hey guys Spirit of the law here in this video we're going to give some love to the
under-appreciated Cavalier they have an incredibly cheap upgrade cost attack faster than paladins and
especially in 1v1 games where the gold cost of Paladin comes into play Cavalier is sometimes
really all you need or at least all you can afford in addition quite a few civilizations lacking the
Paladin upgrade have some very solid bonuses or techs to at least partially make up for that even
in team games the Cavalier is still a powerful and mobile unit so for this one we're going
to be taking a look at the best civilizations set up to dominate with it immediately though
we run into a problem as there's really two completely different ways to approach a topic
and a big decision needs to be made from the onset do we want to restrict the discussion
to Cavalier-only civilizations or open things up to all Cavaliers including Paladin civs like
Franks and just ignore the paladins specifically admittedly restricting things to civilizations
that max out a Cavalier makes for a bit of a stretch as a top 5 list to the point I had to
start including civilizations just because they had good farming bonuses so I decided for this
one we'll open it up to all civilizations which I think makes for a more interesting discussion
with that out of the way let's start off our best Cavaliers at number 10 with the Huns of course
Huns have Paladin but even just the Cavalier is a safe pick for this list you have faster
working Stables helping build up numbers research Cavalier faster and not needing houses always
makes everything feel a bit it more smooth while the Cavalier itself is completely generic it has
enough helping in the peripherals to start us off as an all-around solid choice next up at number
nine we have the Portuguese with their 20% gold discount on units while Portuguese are probably
best known as an Archer and gunpowder civilization the Cavaliers are fully upgraded and also benefit
from that discount making them a sneaky good unit in the late game able to actually create 25% more
units with a given amount of gold to spend moving on to number eight we have the newest addition to
the game the Romans their advantages are that after a unique Tech their Cavaliers are created
50 faster and have a plus 5 charge attack Romans it has to be said also have a very good overall
economy with five percent more resources gathered by villagers making pretty much any strategy a
bit better than the tech tree loan would imply now the plus 5 charge attack has a 20 second cooldown
so it's good for maybe one or two uses per battle and is nowhere close to a plus five attack across
the board but it does have enough of an impact that they can actually beat generic Cavaliers
like Portuguese with equal numbers and can even keep up with some of the weakest paladins that
said it's actually the faster creation speed that pushes them ahead for me with the fastest
creation time for all Cavaliers in the game even faster than Franks naturally they do compete with
a centurion in the heavy Cavalry role so they aren't seen as often as others on the list but
I still think they're fairly respectable next up at number 7 we have the Franks while they're
much more famous for their paladins and are the historical route for those in the first
place again that upgrade is expensive and their Cavalier are pretty good already functionally
they have free Bloodlines plus another 4 HP they have plus two line of sight and the text chivalry
which has a similar feeling effect to the Romans increasing their stable work rate by 40 percent
everything about Franks is nicely streamlined to go Scouts into nights so the Cavalier can
add a nice power spike making it all feel very natural one unfortunate thing for Franks is
their HP bonus is a multiplier of the unit's base stats so while it adds 32 to a Paladin's HP to a
Cavalier it only adds 24. that is enough though to functionally negate the Romans charge attack
and franks win that fight with equal resources Franks probably would have been even higher on
the list a few years ago but keep in mind chivalry is now a more expensive and Imperial age Tech so
it's no longer a safe assumption to have before you really start massing Cavalier given how many
other things compete for your resources in early Imperial moving on to number six we have another
Paladin civilization the teutons like Franks they have several bonuses helping here with plus two
melee armor cheaper Farms helping power their economy into a strong early Imperial as well as
some natural resistance to conversions even just the extra melee armor alone means they can even
beat Frank Cavalier's head to head and important to note here is that all of their bonuses are
completely passive meaning you don't need a castle or to invest anything into unique attacks in fact
the only real issue here is lacking husbandry taking away from some of their mobility and
making it more difficult for them to choose the fights they want at opportune moments next up at
number 5 we have the bulgarians on paper they sound completely broken with their Castle age
unique Tech stirrups letting their Knights and later Cavalier attack 33 percent faster I expect
some people would count them as a contender for number one and the tech is surprisingly cheap
as well they even research blacksmith upgrades faster and cheaper helping your Imperial age power
Spike and certainly late Castle age into early Imperial is a very nice window for them they even
beat heavily armored teuton Cavaliers with equal numbers so they're definitely above average and
I understand if number five sounds too low maybe surprisingly though they don't even beat generic
paladins and tie or lose to three of the remaining four Cavalier civilizations we haven't gotten to
yet the fact of the matter is there's just a lot of really good Cavaliers out there and if anything
that speaks to the strength of the remaining civilizations as bulgarians are very well
set up for knights in the Cavaliers and can be quite dangerous when utilizing the unique attack
moving on at number four we have the Malians similar to bulgarians they have a unique tag they
rely on here this time giving plus 5 attack though notably lacking Blast Furnace so it's functioning
plus three more than usual this technology makes them actually identical to bulgarians 1v1 taking
the exact same amount of time to defeat the other so with equal numbers the battles can go either
way still the unique Tech is more expensive than stirrups and comes later so Malians would have
been lower if not for two other advantages that are easy to overlook the first is their
gold mines last longer meaning they're able to create their gold intensive Cavaliers for longer
in theory the other is that higher attack scales a bit better against higher armor targets than
faster attack so against the toughest enemies with the highest melee armor where Cavaliers
usually struggle the most volumes end up pulling a bit ahead though it's important to emphasize the
two Cavaliers are incredibly similar in the late game where both give you something functionally
quite similar to a paladin without Bloodlines so with two such strong civs already locked in
who could possibly be next well at number three we have the berbers with 20 cheaper stable units
translating into 25% more units for the same cost unlike the previous two entries this bonus helps
immediately when you enter Castle age with no unique Tech or Castle to create first letting
you build up your numbers for the ultimate Cavalier power spike down the road admittedly
Berber Cavaliers themselves are generic when fully upgraded but critically if you can leverage their
discount into the same resources worth of units they in fact beat bulgarians and mullions head
to head this is classic Lanchester's Square law in action where the best performing units
tend to be the ones you can make the most of in fact they're the only Cavalier we've seen so far
that can be Huns or other generic paladins with equal resources albeit in a close fight which
even bulgarians and malians can't say while generally I haven't been putting much weight
on other Tech Tree options these civilizations have between discounted camels and camel archers,
berbers even have some very nice pairings with Cavalier that make them feel very smooth
play but ultimately the fact they beat all of the previous entries we've seen with equal
resources meant I just couldn't justify them any lower than this in fact they even beat the
number two civilization which is going to be the Sicilians this is a case where I'm breaking my
rule about emphasizing melee ability and instead respecting how well-rounded Sicilian Cavaliers
are in three major ways first they take 33 less bonus damage from Spears camels Etc making them
more frustrating to directly counter second the unique Tech First Crusade gives them conversion
resistance supporting enemy monks third the unique Tech Hauberk gives them plus one plus
two armor essentially getting half the Teuton's bonus in melee and even one more pierce armor than
a paladin with two more than everything else we've seen so far they do lose to berbers mullions and
bulgarians with equal resources and in fact heavy Cavalry are one of the more effective ways to deal
with Sicilian Cavaliers as archers and the usual counters are much less effective at one point they
were probably the most well-rounded Cavalry in the game back when they took half bonus damage and
hauberk was cheaper and while they're not quite as strong as they were in their Prime they're still
incredibly annoying to deal with and are easily in the discussion as one of the top Cavaliers
now before we get to number one I have a few honorable mentions all of which I strongly debated
sneaking into the list the first is burgundians they get the Cavalier in Castle age and a discount
on stable techs but unfortunately no Bloodlines so without the Paladin upgrade they max out very
early this one is hard to compare with the rest of the list as they get them the earliest but feel
odd to be called one of the best Cavaliers even Chinese end up saving a similar amount on their
Cavalier Tech switch if you include blacksmith attacks and burgundians lose to generic Cavaliers
head to head so altogether they just didn't feel right to include here another one to point out is
the Cumans who have faster movement and cheaper Stables both are quite useful but very hard to
compare to more concrete things like attack or even discounts admittedly they probably could have
been on the list instead of Huns or Romans but ultimately I like them just a bit less similarly
I should also mention Lithuanians who have up to plus 4 attack from relics but no Blast Furnace
ultimately the issue is it's just too hard to reliably get four relics every time but in a
case you can get bored they end up roughly on the same level as bulgarians or malians without having
to pay for a unique attack so situationally we'll say their top five and finally a quick shout out
to Burmese who have a unique Tech giving plus 4 attack versus archers You could argue this is a
slightly better version of the Persians team bonus though you have to pay for it again it was just a
bit too situational for the list and they're beaten Head to Head by basically everything
we've seen that brings us to number one though and by process of elimination you can probably
already guess what it is to me the number one Cavalier civilization is the poles I expect
not everyone would agree but for me their unique Tech giving a 60 Gold Discount on the Cavalier is
simply unparalleled where most civilizations pay 150 gold for two Cavaliers that's enough
for poles to make five alternately even going by total resources you're still getting 50%
more and backing this up is a solid food economy through the full work helping to massive knights
in late Castle age for an instant Cavalier spike in Imperial for a bit of perspective 50 more units
is so impactful that Pole are basically an even fight against Frank paladins if you balance total
resources making it 12 versus 8 but even with equal numbers polls are cost effective against
Franks in terms of gold which no other unit on the list even comes close to here for example 8
versus 8 the Frank paladins are burning through 45% more gold worth of units than the polls did
maybe just as impressive poles even do better than Sicilians against an identical group of camels or
halberdiers despite the sicilian's reduced bonus damage which made for a compelling argument to
put them so high in the first place now on the flip side pulls lack the final armor upgrade
and while that doesn't matter too much in melee against range units that can be a big deal where
Sicilians thrive in that situation admittedly after an expensive Imperial upgrade holes are
in fact the worst in the entire list we've seen against arblaesters but the gold savings are just
too amazing in one verse 1 or even team games and could be funnelled into onagers or bombard cannons
if archers are becoming too big of a problem anyway saving so much gold just opens lots of
options for you I admit I didn't go in thinking I would pick poles for number one but seeing
them beat up on every other entry in the list as well as a bunch of paladins ultimately swayed my
opinion that'll do it for this one though thanks for watching guys and I'll see you next time