The trouble with the animation fix is that unless you completely nerf the attack and charge values of the 2-Handed units, they become awesome anti infantry units - a unit of Heavy Bill Militia which costs only 300 florins to recruit will decimate a unit of Gothic Foot Knights, costing 800. This can't be right.

Unfortunately, by messing with the stats so that the units play out better in real time conflicts, you are messing with the auto resolve stats, meaning that that battles the AI has independently of you will be affected. Coupled with this is the problem that the AI may not actually build any of these units if you've nerfed the stats down to a 'reasonable' level, especially if you've raised the cost of certain units to compensate for their new capabilities.

I've spent a few hours doing one-on-one battles with Dismounted English Knights v Dismounted Chivalric Knights, and billmen versus Dismounted Feudal Knights, and I think I've managed to get the stats about right - the DEKs end up with a primary attack of 13 and a charge of 1 - they still will win every battle if they charge the DCKs, but it's much closer if they are receiving the charge. The billmen have ended up with attack 8 and charge 1, and will lose to the knights but put up a decent show for themselves - they are anti-armour after all, but still a much lower cost/tier unit.

Unfortunately I just don't know how this will effect the campaign game if I'm not playing as the English - will the AI ever bother to build them?

Sad to say, I don't think there's a global easy fix for this until someone can mod the actual animations themselves. Or until CA release the next patch with their fix.

I think it's down to personal preference in the end - I'm happy with my rebalancing efforts in battles, but I'll have to play through a campaign or two to see if it's having a bad effect on the AI or not.

I did get to the point during my play testing where I was sure the existing animation problem with them not attacking cavalry was less of a pain than the new problem of them being uber killing machines, but after all the work I'd put in I didn't want to admit defeat!