That's pretty much what I concluded from reading the article - it must have been really, really hard to pull off a head-on charge in the middle of a line and live to talk about it...

Imagine being a knight in armor, cursed to be in the first line of such a brilliant manoeuver.

I don't think the problem would lie in getting the horse to actually run into the enemy unit, provided you begin your charge far enough. Then the horse starts to run, and by the time it realizes it's heading straight for the wall, it can't do much about it. It can't just stop dead in its tracks, cause then it'll be rear-ended by the horse behind him. It can't veer left or right either, because that's where your buddies and their horses are. Bearing in mind that horses are utterly insane animals to begin with, my bet would be that its natural response to such a quandary will be to just close its eyes and speed forward hoping that somehow it will all go away :)

But then, if you, the rider, have been lucky enough that

a) you did skewer the guy you were aiming for, the guy behind him, and trample the third with sheer mass and momentum,

b) you didn't unhorse yourself in the impact, either by not dropping your lance fast enough, breaking the saddle, having your lance glance off and clotheslining yourself etc...

c) your horse didn't just go nuts and try to get you off of him and get the frigg away because he realized halfway through that he's a lover not a fighter (and believe you me, a horse that really wants you off is going to get you off QUICK or at the very least make you wish you were. Forget rodeos, those are horses trained to buck and only buck, "normal" horses are way sneakier, and they have lots of nasty tricks. They'll scrape you against a tree (or, in that case, another idjit on horseback), roll over, even jump up and fall on their back crushing you...)

and lastly

d) the guys to your left and right have had the same luck, and you're not completely alone and surrounded,

weeeell...you're still in a pickle if the enemy doesn't just turn and run like he's supposed to.


Even if you are somewhat safeish in all that armor, and with your height advantage and general combat training going for you, your horse isn't. He's got a big wide head to brain, a big wide soft breast to pierce, and great long spindly legs with oh so fragile knees. Oh, and he's probably got a guy or two under his hooves, so he might even break its own legs all by himself, what with the unsure footing and frantic confusion. Plus, while you can hack and slash left and right, you're wide open from the front, the head of your horse and it's height forming a huge dead angle for your sword/mace/axe/modified farming implement.

Chances are, if this state of affairs lasts long enough for anyone around you to figure it out, you'll soon be a footman, and quite possibly a mildly concussed footman trapped under half a ton of dead horse at that.

How, then, to quickly get away from that predicament ?
You can't turn back, mostly because you'd expose your back to the enemy, which is never that good an idea, but also because there's another clunky genius on a horse right behind you.

He doesn't share your problems. His own charge stopped in the middle of the first, perhaps second rank of infantry. You're shielding his dead angle, he doesn't have to worry about infantry behind him, and he's having the time of his life slashing around whoever's unlucky enough to have survived the charge only to be trapped in the middle of it. You can bet your codpiece he's not going to give away his share of the g(l)ory just because it's not really convenient to you. In any case, even if he actually did, you hardly would be able to turn about in the middle of a press of armed men. He can disengage somewhat easily. You, on the other hand, can't.

No, your only hope is to try and force your way straight ahead through the remaining ranks while everyone's still frozen with fright and hope to get away in the confusion.

It's the only way I can imagine pulling that kind of stunt and still be combat efficient - and guess what ? that's exactly what the AI goes for.

Sometimes your formation is not dense enough, the AI succeeds, your unit is butchered without a chance to retaliate, and you feel that cav is overpowered. Sometimes it is, the horses are stuck in the middle, you slaughter the poor fellows, and you feel that cav is a joke.

I believe the root of the problem is that ever since ol' Shogun, the optimal spear formation has always been 4, maybe 5 ranks deep, and that was enough to hold a charge and get the most combat bonuses (boni ?). In M2, apparently, you'd better go for 7-10 ranks if you want to stand a chance against heavy horses. But then you're easy pickings for infantry in wide formation, because it'll wrap around and rout you. Decisions, decisions ;)

A good solution for the knights to avoid all that trouble would perhaps be an oblique chargen which could work rather well I suppose with a trajectory akin to that :

\
\ MMMMMMMMMMMM
\MMMMMMMMMMMM
\MMMMMMMMMMMM
/MMMMMMMMMMMM
/ MMMMMMMMMMMM
\/

the M block being of course the target unit. That way, you could theoretically slaughter a guy or two with the lance, behead a third with your sword and just turn right and race away. I'll have to try that one ingame, see how it turns out, perhaps even in wedge formation.