Age of Empires 4Mastering the French civilization can provide a rewarding gaming experience. The French are known for their powerful cavalry, especially their armored knights, who can be used effectively to attack the enemy’s front line and disrupt their defenses.
Here’s a guide on how to play as the French and take advantage of their unique powers:
French Advantages and Features
- Cavalry Domination: The French civilization has strong cavalry units, including armored knights. These knights can serve as vanguards, attacking enemy lines and disrupting their formation.
- Historical Background: French civilization dates back to Medieval France, a historical period marked by hardships such as plague, rebellion, and invasion.
- Miscellaneous Armory: The French have a well-rounded military with access to gunpowder siege weapons and trade advantages, helping them offset resource scarcity as they advance through the ages.
- Tactical Versatility: French strategies can range from aggressive charges to constant harassment and even some degree of trapping. They are also adept at surrounding enemy positions.
- Effect System: French civilization offers a unique Influence system. When units are close to the Fortress, it reduces unit production costs and makes it cost-effective to train troops.
Advantages of Playing as French
The French have distinct characteristics that distinguish them from other civilizations in Age of Empires 4. These features make them accessible and suitable for both beginners and experienced players:
- Peasant Segregation: Like the British, French villagers have unique characteristics that distinguish them from the standard villagers in the game.
- Difficulty rating (1 star): French civilization has a relatively low difficulty rating, making it user-friendly especially for newcomers.
- Features: The French are characterized by Aggressiveness, Cavalry, and Economy, indicating their focus on military prowess and economic power.
Unique French Features
To truly succeed as Frenchies, it is crucial to understand their unique attributes, units and structures:
- Mounted Combat: The French have one of the most formidable cavalry armies in the game, thanks to their special technology and units such as mounted knights.
- Mainland Economy: The economic advantages of the French include early-game support as well as ongoing advantages such as low technology costs and versatile traders.
- Productive Facade: French Castles reduce the cost of units produced from Archery Ranges and Stables within their area of effect. This, combined with cost-effective technologies, enables efficient unit production.
Civilization Bonuses
Here’s a breakdown of how the economic advantages of French civilization work:
- Faster Peasant and Scout Production per Age: As you progress through the ages, your villagers and scouts will spawn faster and faster (10%, 15%, 20%, 20%).
- Economic Technology 30% Cheaper: This makes it more cost-effective to invest in technologies to improve your economy.
- Resource Drop Building 25 Wood Cheaper: Reducing the cost of resource release buildings helps preserve resources for other purposes.
- Trading Points Shown on Minimap: This provides valuable map awareness from the beginning of the game. (Especially in team games)
- Versatile Traders: French traders can bring any resource (not just gold) back to the market, allowing flexibility in resource management.
- Free Melee Damage Technologies: There is no additional cost to research melee damage technologies.
- 20% More Gold from Merchant Ships: This increases your gold income from trade routes.
Unique French Units
The French have access to unique units that can significantly impact their gameplay:
- Royal Knight: These knights gain bonus damage for 3 seconds after charging, making them formidable in combat.
- arbalétrier: They can deploy a defensive shield that provides 5 ranged armor to nearby units for 30 seconds.
- Galleass: A large war galley equipped with a long-range forward-mounted bombardment, ideal for naval combat.
French Tactics and Strategy
While the French are known for being beginner-friendly, mastering their game requires effective strategies and tactics:
- Early Economy Support: Take advantage of your economic bonuses to build a strong foundation. Protect your villagers and structures from early harassment.
- Early Watch: Use your spotter to quickly locate the enemy and gather intelligence on their activities.
- Enjoying the Benefits: If you manage to disrupt the enemy’s economy with your knights, take advantage of your superior technology and expand your presence.
- Don’t change your strategy: Effective against French unique unit trapping strategies, so don’t be discouraged if the enemy strengthens their defenses.
- Advance and Siege: Move efficiently through the ages, accumulate resources and prepare to lay siege to enemy positions, including stone walls.
By understanding the strengths and unique characteristics of the French civilization, you can effectively lead them to victory in Age of Empires 4. Whether you prefer a cavalry charge or a well-organized economic expansion, The French offers a varied and rewarding gaming experience.
In the videos below, you can watch special broadcasts for France, narrated by iby, a top 100 player in Age of Empires 4 Global. Games played against real opponents will make you more experienced.
How to play France against the aggressive Ottomans
How to play with France against echoing Mali?
Age of Empires IV is a real-time strategy game developed by Relic Entertainment and published by Xbox Game Studios. It is the fourth main game in the Age of Empires series and runs on the new version of Relic’s Essence Engine.
The game was announced on August 21, 2017 and was released on October 28, 2021. Released alongside the Anniversary Update on August 23, 2022, Ottomans and Malians was announced as a free expansion pack. It was initially only available on PC (via Steam and Windows Store) and was later released on Xbox with update 8.0.185 on August 22, 2023. There are currently 9 nations in the game, but a new expansion pack was announced on August 23, 2023: The Sultans Ascend. The number increased to 11 with 2 additional nations included in this package.
Which countries are in Age of Empires 4?
Nations | 28 October 2021 | 23 August 2022 | 14 November 2023 |
---|---|---|---|
Abbasid Dynasty | ✔ | ||
Chinese | ✔ | ||
Delhi Sultanate | ✔ | ||
French | ✔ | ||
English | ✔ | ||
Holy Roman Empire | ✔ | ||
Mongolian | ✔ | ||
Russian | ✔ | ||
Ottoman | ✔ | ||
Financial | ✔ | ||
Byzantium | ✔ | ||
Japanese | ✔ |
Announced on August 23, 2023 The Sultans Ascend If you wish, you can download the expansion pack called steam You can pre-order via . Its current price is 199 TL.