[RFC] The Glory of the French Empire

This game will be using the Rhye's and Fall of Civilization (RFC) mod, updated to the latest patch, on Monarch difficulty. I will be playing France and aiming to recreate the historical French colonial empire (or as much of it as I feasibly can).

Le soleil se lève sur la nouvelle ville de Paris. Un coq chante fortement. C'est le début d'un nouvel empire.



On the banks of the Seine river, a new settlement called Paris is rapidly growing and gaining prominence as a culturally and economically rich city. A kingdom is formed with Paris as its capital. The French-speaking inhabitants of the surrounding regions are eager to throw off the shackles of their local oppressors to unite under the new king, who promises prosperity and glory for all of France. The city garrison of Paris joins with horse-riders from the countryside to form the Army of France, which will be instrumental in achieving that prosperity and glory.



Advisors from the Army are demanding that the kingdom be expanded to the east. Without the valuable iron in the Rhine region, they warn, France will be unable to protect herself. Fortunately, the inhabitants of the area, victims of a recent attack by a barbarian army, are more than happy to join the security of our kingdom. A mining village is founded on the Rhine and it is named Constance.



The Kingdom of France doubles in size as the once independent provinces of Aquitaine and Provence pledge their allegiance to the king. A feast is held in the royal palace to commemorate the occasion.



We meet our neighbor to the south, the Kingdom of Spain. I see her majesty Queen Isabella is wary of me, so to show her my goodwill I offer to open our border in the Pyrenees. She reluctantly accepts the offer. She speaks of an ancient miracle worker named Jesus whom she worships, and I hear similar stories from my subjects in Marseille and Constance. He sounds like a nice enough fellow, so I declare Christianity to be the official doctrine of the Kingdom of France.



Any suggestions on how to go about this? I have to get to Astronomy early so I can beat the Spanish to the Caribbean and the English to eastern Canada. Also, I want to meet Mali and the Khmer ASAP because I'd much rather vassalize them than invade them.

I haven't played as the French on RFC, but seeing those French conquerors all the time, I just do what AI France usually does:

Compass (from Vikings)->Calendar->Guilds (trade from Portugal if you can)->Optics->Gunpowder (from Turkey if possible to give your conquerors muskets and cannons)->Astronomy. Don't forget to load your caravels with scouts/explorers to pop all goody huts.

Let the Germans weaken the defenses of Venice and Rome. Raze Venice, keep Rome (would be your military production city).

By the way, would you attempt reconstructing Napoleon's empire?

Just a warning: Constance is going to flip to the Germans when they appear, so you may want keep most of your troops outside of the city. If you want to get Notre Dame (which is a must if you want to keep your European cities happy), you should immediately start researching engineering, otherwise, the Dutch will finish it right after they spawn.

Constance won't flip, that's the geniosity of it.

Build a courthouse in one of your cities asap and work a spy specialist there. Make sure that other cities won't work any specialists until you get your Great Spy. Infiltrate the Netherlands and steal Engineering and Guilds from them.

Alexius08 said:

By the way, would you attempt reconstructing Napoleon's empire?

Click to expand...

I don't want to take over all of Europe to represent Napoleon's client states, but I'd like to at least get the territories that Napoleon annexed to France, namely Holland (Amsterdam), western Italy (Rome), and the Illyrian provinces on the Dalmatian coast. For the latter, would it be better to just keep Venice or raze it and found a new city with less overlap?

You could found a city around Triest or Split. There'd be far less overlap with Rome, but it is a little far from your historical area.

Unfortunately, I've been really busy with work lately and haven't been able to move this story forward. Even more unfortunately, I forgot to save after those turns so I have to start over. But since I'm starting over anyways, I think I'm going to do it with Leoreth's Dawn of Civilization modmod. More coming soon.