I've found out why cavalry can quite often beat a phalanx unit head on. Part of the problem is it can take cavalry forever to lose thier charg bonus. Where on the other hand infantry lose thier charge bonus rather quickly most of the times. When I tested this bug it becomes quite obvious when you use infantry
First to make this bug obvious take some infantry and give them an attack and charge bonus of 50. Now make sure it's line is slightly shorter than the phalanx so as not to wrap the phalanx in the beginning. Now charge the phalanx head on and watch most of the frontline of the phalanx drop dead. Even though the spears held them back, it appears that if a spear hits a charging unit it has a chance to be killed even though the charging unit is not in range. Now once the charge is dead the phalanx works properly against the infantry taking just about all of thier casualties on the flank.
Now I went with vanilla units to ensure this bug is occuring unmodded. I used urban cohorts against militia hoplites on default unit size. I ranged 3-6 kills each time I charged and made sure my line was shorter as not to hit them on the flanks from the charge. I also used Carthage sacred band out of phalanx formation with nearly the same results. I then used Gaulic chosen swordsmen with nearly the same results.
Then I decide to use testudo on a phalanx head on. This was devastating and killing 6-10 units each time. What caused this was it took a while for the cohorts to lose thier charge.
So the tests caused 8-25 percent of the unit being destroyed from a head on charge even though they were not in range to make a kill.
Again to emphasize the phalanx works properly once the charge is lost.
But since it can take a while for cavalry to lose thier charge plus its' near impossible to watch the effects since it occurs so fast with them getting entangled but using infantry on the test makes this bug obvious.
Anyways I'll try posting a screenshot or 2 to show the effects of the charge, that is if they came out.
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