Why all the different late-period Knights?

I just started the French campaign for the first time ever, and I can't help noticing several heavy knight classes that are essentially the same:

Chivalric Knights
Noble Knights
Templars or Hospitaliers

I managed to get a St John's chapter house in Paris for some nice early period shock troops and I don't see why I should bother wasting gold by upgrading any stables in my castles to get the other mounted knights. Do they have hidden bonuses?

Hospitalier can upgrade to full plate, making them on par with Chivalric nights while being cheaper to train. I do the same thing in all my NE campaigns - Templars for England(just cause they're traditionally English, nevermind the lack of full plate or health bonus), Knights of Santiago for Spain, etc. They make Chivalric knights pointless unless you've run out of Crusader knights to train, have gold to burn and need to fill out your numbers.

What about Noble Knights? Do they upgrade to Gothic Armor? Do they get an experience bonus with the right stable upgrades?

Lancers seem even better than knights since they're faster and almost equal except for having less armor.

So why all the damn cavalry choices?

Only god knows it in his eternal grace. :book:

Alright, so here it is :beam: (as far as I remember):

Chiv knights are not disciplined.
Noble knights have AP bonus.
Guild knights are cheaper.
Lancers do not have shield thus more vulnerable to missiles.

I assume they were introduced both for historical reasons (Templars, Hospitallers, etc) and in order to create variety. France just happens to get too many of them making some redundant.

However, you get an overall larger recruitment pool which might be useful sometimes.

I hate to break it to you, but both the FAUST and http://www.totalwar.co.kr/ show Noble Knights have no AP bonus. They just seem to be as good as chivalric knights but with a different name.

Np. It is sure that the dism.noble knights are AP, somehow I thought that the mounted ones have AP secondary weapons too. Will check though ...

The dismounted noble nights are the same as the dismounted english knights with their bugged animation, therefore they're useless in battle. Mounted Noble knights have no AP bonus with their secondary weapon. All the unit stat resources confirm that. So why bother spending even more gold as maintenance for the same old armored dude on horseback?

I think noble knights must be the lazy French barons who sit around all day drinking wine, eating chocolate pastries and thinking of new ways to hate the English.

Animations work in patch 1.2. Thus DEK, DPK, etc work too. Not terribly strong but they kill.

Considering their attack stat of 21+AP, are they better than dismounted feudal/chivalric knights?

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Originally Posted by Cheetah

Animations work in patch 1.2. Thus DEK, DPK, etc work too. Not terribly strong but they kill.

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Common false assumption. Their animation vs cavalry has been fixed. They remain just as useless as prepatch against infantry. You can beat those units with quite lowly units even.

And as for the OP's question, those knights are all essentially the same, but order knights need a building to be trained and therefore don't start with say a weapons upgrade. Overall, order knights are still better than any other knight unit you can get in vanilla.

In my current HRE campaign I built Teutonic knights chapter house early in the game (after the first crusade), and for the most part of the game, Teutonics were the only cavalry I used, except for Mailed knights as "light" cavalry ~D.

Upgrade your templar/Hospitaller/Teutonic knights' armor and melee, and they are the only heavy cavalry you'll ever need.

Now that I have more money than I can spend, I started to build stables, just for the variety.

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Originally Posted by FactionHeir

Common false assumption. Their animation vs cavalry has been fixed. They remain just as useless as prepatch against infantry. You can beat those units with quite lowly units even.

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For example?

Also, take into account that their cost is lower than that of DFK or DCK. BTW, I just said that they are not very strong but they can kill. Which is true. ~;)

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Originally Posted by SillyEnglishKnigget

Considering their attack stat of 21+AP, are they better than dismounted feudal/chivalric knights?

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They wont beat DFK/DCK but I would be happy to use them against other infantry like spearmen. They are cheaper to recruite than DFK/DCK but has the same upkeep. So on the long term definitely DFK/DCK. With England one should be using armoured swordsmen anyway.

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Originally Posted by Cheetah

For example?

Also, take into account that their cost is lower than that of DFK or DCK. BTW, I just said that they are not very strong but they can kill. Which is true. ~;)

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Ghazi, DIK, and pretty much any other 1-hand infantry (non spear) that is cheaper or more expensive.

I use DEK mainly to combat cavalry really after their "fix". They are better in that regard than spearmen.

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Originally Posted by FactionHeir

I use DEK mainly to combat cavalry really after their "fix". They are better in that regard than spearmen.

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That's understandable, even if you disregard the animations. The best European spearmen have attack 7, plus cavalry bonus, total 15. DEKs have attack 21, plus AP.
I am aware that you can't judge an unit only by its stats, but still...

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Originally Posted by FactionHeir

I use DEK mainly to combat cavalry really after their "fix". They are better in that regard than spearmen.

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Using them anti-cav might not be a bad idea esp. that England lacks armoured sergeants. It is also pretty much historical if it means anything. :clown:

I think I figured out why mounted noble knights are in the game at all. They're available before you build the stable upgrade that gives you chivalric knights. So they're an expensive alternative which you can use if you don't have a chapter house or don't want to spend the time and money to get the cheaper chivalric knights.