
Most players started with the English, so that they could get into the game, but by day 3 the HRE were significantly more popular despite half the people playing HRE saying that were bugged and that the English were OP (a popular thought at the time that has diminished of late). Didn’t stop them from clicking HRE though.
Devs are kind of forcing the idea that generic and boring crap = beginner/casual friendly.
Disturbing and sad to say at least. It’s like they’ve missed the whole RTS history that happened since AoE1 released.
We are more than 10 years past the era of “+1 armor”/“faster attack speed for 2 seconds” techs being cool and interesting gameplay choices.
They get a shield skill which basically adds “+ armor” for amount of time. Nothing really interesting.
The French have literally NO UNIQUE UNIT WHATSOEVER. I’m sorry, but that’s a fact. It’s just some low effort modifiers on already exisiting stuff. Which makes them even more basic civ than their AoE2 counterpart.
Techwise (from what we know so far) their landmarks are basically just “some building you can build anyway just 10% cheaper”/“TC but cheaper” etc etc. Terrible.
Though I do agree actual unique units (instead of stronger variants of existing units) would greatly help the civ design, by the game’s definitions the French have 3 unique units.
The Royal Knight is a weird choice. If I am not wrong they are unlocked in castle age, when they seems to be based on French Gendarme (Imperial Age in term of equipment, only the shield fit with hazincourt battle french knights, but that’s all). French are emblematic of being heavily reliant on heavy cavalry tactics in renaissance / early modern period, when other superpowers changed their warfare doctrines because decline of cavalry with gunpowder and pikes
(until Gustavus Adolphus and his clashes with Polish strong cavalry, which make the come back of tactics with cavalry charges and the start of “modern warfare”).
French Cav should be a unique thing in imperial age, an unique upgrade of heavy cavalry, to distinct them from other civ.
The focus on gunpowder and the model of canon with wheels … it make them unique, but … it’s not an “obvious” choice. It seems to be based on burgundians (the model of canon, and burgundians were really ahead in term of canons).
Arbalester is okay, heavily used by french, as it was for a bunch of european civ … but it would have been better to give that to hre, with their lack of UU for medieval period. And the landsnecht being a weird thing (light infantry, no pikes … wtf).
The royal knights in these screenshots are from the imperial age , i think the ones from the feudal age are shown in the Norman conquest campaign screenshots and video but I may be wrong.
The French advanced cannons while fighting the Italian Wars
Artillery, particularly field artillery, became an indispensable part of any first-rate army during the Italian Wars. During his invasion of Italy, Charles VIII employed the first truly mobile siege train: culverins and bombards mounted on wheeled carriages, which could be deployed against an enemy stronghold immediately after arrival. The French siege arsenal brought with it multiple technological innovations. Charles’ army pulled cannons with horses rather than the oxen typically used at the time.[89] Additionally, French cannons, made using methods used to cast bronze church bells, achieved a lightness and mobility previously unheard of.[90] Perhaps the most important improvement the French made to cannons, however, was the creation of the iron cannonball. Before the Italian Wars, artillery fired stone balls that often shattered on impact.[90] The invention of the watermill allowed furnaces to generate enough heat to melt the iron to be smelted into cannonballs.[91] With this technology, Charles’ army could level, in a matter of hours, castles that had formerly resisted sieges for months and years.
They were very late adopters of guns though
It is important to note that the English were rather fast at adopting the arquebus by equipping some of their Yeomen of the Guard with the firearms shortly after 1476,[citation needed] while it took the French until 1520 to finally start adopting it
They could have made them a civ with great cannons but no hand cannons, like the rest of the military was old school. bombards in this game are already very powerful and useful though, as are hand cannons.
Perhaps they could have made most bombards a bit weaker. Given the french what we have now, and maybe given them a bit more splash damage against mass units, because that’s the one thing that the other bombards are bad at.
Maybe give their cav some bonus against hand cannoneers, and replace handcannoneers for the french with something else?
That’s definitly interesting but the model ingame looks like a 15th century burgundian breech-cannon.
I have no problem of french being good with field of artillery. Just again, why this choice of cannon.
Not wheeled culverins or bombards like you mentionned, which are present into french museum.
