I’m seeing a lot of conflicting answers to this when Googling so thought I’d ask here. I’m mainly interested in pop efficiency ie. highest individual performance, and cost efficiency. This being in a post-Imperial scenario with all upgrades, I know some have the added bonus of early availability but here I mean who has the highest endgame potential.
For pop efficiency the cataphract is the best by quite some distance, it is after all much more expensive than other knights.
The strongest unit in a 1v1 fight would be the gilded knight however it is a 2 population unit. Compared to a normal knight gilded knights have +2 melee armor and +1 ranged armor at elite level.
In terms of cost efficiency I imagine keshiks are up there but personally I’d give it to french royal knights as they can be reduced in cost by 25% and have several strong unique techs. I’d say it is likely closely followed by zhu xi’s imperial guard which would beat a french royal knight head on as they would almost every knight other than perhaps cataphracts/gilded knights. French knights probably just edge them in overall cost efficiency though but not at all in pop efficiency.
its the french knights. They get cost reduction, normal training time, more hp, more charge damage, healing and so on. Plus tanky arbaletrier support from behind.
Cataphracts are good, but they have longer training time, higher cost and slow movement speed, not charge, only charging skill with 45 sec cooldown.
How does the Gilded Knight compare in pop efficiency when you factor in the double space? I’ve seen a video where they get absolutely decimated by Royal Knights so I’m guessing they’re not that good actually?
I’ve seen some mentions that the Cataphract has comparatively low damage and isn’t that great because they take too long killing their opponents, taking a lot of damage themselves in the process. That their real strength is their ability to dive the enemy backline but they’re not that great stat-to-cost wise?
What about Rus knights? They have several good unique techs and I get the impression they hurt a lot once they get those poleaxes.
Are HRE Knights with their extra armour not enough to be amongst the top tier?
They’re still good in terms of pop efficiency like 1 gilded knight will beat 2 normal knights. French knights are particularly good for their cost so they win vs most units in cost efficiency but they aren’t that great in pop efficiency. Gilded knights become better late game as the elite upgrade gives them additional armor compared to them at veteran level.
Cataphracts are good in terms of the value you get in stats per their cost. The additional cost is worth it. Cataphract has the highest base damage of any 1 pop knight and a faster than normal attack speed meaning they do much more DPS. They also have a unique tech that gives them +1 melee and ranged armor and that combined with their high hp means they stay alive much longer.
I forgot about rus knights, they are indeed 1 of the strongest knights and if you go with abbey of the trinity and mix knights with warrior monks they become extremely strong. Certainly the highest damage 1 pop knight in the game, with higher than average armor due to saints blessing.
HRE knights with the meinwork tech are very tanky with their +2 armor but that alone doesn’t put them on the level of cataphracts, imperial guard or rus/french knights. They’re still very good and better than normal knights.
Excluding byz, jap, and variants, talking only about pop efficiency;
Rus - Maxed out with knight poleaxes and boyars fortitude they far surpass french knights in raw stats.
Ottoman - With mehter attack speed and movespeed they tie with mongols for most mobile, and are even with rus for dps.
French - Currently its an extra 27 hp and a total 30 extra damage (given a charge).
Delhi - With honed blades lose to RK with a 1 hit diff, assuming charge. Without charge they win with a 1 hit diff.