Sure, they’re very slow, but they can hold up against generic (and even Frankish) paladins, and are harder to kill than a halberdier. Also, it’s possible to garrison them in rams and siege towers, so they’re not at a complete speed disadvantage. Not only that, but they can be garrisoned in castles for protection, to heal up, and fire extra arrows. I think two issues are that pros view them as pretty underwhelming, so everyone ends up thinking that too, and, well, cavalry can outrun them. But if Teutons are in an offensive position, you’ll have cavalry with nowhere to run.
This is 80% the reason why these guys almost never see action, they can’t force fights as they want as most units can’t just dodge them, while they can’t also run away if are under ranged attacks, add to that they are quite expensive to produce, and Teutons have their Barrack and Stable units with better melee armor so they can rely on those better.
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My point is, they’re not useless. If they were, the devs would’ve buffed them long ago.
We get it. You’re likely Germanic and think you are connected way too deeply to a fictionalized version hundreds of years detached from you.
Either way your pro TK propaganda wont stick because speed is vital for control
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Where did that come from? I’m also of Germanic heritage, likely descended from noblemen serving the House of Hohenzollern, yet it doesn’t make me snobby. I feel a deeper connection to Georgia than I ever did to Germany, despite the fact that I don’t have a single drop of Georgian blood in me.
Point is, don’t assume. He might just like the unit.
Mustve been my imagination
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I stand corrected. Still, it’s possible he just made the same mistake Mutylator did of thinking the Teutons only represent the Teutonic Order.
Oh but they did it since DE. Castle age version way more stronger than before like most infantry UU. Speed boost to 0.8 (0.7 before that) and gold cost decreased (40 to 30.)
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True, but other options of Teutons are more useful, cost-effective and easier to mass in most scenarios while opponent get melee troop backed up by cavalry archers, hand cannon and arbalests.
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Ha! Speed is for the weak! My knights shall never fall when they’re garrisoned in siege weaponry! And no, it’s not because of Germanic descent, it’s because they look cool, and have high attack, melee armor hp, and so on. The biggest disadvantage they have is speed. If they were any faster, they’d be broken.
Also, there’s such a thing as instant ram garrison nowadays. I’ve seen Phosphoru do it with woads, so it must be possible for TKs as well. It’s definitely a window for infantry to reenter the meta (albeit an odd one), that is, unless the devs decide to nerf instant ram garrison (though the only issue with it I see is ranged units ungarrisoning from rams).
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I think it’s fine; shortly after the garrison buff, the devs made it so that ranged units are forced to wait a second or two before they can fire, after being ungarrisoned from Rams/Siege Towers.
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That is correct, Teutonic knights are not 100% useless:
They do ~75% of the DPS of halberdiers while being a significant upgrade against infantry units and being harder to kill. So in a late game pop-capped situation with infinite gold supply (Team Games or neutral markets), you can go TK+siege instead of siege+halbs/champions (champions vs. eagle civs).
Since they are a melee unit, so you can produce a couple of them to defend castles against rams.
And finally, they may be a good unit against civs lacking good ranged options, such as Burmese, Celts, and Slavs, who will have to rely on the cluncky siege units (or the often missing arambais) to beat them.
But the Teutonic knight are weak against arbalsters, HCA, and hand cannoners, and over 40 civs out of 45 will happily transit toward them. So if you want to make Teutonic knights work, you usually need siege units (scorpions & onagers) to counter ranged units, which your opponent will try to snipe with light cav. But in this case, Teutonic knights do not bring much to your composition compared to the cheap halberdiers besides the minor “power boost in ultra late game with infinite gold supply”. So you rather train halberdiers instead. Otherwise, your army is weaker (less resources efficient) and slower to get to (castles vs barracks) and you lose power & momemtum and get snowballed on.
Depends, not all unique units are equally useful. Some civs can be designed around a weak unique unit, with something else to compensate (like cheap farms, PBA paladins, strong conversions, …)
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Siege Towers have been useless since their implementation, and the devs have done nothing to buff them.
11 you should see Red Phosphoru with siege towers. He even calls them broken. And I was talking about TKs.
TKs are not useless but is REALLY niche like 0.5% of the time
woad raiders have fast attack animation while TK has a slow one:(
Edit: actually the attack animation is not as slow.
Still, I wont bother to go TK if I want to win the game.
For fun games, Onagers are much more fun than the turtle knights for me 
Imagine if teutonic knights got an aura that reduced damage nearby monks took from all sources. The teutonic knights are already big targets, but not they are martyrs defending their monks.
TKs are dope and useful to produce when you put down a workshop, to utilize castle as a supplementary production line for your Siege-Pike push. You can have a mix of Pikes and TKs to garrison Battering Rams. This army is considered slow in pro scene (nowadays faster than in the past), but it is steady and strong. They force the fight by trampling the enemy base. Garrisoned Rams can catch defending Mangonels nowadays too if unprotected, which is very important.
In defense, TKs repel alone every Ram push towards your castle.
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I just want to point out that the notion of “If X were true, Y would have taken measures to adress X” is not a safe assumption. The devs aren’t omnipotent, and whilst they usually have better information then most of us when it comes to things like game balance, this information is hardly perfect.
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They have all the statistics of civ winrates, and more. Besides, do you really want Speedy TKs to exist?
Pros try to pick Teutons a few times against civs with strong melee units or good monk play. Teutonic knights don’t offer any advantage over their regular barracks and stable units in such maps. Thats one of the reason why pros dont waste time in trying to gather a lot of stone and go for Teutonic knights.
And “very slow” is a huge problem for melee units. Have you noticed how Knights, eagles, lancers, light cav, shrivamsha riders are very common but longswords, elephants are NOT. Speed is one of the main reasons for it. Too slow makes melee units almost unusable. The other units can ignore them and raid, push from a different side etc.