Hand cannoneers vs Paladin?

So I was playing a game with 3 other friends as the Aztecs on Arabia. The map size was max and my main opponent was the Teutons. He made loads of paladins and Teutonic Knights to kill my pikes. We had a lot of back and forth and even a meat grinder battle in a chicken point where we both lost upwards of 1500 men (my total losses at the end were around 3500) without halbs I found it super hard to counter all the waves of paladins and when he sent in Teutonic Knights I broke. When he attacked a mother friend later on (Japanese) he apparently mowed down waves of paladins with hand canonneers. Can 40 HCs really take on 40 paladins even at close range and do they benefit from blacksmith upgrades. If so I might change my main civ from aztecs to a more modern civ.