Imagination Rules the World - French Strategy

eireksten

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Jul 3, 2008
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Oslo, Norway
I've been thinking on writing up some strategy articles for the forums. As the french was in the spotlight recently, I chose to start with them. I think that a good french player could be competitive, though they might not be the easiest civ to play. Their bonuses doesn't play themselves (not entirely, anyways), so you need to adapt your strategy in order to leverage them.

Feel free to comment on ways to put France to good use, but please leave the "France sucks" and "Xxxx is much better" comments out of this thread. It doesn't add to the discussion at all. If you want to talk about your experiences with the french, try and keep it to what you found out was clever things to do (and not how nothing went well) :)

I'm not trying to give a specific strategy on how to play the french, as I feel that should be up to the player. I've tried to make some comments on things that might be a good idea to include in it, though. (I might have written this a little too fast, so if there are some errors, repeats or mistakes, bear with me).

BONUSES
  • Starting: Begin the game with a Cathedral
  • Ancient: Receive knowledge of Pottery
  • Medieval: Half-price Roads
  • Industrial: +2 Cannon attack
  • Modern: +1 Riflemen movement


Free Cathedral in Paris

This building costs 160 (+40 for a temple) hammers and is available by Religion. This is actually A LOT to get from the beginning of the game.

The cathedral gives you a confident head start at great people, you'll have strong cultural influence. Great people early are always good :)

The cultural influence from the cathedral is really powerful. You might want to try placing a few cities close to the capital in the early game. I once rushed a french player having done this, and took over his second/third city. In a couple of turns this city had flipped back to the french, even counting towards his cultural win as a city flip (I would think). I later conquered him, but I had to take out his capital early to be able to do so (and he hadn't bothered much with protection). A well-protected, well-developed french capital could prove to be an extremely strong asset for a french player.

Might be an idea to get a spy defending the cathedral as early as possible, though. If you get a spy from a hut/village, immediately send it to our capital.


Free Tech - Pottery

At first sight, starting with pottery doesn't seem very good at all. It probably isn't what adds the most to the french either, but lets see how it might help the game.

First of all, Pottery allows the wine resource, the hanging gardens wonder and the granary. The Hanging Gardens and the Granary is probably not something you'd build until you'd have pottery anyways. The wine resource on the other hand, if you can find it, will add even more to your culture, and is a great synergy with the cathedral.

More importantly than these bonuses though, is the fact that you don't have to spend research time on the pottery technology. This gives you a head start on Masonry, Irrigation and Ceremonial Burial. 20 resources might not sound like much, but in the beginning of the game it can make the difference between getting first and second to some techs.

You get 40% off on the research time for masonry, which means it should be more than possible to get it first. This gives you a free wall (probably in Paris) and if you want to be sure a defending spy can stand against an attack, this might be beneficial (besides, you don't want anyone else to get the wall).

If you then can reach irrigation before the others after building a couple of new cities, this will be a huge bonus. It adds one population to all your cities, which is a very good long-term benefit.

Ceremonial Burial is something you'll want after a while, when you need to build temples, and getting it a little cheaper is of course nice.


Half-Price Roads

Roads are generally expensive. Half-price suddenly makes them affordable, and lets you build a road network pretty early in the game. Since you'll later want cannons, which are rather slow, you might want to get at least some essential roads up running. If you have one or two dedicated unit production cities, some roads are essential to get your units to reach their destination on time.

I've never been much of a road strategist, so for those who have some useful comments on roads, please post them. I've heard this is a good bonus, and since there are so many rome-fans out there, it'd surprise me if no one has some good tips.


+2 Cannon Attack

The french cannon is has an attack power of 8. That means that it can easily take out ANY offensive unit, as tanks have a defense of 6. Since you've got your roads in your country already, building a bunch of cannons (a cannon doesn't cost more than 30 hammers), should keep you safe. When you reach Metallurgy, 8 attack is BY FAR the most powerful attacking unit there is. It might be a good idea to get some riflemen along with them and invade somebody. If you're not in a comfortable position going for culture/economy/tech, a little conquest might prove to be the little kick you need :)

Beelining metallurgy should let you get it pretty early as well, around the time this bonus kicks in :)

The way to use cannons defensively is to attack out of your cities on anything that has settled there for conquest. As cannons don't move onto the square they attacked after a win, they won't leave themselves vulnerable after the attack. Everyone should be prepared to lose a lot of units when attacking the french.

Personally I think this bonus is huge. Many seem to be going for tanks instead, but with some planning, metallurgy is available a very long time before combustion. You need to plan though, following the same tech route as you would as the chinese (probably) gets you nowhere on this.


+1 Rifleman movement

Many are doubting the strength of this, as it comes in the modern era. It might be that it'd be handy earlier, but lets have a closer look.

First of all, you usually don't get modern infantry until late in this era. You might get infantry quite early, but in either case you should be able to build quite a few riflemen before that happens. And what is better than finding a new use for your now "obsolete" units?

At this point in the game, your culture should have given you quite a few great people. With a little focus and planning, you should be at least one of the leading cultural civilizations. Now it is time to finish it off. A lot of spies, along with a lot of riflemen should allow you to steal those great people and escort them safely home to France.

If someone are closing in on other victories, try escorting spies toward them and mess things up a little. You will at least stall them. No matter what you're going for, spies will help you out in one way or the other.

Also, riflemen can be used to protect anything. If you're going for domination, you might want to use them simply as cannon fodder (you don't NEED to form armies with them), letting your cannons/tanks/artilleries get a safer way through to the important cities.


Concluding Remarks

It is quite obvious that culture is the main french power, along with domination. You should leverage the culture as much as you can, because it'll help a lot on all fronts. If going for a technological victory, you might want to conquer and culture-flip a few cities to get the upper hand through lots of cities.

It might be that playing the french well differ in many ways from the most popular civilization. This probably makes the civ harder to grasp. If you put the bonuses to good use, though, I think they could prove very strong.
 
I played as french for the first time after reading this post ... FREAKING LOVED IT! Holy crap do those french cannons woop some a$$, lol. I was able to win my first Cultural Victory last nite on Emp following this guide...

First i researched Masonry for the free wall and then went about my normal research of Bronze for archers then rushed to catapults and then cannons ASAP. I made 2 new cities ( 1 from 100g settlers bonus and i Jacked Settlers from 1 of the AI) and the rest i converted or dominated with cannons. By the end of the game i was able to cripple the other civs in the game - Spanish got Nuked, Mongols got Converted/Elimated shortly after, Romans got the full fury of French cannons backed up with Riflemen defenders/ Greeks just sucked that game for whatever reason, lulz - between conquest and conversion i was able to capture more than enough of the AI cities to guarentee my victory.

Very fun strat to play. Two thumbs way up.
 
I generally haven't had a good time with the French before reading this but now they are one of my favourite civ's! I didn't realise how strong a starting cathedral and cannon bonus could be but through a combination of domination and culture it becomes very easy to take down even the strongest! Good job eireksten:goodjob:
 
The early GS
(about 2000BC) is pretty good for france.
If you get an english capital that can be knights, or maybe navigation of you get china or cats to go with the navigation if you get spain.

I quite like french roads - you use then to get at the enemy and attack hard if the opportunity arises.
 
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