I noticed something wierd in a recent battle. I know all about the infamous "Lets switch to swords before impact" problem, this is very different.

I had a unit of 120 dismounted feudal knights. Along comes an enemy bodyguard unit (early Moors). They are headed to my guys, so I order my footsoldiers to charge them.

In RTW, if you did that, the horses would hit your troops and some of your guys would die, then the melee would start.

In this case, since the horsemen were going down a street, they were about 3-4 wide, and about 5-10 horses long (I think there were 40-50 bodyguards). The lead group hits (about 5-6 horses), all the horses slow down (because the lead horses hit), and none of my guys died. Good, I think, they absorbed the charge. Suddenly, the number of guys in my unit start dropping like a rock. I think I lost 50 guys in about 3 seconds. These are tough guys (defence of 23), and the horses of the attacker have basically stopped (they're still moving forward). So what the heck is killing my guys? I get down to about 40 guys left (he has about 35 left at this point) and I realize they need help, so I send in some reinforcements to help out my swordsmen. They finish off the bodyguards and I have 14 guys left of the original 120.

There's something fishy about this. It's almost like MTW2 has a mode for cavalry where anything they touch dies. I saw this a few days ago when 2 bodyguard horsemen (all that were left after an earlier engagement) did a 10ft charge into my guys (we were fighting over the town square). 15 guys died within a few seconds.

IMO, this is ridiculous. I much preferred RTW, where guys pushed around by the charge didn't insta-die like in MTW2. Not only does it seem that the AI can maintain a charge, while my horsemen refuse to hit with their lances, but the AI horses appear to have nerve-toxin on their skin or something.

I'm all for having an impressive charge, but a) it should look believable, and b) it should be based on something other than "charge mode on, insta-kill anything touched".