Cheers, Kobal. I concur
I ran a similar test to yours and it seems like the visuals are, well, visual

I pitted DFKized Highland Rabble against DFKs and their performance was quite similar (if you don't factor in stupid AI moves when I was using the DFKs, it ran back and forth) with an 8 vs 7 wins, most of them very close.

I second that there are probably special rules for charges where units don't have to play an animation.

FactionHeir: I can't really agree to your point about units not catching routers on walls, my observations were a bit different really. Maybe there's some effect there that keeps the soldiers from attacking.

As for the normal routers, I'll have to pay a bit closer attention to that.


However I want to throw another point into the discussion: Since soldiers are playing attack and death animations, and soldiers don't really die before finishing their death animation, there probably is an influence of the actual animation length to the unit's performance, and I think this could be what Palamedes meant when he once talked about good and bad animations in conjunction with unit performance. It's like "meh I just stabbed someone, gimme a break"
This could explain my experience that slow 2h axe units have a worse performance than sword or 1h axe units.

There actually is a kind of sphere around the units if I remember correctly what GrumpyOldMan and KnightErrant were talking about. This could be linked to personal space and I think it's linked to missile attack. A sphere is of course a much simpler collision mechanism than a normal 3d model.

Something else? Ah yes, blobbing: I still find it highly useful to blob my units all onto a point when defending or squeezing them through a gate or something. CA should have been much more rigid on this.
Some of my tests suggest that having two decent units in Schiltrom stand on top of each other is almost impregnable and can hold the line very well until your archers or javelinmen killed the enemy.