In the ancient era your goal is to advance your economy promoting it by using your advantage of Ancien Reign to unlock Liberty and get the free worker quickly. Then you go to the free settler. When you chose your science try unlocking hunting first then pottery and mining and so on during this time your military is the last thing you need to worry about. Once your economy gets up to pace sell all excess luxury resources to any civilizations you encounter to increase your money and buy new units or buildings.

Here you need to even your economy and military by unlocking all of the classic technologies before you advance to medieval era. In addition start buying a few spearmen or archers. This is the turning point for the economy by the end of the era you should have an even number of warriors and workers.

This is the time of growth this era is where you build you army by trading happyness for money to buy units and begin to grow your army. By this time your probally are done the liberty tree and have 2 or 3 cities. By the end of this era you should have probally been declared upon and are defending hopefully successfully yet mantain a army in the top 3 or 4 despite the casualties of war.

This is finally the era of military conquest here the unique unit the musquteer is in full bloom and the cannon is available to overcome the mix of musketmen and medieval units plus any enemy cities. Once your conquest is in full swing you will have taken over at least 1 enemy country catappulting you over your oponnets. in the demographics. In the rennisannce era you should reasearch heavily in the military side while stalling in the economic side since this is the era of your military strength. As for social policies the recommended policy to pursue is that of Rationalism since it will highly increase your science and once you gain scientific revolution you can increase science significantly.

This era is the time of the fortification of your empire. The Mobilization of your troops to begin invasion of new lands. The increase of the size of your cities and the time of a revolution in science. Here your cultural dominance will fail you but you second unique unit the foreign legion will kick in and help you continue the advance on the enemies capitals. Here you can upgrade to the artillery which will highly increase your domination if you master it first but will cause untold havoc from a far if used for the defensive. My suggestion for the industrial era is halfway through the era beeline to nuclear weapons then fill in the left over gap latter and use your nuclear weapons to finish off the majority of enemy civilizations that are weaker. Then do what damage you can with the foreign legion while using the science gained from conquered cities to make up the upper half technologies.

This is the time in which you need to useyour nukes to bombard enemies since you will have to gain the upper hand over enemies with your industrial era military. of course once you master electronics and lasers you will be just fine not using those weapons of mass destruction but its always safer to do so with the upper hand though you might need to see my guide on nuclear war to know how to prevent the counter attack. During this era you have to chose 1 of 2 option is there are not too many opponets and non of them are stronger than you than a domination victory would be best if you still have a large number of enemies a science victory would be optimal since all those extra cities produce lots and lots of science.

By now you will probally have made your choice of city and are sticking to your decision. And since the future era is rather short I'm not going to say much; except be careful there can be many good players playing in your game and if you mess with the wrong one you will be dead. But in the mean time enjoy your own success and use this guide well.

I know that the classic victory for France is cultural but it works just as well using my strategy aand you dont have to restrain your economic activity by building a large military. Plus if you use all captured cities as puppets then cultural cost will not increase and your empire size will. Plus with the Acien Reign unique ability you can increase your culture by taking cities which will produce a base of 2 culture per turn plus their own regular production of culture which all combined can give you a significant culture boost.

With all those cities you also curn out tons and tons of money so when you get to the modern era if you so wish not saying this is suggested but you can beeline globalization to build the UN bribe tons of city states before the vote starts then win the game. This is not a favored option but if you are on diety and your army was worn out after haven destroyed so many other opponetts this is the best choice for victory.