Cards Needed: 3 villies, 700 gold, 2 falconets age 3, at least 1 mercenary card, preferably more
Recommended Cards: 700 food,Hire Swiss Pikeman, Hire Hessian Jaegers, Hire German Black Riders, Hire Landshnekt(sp?),Team Hand Cavalry Attack, Team Hand Cavalry Hitpoints
The French are very good at performing an FF. In this guide I will show you how to advance before 8 mins to Fortress, I usually have about a 7:30 ish time. With this strat you can usually have 2 falconets 7 skirmishers and 5 cuirs in the base by 10:00.

The Build Order
Initial Villies collect FOOD crates first and tthen the other ones, when finished hunt and one build a house then hunt.

Build villies until you have 11 villies hunting, but in the middle of building these villagers you should get a shipment, send the 3 villager card to hunting. So now when it arrives you should have enough or almost enough food to advance, if you don’t, wait for it. So you have 14 hunters. Click Colonial ASAP, Age up with Quartermaster .

While aging up take 4 hunters and put them on gold and take 2 more and put them on wood.

Ok you’ve reached colonial hopefully around 4:30-ish now take your two wood villies and gather the wood and then build a barracks and stable and house, you should have a shipment available pretty soon or already have one. Send the 700 Gold Card, when it arrives have 2 of your gold miners collect it, throughout this process you should be producing villagers, not too many, but a little. To whichever resource you want, gold is best though, faster time. So after the crates are collected send the villies back to their resources.

So now after collecting the crates you probably have enough or almost enough to advance, just wait for the gold to come in and then advance with the 7 skirmisher Politician.

Now youre in the fortress age early and you have a shipment available ore close to available, so send the 2 falconet card.
While the falconets are arriving build 5 cuiraissers out of your stable. And keep producing villagers, never stop, have them go onto whichever resource you need the most.

When the falconets arrive you will have 7 skirmishers, 5 cuiraissers and 2 falconets to attack with. So attack the enemy. Hopefully he will have mostly infantry but if cavalry your cuiraissers can defeat them. You should be producing muskets out of your barracks now and sending them to reinforce your men. Upgrade them to veteran.
Now that I’ve helped you get this far the game is all your call now.

Scenarios

The enemy rushes you: usually this wont be a problem since you will have plenty of resources and a barracks and a stable, but if you’ve already spent all your resources on advancing because he had a slow rush, then micro your villies to fire and run away, but keep a lot in the TC so that he is being fired on by the tc and your villies, another thing you can do is every time the town center fires un-garrison everyone and fire with them then garrison them back up really quickly, so you’ll probably beat him if he rushes you.

The Enemy goes FF and comes out with merc’s:If this happens then you must not attack him with your 7 skirms, 5 cuiraissers, and 2 falconets, instead switch most of your villies to gold and get enough for merc’s of your own and then scout ahead with someone and then attack.

Tips and Tricks
-If you’re being attacked and all of your villager or some are garrisoned, then wait for the TC to shoot, then ungarrison and shoot with the villies then regarrison and let the TC shoot and just repeat this over and over
- Use our villies as light infantry , they can be very annoying to an attacker, just micro them as you would skirms, only attempt this as French
-Build your houses close together around your TC but leaving enough room for a villager to get through, that way an attacker can get a lot less hits in because everyone cant find a spot to attack from

-Build your barracks and stable to the side or back of your TC so that you can produce military in the middle of a battle without it being a waste and so that it isn’t the first building to be destroyed.

This has been my guide on how to FF with the French, hope you liked 