So this gives us any weapon we want, leather armour, and a horse that is only good for cavalry. So we must find a unit that can wear this gear. 

The absolute best way to maximize our stat increase against cavalry is to use cavalry to defend. The highest stat cavalry that can equip this gear is the Charioteer (human tier 1 cavalry). Since we are using cavalry, the best way to maximize our stat increase is to utilize the Elite Division bonus. 

Now lets do some math:

grand total = + 64% 

Now X2 for the Elite bonus and we get = +128% defense vs Cavalry. Wow over 100% that's HUGE!

But now we must apply this massive bonus to our units. Since we are using elite bonuses to maximize efficiency of gear, we can only apply this to 60 charioteers + 1 commander who also will be a charioteer.  

1 charioteer has a defense vs cavalry of 21.
21 X 60 = 1260 defense vs cavalry

But wait! The commander's defense also gets added. The maximum defense a charioteer commander has is 1281

Lets add them together: 

1260 + 1281 = 2541

So that's our elite division's regular defense vs cavalry. Now we get to add our bonuses! 

All of our stats come up to 128%. But if we have leveled our Charioteer commander correctly, we would have another 15% commander bonus. Giving us 133%

2541 + 133% = 5920. Over double our defenses. Such a massive leap in stats seems like a great idea, but there's a problem with this. 

T2 Cavalry commanders have an attack power of 4559 with their +15% to attack. Human Cavalry have 74 attack with the 15% bonus. But what does this all mean????

It means that one player has used 61 wolf pelts, 122 hides, 61 minerals, and 183 herbs to create 61 Pikes, 61 Reinforced Leather, and 61 Nimble Warhorse in order to outfit the most efficient 61 Charioteer army against Cavalry. 

While another player can smash that most efficient defense  with 1 commander and 19 knights wearing 0 advanced gear. This is all without taking into account terrain, which would only further give the advantage to the attacking knights. 

Your post was a fantastic read and I agree with all points. My main point was the greatest defensive bonuses from t3 gear don't mean much at all. 

Where have you seen bonuses are multiplicative?  

I mean they could be i really don't know.  But last i hard anyone doing any testing on equipment the equipment showed even less than the 'advertised' percent bonus.  

On top of that lets not forget the insane cost of just a few equipment compared to a few soldiers.  

Some further numbers, we can assume that attacking cavalry has 15% charge bonus and 30% terrain bonus attacking a town on plains.  That puts their value at 88 attack per vs the above 89 def per for the elite spears equipped.  Taking the training time/upkeep/initial cost value of the troops involved, this is always a win for the equipped spears but only in the long term of a conflict.  

Looking at T1 elite cavalry in defense, we can get 21 base def x 1.15 commander x 2.28 equip x 2.15 wall x 1.3 terrain = 154 cavalry defense.  That is almost a 2:1 ratio, offset by the fact that the division sizes are so small.  Once again looking at the training time/upkeep/initial cost value, this is again a win for the equipped light cavalry.

The problem with equipment is losing it.  The fact that you recover 100% of equipment when defending in a city is the sole reason to use elite equipped companies in these situations.  

Bottom line is the equipment makes a different, but probably not in the way intended.  Useful defending towns from direct cavalry attacks where all equipment is recoverable but makes an overall difference only in the long term where k/d ratios and attrition are more apparent.

In both examples T2 is superior than T1.  The only advantage T1 has over T2 is initial training cost.  While T1 is cheap, most people large enough to be worried about the numbers have no problem obtaining the resources to train either unit type.

And no, when doing a straight attack against a town the underlying terrain modifier is used.  Towns only count as buildings during a raze or capture attempt.

As for the town terrain, attack a town directly and you will see in your report that it uses underlying terrain.  Same goes for when you do a capture/raze attempt.  It lists the building intro when attacking via this method.  I am sure someone else can verify but it is the case.

Actually this isn't so, unless you are playing Orcs. With the current lowest centrum prices we have that :

HUMANS

Why are they a ripoff .?. 

True, but Elven cavalry are equally expensive due to the price difference between the plate and chain armor ...    

Actually equipment bonus is applied first than other bonuses are added together (wall, commander, terrain, biome) prestige bonus is also multiplied. 

For human t2 spear in elite division on plains behind lvl 20 wall this means they can kill a lot more than 1 knight:

Equipment:

+16% pike

+24% reinforced leather

----------------------------------

40% equipment bonus for defense against cavalry, 80% bonus in elite division

I don't know if human battlebred horses can be used with spearmen since I have no such horses otherwise + 20% defense (+40% in elite division)

Pikemen base defense against cavalry 29.

Defense after all the bonuses: 29*(1.8 (elite equipment))*

(1+(1.15(wall)-0.3(plains)+0.15(commander)= 104.4 defense

Human t2 spearman can kill 1.11 knight behind lvl 20 wall on plains and equipped like he should be. 

Orcs can have their t2 spearmen have 118,4 defense against cavalry and each can kill 1,26 knights.

I have this results confirmed in practice and I assumed 15% charge bonus... 

With right equipment even defending knight kills more attacking knights behind level 20 wall on plains... Not to mention that if 5 knight commanders have lvl 10 avoid charge they more than nullify attacking knights heroism...

All the equipment stays in a city after the combat... So if anyone is still complaining that cities on plains are not worth defending, they should play a bit simpler game like farmville...

edit: orc results

Thanks.

base defense with lvl 10 avoid charge: 1708

equip. bonus: 54%*2

Each commander on plains behind lvl 20 wall has 1708 *2.08*2.45 = 8704 defense against cavalry... commander alone kills 92 attacking knights. If you manage to add 10% divisional defense bonus it has 9059 defense ... meaning it alone kills 96 attacking knights... Of course in cavalry city same commanders can be used for defense as for offense. Above lvl 100 commanders shouldn't have any problems maximizing all needed skills. At least 4 commanders can always reinforce defending city and 1 can do the attacking with the rest of the army...

Interestingly orcish death pack is better than knight in defense. Elite death pack commander with appropriate skills and equipment can alone kill 100 knights. 

well prestige bonus is multiplied at last, so this would mean 1708*2.08*2.55 (with extra 10 % divisional bonus)* 1.1 (prestige - defense against cavalry) = 9965.1552 (killing 105,73 attacking knights)

edit: added prestige example

Cool.  Thanks for laying that out for me.

So the caution is the malus modifiers for equipment.  Those will be amplified by the subsequent modifiers, too.

Exactly.

Usually all direct city attacks on plains are done by cavalry, everything else is just waste of troops since they all get attack penalties and their attack is low anyway. You can also determine, if attacking army is cavalry by it's travelling speed. If attacker is smart and adds one slower unit (or division) in the army than you can always use plainsman spear and plainsman armour + nimble horse = 48% * 2 equipment defense against everything on plains. 

The commanders pose an interesting situation as well.  Take your 5 elite divisions of spears at 20880 def each, add 5 commanders at 9059 and your total cavalry defense is 153,695.

If they attack with 10k knights with 1 commander, they have 947,719 attack.  According to Innoble, casualties is calculated by total army size x off/def ratio.  So according to this, you 5 commanders and 1k spears would kill 1622 T2 knights.  If they send 20k knights, you would kill 1626 T2 knights.  Not bad when you keep all dropped equipment.

and what prevents me to reinforce my own cities? Or my alliance mates to reinforce my city? Few members can easily kill 10K attacking knights by having very small losses...

Well Elmindra your own member Hannibal launched around 10 cavalry attacks against me and he was nice enough to leave few hours in between attacks so I could reequip and refill my elite divisions. Since his armies were rather small (largest being 3500 marshals) I doubt that he got any report back. I urged him not to stop, but he stopped anyway 

If the work Innoble did is right, then Aha's point is correct.  The attack value of a commander is limited to the attack strength of the troops in the commander's army.  Thus, an army with a knight commander having level 10 Heroism and 19 knights would have a total attack strength of 3,211, 1,606 from the 19 knights and 1,606 from the commander.

The bottom line, you would need about 40 knights for the OP example to be correct.  The point is valid but I don't think but it really changes the discussion.

The real cost of t3 equipment is in "clicks" (player keyboard entry events).  In a mature city, with one click, I can que up 10k of any t2 resources from the 100s of thousands of basic resources automatically created in the city.  With 100k plus stockpiles of t2 equipment, I can que up any size army I want with one more click.  Certainly this is not the most efficient in terms of progress but it maximizes the efficiency of a player's time.