Brother-Knight

A Knight ther was, and that a worthy man, That fro the tyme that he first bigan To ryden out, he loved chivalrye, Trouthe and honour, fredom and curteisye.
	— Geoffrey Chaucer, Cantebury Tales

In game

Brother-Knight — Vital statistics
	Super-heavy infantry. Highly costly to train, but powerful in single combat and capable of inspiring other units. Strong versus melee units, especially cavalry. Weak versus missile units.
Prereq:	Build time	HP	LOS	Attack	Attack speed	Movement speed	Upgrades to
[2];	21.9s (320t)	100	8	25	2.1s (32t)	25
Cost			Created from	Armour	Weapon range	Specialty
Base	Ramp	Pop
: 100; : 100	: 4; : 4	1		1	Melee	Bonus damage versus cavalry. Takes more damage from archers. Boosts attack of adjacent friendly units

Overall strategy

The archetypical unit of mediaeval Christendom, the Brother-Knight is both a sight to behold and to beware. Although he is somewhat poorly armoured, he can still dish out a lot of damage on his own, but then that is not his true purpose in life — for his zeal and his commitment to defending the tenets of his religion and his fellows is probably a greater draw than his ability to eviscerate almost any enemy unit in melee.

Taking everything into consideration, Brother-Knights are also not that cheap to recruit. High overhead costs owing to the amount of infrastructure required as well as the heavy outlays of Metal and Wealth required to train them limits any faction's ability to raise them, and while they can function as a spearhead of sorts on their own, they are however more powerful when accompanied by an Officer or a Patriot, surrounded by lower quality but more numerous troops. A Brother-Knight can thus be used to escort a larger body of units, thus increasing their offensive power. Still, being so weak, and being slow on foot as all heavy infantry units, these units are best used to help defend key positions, and never on their own.

Unit summary

• He Who Liveth By The Sword ... — As always, knights have sufficient armour and punching power to plow through hails of arrows, but not a wall of determined pointy objects. Thus while they are most effective against enemy archers and infantry, their worst enemy will forever be pikemen.
• Pronoiar Cataphract — Byzantine heavy cavalry is known for its armour which is superior to normal lancers. This type of heavy cavalry is also available to factions who historically had interests in the Balkans and Mainland Greece, such as Venice.
• Retinue Cavalry — In areas where Western feudalism does not penetrate, whole communities on the peripheries of Europe are capable of raising bodies of retainers on horseback to do the dirty work of fighting for them. Although weaker than Knights, they are still cheaper to train.
• Frankish Knight — The French propensity for fast and hard-hitting heavy cavalry continues in the Castle Age with the gendarmes, or men-at-arms. These are the men most loyal to the crown, and have thus been elected as the escorts for the Crown Prince, or Dauphin as he is known.
• Transoxanian Lancer — In the lands of Islam, a new people have arrived, the Khwarezmians. Armed with heavy lances and trained from birth to ride on the haunted steppes, these warriors from beyond the Oxus River in Central Asia are capable of a reach unknown to most melee units, and are capable of hitting archers from behind a spear or shieldwall.
• Várispán Lancer  — Although now a Christian people, the Hungarians still maintain the cavalry traditions of their Turkic forbears. This means that while they are far more lightly armed, they are capable of untold destruction when flanking an opponent and thus cannot be underestimated.
• Freelancer — Knights too poor to afford the maintenance of their equipment and mounts may sell their services as mercenaries. These men are not only recruitable by most European factions but can also be raised by Muslim Moors thanks to contacts with Christian counterparts in Spain.

History

By the end of the 10th century, European magnates had realised that a man on horseback with a spear moves faster than one on foot, making him far more useful, and soon heavily armed horsemen began to take precedence over elite footmen. Even the Viking kingdoms soon learnt to use cavalry to their advantage, with their Gallicised Norman descendents soon learning to transport horses by ship to where they were needed. The cost of raising horse and rider and then arming them however was problematic to the extreme in the mostly agrarian societies of Dark Age Europe, and so it was that only people of means could furnish cavalry units to fight for their kings, meaning the ruling aristocracy (and in more modern times, yeomen as well).

These aristocrats were often landowners and in good time evolved into the warrior known to us as the knight, and were often found in the most warlike of societies. The French, Russians and Hungarians had good lands that allowed for the rise of an efficient feudal society to sustain a heavy cavalry tradition, a system that was soon adopted by the increasingly strapped-for-cash Byzantines, whose lands covered present-day Italy and the Balkans. Although knights were often expected to be landowners, not all of them were always sufficiently rich to do so, much less afford the sums required for maintenance of their equipment and mounts — the very embodiment of their own livelihoods. Towards the Modern Era, feudalism increasingly fell out of favour, and many knights, especially in Germany, were soon forced into becoming bandits or selling their services as mercenaries. Such a warrior, independent of land, custom and even fealty, were often called "Freelancers", and they were not only recruited by most European factions but were also raised by Muslim Moors who had contacts with their Christian counterparts in Spain.