I find I seldom ever do this but last night I was in an odd position.
Its early in the campaign and I was attacked by 3 factions in the first 3 years so there's no huge stacks anywhere yet as I am sending men to whereever the fights are. I get caught in one of those transition troop relocation years where I have a border province I am busy trying to send whatever it may be lacking so that I do not have a province with 6 archers and one peasant next to a province with 4 spearmen with no archers or 3 cav. but no spears and so on. You know, make each border army end up with a good troop mix so it can handle anything that comes at it.
But like I said, its early in the game and I haven't had the leisure time to focus on this too much yet as I am puting out fires everywhere instead.

So the Italians take Provence from the HRE (they were swapping this back and forth right off the bat) and I take a peek at their stack since its right next door although we are neutral. I always like to know what my neighbor might hit me with if he becomes unfriendly. Well true to form he attacks my mediocre army in Toulouse. I am busy beefing up my Aragon forces since the Spanish have some big stacks ajacent so most anything of value passed right through Toulouse as I was counting on a few more years of peace with Italy while I got my borders built up.

I noted he has 7 knights (some Royal, some Chiv.) and good infantry and also he outnumbers me almost 2:1
My force is unfortunately a hodgepodge and I notice I am lacking foot troops to make a solid line. I have only 1 vanilla spear, 3 peasants, 2 archers and 1 UM (just wasn't watching the makeup in Toulouse well enough I guess). But I do have two Feudal Knights and one mounted sergeant.
So I am placing my defense units on the map and I instantly see my wall will crumble rather easily when he hits it. My one unit of spear isn't going to be able to be everywhere at once so his cav. alone will probably ride through me, much less his better infantry.

My 3 cav units will be crushed being out manned vs. his cav. and then all those spears he has.
I decide in this case I need good quality foot troops to make my line more than cavalry so for the first time in ages I dismount my 2 units of Feudal knights.


Turned out to be a great decision. Those 2 units held the line very well and I squeeked out a victory, albeit at high losses. I seriously doubt in this scenario that using them as Cav. for flanking would have proved a better choice.

Do many of you dismount to get footknights?