I do not get French lancers

[Tuidjy]

I do not get French lancers. I must be missing something.

They are supposed to be the ultimate development of the heavily armoured
knight, and the most devastating charger. They take an awful lot of
infrastructure and do not come until quite late in the game. But statwise,
they are no better than hospitalier knights that I have been building since
the first crusade, and they are inferrior to chivalric knights, at least in castles
where I have well developed armourers.

They have great armour, but that is offset by the lack of a shield. They are
no faster than hospitaliers, and charge without orders. I have trained a few,
and so far, I do not see what would make me build more.

What am I missing?

[KeyserSoze]

Shield bonus isn't as good as total armor bonus, imo. If you get flanked, IIRC shield does not apply while armor does.

[Rothe]

Also, I think the horse barding is not upgraded from whatever is the default for the horse. So, the lancers should be quite a bit tougher when you also consider that their defence is based on armor alone (no shield).

Test some archers vs. lancers and vs. vanilla knights (the ones you say are as good or better) in custom battle...

[Hamburglo]

Welcome to France, were cavalry gets progressively more expensive but act and look pretty much the same.

I haven't seen anyone try to increase the effect of a certain cav unit yet, but it'd be interesting to see the 'ultimate' live up to their name. Give them like 15 attack and a 10 charge and see what happens.

To the mod mobile, batman!

[Varyar]

Stats doesn't tell the whole story, many units are far better(JHI) or far worse(Varangians) than their numbers imply. The Lancers have armoured mounts, which only a preciously few units have in the game. If you really want to test their strength, run a few Custom Battles and compare them to other cavalry.

Also, when comparing to your Hospitallers, what exactly are you paying for those, in terms of recruitment + armor upgrade? I'm guessing the total cost is close to that of the Lancers.

[BigTex]

Lancers of the end all be all of the heavy cavalry charger. They have more armor then almost any other cavalry, and they have the ultimate armoured horse. Just try them against hospitallers, or even chivalric knights. You'll see the difference very quickly.