Mounted units have +20% hit points
From the Feudal Age, and it applies to every mounted unit — Scouts and Cavalry Archers included, not just the Knight line. Read it as a free Bloodlines, because the Franks are not allowed to research the real one.
The Franks buy one plan, and it is a very good plan.
Free farm upgrades, cheaper Castles and +20% hit points on every mounted unit add up to the most direct civilization in the game: get to Castle Age, make Knights, end it. This guide covers the three build orders that actually get played, the strategies that follow, every tech-tree gap you have to plan around, all ten campaign scenarios, and how much of it matches the real Franks.
+20%cavalry hit points
488stone per Castle, imperial
10campaign scenarios
Cavalryciv archetype
What you actually get
Civilization bonusesbeneficia
Two economic bonuses that pay early and stop paying by Imperial, one that makes Castles a strategic option rather than a luxury, and one that quietly replaces a technology the Franks are not allowed to research.
Farm upgrades are free
Horse Collar, Heavy Plow and Crop Rotation all arrive automatically as you age up. That is 875 food and 450 wood you never spend, and it lands exactly when a Knight civ needs food most.
Castles cost −15% / −25%
553 stone in the Castle Age, 488 in Imperial, against 650 for everyone else. Note the split — the Castle Age discount was cut from 25%, so older guides overstate how cheap your first Castle is.
Foragers work 15% faster
Berries come in quicker, which smooths the Dark Age and helps you hit Feudal on time. It was 25% once and got trimmed; it is now a small, early, honest bonus that stops mattering by Castle Age.
Unique unit
Throwing Axeman → Elite
Infantry that attacks at range, with a bonus against buildings. It counters the units that normally counter archers — Skirmishers, Huskarls, Rattan Archers — and it can kill a Ram from behind your own walls without opening the gate.
Trains at the Castle · ranged infantry
Castle Age unique tech
Bearded Axe
Throwing Axemen gain +2 range. Both details changed: it used to be an Imperial technology giving +1. It is now Castle Age and gives double the range, which is what makes massed Axemen viable at all.
300 food · 300 gold
Imperial Age unique tech
Chivalry
Stables work 40% faster. It also speeds the notoriously slow Paladin upgrade by about 68 seconds. It used to be a Castle Age technology and was moved up, so the Franks are weaker in Castle Age than older guides suggest.
Replaces losses faster than any other cavalry civ
Team bonus
Knights +2 line of sight
Knights have poor vision by default, so this genuinely helps — you spot the Pikemen before you ride into them. It applies to allied Knights too, which is why Franks are a strong pocket pick.
Applies from the start of the game
The unique unit, in numbers
Throwing Axemanfrancisca
Classified as infantry, but it attacks at range. That single oddity is the whole unit: it takes infantry counters badly and archer counters not at all.
Castle Age · trains at the Castle
Throwing Axeman
60 HP · 13s to train
Bonus damage against buildings.
Imperial Age · upgrade 850 food, 550 gold
Elite Throwing Axeman
70 HP · 13s to train
The Franks' answer to having no Arbalester.
| Stat | Throwing Axeman | Elite |
|---|---|---|
| Hit points | 60 | 70 +10 |
| Speed | 1.0 | 1.0 |
| Training time | 13s | 13s |
| Attack type | Ranged | Ranged |
| Armour class | Infantry | Infantry |
| Bonus damage | vs buildings | vs buildings |
| Range with Bearded Axe | +2 | +2 |
| Upgrade cost | — | 850F 550G |
The frame delay is the catch. Throwing Axemen have a noticeable wind-up before the axe leaves the hand, so they lose damage every time the target moves and they are punished hard by hit-and-run. That, plus modest range even after Bearded Axe, is why they support Knights rather than lead. Where they shine is against the anti-archer units: because they are classed as infantry with a ranged attack, Skirmishers and Huskarls have no bonus against them at all.
Strong against
Skirmishers, Huskarls, Rattan Archers, War Wagons and other anti-archer units, buildings, and Rams — which they can kill from behind a closed gate.
Weak against
Hand Cannoneers, Onagers, Cavalry Archers and anything that can kite. Standard infantry counters apply too, since the game treats them as infantry despite the ranged attack.
Honest assessment
Strengths and weaknessesvires et vitia
The Franks are the easiest strong civilization to play and the hardest to play badly — up to about minute thirty-five, when the gold runs low and the plan runs out.
Strengths
- The best Knight line in the game +20% hit points means a Frankish Paladin sits around 216 HP where everyone else has 180. You win fights you had no business winning, and you win them without paying for Bloodlines.
- An economy that funds the plan Free farm upgrades hand back 875 food and 450 wood exactly when a cavalry civ is starving for food. Nothing else in the game so precisely matches a bonus to a win condition.
- Castles as a strategy, not a luxury At 553 stone you can afford a forward Castle far earlier than the opponent expects, which converts map control into Knight production right where the fighting is.
- Chivalry replaces losses Stables working 40% faster means attrition favours you, and it cuts about 68 seconds off the Paladin upgrade — one of the slowest researches in the game.
- Full infantry tree Champions, Halberdiers and every supporting upgrade including Squires. The Long Swordsman opening is a real mix-up against someone who already built Pikemen.
- Heresy Knights are the classic conversion target. With Heresy, enemy Monks merely kill them instead of stealing them, which removes the single scariest counter to a Paladin ball.
Weaknesses
- You are completely predictable There is one plan and everyone knows it. Any competent opponent keeps Pikemen or Camel Riders on hand from Castle Age, so the civ demands genuinely good Knight micro to pay off.
- The archery range is close to unusable No Arbalester, no Thumb Ring, no Bracer, no Ring Archer Armor. Hand Cannoneers are the only respectable unit there, and even they suffer from the missing armour upgrade.
- No Hussar, and awful Skirmishers Both trash units are bad, which means the Franks lose trash wars badly. When the gold is gone, so is the civilization.
- Both economic bonuses expire Free farm upgrades and faster foragers stop mattering by early Imperial. The Frankish economy has no late-game multiplier at all.
- Thin defence and a poor navy No Keep, no Bombard Tower and no Bracer, so towers are weak. No Shipwright, no Heated Shot and no Elite Cannon Galleon, so water maps are an uphill fight.
- Siege has holes No Siege Onager and no Siege Ram. Bombard Cannon and Siege Engineers carry the whole department, and Heavy Scorpions are excellent but expensive.
Three openings worth learning
AoE2 Franks build ordersinitia
These are the three most popular AoE2 Franks build orders on the ladder: the Fast Castle into Knights that defines the civ, a Scout opening for open maps, and the forward Castle drop that only Franks can afford this early. Villager numbers are cumulative — villager 11 is your eleventh, counting the three you start with.
Castle Age at ~16:00
Feudal at ~23 pop
Difficulty easy
Best on almost anything
Why Franks make this build look easy: every other civ pays 275 food and 75 wood for Horse Collar, then 375 food and 125 wood for Heavy Plow. You pay nothing and get both automatically. That saving lands during precisely the window where a Fast Castle is starved for resources, which is why the Frankish version of this build reaches Castle Age comfortably while doing less optimisation than anyone else has to.
Feudal at ~21 pop
Scouts out by ~9:30
Difficulty medium
Best on open maps
Villagers 1–6
Two houses, then all six to sheep.
Villagers 7–10
To wood with a Lumber Camp.
Villager 11
Lure the first boar.
Villager 12
House, then Mill on berries.
Villagers 13–15
Berries. Lure the second boar with the last of them.
Villagers 16–18
Food under the Town Center, then farms as the sheep run out.
Villagers 19–21
Split between wood and gold. Build the Stable with a wood villager.
Feudal Age
Loom, then click up at ~21 pop. Start Scouts the moment you land.
In Feudal
Three to five Scouts, then a second Stable if the raid is landing. Your Scouts have +20% hit points, so they survive Spearman contact far better than usual.
Castle Age
Click up behind the pressure and transition straight into Knights. Do not over-invest in Scouts — they are a tempo tool, not the win condition.
The bonus that makes this work: the +20% hit point bonus applies from the Feudal Age and covers all mounted units, so Frankish Scouts are noticeably tankier than the version every other civ fields. They trade up against Spearmen and survive tower fire long enough to actually leave. That said, the Franks still lack Bloodlines, so your Scouts are behind a Bloodlines civ's Scouts — you are ahead of the field, not ahead of everyone.
Castle at ~553 stone
Drop by ~18:00
Difficulty hard
Best on Arena, Hideout, Black Forest
Villagers 1–12
Standard Fast Castle opening — sheep, four to wood, boars, Mill on berries.
Villagers 13–18
Berries and food under the Town Center. On Arena you will have more bushes than usual, which suits the forage bonus.
Villagers 19–22
Wood and gold. Put four onto stone as soon as the Mining Camp is up — this is the part that differs.
Feudal Age
Loom, click up, then Market and Blacksmith while advancing to Castle.
Castle Age
You need 553 stone, not 650. Walk three or four villagers forward and drop the Castle just outside the opponent's base.
After the drop
Produce Knights from Stables at home and Throwing Axemen from the forward Castle. Add Bearded Axe so the Axemen out-range what comes to clear them.
If it stalls
The Castle still pays for itself as map control. Fall back, take the extra Town Centers, and play the standard Knight game with a forward fortress you already own.
Read the discount carefully. The Castle Age discount is now 15%, not 25% — it was reduced in Return of Rome, and a lot of guides still quote the old number. So your Castle Age drop costs 553 stone, and only in Imperial does it fall to 488. That is still the cheapest Castle in the game and it still enables drops nobody else can afford at that timing, but budget for 553, not 488, or you will be a full mining trip short.
Playing the civ, age by age
AoE2 Franks strategiesratio belli
Every Franks game is the same shape: reach Castle Age healthy, convert Knights into map control, and close before the gold runs out. The skill is in the closing.
Age I–II
Getting there intact
~9:00 – 16:00
The Franks have no Feudal Age power spike, so Feudal is a corridor, not a destination. Either wall and take the Fast Castle, or make three to five Scouts to buy time. Both are correct; the map decides.
Skip Horse Collar. It arrives free. New Franks players research it by reflex and hand the opponent a thirty-second lead for nothing.
Wall early3–5 ScoutsSkip farm techsMarket + Blacksmith
Age III
The Knight window
~16:00 – 26:00
This is the civilization. Two Stables, constant Knights, and raid continuously — the +2 line of sight exists so you can see the Pikemen before you ride into them, so use it. Take Bloodlines off your mental checklist permanently; you cannot research it.
A forward Castle at 553 stone is the Frankish special move. It denies map control, produces Throwing Axemen on the spot, and gives raiding Knights somewhere to retreat to. Add Bearded Axe only if you are genuinely committing to Axemen.
KnightsForward CastleBearded Axe2nd Town CenterHeresy vs Monks
Age IV
Imperial, and the clock
26:00 +
Paladin plus Throwing Axemen or Hand Cannoneers, with Bombard Cannons for anything that hides behind stone. Take Chivalry early — it cuts roughly 68 seconds off the Paladin upgrade and then keeps replacing losses at 40% faster.
Heavy Scorpions pair beautifully with Paladins if you can afford them. What you must not do is let the game reach a trash war: no Hussar, no Bracer and no Ring Archer Armor means Frankish trash units lose to almost everyone's. Every minute after your gold runs low is a minute you are losing.
PaladinChivalryThrowing AxemanBombard CannonHeavy Scorpion
Any age
Playing against them
Scouting notes
Assume Knights and prepare before you see them. Pikemen into Halberdiers and Camel Riders are the answer, and unlike most matchups you can commit to them early because the Franks have no archer plan to punish you with.
Then take the game long. Their economy bonuses expire, their trash units are poor, and their towers are weak without Keep or Bombard Tower. Monks work, but check for Heresy first — the Franks have it, so conversions may just be kills.
Pikeman → HalberdierCamel RiderTake it to a trash warRaid their towers
Watch a pro break it down
DauT's Advanced Guide to Franks
Worth watching precisely because it is organised differently from the section above. Where this page walks the ages in order, DauT splits the civilization by who you are facing — how the Frankish game changes from Dark Age to Imperial against a cavalry opponent, and then the same run-through against archer civilizations. That second half is the useful one, because archer civs are exactly the matchup where the Franks' missing Arbalester and Bracer start to bite and Knights alone stop being an answer.
Civilization guide · chaptered by matchup DauT Open on YouTube
What you can and cannot build
Franks tech treearbor artium
Strikethrough entries are what the Franks do not get. The pattern is deliberate: everything that makes cavalry work is present, and almost everything that would let you survive without cavalry is missing.
Stable 2 gaps
- Knight
- Cavalier
- Paladin
- Light Cavalry
- Husbandry
- Bloodlines
- Hussar
Paladin is the best in the game thanks to +20% HP. No Bloodlines is the trade, and no Hussar hurts in a trash war.
Barracks Complete
- Champion
- Halberdier
- Squires
- Arson
- Gambesons
- Supplies
A genuinely full infantry tree on a cavalry civ. The Long Swordsman opening is a real option against early Pikemen.
Archery Range Severe
- Crossbowman
- Elite Skirmisher
- Hand Cannoneer
- Cavalry Archer
- Arbalester
- Thumb Ring
- Parthian Tactics
The worst archery range of any strong civ. Hand Cannoneers are the only unit here worth massing, and Throwing Axemen exist to cover the gap.
Blacksmith 2 gaps
- Blast Furnace
- Plate Mail Armor
- Plate Barding Armor
- Bracer
- Ring Archer Armor
Every cavalry and infantry upgrade is present. Both missing techs are archer techs — and Bracer's absence also weakens towers and ships.
Siege Workshop 2 gaps
- Bombard Cannon
- Onager
- Heavy Scorpion
- Capped Ram
- Siege Engineers
- Siege Onager
- Siege Ram
Average rather than bad. Bombard Cannon plus Siege Engineers is enough to open a base, and Heavy Scorpions screen Paladins well.
Defence 3 gaps
- Watch Tower
- Guard Tower
- Fortified Wall
- Masonry
- Architecture
- Keep
- Bombard Tower
- Bracer
Cheap Castles are the whole defensive plan, because the tower line stops early and never gets Bracer to compensate.
Dock 3 gaps
- Galleon
- Fast Fire Ship
- Heavy Demolition Ship
- Dry Dock
- Shipwright
- Heated Shot
- Elite Cannon Galleon
No naval bonus and three missing technologies. On water maps, lean on cheap Castles near the shoreline instead of contesting the sea.
Monastery & economy Solid
- Heresy
- Redemption
- Faith
- Wheelbarrow
- Hand Cart
- Free farm upgrades
- Treadmill Crane
Heresy matters more here than almost anywhere: it stops Monks stealing your Paladins. The economy tree is complete but has no late-game multiplier.
Where the Franks appear
Franks campaign scenarioshistoriae
No civilization gets more screen time. The Franks are playable in ten campaign scenarios — eleven if you count the hidden one — and they have more AI appearances than anyone else as well.
The Age of Kings · 6 scenarios
Joan of Arc
1429–1431 · Hundred Years' War
The full Frankish campaign, and the one most players meet second after William Wallace. Six scenarios: An Unlikely Messiah, The Maid of Orléans, The Cleansing of the Loire, The Rising, The Siege of Paris and A Perfect Martyr. Narrated by Guy Josselyne, a knight the designers invented.
Tip: It is harder than its one-sword rating suggests, because the enemy is Britons and Longbowmen out-range everything you own. Do not try to win at range — you cannot. Force the close fight with Knights, and use a Castle to absorb the aggro while your cavalry gets in.
Battles of the Conquerors · co-op
Tours
732 · Charles Martel vs the Umayyads
The deepest cut into actual Frankish history the game makes. In the co-op version both playable factions are Franks.
Tip: Enjoy the irony while you play it — see the history section below. The real Frankish army at Tours won on foot.
Battles of the Conquerors · co-op
Hastings
1066 · Norman conquest of England
You play the Normans as Franks — descendants of Norse settlers in Francia, which is a reasonable enough call. Both playable factions are Franks in the co-op version.
Tip: The scenario rewards combined arms far more than the rest of the Frankish material does. Cavalry alone will not break a shield wall here, which is historically apt.
Victors and Vanquished
Charlemagne
768–814 · Carolingian expansion
The Franks at their actual historical peak, rather than as a stand-in for medieval France. If you only play one Frankish scenario for the history rather than the gameplay, make it this one.
Tip: Pairs naturally with Tours — Charles Martel was Charlemagne's grandfather, and the two scenarios bracket the rise of the Carolingians.
Victors and Vanquished
Robert
Early Capetian France
The fifth playable Frankish scenario, and the least played of the set. Worth a look if you have finished Joan of Arc and want more of the same civilization with a different problem to solve.
Tip: Like most Victors and Vanquished maps, it assumes you already know the fundamentals. Do not start here.
Elsewhere
And almost everywhere else
Beyond those, the Franks turn up as allies or enemies across a large share of the campaign catalogue — more AI appearances than any other civilization. If a European scenario needs a generic Christian kingdom, it is usually the Franks.
Tip: Their wonder is Chartres Cathedral, and Frankish units speak Middle French — with a modern accent that would have baffled anyone alive at the time.
Design versus record
The game versus real historyres gestae
The Franks are the most historically confused civilization in the game — and one of the most accurate, depending entirely on which bonus you look at.
In the game
The Throwing Axeman is the Frankish unique unit
A Castle-trained infantryman who hurls axes, available from the Castle Age through to the end of the game.
In history
Right weapon, wrong century
The francisca was genuinely Frankish — and genuinely obsolete by the time the game begins. It belongs to the Merovingian Franks of the fifth and sixth centuries; it had fallen out of use long before Charlemagne, let alone Joan of Arc. The in-game axe is also a hefty double-bitted thing, where the real francisca was small and single-bitted.
Verdict: a real weapon dragged forward roughly eight hundred years to give the civ a unique unit.
In the game
Farm upgrades are free
Horse Collar, Heavy Plow and Crop Rotation all arrive automatically.
In history
Unusually precise
Those three technologies map almost exactly onto the agricultural changes of the Carolingian period: the horse collar that let horses pull ploughs, the heavy mouldboard plough that broke northern European soils, and three-field rotation. The Frankish surplus is what paid for the Frankish army.
Verdict: the best-researched bonus on the civilization, and hardly anyone notices.
In the game
The Franks are a cavalry civilization
+20% hit points on mounted units, the best Paladin in the game, and a Tours scenario to play it in.
In history
True later — but not at Tours
Frankish heavy cavalry really did become the template for European knighthood under the Carolingians. But at Tours in 732, Charles Martel's army fought and won on foot, in a close infantry formation that absorbed the Umayyad cavalry. The game hands you a cavalry civ and a Tours scenario, which inverts the battle that made the Franks famous.
Verdict: right about the Franks in general, wrong about the one battle it dramatises.
In the game
Castles cost 15–25% less
553 stone in Castle Age, 488 in Imperial, against 650 for everyone else.
In history
Fair, if anything understated
Fortification in France proliferated dramatically from the tenth century onward, first as timber motte-and-bailey works thrown up quickly and cheaply, later in stone. Castle-building was so bound up with local power that royal authority spent centuries trying to regulate who was allowed to do it.
Verdict: accurate, and it produces the civ's most interesting strategic option.
In the game
Joan of Arc is the Frankish campaign
Six scenarios set in 1429–1431, played as the Franks in blue.
In history
Joan was French, not a Frank
The Franks were a Germanic people whose realm gave rise to France, Germany and northern Italy alike. By Joan's lifetime they had been gone for five hundred years. The civilization collapses about a millennium — Clovis, Charlemagne, Hastings and Joan of Arc — into one blue banner.
Verdict: a deliberate simplification, and the reason "Franks" and "French" get used interchangeably by players.
In the game
Frankish units speak French
Middle French vocabulary, delivered in a recognisably modern accent.
In history
The accent is centuries early
The guttural French "r" that makes the voice lines sound French to a modern ear only emerged around the eighteenth century. The actual Franks spoke a Germanic language; Old French developed later from Latin in their territory. It is an anachronism the designers almost certainly chose on purpose, because the alternative would not read as French at all.
Verdict: wrong, knowingly, and the right call for a game.
Quick answers
Franks FAQquaestiones
Are the Franks good for beginners in AoE2?
They are the standard recommendation, and deservedly so. The bonuses require no management — the farm upgrades arrive on their own, the hit points are simply there — and the game plan is one sentence long: reach Castle Age, make Knights. The one habit to build early is remembering that you must never research Horse Collar, Heavy Plow or Crop Rotation.
What is the best Franks build order?
Fast Castle into Knights on almost any map. The free farm upgrades land exactly where a Fast Castle is tightest, so the Frankish version is more forgiving than most. Use the Scout opening on open maps where you need early pressure, and the forward Castle drop on closed maps like Arena where 553 stone buys a position nobody else can afford that early.
Do the Franks have Bloodlines?
No, and this catches people out. The +20% hit point bonus is there instead of Bloodlines, not on top of it. For the Knight line it works out better than Bloodlines would; for Scouts and Cavalry Archers it works out worse, which is why Frankish Scouts sit at about 72 hit points against 80 for a civ with Bloodlines.
How cheap are Frankish Castles really?
553 stone in the Castle Age and 488 in the Imperial Age, against 650 for everyone else. The Castle Age figure is the one guides get wrong — that discount was cut from 25% to 15% in Return of Rome, so a lot of older material quotes 488 for a Castle Age drop. Budget 553.
Are Throwing Axemen worth making?
As support, yes; as your main army, rarely. They cover the Franks' catastrophic archery range and they beat the units that normally counter archers, since the game classes them as infantry. But the wind-up before each throw means they lose damage against anything mobile, so they work best massed behind Knights rather than leading an attack.
How do you beat the Franks?
Build Pikemen before you see the Knights — the Franks have no archer threat to punish you for committing early — then add Camel Riders if you have them. After that, extend the game. Both Frankish economy bonuses expire by early Imperial, they have no Hussar and no Bracer, and their trash units lose to nearly everyone's. Check for Heresy before you invest in Monks.
Which unique technology should I research first?
Neither is urgent. Bearded Axe is Castle Age now and gives Throwing Axemen +2 range, so take it only if you are actually building Axemen. Chivalry moved to the Imperial Age and is the stronger of the two — 40% faster Stables plus about 68 seconds off the Paladin upgrade. Note that both changed: older guides list Chivalry as a Castle Age technology and Bearded Axe as Imperial with +1 range.