Tech trees

[Ranika]

I doubt that the Englisc kings would have adopted the feudal system, Englands system was the best around and the richest, infact maybe they would have not even introduced knighthood as they already had the equivelant in Thegns.

This is a very simplifying comment. England was a relatively poor, unknown place for a very long time (people knew it was there, but simply didn't care about it; it was a poor, rather useless place). The introduction of the feudal system improved their national taxation greatly (as the similar system employed by Saxons was rather ineffective at tax collection), and allowed the Norman lords to exploit the natural resources of England effectively. The Saxon system was inefficient in managing resources; many of the pre-Saxon Roman and Celtic-Briton mines fell into disuse, quarries were abandonned, etc., and they didn't have much of a solution for dealing with the problem. Calling that system the 'best around' is inaccurate, to put it lightly; it was a good militarist system that allowed one to assemble a large army, but was ineffective at harnessing what was present, and made forming a cohesive force difficult. The feudal method had the advantage of superior resource management, though, it had a slightly inverted militarist effect; assembling an army was hard because vassals had the ability to persue their own interests, though it also introduced a more professional army (in England, anyway) as feudal lords often afforded their soldiers better equipment (though it wasn't always the case, and levies were still used, but substantially less). All of the political systems in the islands and in northwest Europe had merits, but they all had problems; the Saxon system relied substantially on looting for a very long time; they had begun their incursions in Britain by raiding surrounding territories, and hadn't really outgrown the necessity to accomodate an amount of their wealth through terrorizing neighbors (though the Normans did much of the same thing, even to allies, but their government could fund itself easily without raiding).

As for knighthoods, that's a rather broad comment; every developed nation had an equivalent, even if they weren't feudalists. Gaels (who had a kind of representative government with a militarist-monarchy, and found feudalism to be an abhorrent concept) had Ridire/Rittire, the Welsh (with a type of elective monarchy) had Teulu, who filled the exact same role as a Thegn or a knight; it was simply a necessity of the period. One needed a military elite to successfully engage any war. Few actually had to 'introduce' knighthood; an example would be lowland Scotland. When they adopted Norman feudalism, the lesser chiefs and their retainers (the ridire) became knights. 'Adopting' knights as a military unit was never really much of an issue.