So yeah.. the AI isnt as helpful as it was in earlier games and wont let me do a full melee. So cant test the new patch status on our favourite metal dress Persians vs The Tanks of the Barbs. What I can document is that breaking off a melee with cavalry now loses you less guys than before. It still hurts, but not as badly.

Specifically related to Cataphracts is their formation, which is effective for a charge but it has the nasty sideeffect of this efficiency: The unit will plow into the enemy unit to hit as many as possible with the charge - which is good! The problem is that when disengaging (which, I will remind our noble audience, is the point of shock cavalry) the individual riders get stuck in the enemy formation! I lose maybe 10 horsemen when disengaging (fewer than the 30+ prepatch) and then 10 more than are sort of stuck in the enemy. And maybe due to their royal status the rest of the unit faithfully wait for their trapped comrades, which means they will disengage slower to "allow the rest to catch up". Boys... the rest are dead. Haul ***! I cant charge if you dont put distance between you and the Gauls!

One thing I also found was that units seem to tire off very quickly when fighting, as in, when I charge a group of Oathsworn (be afraid btw) I will deal a massive blow within the first few seconds, and now both units are exhausted? What? I know that exhausting was way too slow pre-patch but this is ridiculous. And this hurts Shock Cavalry much harder than other units, especially Cataphracts. They're slow already, there really is no need at all for them to run any slower!