Quote Originally Posted by Empirate View Post
The recipe for pulling off a successful charge is as follows:

0. Don't charge up a steep hill, or in areas with lots of obstacles, or against a pike unit.
1. Walk or run up your heavy cav/knights, then wait. Let them reform before charging.
2. Make sure your heavy cav/knights is aligned as parallel or as much at right angles to the target unit as possible. Make sure you have sufficient space to reach full gallop (ca. 100 meters or so).
3. Order the charge with a single right click. Lean back and watch the carnage.
Not much to add to this

0 - Perfectly right.
1 - Depends whether or not you cav starts aligned and facing your desired target. If so do not bother with this.
2 - Works better but even at 45° angle you should obtain good results. Might be particularly useful if your targeting the captain/general unit as he will bear the brunt of the charge.
3 - Order the charge with a signle right click. Then type "R" for run and watch the carnage. Gains time.

I'll add a 4 - When using heavy cav against the enemy line, if the enemy has missile units arrayed in front of his infantry, target the infantry unit directly behind the missile one as per (3) and watch as the missileers are trampled to death while the charge scores against the infantry.

I often managed to kill one unit of missiles (leaving often less than 10 soldiers) and maim severely either one of spears or foot knights (killing about half of them) in a single charge done as above.