Quote Originally Posted by Alcorr
I have considered these points before, and I still use these insane generals in battle, but I must say I would take a unit of gothic knights over a 20 man gen unit any day. 20 men seems to be my average as some are 16 and some are a good 24...
I have a unit of 33 right now, and almost never see less than 20. Fairly often I see higher though. Does anyone know what controls the size of the general's bodyguard unit?

Those are all true points but im talking about late game where units like gothic knights are actually better in melee (maces) than the general units.
"units like gothic knights..." There aren't any others like them, lol. No other cav unit in the game boasts as high a secondary attack w/ AP stat. The few that have AP mostly have considerably lower attacks, and the ones that don't typically have attacks no better than that of a general unit. Even not considering that, if you are allowing your heavy cavalry to become entangled in melee you are using them incorrectly, so this should not be a concern.

But more importantly, like 90% of damage done on melee is during the charge, a unit with half the men is going to do (in essence) somewhere around half the damage on the charge. Thus twice as many enemy survive...
One would be inclined to think this a valid point, and to some degree it may be. However, when using a larger group of cavalry, it is usual for many of them to miss the charge target - half the unit is in the second row and often ends up not charging into anything, and furthermore the flanks of the front row are often even ineffective as they are boxed out from actually contacting the target unit by the interior men of their own unit. Only about 1/4 of the unit (~10 men) is actually in a good position to connect with a charge, and that's assuming a frontal attack. In side charges, this is even less. The narrow nature of a general's unit gives it an advantage here as well, as the same 10 men in the middle are in great position to charge, it's just that they are higher quality troops now with bigger attack and charge bonuses than most cavalry. If more than 20 men at a time could be reasonably expected to connect with a given charge then your argument would be valid, but as they typically do not, it holds no water.