Knight

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Knight Information Pages
Knight Buildings Overview
 * Keep
 * Tower
 * Walls
 * Ramparts
 * Garrison
 * Smithy
 * Fletcher
 * Market
 * Stables
 * Eyrie
 * Shrine of the Sword
 * Cathedral

Knight Researches Overview
 * Crusade
 * Weaponsmith
 * Armorer
 * Full Plate Armor
 * Fletcher
 * Bowyer
 * Flaming Arrows
 * Trade
 * Income
 * Warhorse
 * Order of the Ram
 * Order of the Lion
 * Order of the Grail
 * Order of the Pegasus
 * Order of the Dragon
 * Sword of Sirian
 * Knight's Quest
 * Holy Relic
 * Holy Word
 * Rites of Dawn
 * Paladin
 * Grand Paladin

Knight Armies Overview
 * Peasant
 * Swordsman
 * Squire
 * Knight
 * Knight Champion
 * Eagle
 * Knight Lord
 * Dancing Sword
 * Battering Ram
 * Catapult
 * Archon
 * Pegasus
 * Inquisitor
 * Fire Dragon
 * Celestial Dragon
 * Sirian

Overview
With a massive amount of armored cavalry, the Knights are not short of fast or powerful units. They are capable of wrecking havoc later in the game with Archons and Knight Lords, but until then they have little in the way of damage types (other than Slashing). Due to this, some opponents may be capable of abusing Slashing resistant units against them. Things haven't looked too bright for the Knights since the latest unofficial patch either (1.03.24), as unit level ups don't heal them anymore, effectively nerfing the Crusade research to the point of obscurity. Despite this, the Knights remain a well rounded race capable of tough, powerful armies which can raze both armies and bases alike, given enough resources to do so.

Pros

 * Have a large number of cavalry units, all of which are resistant to all physical damage types and are quite upgradable.
 * Access to research, units and abilities specifically designed to deal with the Undead and Evil enemies in general.
 * The Knights' basic infantry unit is efficient for its costs.
 * Strong and cheap anti-air unit, the Dancing Sword.
 * Access to multiple XP gaining skills that allow their units and Hero to gain XP fast and level up very quickly.

Cons

 * The Knights almost need as much Gold to function properly as the Dwarves. There are usually always Gold-based economy problems in a Knight game. This problem is stressed much further because the main keep upgrade requires Gold, so a poor Gold economy will keep the main HQ building a low level.
 * Almost all units use a massive amount of Gold and Metal and very little Stone or Crystal. This can cause serious unit production problems.
 * Cavalry units don't usually fare well against elemental damage types. They are also very costly and take a long time to produce. Also, the Knights may have 3 different cavalry units, but all of them are somewhat invariable.
 * Nearly all Knight units use Slashing damage. They have very little access to elemental damage types and the keep needs to be upgraded to level 4 to gain access to them.
 * The Knights' basic and only missile unit is amongst the worst in the game.

Units
Firstly, a Knight player should attempt to capture and stock all Gold Mines available. This will help the race with everything - researches, upgrades, units or buildings. The Metal mines should be the second priority to help with the unit production. The Knight player may wish to construct the Market as soon as possible and research Income to stabilise the Knight's economy.

Depending upon the game's version, the Knight player may or may not wish to research the Crusade upgrades. It is a viable option in 1.03, but in 1.03.24 units do not get healed from leveling up anymore, which means it is extremely overpriced for what it does.

The Knight race's basic units are highly reproducible but not particularly effective. These basic units shouldn't be used later on in the game (unless the player has managed to research Flaming Arrows, which can make Squires useful).

Basic Knights should be one of the main frontline troops unless the opponent is using plenty of elemental attacks or elemental towers. Otherwise, Swordsmen may have to be used until next usable knight can be mass produced (Knight Champions or even Lords). Spamming and upgrading Knights (and later Archons alongside some other support troops) is usually the win condition of the Knight race.

One of the objectives of a Knight player is to try and purchase all of the cavalry upgrades within the Shrine of the Sword and the Smithy to improve the various Knights and units respectively. Once the Knights are upgraded, they become incredibly dangerous - they even gain the ability to better resist elemental damage, which is normally a weakness they all share.

The Dancing Sword is a valuable unit which costs almost entirely Crystal - which the Knight race has little other use for. Dancing Swords can really help the Knight army because they are very easy to obtain and they can attack air - which is crucial to a race with amongst the worst missile units in the game. Alternatively, it is possible to use Eagles for anti-air instead, but they cost valuable Gold that the Knight race usually needs for something else.

By the time Battering Rams become usable at keep level 4, they are immediately outclassed by a wide variety of other units which are much easier to fit into a Knight player's army (many of the Knight units are more usable including Pegasi and Archons). Catapults however, are a useful addition to the Knight player's arsenal as they give what the Knight's usually lack- a powerful anti-horde missile weapon.

Lastly, Archons should always be a number 1 priority unless opponents have perfect weaponry to use against it (like a fire resistant, good-aligned unit). If they do not, enough Archons will usually overpower almost anything.

Dragons would normally be useful, but Archons usually do a lot more for the resources. Still, if there are spare resources, Celestial Dragons are always the ones to pick for production.

Buildings
Most of the Knight race's buildings are average. The Market costs 200 Gold and 100 Stone, which may be costly for many players at the start of a game. However, it is one of the most important structures to the Knights and should be defended with everything possible until the Income researches have been completed.

The Smithy and the Shrine of the Sword are also imperative for any Knight player. The former contains upgrades (Weaponsmith and Armorer) which effect all of the Knight player's units (which is very useful and can make the production of Swordsmen strangely efficient). The latter contains a massive amount of upgrades - most of which effect Knights and are highly useful.

Their tower does piercing damage, and can be garriosned as per normal. However, unlike most other races, the Knight Tower's damage type cannot be changed from piercing (or piercing + fire with the Flaming Arrows upgrade) as the only missile unit the Knights have which can fit into a tower is the Squire. This may cause a multitude of problems when fighting against piercing resistant units.

Heroes
A good choice for the Knights is the Paladin. The Paladin is able to heal the tough cavalry units whilst providing them with an XP increasing skill for all mounted knights.

A purely spellcasting choice could be the Sage. The Sage's abilities mainly revolve around further exploiting the XP gathering nature of the Knight race. The XP upgrades in the Keep are practically synergistic with the XP increasing spell Telepathy and the XP leeching spell Mind Leech. The Comprehension spell can also be used to cut the costs of researches dramatically, and considering the number of researches available to the Knight race, it is a very abusable characteristic.

A great support choice for the Knights would also be the Bard, getting a synergy bonus to leadership, early access to the amazing Divination Magic sphere and of course, the much needed Wealth ability.

Warriors can be used for a unique synergistic bonus in Weaponmaster, allowing the Knight Warrior to inflict immense amount of critical hits on enemies. However, this combo may not be necessary as combative heroes tend to crit quite often anyway.

Chieftains can also be suprisingly efficient: they have a synergy bonus to Leadership and this combined with Riding, can make them excellent at leading cavalry of any race. By investing evenly between Charisma and Strength/Dexterity they become a great leader/warrior hybrid that also gets trickier to defeat thanks to the massive boosts given to the cavalry.

The Healer choice is actually a nice choice as it can provide the forces with necessary healing, curing, and buffs, with more focus on healing than the Paladin.

Simply Merchant can be excellent choice too. Only disadvantage is that a Divination sphere come later but wealth, gemcutting or even trade will make pay off.

Counters

 * A barrage of elemental damage types can cause serious damage to all knights. If any particular knight is being produced, abuse their vulnerability in Electrical for Knight Lords or Fire for Knight Champions (any elemental damage type for Knights).
 * The Knights have amongst the worst archer units in the game. This allows some races to abuse flying units against the Knights before they get access to Archons, Pegasi or Dragons.
 * The Knights have a massive Gold requirement. Destroying their Gold Mines will slow them down greatly.
 * Knights will struggle badly against Empire in mid to late game as their anti-cavalry units, particularly Halberdiers, will boast enormous combat, good damage and armor and they might devastate the Knight cavalry. To add insult to the injury, Mages will ALSO wreak havoc against them, due to their elemental attacks, as well as against Archons, in the case of Black and White Mages.
 * One single Dragonliche can become the Knights worst nightmare if they are not prepared, due to their lack of anti-air non arrow counters. Even a swarm of Dancing Swords is quickly vanquished due to the dragon's splash damage nature

Lore
'Etheria is home to many orders of Knighthood, but the 5 most powerful orders rule the lands of Agaria. The Sirian, Bartonian, Elenian, Gildine and Theiran Knights may constantly be at war with each other, but the armies they lead into battle and the methods with which they wage war are all very similar, consisting of huge masses of armored knights who love nothing more than to crash into enemy lines.

Time and again, the Knights (particularly the Sirians) have turned back the tide of Lord Bane's Undead as they have swept down from the frozen north.' - http://www.enlight.com/wbc3/gameinfo_races.htm#2