vanilla spears are way too weak to eat a heavy cav charge and will often break.

I use katanks in single line spread just in front of my swords and countecharge the enemy cav.

once melee closes, I bring up my Byz inf and Varangs and it's all over for the enemy cav.

the charge is what make cav beat swords. once in melee, the weight of numbers of the swords prevail, particularly the 100 men Byz inf.