I've noticed that the cav charges are really powerful, but noticably less against spearmen. From an MP view, I think that the charge is too powerful to make the games that I like to play. On more than one occasion, I've had v1 knights -- I don't remeber which type, I think mailed, frankish or feudal, but it doesn't matter unless they're far-and-away the strongest in the game -- slam into a line of 60 pavs and reduced it to 10-15 pavs in the charge. Once they get stuck in inf though, they melt away faster than they did in MTW, maybe because there are more of them inside the unit of inf, whereas in MTW all the units tended to buoy in globs, even moreso if they where told to keep formation; I liked that too, it made playing less sloppy and more controlled. Besides the command delay, tendancy for single units of cav to become ridiculously spread out, relatively slower speed, and being a little hardier, they're pretty similar to the cav in MTW. I'd like the charges to be less powerful, but I think cav would be harder to use well online in real time because of the big command delay. On the whole, I would say they're fairly balanced; most all of the changes since rome just seem to result in a style of play needed to win that I just don't find very fun. I did like MTW being simpler and less realistic.