A knight is worth like a thousand, if not tens of thousand common (militia) soldiers. The Normans conquered all of Sicily with just a few dozen knights, later a few hundred. NOTHING can beat a Knight's charge. They had a more thorough and complete training than Olympian athletes, who specialize in a single discipline. They stay in rural fortifications OUTSIDE the cities. They hunt all day or fight in minor disputes, basically private wars, if they are not called to fight in an actual war. They are descended from Pagan Germanic warriors and always retained a foreign morality and attitude compared to the Christian Latin people they conquered. The Furor Teutonicus burns inside them. Medieval Europe was the perfect fusion of what made Europe great. Germanic warriors finally having the resources to make their fighting style into the unbeatable combination it always had the potential to be.