So ...

[Doug-Thompson]

They were just about to get up from the water, so I reckoned a charge at that time would be devastating as they didn't have their formations ready, sort of. But instead, the unit just ran down in the water. It was a set of 3 fresh units. And they DIDN'T have the swim ability. I thought the logical thing would be to stop just above the water line and kill the incoming enemies, but no, they decided it was best to suicide charge down into the water...

This needs to be on a bug thread. It sounds like CA could have created an unforeseen loophole when they took away the prohibition of any land unit entering the water at all. Moving the heavy cavalry into the water wouldn't have worked, but attacking might have sent them down.

At the very least, it's a possibilty that others should look at. Put it on a bug thread and you may get "Yeah, that happened to me" responses. It also might explain the sudden disappearance of land units while the player wasn't paying close attention. After all, it's not like we can replay recordings of campaign battles and find out what happened any more.