Teutons/Strategy

The Teutons are a well rounded civilization. They have both strong defensive and offensive capabilities with powerful infantry.

Strengths
They can produce all siege weapons with the exception of the Siege Ram and can also produce all naval units except for the Elite Cannon Galleon. The Teutons have a potent defense. They have the ability to garrison more units in towers and obtain Murder Holes for free. Their unique technology, Crenellations, allows garrisoned infantry to fire arrows and increases the range of their Castles. The increased range allows Castles to fire back on Bombard Cannons and kill them before they can do too much damage. They also have strong towers to support their castles. Towers can be fullly upgraded and Bombard Towers are available as well. Since their towers can hold ten units instead of five they can fire as many arrows as a castle, making them much more devastating. When Teutonic Bombard Towers are fully garrisoned with Hand cannoneer only, they fire two cannons simultaneously, making them the deadliest in the game. They also have a strong economy and can research all economic technologies except for Gold Shaft Mining. The Teutonic unique unit, the Teutonic Knight, is the strongest infantry unit in the game. They have a large attack and are almost invulnerable in melee combat due to the huge amount of armor they possess. The only way to counter them in hand to hand combat is with Aztec Jaguar Warriors and Byzantine Cataphracts, both of which possess an attack bonus against infantry. A large group of archers is also a viable method of taking down Teutonic Knights as they are quite slow.

Weaknesses
They do have weaknesses however. In contrast to their powerful infantry they have weak archers and cavalry. They cannot build the Arbalest or Heavy Cavalry Archer, and have to rely solely on the Paladin for their cavalry in the late game. Their Paladins are slower than the cavalry of most other civillizations, and their Teutonic Knights are so slow that ranged units can pick them off at a distance.

Strategy

In The Conquerors and in age of kings Teutons have a different start up than other civs due to the +5 line of sight of its town center that allows to find faster their herdables, this bonus was removed in the Forgotten for a more defensive bonus that allows to the town center to garrison more units inside.

Teutons are capable for Turtling, rushing and booming but they perform better at Turtling and rushing, if they want to rush they will normally try to perform infantry rushes  ( Dark age rush or feudal age rush) since they have full upgrades for their infantry and the left over infantry will retain its value in middle and late game, they can also go for a Trush ( tower feudal age rush), since their towers can garrison more units than normal which means they can also fire more arrows, for a trush they will normally  create skirmishers to fill their towers.

Just at the start of the game Teutons have already good defense ( in aoc town centers have more attack, in the forgotten they have more garrison space) so the other way a player normaly uses the teutons is the turtling for this they must  create several buildings in feudal and dark age  like houses for walling and then a few towers. once they reach the castle age they must create one to 3 castles, build stone walls an research all the necessary technologies at the university and blacksmith ( Fletching and bodkin arrow, teutons does not have bracer at imperial age) for improving the buildings, there will be nessesary to create infantry  specially teutonic knights, monks and ranged siege units. once in imperial age the player must research crenellations in order to allow their infantry to shoot arrows when garrisoned on a building, also in imperial age is good for turtling strategy for teutons to create several bombard towers.

Offensively at the castle and imperial age teutons must use their unique unit the teutonic knight as the base of its army, despite the fact that they have no acces to siege rams is useful to create rams  for the teutons since teutonic knights have a very slow movement so garrisoning in rams make up their mobility a little, Teutons have acces to all gunpowder units except the elite cannon galleon, so the siege they would normally use is the bombard cannon, they must also abuse a lot their villagers to create forward towers and castles in order to provide support for the troops which in a siege to an enemy town they will can retreat to the buildings and shoot arrows once inside. Teutons have olso good monks which have a large healing range, this means that their monks ca support the frontlines of infantry and cavalry at a safe distance. For the cavalry teutons must use their paladins for raid enemy towns.

In maps with water, Teutons have not many advantages as other civs, but their tower bonus gives them a little edge on defending the shoreline, so they must try to keep dry.

Strategy changes in The Forgotten
Their new unique technology Ironclad improves the melee armor for siege units, making them more resistant to cavalry and infantry attacks (siege units normally are very weak vs. melee units due to their minimum range), this is specially helpful in mid and late game. The Town Center LOS bonus was changed in favor of a garrison bonus (+10 units) and can fire +5 arrows; this new bonus synergizes better with the other Teutonic bonuses and their unique tech Crenellations. Their Monks' healing range bonus is now fixed so monks now can effectively heal units from a farther distance giving to them a supporting bonus that is useful in battles, maintaining the monks at a safe distance.