Sorry if this has been said, I only read first couple of posts. Thought I would just clear a few things up as I teach history at a high level.
* Knight is the term for a noble and did not really mean that this man would fight in full plate and horse back. Full plate armour was stupidly expensive ( Imagine in todays terms kitting your best guys out in something similar to Batman's outfit in regard to protection. Knight was more the term for a man of noble birth or who had aquired this title through deeds to a kingdom. He would have generally fought on horse but would ; for game purposes, be considered Light Cavalry. Your average Count or even Duke could not field any heavy cavalry due to the insane cost of not only arming but also training these men ( riding a horse at pace in something as heavy as full plate AND timing your attacks on an enemy takes years of training which costs money.)
You could have a knight in less than plate, especially in the crusading era, when chainmail was the norm. Later on, what used to be "heavy" in the previous centuries would be considered light. I suppose you could go down some way from full plate and still qualify, especially in poorer countries or with less discriminating princes. But you couldn't be too lightly armoured as knighthood was too closely tied to tenure by chivalry, i.e. holding land in exchange for the feudal service of showing up in knight gear. No gear, no tenure. (You'd have a short life expectancy being the brave chainshirt owner in the middle of two fully plated parties crushing into each other.)
* The only "TRUE" heavy cavalry of the period would have been Teutonic or Crusader Knights.
Not really, those were feudal levies like any other, roughly the same organisation etc. A pure heavy cav force is created by sending all the non-heavy-cav servants back home.
Battle of Courtrai had 2500 heavy cav out of 8000 total in the french army.
It's impossible to simulate this in the game in its current state.
Again, it would be doable by not raising the lesser levies out of all the levies that you have available in theory.
Yet, someone has armoured those about three thousand guys who are heavy cavalry in the Knights Templar in the game. And another three thousand for the Knights of St John. That's a pretty massive expenditure of allegedly hyper-expensive armour there, paid by someone, and they are so many (and reinforcing constantly!) that it can't just be lesser sons of characters of baron level and above. It has to be common knights. And if common knights can afford one, a baron must be able to afford way more than that, and higher nobles even more.
The passable equipment for a knight cost more or less one village (or rather the seigneural rights to it in practice). Which wasn't actually that much.
And besides, if the defintion of heavy cavalry in-game really would mean full plate armour, it would mean that the first full plate armoured guys appear already around 1100. Which is blatantly anachronistic.
Depends. The late-Roman and Byzantine kataphraktoi, clibanarii and their even older Persian predecessors would get close to that.
Sorry but this is so annoying and incredible that I have to reply to this post before completely reading through this topic...
1) A knight is not necessarily noble (as a previous poster already mentionned, there are such things as ministeriali who were serf knights (and this system is not unique to in the HRE, there are clear examples in Flanders for instance also similar systems in France). Note also that not all noblemen are knights in the strict terms. Certainly early in the medieval period knights and nobility tended to be entirely separate. Later on knighthood became ever more codified and controlled meaning that by the end of the middle ages every knight was indeed also of noble birth (but not every nobleman in arms a knight)...
1. Depends how you define noble. If you define "noble" the English way, not even a duke's wife or eldest son is a noble. If you go by German specifications, those are all ranks of descendants of previous tribal elite from times immemorial (Uradel), supplemented by eldest creations and finally Briefadel, i.e. the paper-made guys (with patents). German nobility included two lesser categories than knights, the Edle (like squire but more prestigious) and totally untitled. Also Italian nobility includes a knight as a rank (Cavaliere) above a plain Nobile or city Patrician (also a noble but low-ranking). French nobility were just descendants of the chivalric class or higher nobles, in perpetuity, with plenty of room for people below the station of a knight (ecuyer, i.e. squire, is the basic nobility of the French system and the systems derived from it). Polish nobility were essentially clans plus new creations generally similar to getting knighted.
The English definition is the one that is off. Nobody else in Europe defines nobility like that (i.e. more strictly and exclusively than aristocracy is defined in the continent, who are normally the top of nobility). England is the only country in which you can be legally a commoner after ruling the same castle your father did and his father before him and his father too back to William the Conqueror (this must be actually worse than living in a republic that just doesn't legally care who you are descended from, I guess).
In France, if you knighted a peasant, he was a noble, except that later on you needed the king's authority to knight a peasant. Generally, the conferment of knighthood was restricted as it became more and more a rank of nobility.
Therefore, outside England (where the definitions changed over time from primarily a stricter definiton of gentry, that used to be strict enough to correspond with continental nobility), you can't really have a non-noble knight (although you can have a knight without hereditary nobility, e.g. the lowest category of Knights of Malta being the Knights of Magistral Grace, or the Equites Aurati, i.e. golden knights, similar to the current British knight bachelor). Basically, knighting that dude makes him a low noble if he hadn't already been.
On the other hand, you could probably have a non-noble heavy cavalryman, although that would have been rare (rich squires when knighthood stopped being a right of passage into adulthood for the theoretically entitled people, such as in 15th century France or England after the social changes; rich burghers when they were allowed the comfort of knightly equipment if they could afford it but without gaining the full status etc.).
As for the German ministeriales, they were actually nobility, although the lowest of the low and not particularly respected by the more prestigious nobility. They were actually technically slaves (they did not have personal freedom) but they were nobles (not unlike a prisoner of war). In fact, you could theoretically become a duke without gaining personal freedom and basically remaining the king's slave, although I guess this lack of freedom would fall into desuetude (stop being mentioned and relied upon) in such a case.
Also, generally, you would have a hard time becoming a knight if you couldn't afford the equipment or be gifted with it along with the honour, although, as I said, some stuff knights wore in the later middle ages would probably qualify as light armour at that period and some of the heavy armour from the crusading era would qualify as light armour when heavy started to mean full plate or close, I guess.
I don't see balancing issues. Just make the buildings with heavy cav generate monthly costs. If you can afford it you can build more of them.
Or reword the light cav definition to include poorer armoured knights (if heavy means full-plate... because if heavy means decent chainmail, then <1000 for a France-sized kingdom is a joke).
Well heavy cavalry is a pretty strong unit, and as such increasing its prevalence would make countries with knights a little better off compared to countries who dont have any.
Yeah, heavily armoured knights (whatever was heavy by the then-current standards) should cut like a hot knife in butter, like 1:100 ratios against poor peasant levies.
