France in BNW

Ok - so has anyone had any success playing the New BNW France in an aggressive manner? I mean by this aiming for a cultural victory by building wonders in Paris and then playing aggressively with Musketeers to capture cities and city spots to build chateaux's on.

Most guides I've seen have suggested playing the new France as peaceful, using your musketeers as defensive units - but they seem wasted to me in this way. I've always enjoyed warmongering as France and am wondering if anyone has been successful culturally with them.

Seems to me you'd have to focus Paris early on growth and production so it can pump out Sistine Chapel/Broadway etc later in the game and use your other cities to build Musketeers to capture AI cities with lots of luxuries round them - then build loads of workers and put chateaux's on them so later in the game you'll get tourism from hotels and airports.

What do you think?

Are France now best played peacefully or can you still be aggressive with them and focus on a tourism culture win?

Either one works. Offensive culture is an 'easy' way to win Culture victory - just go kill whoever else is building wonders and win. The musketeer is decent, though it's still a melee unit in a mainly range-dominated game, so YMMV.

France's bonus is mediocre, really, but it's more than most civs get for a cultural victory. Just be sure to build specifically in your capital even if you have a great second city. Personally I think Broadway isn't very good - you want the GMs for music tours after Internet, not to fill up Broadway, and the 'free' GM from Broadway increases the cost for later GMs from the guild too. In my opinion, you should focus on Eiffel and the other Cultural wonders around that time (Uffizi, Louvre, Cristo Redentor).

If you go full Liberty with 2 or 3 cities and bee-line Physics, you will have trebs around 200 AD. You can start attacking at that point when citiy defense is still low.

I love the new France. A very versatile Civ. You can play tall (Capitol theming bonus), wide (chateaus), or warmonger (Musketeers). It can be difficulty related, though, where tall would work best at King or below. Wider with lots of chateaus on higher difficulties. War is usually required on Deity, although some pros can win without war, I think. Except for stealing workers.

It feels good, I just got Notre Dame on an immortal continents game using full Tradition and a home grown Engineer. T128 which is pushing it. I'll save it for later and see if I can get a role play cultural victory.

I'll work up to Edu while building trebs then upgrade to cannons and see if I can clear my continent. It has Inca Alex and India.

What I am wondering is if I could delay my GAWM until Cult of Personality to finish it off.

Wider working better on higher difficulty levels ???

In my experience the opposite: Much easier to manage happiness on higher levels by only self founding a few cities (Tradition) and then conquering to attach a wide empire to a tall core.

Maxing out France's UA:
Directly depends upon building a specific list of world wonders in Paris that are all about the time that those conquering would be gearing up for an early war. This also includes after having finished the starting tree starting Aesthetics (with plans to eventually finish it even if you complete Rationalism first) and in early Industrial opening Exploration (just to build the Louvre in Paris) This is typically hand building Leaning Tower for a twofer with Globe followed by hand building Uffizini.

The war mongling to get some more great works & spots to build the UI would then come after you've completed those Midevil world wonders you were going to do since there is quite a lot of time after that before the Modern era wonders (faith buy GE for Lourve if hand building it would interfere with war mongling) France's Musketeer also comes along during this gap.

joncnunn said:

Wider working better on higher difficulty levels ???


Maxing out France's UA:
Directly depends upon building a specific list of world wonders in Paris that are all about the time that those conquering would be gearing up for an early war. This also includes after having finished the starting tree starting Aesthetics (with plans to eventually finish it even if you complete Rationalism first) and in early Industrial opening Exploration (just to build the Louvre in Paris) This is typically hand building Leaning Tower for a twofer with Oxford followed by hand building Uffizini.

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Just to clarify you'd use your GE from Pisa to build Oxford rather than Uffizi? I'd always assume it would be the other way round (or build the Globe as it comes at the same time) because of the competitive nature of World Wonders as opposed to national ones.

tat501 said:

Just to clarify you'd use your GE from Pisa to build Oxford rather than Uffizi? I'd always assume it would be the other way round (or build the Globe as it comes at the same time) because of the competitive nature of World Wonders as opposed to national ones.

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I meant I'd build Globe with the GE from Pisa; I don't know how Oxford entered up in my post.

I've found that France's ability can be quite strong since, with the Aesthetics finisher, it QUADRUPLES your theming bonuses (very strong with Uffizi!). My own preference is to play peaceful. Even if you conquer culture WWs, they won't do you as much good unless they're in your capital. Also, it's just easier to race through the top part of the tech tree rather than splitting it and going for both the top and bottom. I also personally never found Chateauxs to be that important for generating tourism... I'd rather go tall in the capital and then multiply all that tourism yet again with hotels, airports, and the visitor center.

I unerstand wanting to war because Museteers are pretty nice, and warring can be more entertaining so don't let me stop you from trying!

joncnunn said:

Wider working better on higher difficulty levels ???

In my experience the opposite: Much easier to manage happiness on higher levels by only self founding a few cities (Tradition) and then conquering to attach a wide empire to a tall core.

Maxing out France's UA:
Directly depends upon building a specific list of world wonders in Paris that are all about the time that those conquering would be gearing up for an early war. This also includes after having finished the starting tree starting Aesthetics (with plans to eventually finish it even if you complete Rationalism first) and in early Industrial opening Exploration (just to build the Louvre in Paris) This is typically hand building Leaning Tower for a twofer with Glob
e followed by hand building Uffizini.

The war mongling to get some more great works & spots to build the UI would then come after you've completed those Midevil world wonders you were going to do since there is quite a lot of time after that before the Modern era wonders (faith buy GE for Lourve if hand building it would interfere with war mongling) France's Musketeer also comes along during this gap.

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You are, of course, correct. Although you didn't really contradict what I said. You were more detailed and specific about how to go wide, but you still advocated wide for higher difficulties as I did.

I have much respect for your posts on Civ 5. I was more trying to put a good word in for France than give strategies.

I for one love France for their musketeers. I often build full tradition then into the honor tree. 3 points, down to the xp bonus. Culture from pantheon, chateaus, and CS' allows you to have the freedom to choose a lot of policies. Making the 3 points in honor not so crucial, especially if you can get the oracle in your 2nd or 3rd city. In turn making early war so much easier. With great general increased birth rate, you should have citadels into most of your neighbours, prepping for war. Xp bonus is self explanatory; 4-5 promos on long swords, getting upgraded into musketeers is too strong. Sprinkle in the xbows, and pillage your way across the lands.

What makes France my 2nd favourite is their ability to keep up/lead in culture production, and solid tourism to back it. Once industrial era hits and everyone picks their idealologies, you're usually still above the pack and have no happiness woes, that come with warmongering.

I find that if I'm playing France I'm going rather wide and trying to exploit tourism from chateaus as hard as possible. I go bold and don't worry overmuch about fighting the neighbours. If I get some puppets on them... Puppets love working chateaus and they like building hotels later (if I don't annex them).

The UA is better than a slap in the face, but only just. It only doubles the theming bonuses of culture wonders that are in Paris. (And your museum). The list of wonders this can possibly apply to and their values from the UA are as follows:

Guaranteed to build
Museum: +4
Oxford university: +4
Hermitage: +6

The rest
Ufizzi: +6
Louvre: +8
Great Library: +4, good luck!
Globe Theatre: +4
Sistine Chapel: +4
Sydney Opera House: +4
Broadway: +6

I'm reading that as a potential maximum of fifty extra tourism, but with the following strings attached to get it:
- Paris must be coastal for the opera house
- Must max out Aesthetics for these values (no big deal)
- Must at least open exploration for Louvre.
- Must somehow build great library
- Must be able to theme difficult wonders like Uffizi
- Must be able to construct all the following reasonably contested wonders at the same time in Paris: Uffizi, globe theatre, broadway, Sistine chapel

In reality, this is probably not possible barring some incredible terrain and luck, in which case your game was going to be easy anyways.

GoStu said:

I find that if I'm playing France I'm going rather wide and trying to exploit tourism from chateaus as hard as possible. I go bold and don't worry overmuch about fighting the neighbours. If I get some puppets on them... Puppets love working chateaus and they like building hotels later (if I don't annex them).

The UA is better than a slap in the face, but only just. It only doubles the theming bonuses of culture wonders that are in Paris. (And your museum). The list of wonders this can possibly apply to and their values from the UA are as follows:

Guaranteed to build
Museum: +4
Oxford university: +4
Hermitage: +6

The rest
Ufizzi: +6
Louvre: +8
Great Library: +4, good luck!
Globe Theatre: +4
Sistine Chapel: +4
Sydney Opera House: +4
Broadway: +6

I'm reading that as a potential maximum of fifty extra tourism, but with the following strings attached to get it:
- Paris must be coastal for the opera house
- Must max out Aesthetics for these values (no big deal)
- Must at least open exploration for Louvre.
- Must somehow build great library
- Must be able to theme difficult wonders like Uffizi
- Must be able to construct all the following reasonably contested wonders at the same time in Paris: Uffizi, globe theatre, broadway, Sistine chapel

In reality, this is probably not possible barring some incredible terrain and luck, in which case your game was going to be easy anyways.

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You dont need all of them. You also have to factor that there are open borders, trade routes, shared ideology and world religion and diplomats that add multipliers to the themes.

budweiser said:

You dont need all of them. You also have to factor that there are open borders, trade routes, shared ideology and world religion and diplomats that add multipliers to the themes.

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Absolutely. Shared religion, trade routes, and open borders all add to whatever you can get out of the UA. Still, that's the absolute top-end result of the UA. In my experience though it's hard to get a lot of those wonders, and I find some hard to theme up even if I do get them.

Maybe I should put my point in a larger overall context. My approach to playing France is to settle rather aggressively to try and make the most out of the chateau. Any outstanding border disputes this causes can be settled by a well-timed attack with musketeers. The UA to me is the weakest part of the whole France thing, and I treat it as a small bonus to the Museum, Oxford University, and Hermitage. Any wonders I can benefit from in the capital are nice, but I still think that it's better to go wider to have more chateaux than it is to stay tall and peaceful to try and exploit the UA harder.

New France is a peaceful civ now. And, that's true, UU is just waste of or when you use them as defensive unit.

Anyway, I haven't played as New nor old France. So, my advice may not be useful. But my suggestion, play as Peaceful State when you playing as France. Because if you don't, you'll get lots of enemy when you declare war against someone. And, many other faction also will dislike you because of warmongering.

But, if you want to be warmonger as france, you should forget cultural victory.

ArguCa said:

New France is a peaceful civ now. And, that's true, UU is just waste of or when you use them as defensive unit.

Anyway, I haven't played as New nor old France. So, my advice may not be useful. But my suggestion, play as Peaceful State when you playing as France. Because if you don't, you'll get lots of enemy when you declare war against someone. And, many other faction also will dislike you because of warmongering.

But, if you want to be warmonger as france, you should forget cultural victory.

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Strongly disagree with the bold text.

1st point: The musketeer and its 28 is a wrecking ball in its era. Here's what's contemporary around that time


Crossbow: 18 , 13
Longsword: 21
Musketman*: 24
Trebuchet: 16 , 8
Cannon: 26 , 13
Knight: 20

*All variants are 24 as well, except the Tercio at 26 .

As you can see, the musket is stronger than contemporary units. The Musketeer is even stronger (~18% before any multipliers such as promotions, which only widen the gap). That extra four strength is in the right place at the right time, and means they can mop up a LOT of other units. I don't see them as a long-term warmongering strategy (like the Ottomans - former Janissaries are still lethal), but they're nice for a good window of opportunity to expand your territories. The window is still open before the World Congress and the whole world meets you.


2nd point: you can win Cultural victory two ways. The first is peacefully, making friends and opening borders, holding hands and lah dee dah stuff. The second is at bayonet-point. Find the guy who's got a lot of art & take it. They've got wonders? Annex their cities. Someone's got enough Culture to substantially delay you? Gut them. The rest of the world might disapprove, but you're holding all the pretty shiny artworks and artifacts. You've taken over the landmarks. There's no more Brazil, that's just French South America.

GoStu said:

The UA is better than a slap in the face, but only just.

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Easily one of the most misguided statements I've read on here in a while.

GoStu said:

It only doubles the theming bonuses of culture wonders that are in Paris. (And your museum).

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But this "only" doubling, comes before all multipliers are applied. Aesthetics finisher doubles the doubling. Museums and airports double it again. National visitor center doubles it as well (not on top of museums/airports). And then the international games, doubles all of THAT.

It actually works out to quite a lot of tourism at the end game. And culture too - don't forget, theming bonuses provide culture as well as tourism.

GoStu said:

The list of wonders this can possibly apply to and their values from the UA are as follows:

Guaranteed to build
Museum: +4
Oxford university: +4
Hermitage: +6

The rest
Ufizzi: +6
Louvre: +8
Great Library: +4, good luck!
Globe Theatre: +4
Sistine Chapel: +4
Sydney Opera House: +4
Broadway: +6

I'm reading that as a potential maximum of fifty extra tourism

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So it's confirmed you are completely ignoring the multiplier effect. If we did manage to get all those wonders, that 50 tourism would be multiplied as follows during peak tourism:

1st level:
+100% for aesthetics finisher

2nd level:
+100% for combination of airport/hotel
+100% for visitor center

3rd level:
+100% for international games

((50 x 2) x 3)) x 2) = 600.

600 tourism, just from theming bonuses. A normal civ would only be getting 300.

Obviously 600 is a crapload of tourism, but building all those wonders is not realistic. Let's try a way more pared-down version:

Museum: +4
Oxford university: +4
Hermitage: +6
Ufizzi: +6
Globe Theatre: +4

In this setup we only get 2 world wonders, and all the national ones. 24 tourism from these theming bonus turns into 288 tourism. That's an advantage of 144 tourism over a normal civ - a very significant amount, while only committing to 2 wonders.

Only on deity does France struggle with a peaceful strategy, due to inability to win the international games. That last level of multipliers really seals the deal for them.

tat501 said:

Are France now best played peacefully or can you still be aggressive with them and focus on a tourism culture win?

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I'm doing that right now. (Large/epic/50% more civs, on King.) There was room on the map for everyone to build about 4 cities (except for the poor Celts, who died quickly). England, my neighbor, adopted my religion and used their faith to buy pagodas in their cities. Then we hit the renaissance and it was time for them to adopt my musket balls. With galleasses, trebuchets, and musketeers I took 3 of Elizabeth's four cities. (Left her landlocked, ha!) Longbows are extremely annoying on defense, and have twice saved England from being eliminated by invasions of superior AI forces. Those Brits are scrappy. But musketeers with cover are just shockingly effective in their time.

And the upshot of my aggression: now I have 3 more fairly-well developed cities generating culture with buildings and chateaus; and, more importantly, 3 more cities generating faith with shrines, temples, and free pagodas (plus a pre-planted holy site, thanks Lizzie).

It's now the industrial era, I'm about to close out Aesthetics, and the World's Fair is about to come online. Seven cities producing culture and faith will make for a much bigger social policy slingshot than just my original 4. After that I can likely cruise to a nice CV. But the musketeer aggression was fun and definitely helped.

chazzycat said:

But this "only" doubling, comes before all multipliers are applied. Aesthetics finisher doubles the doubling. Museums and airports double it again. National visitor center doubles it as well (not on top of museums/airports). And then the international games, doubles all of THAT.

It actually works out to quite a lot of tourism at the end game. And culture too - don't forget, theming bonuses provide culture as well as tourism.

So it's confirmed you are completely ignoring the multiplier effect. If we did manage to get all those wonders, that 50 tourism would be multiplied as follows during peak tourism:

1st level:
+100% for aesthetics finisher

2nd level:
+100% for combination of airport/hotel
+100% for visitor center

3rd level:
+100% for international games

((50 x 2) x 3)) x 2) = 600.

600 tourism, just from theming bonuses. A normal civ would only be getting 300.

Obviously 600 is a crapload of tourism, but building all those wonders is not realistic. Let's try a way more pared-down version:

Museum: +4
Oxford university: +4
Hermitage: +6
Ufizzi: +6
Globe Theatre: +4

In this setup we only get 2 world wonders, and all the national ones. 24 tourism from these theming bonus turns into 288 tourism. That's an advantage of 144 tourism over a normal civ - a very significant amount, while only committing to 2 wonders.

Only on deity does France struggle with a peaceful strategy, due to inability to win the international games. That last level of multipliers really seals the deal for them.

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There are some flaws in your math. First, the numbers I provided include the Aesthetics finisher. I took it as a given that players actively pursuing cultural victory would compete the tree.

Second, hotels and airports don't apply to theming bonuses. They add their multipliers to the base value of the great works, and add tourism for culture from tiles (such as a chateau).

Third, I discounted the international games for a few reasons. The first is that it is a temporary bonus. The second is that including it in your calculations assumes you win it. Against solid competition, this isn't a guarantee by any stretch of the imagination. The third reason is that even if you do win it, it may not be at the optimal time for you. If you're in a position to dictate the timing of the international games and to confidently crush it, the UA no longer matters: you're winning this game, probably by diplomacy.

I do admit that I overlooked the National Visitor's centre, and this is a byproduct of my play style. I tend to sprawl out and as a result, some of my later acquisitions lack hotels. As France, I would go through the trouble of getting it in Paris. Still, it's late tech makes it less likely to coincide with the international games above.

Theming bonsuses: What's listed above is just one multipler. (It's either France without Aesthetics or anybody else with it, when France is playing with it, they can get 12 for Hermitage, 8 each for Museum, Oxford, and Globe in Paris)

Olympics comes at a time that it's usually easy to win the race to. But you need have sufficient votes to propose it since it also comes at a time when many of the AIs would rather propose banning their enemies luxuries and embargoing their enemies. Yes, chances are that the closing ceremonies will be before you can build the national visitor center.

Going for cultural victory, if you haven't already won by the time you get the tech for National Visitor Center it's a really good idea to cash buy any missing hotels so you can build it as it will probably greatly speed up turn up victory.
(Actually if you succeed in building the Louvre in Paris you have a really good chance of winning before reaching the tech to build National Visitor Center with the 16 theming bonus.

Airport/Hotel : These don't increase theming bonuses, however they do add tourism to the base great works.