When fast castle Zhu Xi's Legacy plays up against French, they just aren't in a position to mass up enough units and ultimately lose out with their castle age advantage up against the feudal age knights.

Typically, we see just the French in general putting up a lot of aggression very early on in the field as they can just pump knights immediately. Zhu Xi's Legacy when they go for pro scouts, they'll make a minimum of like a couple of infantry units, some Zhuge Nu, some spearmen just to have some semblance of map control, be able to contest the pro scouting a little bit, but then eventually they want to go for their own fast castle age, relatively fast castle age in order to be able to also pump out their knights as quickly as possible.

When you are in a civilization match like Zhu Xi's Legacy or China versus French, you do have to open with that barracks most of the time and it does delay that pro scouts just a bit.