France is one of the powerhouses of Europe. They have a very strong start in game and once you hit your second national idea, Elan, that gives you 20% moral bonus, your armies are unmatched. With a strong army and a strong economic base, playing as France is fairly easy. However, expansion is somewhat restricted because you are sandwiched between England, Iberia and HRE. This guide will help you make an optimal start with France and expand into different directions making sure you don’t incur too much AE while still growing your economic base.

OPENING MOVES

For newer players- Restart the game until Castile doesn’t rival you and rivals Aragon. If you have Castile as a rival, you can still move forward, but your progress will be slow.

1. Get level 1 advisors.
2. Rival Aragon, England and Savoy. Savoy won’t be a valid rival for long and you can switch to burgundy after that.
3. Ally and RM Castile
4. Improve relations with papal state, so you don’t get excommunicated. Some games Papal state starts as hostile towards France and excommunicates you. You can consider restarting until papal state isn’t hostile too, as excommunication sucks big time.
5. Move 13 stack near Labourd. 15 stack near Caen.

CONQUESTS

England

There’s a strategy where you attack England with reconquest CB, before the surrender of Maine event. But I don’t recommend it as you are the attacker and you won’t be able to call in your allies that early.

Wait for the Surrender of Maine event to fire which happens fairly early game. This war is easy, as your allies will help you out. Just siege down all three forts. Then take Labourd, Aquitaine, Calais and Pale from England.

When the truce expires, attack them again with reconquest CB. Siege down all their provinces on Europe mainland. Castile should help you out here and will take care of Portugal. It’s important that Portugal joins this war. Because you are going to take Ceuta from them to get a foothold in north africa where you can open another war front.

This strategy gives you a province in the British Isles and a province in North Africa increasing your war targets.

Once you take over irish minors and scotland, england should be easy. They usually don’t ally anyone big, so subsequent wars are mostly a formality.

Irish minors – Scotland

Next target after the first england war. You can either release Meath as subject and let them get claims or get a claim yourself. You will need a vassal in ireland either way. Vassal feed them and claim all of Ireland. When you are halfway done, revoke your guarantee of Scotland.

Scotland are easy target once you get the province across the strait.

Further wars

There are a couple of events after this that will decide your attack plans.

Iberian wedding

If Castile get Iberian wedding early, you can’t attack Aragon, which isn’t great. But on the bright side, you have a super powerful ally now. However, if paradox RNG is kind to you, the event won’t fire until late and you can attack aragon. Humiliate and take a province and release catalonia. If you are really lucky, you might have enough time to get the age ability for transfer subject at half cost, so you can get Naples from Aragon. Getting all that rich Italian land for 200 diplo is priceless.

Burgundian Inheritance

There are ways to make it happen quicker, such as sieging down all burgundy and waiting, but that strategy isn’t very viable as the mean time to happen is absurdly big. This is an RNG event and you can’t play around it. If you get it great, if not you will just have to fight burgundy bit by bit.

North Africa

Taking Ceuta from Portugal is crucial for couple of reasons.

1. you can get claim and expand in Maghreb now, which is great because otherwise you would be sitting idle waiting for AE to die down.
2. Morocco or Castile would often attack Portugal after that and take them out or cut them down to couple of provinces. This gives you an opportunity to attack and vassalize Portugal. Now you can get colonies from your subject without having to take exploration ideas.

Make sure you don’t spend any admin points in North Africa though, as all provinces have increased coring costs. Keep releasing vassals and integrating them timely.

Scandinavia

You can jump to Denmark once you have scottish provinces. You will need to build a decent sized navy though. The timing of this war is entirely up to you. There’s no rush, but if you attack early, you can take on Muscovy before they form Russia making expansion in that region easier.

HRE

The extra 50% AE in HRE provinces makes the expansion in Europe really slow. There are a couple of ways to deal with it.

1. Become the emperor-, complicated by reformation and religious league wars. As you don’t always control which religion gets control of HRE.

2. Dismantle HRE- preferred way. This is easier to do right after the religious league wars, as typically there aren’t too many electors. Once you get control of all electors and emperor’s capital, you can dismantle HRE.

Participating in the league wars is entirely up to you. It will depend on if you want to convert to Protestant or remain Catholic. I usually don’t participate in it because I can’t be the leader and AI will pick the worst time to start the war.

DIPLOMACY

France is such a strong nation that you basically need one major ally all game. Getting 2 allies early game will ensure that coalition doesn’t attack you. One of them is Castile or Spain. And the other is Ottomans. Ottomans are the best ally till late game when they will break the alliance because they want all your provinces. Use most of your relation slots for vassals. You should have a lot of vassals all game.

There is also an option to diplovassalize Navarra at the start. I wouldn’t recommend it on current patch as Navarran succession crisis happens fairly regularly and it’s not worth fighting Castile or Aragon over just 1 province.

GAME MECHANICS

Ideas

Influence- Reduced ae. Ddiploannex cost and speed is very helpful for integrating your vassal swarm.

Admin- Coring cost reduction. I usually only take the first two here and then finish it up later when I have spare admin points

Offensive- Better generals. Although you can also go quality.

Humanist- By this time you will have lot of provinces of wrong religion. You can also go religious, but humanist is easier if you want to expand fast.

After this it’s up to you. I usually take diplo, then couple of military ideas.

Events

France has one of the highest number of nation specific events. You will get a lot of good events for specific advisors late game. You also have the surrender of maine event we already talked about. Then there are a couple of disaster events specific to France.

War of Religions

Fire in age of reformation if you have 75% or less religious unity and if you don’t have humanist ideas. You can convert to Protestant to avoid it, but it’s not necessary. If you stay Catholic, you get the Edict of Nantes decision giving you an extra 25% religious unity. Combine that with 25% from Humanist and you won’t see any rebels mid to late game.

So, as France you can either stay Catholic or go protestant. Things will work out eventually.

French Revolution

Although every nation has a revolutionary disaster, France has some specific events related to it.

ACHIEVEMENTS

You can get 2 out of 3 France specific achievements with this strategy.

Azur semé de lis or

Getting all French cores is easy and you will have that in the first few years.

Better than Napoleon

Owning Vienna, Berlin and Moscow is a bit tricky, but if you play the blobbing game, its achievable.

Big Blue Blob

I should mention here that this is one of my least favorite achievements in EU4. The reason is that if you play on getting 100 european provinces before 1500, your strategy is going to be vastly different from your usual strategy with France. This achievement does not synergize with long term gameplay as France. You basically have to avoid going into north africa and focus your tech on military and don’t take any admin techs. I might do a separate guide on getting the Big Blue Blob achievement later.

I hope this guide helps out some newer players who are looking to try their hand at playing France!