It usually comes down to the first few knights because if you screw up your positioning and lose Jean, you kind of lose all influence.

If you have good positioning and protect Jean, all those knights get low, then Jean can snipe them with her range form.

Wheelbarrow is much harder to achieve in the dark age for Jean than French, which is why you usually skip it.

Jean wants to be hugging a tree line so she can't be accessed by knights, otherwise they can run past you.

Hugging gold outcroppings makes Jean hard to access because knights path oddly around gold veins, causing them to run around and lose effectiveness.