And these are the arguements that ensue when one wants to enforce fluff upon the rules that effect actual game play
I like the ideal of somehow making the Empire Knights unique. While I'm fine with the Knights as they are, with the current changes to other armies heavy cavalry, someting that makes our Empire Knights stand out would be nice.
Brettonians and Empire are both human armies and it makes some sense they both have developed armies of heavily armoured men on horseback as a "low" tech counter to the non-human races and their (mostly) superior base statlines. Ergo Knights as Core are just fine. Afterall not everyone wants to play with hordes of infantry and shouldn't be forces to. Remember you could build a 3000 pt army just on part of the Knights Panther alone - some of it's got to be core.
Inner Circle as they are are fairly lame for a "Special" choice. Sigmar forbid you make them Rare. Fact is I use them because I'm not a fan of Greatswords or Pistoliers and more than 2 Great Cannons tweaks even a Tournament players conscious.
I'm not against a Rare Knight unit but he better be bringing alot more to the table than +1 str for me to give up my Helblaster (or occassional STank
)
I know some folks think thegame should reflect the fluff, but if I want a good story I'll buy a novel. If I want a good game I'll go with a game system that allows me to play a good balanced competitive game that allows me frredom to choose how I want to play. Of all the armies GW puts out Empire is the one army that gives you almost every possible combination of ways to play an army with never being considered overpowered.
Knights should stay pretty much as is with minor tweaking (for flavor)