In charge of the cavalry charge

I would like to garher opinions about using cavalry.
1. How deep should be the cavalry formation? Or perhaps the depth doesn't matter as cavalry units don't get any rank/formation bonuses?
2. Do you let your cavalry stay in the melee after the initial charge or do you pull it off and charge again? I seldom do the latter as I find most cavalry units (especially knights) difficult to extract and (more important) it takes a lot of time and attention thus leaving other parts of the battle unattended. And if you have several cav units? Should you withdraw them one by one and send them to charge in the like manner or do you wait for them all to be withdrawn and then make a joint charge?

Most of the time I let them fight. I rarely frontally charge dangerous units and getting them to disengage and re-charge is too much work. By the time I pull it off the unit is usually routing. Not many can stand up to cavalry charges to the rear for more than a few seconds.

I don't use a lot of heavy cav though. Mostly mounted sarges or some other medium cav for flanking and router chasing. I end up so worried about protecting them from spears, pikes, militia, polearms and x-bows that it's more hassle than it's worth for the $$$.

On edit: I always keep them 2 deep and use wedge formation a ton when maneuvering to keep the formation compact until I am ready to charge. Trying to move that long line around without the ends getting hung up on something is a pain.

I usually keep my cav in 2 ranks. Habit, mainly.

I never have success withdrawing cav from combat, I usually lose more men doing that that letting them continue to hack away. The only time I try it now is when they are desperately needed elsewhere. I don't do frontal charges against anything but missile units, so usually I can just wait for the rout to begin before moving them to some other task.

I do it if I have time. I don't think it pays unless you do it promptly before your cavalry gets too entangled. Also, it does not pay unless you switch to hold formation to pull them out and then back to engage at will when they charge again. If some of your guys have trouble pulling out, its not worth waiting for them to cut their way out or die, either. You might as well charge the guys who did get out.

All said and done, its a lot of trouble and I'm not surprised that some people don't bother.

Hold formation, or hold position? I thought the best way was to switch to hold position, double click to a spot of ground away from the melee, and then pray.

It seems to be all about the standard bearer/unit leader. If he gets clear the unit will rally to him and can charge again even with some members still engaged. If the leader is entangled he will re-enter melee immediately after your move order, canceling it. That flag is the all important variable in unit movement.

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Originally Posted by drone

Hold formation, or hold position? I thought the best way was to switch to hold position, double click to a spot of ground away from the melee, and then pray.

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I thought that hold formation would tell your troops not to engage at will (return to the fight) but to center as a group around the spot you double clicked. I will have to test out hold position now, or maybe both together?

Mike could be right about the unit leader for all I know. If I mean to pull out my cavalry I don't give them time to entangle, and if some get left behind I just give up withdrawing and charge everyone back in. It never occured to me to check if one of the guys left behind was the standard bearer.