How to beat
Frenchas Chinese
Matchup tips
This matchup historically has been slightly favored for French. When China runs out of food and has to make the farm transition with granaries, that's where they typically die. Pro Scout historically has been the technology that keeps China in the game longer for a potential turnaround.
Zhuge Nu lose an insane amount of value going from Feudal Age to Castle Age. Castle Age Zhuge Nu are just not good, especially up against a civilization like the French, which are going to be hammering out knights.
China's win condition against French is to secure enough deer to mass spearmen and horsemen and take good engagements.
A single early horseman for Chinese can cause idle time on the gold or deer, and distract a whole knight, making it much easier to secure early deer.
By the time your first knight is out, Chinese has the gold they need, researches the first gold upgrade, makes a few spearmen, and they can't go out anyway. So there's no big point in aging up faster as French.
French often go second stable first to leverage knight mobility and strength, because if Chinese fully invests in units, you probably can't get enough archer mass up in time.
A horseman opening against French is a massive improvement over a spear opening; spears struggle to catch knights and get cheap shots, but horsemen can get kills and get away safely.
For China, your goal is always hit castle because if you play along feudal, knights are the kings. The problem is that once the knight count gets to like 20 knights, the way they keep formation shuffling, the injured ones just are never being hit, so Chivalry heals them up and you feel like you're just in the slowest death cycle.
China has a much easier time getting food in thanks to Pro Scout and having a castle age followup. Hand cannon placements are by default the anti knight archer kind, so much penetration going through there, works really well.
If Chinese doesn't kill low knights, they'll just heal back to full because of Chivalry.
Horsemen were still incredibly valuable as a raiding unit being able to outrun the knights at any point in time.
French just masses up knights the entire time to keep China in feudal age; they don't overextend into castle age too soon, or China might go castle and win.
French usually three to four scouts maximum. The goal is just to get enough coming back because you can control the map so well with knights, whereas other civs that tend to go seven, eight scouts do so because they don't feel like they can hold on to the map control.
The main thing Chinese wants to do is get some presence around the large gold veins in the middle of the map because that is where French want to get the Red Palace up. Have an outpost on every gold vein to see villagers coming and pick them off while they try to build the Red Palace.
Against French, the Great Wall Gatehouse should be placed on the farms to protect them from raids; placing it at the front leaves farms vulnerable.
French Unique Units
French Landmarks
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