Quote Originally Posted by Noir
The point i was trying to make is that if you want to show proof ...
I was illustrating - not attempting a proof. I have better things to do with my time, especially as it seems you don't actually disagree with me on the point.

In RTW there is no need for micromanagement of HAs ...
That's too strong - eventually you will trap AI horse archers, and the AI will trap yours, thanks to the inability of the skirmish function to cope with map edges.

In fact if the enemy has foot missiles, HAs get slaughtered in RTW/BI as well, so i fail to see why in MTW they were fodder and in RTW/BI are not. I took out several happy hordes in BI with the lowly Roman Archers as WRE.
Yes, you can do it but against horse archer armies you need a lot of foot archers (a historical Roman army with few missiles, like the one in my PBM story, will just die). The Cantabrian circle is one thing that aids horse archers against foot archers in RTW/M2TW; another is that they are not automatically outranged by foot archers (depends on the quality of the foot). I suspect there are other factors, but a foot archer vs horse archer duel in RTW/BI is more even than in STW/MTW.

The "Parthian Shot" is a hideous implementation ...
As I said, I agree it may be overpowered, but you may be going over the top here. At least in M2TW, I think units doing the Parthian shot are much less accurate than shooting conventionally. I'd rather see a watered down (M2TW style?) Parthian shot than just having horse archers neutralised by enemy cav. Bearing in mind TW battles are compressed over real life battles, I think it models say knight vs Mongol engagements better than no Parthian shot.

Also HAs needed support ie an anti light cavalry unit (that is another light cavalry) and some light (and so fast and able to join the cavalry match) spears in order to skirmish succesfully and it took skill and combination to do that.
We are probably talking at cross purposes here. You are talking about recreating STW/MTW gameplay, which might have been exquisite RPS gameplay for you. I'm talking about modelling historical warfare. The Mongols, Huns etc never needed other "light cavalry" or "light spears" to go with their horse archers. (Heavy cavalry, yes.) I think RTW probably has better potential to model historical army styles (barbarian, legion, horse archer, phalanx, mixed). I think it is one strength of the game that it represented these different styles rather than the MTW/STW generic armies.

1. We dont know how morale penalties work and if there are morale penalties for outnumbering/threatening (at least i dont) and spatially cutting off.
Not known is not the same as not existing. My armchair observation is that missiles and cavalry (esp. flanking) are very valuable for their morale penalties. You see it more in realism mods where kill rates are nerfed. Frontal engagement is a waste of arrows and expensive troops - get behind them and use the horse archers to distract/disrupt, and you will get your money back.

2. The action is way too fast to allow any kind of maneuver as the player is probably busy trying (and not always succeeding) to match up and flank with cavalry - let alone manage the HAs.
Again move speed and kill rates are moddable.

3. There is no aftergame after the main melee - enemies simply rout and never reform or come back - no need to manage fatigue as an important morale factor and no need to keep tactical reserves (bum rushing with everyone is always your best bet in RTW).
Again moddable. And please, don't tell a veteran of multi-hour MTW/STW battles about no aftergame. The older engine was plagued by having to fight repeated battles against second and third reinforcing waves, which were predetermined once you had killed the general and smashed the first wave.

4. Fatigue is not a factor in 99.999% of the battles IMO and so the superior stamina tactoical factor is useless.
Could be true for the player but unfortunately fatigue cripples the AI as the attacker in RTW. Better to switch it off IMO.

5. Any other cavalry does the chasing router job just as well.
Horse archers are usually fast cav and so particularly useful for pursuing other cav. I'm not convinced by the STW/MTW convention of making them slower than light cav. Good RPS, I guess - dodgy history.

6. Cavalry is so fast, that there is no need to prepare to cut down the routers, by moving/deploying behind the enemy - you'll reach them anyway from any point of the map.
If you kill rates are lowered (as in RTR etc), then getting rear shots are very important in RTW to get behind those hefty shields.

It was a hideous campaign as most of the others i played for the simple reason that the game is full of exploits on the battlefield and that is true for most factions - if not all. ....

IMO, this is what has been done in RTW: apply RTS principles and simplify controls and sacrifice depth for the sake of selling the game. Some would call that selling out.
"Hideous"? "sell out"? Sounds like another bout of RTW bashing. I'm not sure I want to get into that argument; it's been done to death. I'm not defending the vanilla RTW game - I lost interest in playing it solo after one campaign (sorry you endured multiple hideous ones). But with modding (RTR/EB etc) it can get much closer to the MTW model than it is to a game based on "RTS principles". And it does improve on the model in a number of ways usually overlooked by the anti-RTW crowd.