Lance attacks too strong?

[Watchman]

Overhand cavalry spear =/= underhand/two-handed lance.

Anyway, in my experience lancers normally get eaten alive by "sidearm" wielders in a cavalry duel if they don't swap to their secondaries (eg. some HAs have the lance *as* their "secondary", and the AI is dumb and can't switch weapons anyway), so meh.

[Atraphoenix]

it is true they are very strong thanks to their charge bonus + ap.
in reality 90% the cavalry lancer would lose his lance mostly broken or got stuck in the enemy's ribs etc.
on the other hand with repeated charges 3-4 any cavalry faction can dominate the game.
AI is dumb and it does not know how to use cavalry effectively. on the other hand as the lances are not broken or at least before EB2, any player who is quite patient on micromanaging at least 10-15 units separately I call it constant pressure (like pressing in football ) can dominate the game easily.
CA gave lancers iron lances that is never broken and sticked the soldier to his horse with japan glue that after 80km/h charge and with no stirrup he is on his horse again.

[The Celtic Viking]

Anyway, in my experience lancers normally get eaten alive by "sidearm" wielders in a cavalry duel if they don't swap to their secondaries (eg. some HAs have the lance *as* their "secondary", and the AI is dumb and can't switch weapons anyway), so meh.

Actually, that's not quite correct: the AI can change to their secondary; I've seen it, and even have a picture showing it. Maybe that was because of the BI.exe, though?

[antisocialmunky]

Lance usually beats swords or matches them in cav vs cav. That's my experience. The Lance has some strange and magical properties... Of course leaving any heavy cav in melee is uneconomical so meh.

BTW - I calculated the force for an inelastic collision between a large horse + rider. Its about the same force as a small-medium car(depending on weight) hitting you except all the force is concentrated on a 1 inch by 1 inch surface. And it would probably kill the first 2-3 guys even if it was just glancing blow and seriously mess up the the next 4 in line before all the energy gets spent. Keep in mind that this is for knights, not EB era stuff though heavy cataphracts could probably do something similar.

Something about 1/2 as bad as this vs unbraced infantry: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1b5Q...eature=related

Imagine the light pole being several guys with spears braced against the ground.