Several comments in this forum are about making currently less useful units more viable. Here I want to present some options to make the Teutonic Knight more viable without buffing the Teutons or change their gameplay. Both seems to be quite satisfying at the moment.
The Idea
Teutonic Knights have some niche where they excel: They are good for defending castles in the Castle Age, see for example https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rRnyhzauIb8. They also have some use in attacking other castles or bases when they are close to the teutonic castle via siege rams or siege towers, see for example https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qLadRIaACRs. Later in the game, the Teutonic Knights loose this niche. In the Imperial Age armies get bigger and bigger and attacking by distance is more and more dominating (siege and archers play a great role while champs usually don’t). This holds for defence (e.g. against trebs) as well as offence.
The idea is, to make – at least the Elite Teutonic Knight – useful again in this situations in Imperial Age where an opponents castle/base is next to a teutonic one.
Approaches
I have a small list of ideas that may be attractive. Conservative ones as well as unorthodox ones. I start with the latter ones:
Give the Teutonic Knight after the upgrade to “Elite” the capability to repair (military) structures as castles and towers or even siege weapons: In trebs-battles this helps the Teutons to keep their castle and siege weapons alife. This is a most unorthodox approach as there is currently no military unit in the game that is able to do villager-exclusive actions.
Consider Teutonic Knights as something contrary to Shotel Warriors: Slow, highly armored for both, pierce and melee attacks but also with lower attack. That means: Dont’t increase the Teutonic Knight’s attack with the Elite-upgrade but instead increase the pierce armor. This may be useful to slowly walk to the opponents siege weapons and temporarily drive them off. You basically trade the lifes of the Teutonic Knights for time to defend or attack a specific point on the map. Regarding the Huskarl: He still may have more pierce armor and – most important – much more speed!
The most “simple” of these ideas is to just let them walk faster. It also helps the Teutonic Knight to get to the enemies siege weapons. Additionally it would have the side effect that the Teutonic Knight might become a more population-efficient version of the champion (which is not necessarily my intention).
UncannyPlayer22 has the idea to extend supplies to unique infantry units, see Make Teutonic Knights usable without buffing Teutons. This is a proposal that on the one side does not target the niche that I describe above but on the other side may help other unique units that need some change as well, like the Samurai or Karambits (see his post).
UpmostRook9474 has the idea to make them like an inverted variant of the Konniks, see Make Teutonic Knights usable without buffing Teutons Low HP while on horse and high HP and slow speed while fighting as infantry.
I don’t think that adding more pierce armor to Teutonic Knights so they could attack siege is a good idea. I mean, I don’t think that using an infantry unit to attack siege is a good idea at all (except rams) if the opponent has archers around. Also, giving them more pierce armor and no damage bonus to the elite update would make less useful as infantry (the same reason tarkans do not replace paladins).
With the buff to the speed that they have right now I think they are fine (I’m seeing them more frequent on matches). The problem they have is that sometimes the champions could just take their place due to their cost and production (same problem with samurai).
I don’t think TKs are in a bad spot. They have a strong role in protecting siege, particularly Siege Onagers, and unlikely halberdiers, can do so against cavalry and infantry at the same time. They dumpster almost every melee unit except a few unique units like Cataphract, Samurai, Jaguar Warrior and Leitis, and they have access Bombards and SOs with Siege Engineers to offset the weak archery range to try to make enemies attack siege directly in most cases. At most maybe +1 PA or .05 additional speed but I would lean against this until we have a better idea how strong melee focused civs are with the updates to pathfinding.
The key to using them is to make your opponent come to you. See video below where this is shown against Mayans no less.
I think Champs are the optimal choice to protect the Onagers against the Halbs here, consider that you can get 2 Champs for every TK meaning you will have more damage output as well as being able to block a larger area and then of course the faster walking speed will help you catch them. I think in general it’s true that what the TK can do, the Teuton Champ does more efficiently.
People underestimate the value of speed way too much. The Woad Raider is a great unit thanks to its horse-like speed despite costing way more than the Champ while having similar stats. The ETK could easily gain +1 PA without being overpowered.
It depends a bit on what you are fighting though. Even with the +2 armor for the teutons, the champions will take much more damage from most melee whereas TKs reduce the damage significantly with higher HP. They are also more population efficient and while they are slower than champions, it’s 0.1 speed difference which is noticeable but not a massive issue guarding siege. That being said agree that the +2 armor for the champions does reduce the situations where you would use TKs.
I think one solution that would be interesting would be to extend supplies to unique infantry units. Probably would need to reduce the effect for Karambits but would increase viability of unique infantry units
of course your getting more damage done, you have twice the population. they also TAKE more damage.
except you just proved otherwise. they take more damage, and have less health, which means they die faster, they might be more cost efficient, but they aren’t nearly as population efficient.
Please No, for a High PA infantry unit you have the Huskarl, the reversed TK, giving to the more PA would make them simply as arrow soakers and it will lead to balance problems.
Disagree hard. 2 Champs have 140hp put together, they can cover more area, which is important in this case since you want to block incomming untis and they are faster which is also important when units are trying to squeeze through to get to your valuable siege units, these factors are not mentioned in your reply. You are right on two accounts, first, the TK does obviosuly last longer against melee but since teuton Champ or Halbs trade very well against almost melee units in the game I don’t see that as an issue, rather it is the Onagers you have to worry about. Secondly TKs are pop efficient but in 1v1s pop efficiency is rarely an issue.
Huskarls have 6 and 8 (elite) PA. TKs and ETKs both get 2 PA.
Malian Champs are infinitely tankier than a 3 PA Teut Knight would be, as well as being able to actually catch up to an archer which is a plus…
except they still die INDIVIDUALLY, which means that combined health means NOTHING.
of course they do. there is 2 of them.
so stay closer to your siege. they also take more damage from archers then TK do.
really? pop efficiency is rarely an issue? then why was Battle Elephants recently nerfed?
fact is that if i can use less TK to cover my siege that means i can invest more population space into other things focused on killing the enemy with.
but Huskarls end at 8 and 10 PA, and only have 60/70 health.
TK end at 6 PA and have 80/100 Health. TK are already incredibly tanky vs archers, despite not being an anti archer unit.
except TK aren’t supposed to be an anti archer unit, so why should they have more PA? makes zero sense for them to have as much pierce armor as a paladin. especially considering the in game tech tree literally says they are supposed to be weak to archers
how many times do the devs have to buff teutonic knights before people leave them alone?
they’re better than they’ve ever been. they’re a situational unit good for holding positions and protecting siege. if you give them more pierce armor (they already have solid pierce armor with upgrades unlike most infantry…) you just end up with a bulletproof un-counterable tank unit. archers aren’t damaging it, melee units aren’t… and they’ve gotten like 2 speed buffs in a row in the last few patches. they do not need to be fast. these criticisms come from not understanding the niche of the unit and how it plays out in practice, and they’re more usable than ever.
why should teutonic knights counter siege weapons?? teutons have amazing knight options and even better siege options. if you’re getting hit with mangonels and scorpions, make your own mangonels. if anything, ttks should be countered by siege weapons.
even if this was functionally capable in the game engine, that’s a bad idea.
that backhandedly buffs their already amazing economy by not needing villagers to forward, and even ignoring the other proposed buffs you end up with a unit with amazing hp, can repair siege units, and shred cavalry and infantry alike. what’s the counter at that point? your own siege or guard towers aren’t going to do a lot when the ttks can repair, and engaging with cavalry is completely out of the question
On the contrary, the criticism comes from having a good understanding of how this unit plays out in practice. Before the last patch the TK was universally seen as bottom tier UU and no one raised an eyebrow at their slight speed increase nor has any one remarked what a great unit they are now. The unit has a small niche, slightly larger than before but still rarely the best unit-choice for the Teutons. That may be fine for you but some of us would like to have a more frequent use of the unit.
Having a PA of 3 does not make a unit an uncounterable bulletsponge, this is just ridiculous hyperbole. Being slow, expensive and weak to arrows is a combination that does not work in this game.
Now I understand I am discussing with 2k ELO players who have a perfect game-understanding here, but let me remind you that Viper put the TK in the lowest tier (not counting flaming camel/missionary/elephant archer tier) and that was post-buff.
the problem is the rest of the civ is incredibly strong outside of archers. you got great cavalry, arguably the best paladins in the game, and solid infantry, stellar siege and defenses, and a solid eco to back it up. you want your unique unit to be something you see all the time? be prepared for a nerf somewhere.
The unit is supposed to be weak to archers. because it straight up murders most melee units head on, which means the only way to effectively counter it for most civs is archers, and even then it takes 25 shots for a fully upgraded arbalest to kill. to put that in perspective, the arb can kill Aztec Elite Eagles in 30 hits. it can kill Champions in 14 hits.
And to further put this in perspective if we gave ETK 3 PA it would take 34 hits from an arb… It would be easier to kill the arrow sponge EEW, than it would be to kill an ETK. ETK becomes 34% harder to kill. It seems people happily neglect how much of an impact PA has…
Pop efficiency means you can spam moar ES or halbs.
But more importantly teutons have so many bonuses and rek in so many situations if you buff the ETK they will just make hard match ups even worse.
At 3PA, it’s 100 persian xbow hits to kill an ETK?
The irony is they gave the teutons the TK equivalent in the form of a paladin AND THAT STILL DIDN’T SHUT THEM UP… Like they seriously want a 10MA mounted Knight like you said
If it was the case that the Teutons would have to be nerfed I wouldn’t have anything against it but they aren’t considered a top civ on anything but arena so I don’t think that would be needed.
You’re comparing Eagles to TKs? Well, since the TK costs twice as much and moves at 60% the speed, yes, I wouldn’t mind if they could tank as many arrows. It would make them half as cost-efficient against arrows and with none of the Eagles’ ability of running away or catching up to the archers.
Hahaha and 100x the utility vs everything else. It doesn’t have the extreme weakness to champs. Beats almost EVERYTHING IN MELEE COST/POP EFFECTIVELY. Demolishes buildings. But it’s ok if its harder to kill than an arrow sponge
Ill remember that the next time im using an elephant or ram to knock down a building… “they’re half as cost efficient because they can’t catch archers”
You also seem to be forgetting ETK do more than double the damage to buildings…
