That's a lot of time spent not producing a knight during a point of the game where it matters very much to keep the School of Cavalry pumping knights nonstop.

If the game keeps going very passively, French will keep building a villager lead, but English will keep building cheap farms. Eventually, French will need a castle timing or a decisive engagement; otherwise, the food economy will become out of control for English.

Now French getting those upgrades for so much cheaper, so they don't mind that extra investment. They need to make sure that those longbow numbers do not get into a position where they can actually handle the knights and the scouts.

This is the benefit of going against English with your French knights: the English mass is a very slow mass.

Make sure you're able to kill the Berkshire before the Berkshire kills the bombards. If it's fully garrisoned, bombards don't last too long.