GENERAL IDEA!!!! If we have to compare armors and weapons of medeival age we must create a list begining from the last medeival era.For example if we accept that the ultimate weapons and armors are the chivalric ones we must give them the greatest rank...let's say 20 points for lances and 17 points for armors.The diference of those 3 points is the ability of a weapon to penetrate an armor..Of cource the where many more weapons like swords,bows etc.Now we put the highest level of weapons and armors of the game we must return to the starting point ex.1071ad...Curent status of weapons and armors acording to historical data.For many years even centuries people beleived that in the east wasn't any heavy armor tradition. That's was untrue...Having a heavy armor tradition of ahaimenidic heavy cavalry 600-300bc and hellenistic one 300-100bc,nations of the east continued to develop heavy armors for nobility and profetional units (parthians,sasanids etc).In time of the first crusade western units even the knights equipted whith lighter armors than the arabs.A point of superiority of the western knights was the lances they had...In the east cavalrymen having allready the wheight of the armor prefered lighter lances made for example from baboo!Byzantine historians mention that against heavy armored troops byzantine,arabic and others aimed to the oponet's head because lances often fail to penetrate the 3 levels of armor.It was common for crusaders to equipt themselvs whith byzantine or arabic style armors to encrease the survival chances of their own.In the start another point of eastern superiority was the steppen bow used by all nations of the region.Only the english longbow has a biger range and power of the steppe bow but the last one can be used by also cavalry and infanty!In byzantine army steppe bow was used only by professional units and not by thematic(militia)ones... TO BE CONTINUED