>>95966542
Evasion is indeed better than Armour (but not Heavy Armour). I'm not sure I see problem however, even with Nimble (which is mostly the Troupe de la Marine) it still only lowers by a / each time, no more. If the French had more AP generation it might be a problem but there's not a whole lot more than any other Colonial faction, its pretty much only Rations.
France is in a similar position as the Tsardom for the shooting&reloading speed, it has better range but that's it. Dodging even once comes at a certain momentum cost.
Its just a /, maybe you are thinking Nimble works for everyone like it does for the Amazons, which it doesn't. Nimble normally just let you roll a second dice, you choose one result. For Amazons they have additional rules that say they get to reduce by / for each dice thrown on the Evasion test, but in other cases, you can never reduce it more than /. So shooting at the French with Garnier and the Tonkin team will almost always result in a X, appart from the Critical Dodge (which Nimble does help a bit with, but not that much).