but rather that a player charging a cav unit into spears should be prepared to lose a good proportion of the cav unit at the same time as causing big casualties to the spears.
Which is largely what happens if the spears are of the same era as the Knights doing the charging. Once you Fix the Sheild Bug that is BTW.) The problem I have is with people who belive Kinghts of the same era as spearmen should just be able to roll right over the spearmen with only small losses.

The way I see, it's balance and fun first, historical accuracy second. However, usually historical accuracy isn't that far off equalling balance and fun anyway.
I agree 100% here too. I love my History, but not at the expense of balance. genrally the Historical stuff is well balanced. Cav are the real exception and I think that comes more from distorted accounts of Cav charges. In this situation i'm willing to accept that History has to take the backseat though and that cav should be beatable by somthing thats avalibile as early as the cav, and it should be somthing thats eithier avalibile to all factions. Or it should be somthing diffrent for diffrent factions. Or a mix of the two, but n matter what all factions should have a counter to anything any other faction might throw at them at any point in the tech tree. This counter should also occupy the same point in the tech tree as what it's countering.