Talk:Franks/@comment-157.49.72.208-20180318145201/@comment-24.143.136.97-20191015010626

Jokes aside, although Franks are a much underappreciated civ, this is laughably inaccurate. Frank castles are not the strongest, they simply have the full range of upgrades. They are in fact, not even the most powerful of the fully upgraded castles, since they lack bracer.

Second elite skirmishers do not get a bonus against Throwing Axemen, since the latter are not archers, so why do you assume that they pose any trouble to them? Wouldn't arbs/HC's be better?

Third, Chivalry does not increase the HP's of the knight line. In fact since they lack bloodlines, at the end of the day the paladin only has 12 hp more than other civs' FU paladins. This is still a decent bonus since it is counterbalanced by the fact that you save a bit of time and resources from having to research bloodlines if you're planning to go for a quick knight rush.

Franks are by no means the best civilization. They are a gold intensive civ with a lot of weaknesses and their economic bonuses are by no means exceptional. In fact they are sort of an underdog civilization that is looked down upon in competitive play. Just as with Huns, the fact that they have such a high win ratio doesn't really mean much to me, it's probably  because the basic knight and xbow rush works well against many noobs.

Franks are a bit of a one trick pony because everyone expects you to rely on paladins as the main hitting force, and prepare accordingly. One thing you can do is reverse this expectation by fielding halbs/HC's/TA's and even champs - and when the  anti-cav units that the enemy erroneously amassed are wiped out, you can then follow up by a quickly trained wave of paladins. But again even half decent Voobly player would be able to counter this with some effort.