Knight Buildings

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Knight Buildings

Keep
The Keep, as you probably guessed, is the Knight's keep and is near enough a carbon copy of other keeps of the game. With the production of just Peasants and the Crusade skills, the Keep wont be seeing much action, especially considering the price and research time of those Crusade skills that'll all but force you to leave them till nearly the end of the game before you get them researched.

A second Keep could be built for faster Peasant production if you acquire a lot of easy to reach mines, or late game if your base extends across a vast land. Otherwise there is no need to consume a large chunk of your land for another one.

Tower (Knights)
Despite its high gold cost that doesn't go well at all with the rest of the gold-hungry Knight race, the Knight's towers are decent and do a good job at both withstanding attacks and dealing them. However, the Knights do not hace access to any missile units other than those with the same arrows that their towers have, leaving their tower unable to change its attack type. This leaves them vulnerable to common missile-resistant units, such as Skeletons, and pushes for a strong need for more defensive troops to aid the towers than normal.

Garrison
Garrisons are the core infantry production buildings for the Knights, mass producing Swordsmen (due to their incredible cheapness and metal cost) and Squires (the Knights only missile unit). But the Garrison's horrible space-wasting shape prevents you from being able to effeciently place them down within your base. This can lead to less of these being built than what would be ideal.

Smithy
As expected from buildings of its type, the Smithy researches armor and melee damage upgrades, as well as producing the common siege weapons (Catapult and Battering Ram). The Armorer and Weaponsmith upgrades are what truly make the building so valuable, (especially due to how quickly the Knights can get the building up and then obtaining those first researches) but for the Knights, they get one more armor research to add to the list - Full Plate Armor. Although it is applied only to their cavalry units, those units are prominant enough to the Knight race that it sees much use. However, this and the second Armorer and Weaponsmith can be quite expensive, especially early game. But with access to the Market in just tier 2, those aforementioned skills can be put aside until the Income and Trade skills are researched. That'll make getting those more expensive skills much easier.

Fletcher
A somewhat weak building that's also reflected by its price, the Fletcher allows for the production of Squires, as well as offering researches to upgrade them to usable levels. Considering Knights have no other missile unit, Squires are unfortunately important units to the race and all three missile researches are mandatory. Since the building is needed for the production of Squires, it will need to be kept in play at all times.

Fortunately the building is quite small, so its presence wont feel intrusive, but aim to build it somewhere safe and out-of-the-way. The lack of unit production also mean there's no harm in placing it in awkward areas, which would otherwise cause pathing issues to newly produced units.

Market
The Market simply allows for the researching of the Income and Trade skills, but that itself is a massive feat! Like with any race, these skills largely help your economy and makes those expensive purchases more easily achievable. All this makes the Market a priority building to the Knights and also one they would want to protect, for its high gold cost, frailness and need for trading also makes it a priority target for the enemy of the Knights.

Stables
Although the Stables produced cavalry units, because the Knights focus heavily on them, the Stables can also be considered a second core production building. Although Knight Champions will be the units mostly produced from them, plenty of Stables will be needed to play effectively to the Knight's strength. A couple of Stables at the back of your base should be used for Knight Lords and generally forgotten about (because their production time is incredibly lengthy), another two to four for Knight Champions and maybe even another one or two for the basic Knights when you need to quickly pump out some reliable units.

The Stables can also research Warhorse, a skill that improves the combat score for the Knight's cavalry units. This cheap skill doesn't take long to research but obtaining it prior to any cavalry units will delay their production and instead research it while your army is already out and on the trot.

Eyrie level 1
The Eyrie level 1 can only produce Eagles. Although limited, Eagles can be used along side Squires where the two can work together to offer passable aerial defense against the more powerful fliers that can crop up early game via spells and temples. Typically you wont be building many of them (unless your enemy has a way of spamming them) as such, there isn't much demand for Eyries and you wont need many of them (if any at all!) at this early stage of the game.

Shrine of the Sword
A very useful building indeed - the Shrine of the Sword offers a broad range of great researches, as well as producing decent units in the form of Dancing Swords. The building can even turn fallen units into Dancing Swords, saving both time and resources. This ability alone can influence the amount to build and where to put them. Having one by each entrance of your base to cover common battle-grounds, allows for regular raising of Dancing Swords. Having multiple Shrines of Swords also allow for quicker researching, which would otherwise take a considerable amount of time to get through them all due to the sheer amount of them and the long researching time of the lower listed ones.

The building is pretty tough and can weather any stray attackers that find themselves upon the Shrine. The Shrine's 200 crystal cost instead of any gold is also beneficial, as the Knights only start using crystal in tier 4 and are forever in demand for gold.

Cathedral
The Cathedral is the most expensive base building the Knights can build and one of the most useful, too. With production of the Knights General and a second (and more useful) advanced flier, as well as the Titan, the Cathedral will certainly be continuously producing units. It also researches some very powerful and useful skills. All this will encourage you to build a decent amount of them but that cost and somewhat large size can cause difficulties in getting them built. Although, with its high hit points and Holy Word ability, it's not entirely helpless if it comes under attack. This allows the Cathedral to stand strong even when on the out-skirts of your base. But still aim to have the most protected one build the Knights Titan.

Since the Cathedral can produce two different spell casters, it's always a good idea to set the building's attitude to a magic casting one, so the produced spell casters adopt the same attitude. This'll cut down on micro-management later on.

Eyrie level 2
Once upgraded, the Eyrie can produce Pegasi in addition to Eagles. Although Pegasi are decent units, the problem for them is that the Knight race also gain access to Archons at the same time - a unit that is largely Superior to the Pegasus and also shares the same resource types. Unless you are facing against fire resistant units, or enemies with a lot of electrical attacks, then producing Pegasi is unnecessary and aiming for an Eyrie level 2 is not needed, other than the preparation for Dragons in tier 5.

Eyrie level 3
The Knights are one of the few races that get access to Celestial Dragons and makes building up to an Eyrie level 3 worth while. Because of the Knights access to Trade and Income, getting to a Celestial Dragon isn't particularly difficult. And once you get one, it'll make getting following Dragons even easier. With Pegasi outclassed by Archons and Eagles being fairly useless at this stage of the game, all Eyries could be upgraded to level 3 and purely used for Dragon production. Most of the time you would want Celestial Dragons, as their abilities are just amazing. Fire Dragons aren't of much importance because of Archons, but can thrive where Archons would suffer due to their electrical weakness, such as facing an Undead / High Elven base or assailing spellcasters that know Call Lightning.