Quote Originally Posted by geala View Post
Where do some people get the impression from that cavalry in melee died like flies? If unarmored 18th c. cavalry were able to charge and broke squares and disperse or kill the infantrymen after braking in, why should ancient heavy cavalry not have done it?

I'm not a cavalry player in EB, but it would be extremely frustrating from the historical point of view, if cavalry was not able to destroy a unit by one or two charges in the flank or back and would suffer heavy losses time after time when disengaging (why should they, from the shattered infantrymen who were glad that the horses would go away?).

Crushing a formation of firmly standing infantry with frontal charges should be the exception however.
that's the point, if you charge in disordered formations, weak charge should be counted to easily break them, and remember that cavalrymen often dployed some kind of scout cavalry to probe for "structural weakness" before commiting headlong furious charge for maximum exploit...

but if the infantrymen is not carrying longspears, I see no problem in having them almost completely annihilated by the first charge, especially when the chargers are heavy cavalry with 4m lance (the problem is, in M2TW, you could frontal chargin most Spearmen without pikes, and still decimate them on frontal charge)