Quote Originally Posted by Puzz3D
Each man requires 1 meter of space around him to fight at full effect. That is the spacing of the men in a typical unit, so it's never good to overlap units. If a man doesn't have 1 meter of space, he fights at half effectiveness.

CA did clarify that more than 2 men can strike at a single man. They said it's only limited by the number of men that can fit around the enemy man. Each sprite has 8 sides. In practice with two units fighting, you don't often see more than two men attacking one even when on unit is much larger because the men tend to stay in formation even when they are in engage-at-will. There was a much better swarming effect in STW. Best way to win is to put the unit that's fighting frontally into hold formation and then flank with another unit. Flanking men get a 250% combat bonus when striking from the side and a 350% combat bonus when striking from the rear.

Probably the main reason those billmen are having trouble killing the feudal knights is that the upgrades are way too strong. In reality, the difference between a green unit and an experienced unit isn't more that 200%, but in the game you have a possible 8000% difference due to upgrades. Modest battlefield upgrades can easily swamp out the 200% anti-cav bonus of the billmen. This is why LongJohn ultimately agreed to remove battlefield upgrades from MTW/VI multiplayer.
I figured that much since I've seen units surrounded fighting 8 guys at once. Normally it's about 1 or 2 to 1 if it's from one side and you're outnumbering them.