Beware the butt spike!

[Red Harvest]

I've seen this posted about before, but it has never happened to me until now. In my 2nd campaign after the 1.5 patch I lost an excellent Carthaginian general in a siege sally to my own merc hoplite phalanx. I was charging through the back of it to attack some light cav that was charging my slingers. For some reason that killed my general/family member and eventually resulted in the loss of Caralis (in a later battle...since I needed that large bodyguard unit to help fight the Roman hordes and their bodyguards.)

Anyway, my future warning cry to generals will be, BEWARE THE BUTT SPIKE!

And yes, I'm 100% certain that it was due to the phalanx...there were no enemy within 20 meters yet and no ranged units firing at me (nor any FF as my slingers were in front.)

This may be related to the oddity of having large numbers of cavalry killed when slamming into the *back* of a phalanx in a charge. I almost wonder if the cav are charging through and getting hit by the "reflection" effect of the charge on the other side? It doesn't work quite the way one would expect.