Teutonic Knight

The Teutonic Knight is a unique Infantry Unit for the Teutons and is featured in Age of Empires II.

Game Information
The Teutonic Knight is the most powerful infantry unit in the game. When upgraded to Elite Teutonic Knight during the Imperial Age, they boast 100 hit points and 17 attack power without any upgrades. With all the upgrades from the Blacksmith, Elite Teutonic Knights boast 100 HP, 21 Attack, 14 Armour and 6 Pierce Armour. They can defeat fully upgraded Paladins more easily than fully upgraded Pikemen.

Teutonic Knights are tough enough to beat every melee unit in the game, with the exception of the Persians' War Elephant and Byzantine's Cataphract. However, they are extremely slow, due to the large amount of armor they wear, and so are at a disadvantage to ranged units and artillery. They are also vulnerable to double-teaming from infantry who attack quickly, such as Japanese Samurai or Celtic Woad Raiders. However, this can easily be compensated for by increasing the number of Teutonic Knights traveling together.

Teutonic Knights boast an attack bonus vs. buildings and the Militia class of soldiers. Due to their slow speed, on maps with plenty of waterways it may be effective to transport them to some areas using transport ships. Additionally, their slow speed will make them vulnerable to Monks and area-of-effect attacks, so it is usually wisest to place them in staggered formation to compensate when battling siege weapons. If the enemy has assembled a large force of Teutonics, the best strategy is to use infantry to delay them while massed archers attack from behind the infantry. if that is not possible, assemble a force of horse archers as large as possible, and use hit-and-run. shoot a volley, then withdraw the archers. That is efficient against small pockets of Teutonics but is less useful against a large group.

Real Info
The Teutonic Knights (Ordo Teutonicus or "Orden der Brüder vom Deutschen Haus Sankt Mariens in Jerusalem" in german) existed in the baltic region from the time of the Crusades to the early 16th century, and their order is still in existence today. They were a religious order of monk-knights like the Knights Templar or the Knights Hospitaller.

They were recruited among the nobles of the Holy Roman Empire in central Europe to conquer the lands of the pagan natives of prussia and the baltic states for the pope, with most members serving the order for a certain amount of time before leaving the order again.

They were usually very well-trained in hand-to-hand combat, but they also were proficient as heavy cavalry. As their game counterpart suggests, they often wore a lot of armor, which stemmed from the nature of combat in Europe at the time, which gave the heavily armored fighters a distinctive advantage over their mostly tribal enemies. Although they saw action in the middle-east their main focus remained in the colonisation of the eastern european provinces, where their rule expanded until they were defeated by the unified Poland-Lithuania in the battle of Tannenberg in 1410, which marked the beginning of their decline.

Rumors of the Knights Templar abounded by the end of the Crusade, some being that they found and kept secret great treasures, or that they had recovered the Shroud of Turin, and other such stories.