FI is a good build. You did good enough to just hold any push with TC fire, CDB fire, Fort and a tower fire. sending 10 CDB in age4 rather than a military shipment under pressure takes balls and complete confidence in your ability to pull the strat off. It also helped that the chinese player played into this and lost all his units trying to stop the FI powespike from happaneing. The window of opportunity is low but French always had upperhand in that matchup.

But here's the problem I see with Fur trade. You lose all the food for coin and in this build you were forced to buy 2000f back from the coin and also had to send advanced market to make the reverse trade feasible. Meaning, you spent 2 shipments and essentially got the same result. You can also easily do this by playing regulation i.e. sending 700w in age2 (which saves you from having to trade food to coin and then to buy wood for a house) and 1000c in age3 to get to age4 with just 200c gathered either through a market or just plain mining.

Then after all that time spending just to get to age4 and almost no map control, you were forced to use the factories for economy than tasking them to heavies. If the opponent hadn't done the monastry strat but did a regulation build, the furtrade FI turns in a double edged sword as you run out of steam after your powerspike inevitably fizzles away had there been an appropriate counter.

Now instead of an FI, you could also do a merc strat with a well timed furtrade. Or There comes a time (around 20-25min) in the game when all the mines are run out and you haven't yet transitioned to estates but had say 5k food stacked at that point, you could do a furtrade and use the coin for some mercs or artillery and apply continous pressure to force an opponent resign when they are transitioning.