Faction specific Knights - for cheap

Problem;

Knights (except the Royal Guards) don’t play a major role in the game until you're well into it, or on Crusades. They require a lot of Tech and florins – hence the delay. If the tech and/or cost is reduced, they’ll play too substantial a role in the game.

Solutions;

Give each Christian faction a faction-specific Knight unit, titled ‘French Nobility’ or some such thing. The unit is only available in one core territory, but does not need a lot of tech. This will put a cap on how many can be produced. It is inexpensive to build, but costs a lot to maintain – similar to mercenaries. It may take two turns to build, to further limit the total quanitity that get onto the map.

This unit is meant to represent the king calling out his feudal lords to fight. They shouldn’t cost the king (the player) much initially. That was the whole point of feudalism – the king had access to a supply of highly trained heavy Cavalry (the knights), and they got the rights to the profit off of the land. Of course, the king couldn’t keep them away indefinitely, the knights had estates to manage after all. The units high cost in maintenance would be there to make it painful to keep the unit as a garrison. The low initial cost would insure its abundant availability during moments of crises, especially those close to home.

Hopefully, this solution would add more Knights to the game, but keep their ratio to other units under control. Of course, additional generic knight type units could be built, but would require the higher tech and cost a lot to build. Of course, these would be more useful later in the game, when campaigns happen further from home (requiring lower maintenance cost) or when a large, high quality standing army is needed (and can be paid for).

I feel pretty confident that this could work for the human player. What I don’t know is what the AI would do. They may just build a ton of Knights and go into stagnation as a result of maintenance costs. Anyone have incite into this?

I am working on this now, but on a different slant. I am taking the royal knights out of the game for now, although I like your idea for a minor nobility type unit, and replacing them with a knight from a chivalric order, like the Knights of the Garter for England. They can only be built by having a royal palace, which I have made unique, limiting them to be buildable in one province only. The Feudal and Chivalric knights are the ones that I am currently using for the minor nobility. It is still in the early stages though. Right now my Polish knights are riiding their horses facing backwards and hanging off of the side.