Their unique Renaissance Era military unit, the Musketeer, gives the French an edge in the middle game, allowing them to expand more easily if they need to conquer new lands with resources. In addition, the French are also a surprisingly good military civilization. (Note that the ability affects only wonders and other buildings to which a Tourism bonus applies, not those that directly contribute to Tourism - for example, the Eiffel Tower isn't affected.) To do this, make sure your Capital has the latest advancements in Production so that it can build wonders quickly. Most importantly, build every World Wonder with multiple Great Work slots in the Capital! This will double their usefulness, thanks to France's new 'City of Light' ability, and give you a jump start at heavily influencing other civilizations through Tourism. This way, you will also be able to adopt social policies faster thanks to the abundance of Culture. Set technologies providing cultural buildings and wonders as your priority, and try to at least make friends with cultured city-states. To make use of the unique components of the French, it is best that you develop France as a heavily centralized cultural civilization. Not only does it help defend their lands, but it also provides extra Culture for the empire, so use every opportunity to build Chateaux after researching Chivalry.

Both their vanilla and Brave New World unique abilities focus on that, although the new state of affairs is even more pronounced in that direction, because of their new improvement, the Chateau. The French civilization is aimed plainly at achieving cultural dominance, and thus pursuing a cultural victory. 2.7 Charlemagne and the Holy Roman Empire.

Brave new world civ 5 bonuses