The French

Age of Empires IV IV - Discussion
21

The Cannon was a generic unit at least until the fan preview.
You can see Delhi and I thing the English too using it.
The English also used the Culverin in the Fan Preview.

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damn, interesting, what happened

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We don’t know.
No one of us played a build between Fan Preview and Closed Beta.

On the E3 you could already see the English having Organ Guns and the Cannon was listed as unique for the French on the website.

I wonder if the Culverin is really HRE+Abbasides only.

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Thanks for pointing that out (also @Grugnorr). The arbeletiers are crossbows for sure. The description makes the arbeletiers sound like they also have a defensive shield deployment capability, which I would think works similarly to the longbows’ palings. Of the French unique units, the arbeletiers is the one I’m most intrigued by. Presumably, the pavise shield will not deter cavalry, but may be useful to soak up arrow damage (e.g. from a keep or TC) like a battering ram.

I think it’s reasonable for the French (or any other civ) to have shared traits with other civs. The kind of asymmetry in a Starcraft or AoM, where you have aliens and dwarves, does not necessarily reflect a historical RTS. Take the CoH series, where the mechanics are nearly the same, but the factions really look and feel different.

After watching the Mongol v. Abbasid Developer Showcase match, I get the sense that civs that rely on cavalry, including the French, will struggle against the Abbasid and any future camel-featuring civ.

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Also remember that the civilization write-up mentions that the French give some unique technologies. The two references to these technologies (end of 2nd paragraph in “Playing French” and in the “Age 3” section) don’t mention how many there would be. From the stress test, England, Chinese, and HRE all had a handful of unique techs. So, I don’t know if that means the French will have a similar number as those civs or if we can assume they would have more, especially since they have a landmark dedicated to housing all their unique techs (I’m guessing not as many as the Abbasids).

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It will make French crossbows to suck less against their counter, archers in a same way as stakes of english longbows help vs cav.