Also, camels and hand cannoners.Įxtra: Malay can try earlier archer rushes thanks to their advancing age bonus and have a temible elephant rush Persians have paladin with extra attack to archers and gold_free crossbows without all upgrades (their archer style prefer quantity over quality). they are like tatars in the sense they dint have arbalester but they have very good cav archers. Also turks collect gold faster which is important for a knight or archer rush. Turks light cav with free upgrades and extra pierce armor is good. Although their cav miss the last attack upgrade. Also, you can try a decent scout rush with them because of their bonuses (the eco wood discount helps to have more farms working, and you can use your scout to push deer or lame sheep in dark age because you know the starting enemy position). Vietnamese, besides good archers, imperial skirmisher and rattan archers, have standard cav until imperial, which is good. Byt their archers are lackluster in imperial age.
So you can start with archers and transition into cav. Malians have good crossbows in castle age: free gold mining, wood discount for buildings. Similarly, chinese have fully upgraded cavalier and arbalester with a discount to every tech, so transitions between them are easier.
Also they can transition a bit faster between both units if needed. Big problem is that they dont have hussars but they dont need it (and you can spam light cav easily with a couple of feitorias). Portuguese dont have palladin, but their cavalier is fully upgraded (same as their arbalesters) and both cavaliers and arbalesters benefit from gold discount.
Magyars looks like your best option: they have full upgraded paladins and arbalesters (with extra LOS) and discounted scouts, with the free blacksmith attack upgrades for both knights and scouts.