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Template:AoEIIUnitsIn Age of Empires II, the Cataphract is a unique unit to the Byzantines which has an attack bonus against infantry. In the Conquerors Expansion, the Byzantines can research Logistica, which gifts trample damage to the Cataphract. Without the upgrade, Cataphracts are roughly equivalent in statistics to Paladins; however, with Logistica and their attack bonuses, Cataphracts become superior to Paladins overall. Cataphracts may be upgraded in the Imperial age to become Elite Cataphracts.
Usage
Thanks to its good statistics and bonus against foot-troops, the Cataphract is probably the unit with the least weaknesses. To one's surprise, Cataphracts are effective against almost all the units which have bonus attack against mounted units such as Heavy Camel, Elite Mameluke etc. However, Halberdiers are still a threat to them. Never send Heavy Camels or Mamelukes into battle against Cataphracts, since their bonus attack property doesn't work against them. The bonus damage dealt to the Cataphract is reduced by 12 (16 for elite). So the aniticav bonus of Camels (10 bonus damage) and Mamelukes (9 bonus damage, 12 for elite) are nullified, Heavy Camels with a bonus of 18 only have a small effect.
Tactics
Though Halberdiers do not deal as much bonus damage to Cataphracts as they do to Paladins, Halberdiers are still a moderately good choice to counter Cataphracts. It is always advisable to send large groups of Halberdiers against Cataphracts, since Cataphracts have a very high damage bonus against all kinds of infantry. The groups of Halberdiers should be managed carefully since sending them into battle sporadically and sparsely would lead to little or no effect against the Cataphracts. While dueling, each hit of a Cataphract deals a damage of as much as 30 HP to a Halberdier, but a Gothic player could produce an army of halberdiers to outnumber the Cataphracts.
This is the best tactic to engage Cataphract army, if you have enough Food and Gold. Paladins can wipe off a Cataphract army and even go on the offensive with little effort. Even though Cataphracts have trample damage, it doesn't seem to bother Paladins. On the other hand, fully upgraded Paladins have 14+4 =18 Attack and 180 HP [Teutonic, Spanish, Persian and Hunnish] and Those of Elite Cataphracts have 12+2 = 14 attack and 150 HP . That means Cataphracts are no match for Paladins, furthermore since the Franks have +20%HP on each Knights, the Frankish Paladins (not the hero) should make more of a difference to the Cataphracts.
Note that Cataphracts have lower Pierce Armor, 1+4 once fully upgraded. That should hint that they do not fare well against masses of archers. Large groups of Arbalests placed wisely can stop approaching Cataphracts pretty well. It is also good to make use of Unique units if the player controls a Civilization which mainly has Archer-type Unique Units. Groups of Elite Longbowmen, backed up with some inexpensive units like Halberdiers would produce some amazing results. Other than Longbowmen, units like Chu-Ko-Nu, Korean War Wagons, Mayan Plumed Archers with backup would be a good combination to take out Cataphracts. Mongol Mangudai, or Heavy Cavalry Archers formed properly would also make fresh meat out of Cataphracts.