Welcome to the fora

1. mainly because AI behavior etc ar not as easily moddable as models skins and unit stats. but afaik there are some submods that deal with this.

2. I doubt it. but it could be as I'm not playing EB atm ^^

3. Bellum's right, cavalry charge in general has been nerfed, you cant annihilate any non spear unit with a unit of crappy equites in one hit now. you need to micromanage your cav a lot if you want them to live and do damage. oh and as I presume you're playing as romani then I'd like to add that cavalry that wields their spears overhand(thus like hoplites) are mediocre in melee but suck(bigtime) at charging for a proper charge you need underhand lancers like Hippeis Xistophoroi, Illyrioi Hippeis and Leuche epos, I think those are the first few underhand lancers you get as rome.
the real killers live in the east.