Should Knights be 4 point piece instead of 3?

depends on the position

Awesome scene, but that pic is a big spoiler. Vikings.

Chess is not played for points. Chess is played for checkmate. The point system is meaningless, except as a general guideline to help you evaluate positions.

You can give pieces whatever value you want. If you think a knight is worth as much as a bishop and a pawn, go ahead and play accordingly. If you're right, then you'll win more games as a result.

Chances are you'll find that you're wrong, though. ;-) 

bishops have always been trickier ...

Men in dresses!

of course, the men in red ...

but you don't get 4 points for green

better than making hest.

You are culturally appropriating Native American speech.

Vikings!

Really the only way to answer the OP is: Try valuing the Knight at four points and conducting your games accordingly. Let us know how it works out. If the Knight is as strong as a Bishop and pawn, or less than a pawn worse than a Rook, or better than three pawns, you should be able to show it experimentally. (But this does risk the board being spammed with hundreds of meaningless games played against nobodies.)

So if someone started to think this way, would they constantly have to play h3/h6 to prevent kingside knight getting traded after Bg4/Bg5? I mean, sure the opponent wont necessarily want to trade especially if they value the bishop pair, but our protagonist wouldn't know that. Im curious as to what concessions someone would make in the opening just to preserve their "tricky knights".

Piece value depends on the position.

It's curious that two bishops rather than two knights can force mate...A rook and king can force mate, yet two knights are worth six points and a rook five....(cue twilight zone music....)

I think bishops and knights pro and cons pretty much balance each other, but to the bishop's detractors I say: bishops can control a maximum of 13 squares simultaneously , Knights only 8 !

And we riposte: Knights can control a maximum of 2 colours ever, Bishops only 1!

Piece values are general guidelines, and really good for beginner players learning the game as they have something practical to guide their evaluation process during play. But the better you become the less you rely on such principles as you'll realize each piece has a movement that may be superior or inferior on the board at the time, causing a knight to dominate a specific position or a pair of bishops to overrun a position to such a degree it may warrant a "sacrifice" of a rook to rid the board of that presence. Pieces are geometric objects on the board ultimately and their value can be more fluid during the course of play, sometimes lesser in their stated value, sometimes equal, and sometimes even more. It's up to you to become better at evaluating the pieces in relation to the board and react accordingly.

I decided to pit two Shredder engines rated at 1200 elo against each other, the only difference being one of them values knights at +1 pawn. (I don't know what value Shredder normally assigns to knights, but 3.25 is often used in engines. So I'm guessing the adjusted knight value would be 3.25 + 1 = 4.25)

 

The tournament is only up to 70 games right now, and the results are still evolving, but it seems the penalty for the higher knight value is in the neighborhood of -40 or -50 elo. (Not a huge penalty, but significant.)

 

I'm guessing that the penalty might be much larger at higher elo levels.

After 200 games, the penalty is about -30 elo at a 1200 elo rating.

This is so weird. So the shredder engine just always trades knight for bishop when it can? And it will even give up a pawn to do so if it feels there is compensation?