French Fast Castle

The goal of this build is to get to the Castle Age and produce Arbalètriers out of 3 Archery Ranges. You have the added flexibility of being able to add Knights to the composition should the need arise, thanks to the School of Cavalry.

The goal of this build is not to invest into economy or technology, but rather hit a timing attack that makes use of the Arbelists (to be used interchangeably with Arbalètriers) abilities in combat. They are able to stack armor, unlike many other ranged units. This makes them trade very effectively in a ranged combat situation, which happens a fair amount in AOE4.

The Dark Age is fairly straightforward and is a classic way to open with the French. In transition, you're making sure that you get enough for Professional Scouts and Survival Techniques, which will cost 300 Gold and 100 Wood. Thus, you must gather the necessary resources during transition. You'll also want to keep a fair amount of villagers on food gathering in order to train Villagers and Scouts upon aging up.

Upon reaching Feudal Age, you'll want a total of 7 Scouts, since each hunting patch has 7 deer in them. 5 to 6 villagers on Gold will ensure a smooth transition to Castle Age. I also recommend training 2 Knights for several reasons. Firstly, it puts pressure on your opponent since your Knights are able to one-shot a Villager during raids. It forces idle time for your opponent and it's generally nice to have some amount of pressure on your opponent throughout the game in order to scout the composition and overall game plan your opponent has.

Your goal is start building your Guild Hall at roughly 8 to 9 minutes. You're looking to get powerful upgrades out of the Guild Hall at a discount. Knights and Arbelists in particular benefit from this landmark. 3 Archery Ranges will give good production capabilities for you, and you'll be needing a lot of Food to fuel this push.

Once you're in Castle Age, start Arbelist production and keep it up. You'll want to be aggressive with these units. The Pavisse ability that they have allows them to trade very well against other ranged units. You can research Gambesons, which raises the melee armor of Arbelists by 5. This allows you to be quite efficient against melee units as well. In essence, your Arbelists act like a heavy ranged unit. As anti-armor specialists, they do quite well against Knights and MAA, which are traditionally the backbone of many game-winning armies.

The weakness of this strategy would be siege, horsemen (though less so once Gambesons is researched) and defensive buildings. You may want to back up and transition into your own siege, or perhaps focus more heavily on Knights. However, should your execution be on point, you have a window where your units trade very effectively.

- iNcog