It is funny you should bring this issue up not so long since I've seen some great chariot action in my very own going Casse campaign...

My old opinion was a bit like yours though I would not say completely useless: regardless of their combat ability generals tend to earn you more than their personal salary by simply governing your towns which happen to have a harbour.

So here goes how come my opinion isn't the same anymore:


I never ever managed to get much out of them, always keeping them for ceremonial reasons (aka roleplaying) only...
Playing on hughe settings I never ever could get them to wheel around the flans and start hitting from the back; reason: ever since I first played the Casse my unit size has been at least large...

BUT:

I just found out how awesome they actually are when you put them closely to the units of your main line -at least during siege/assaults:
1) Not only have those guys some serious range; they also have an extraordinally large supply of javelins, it seems.
2) Their javelins tend to hit the mark.
3) They are very scarysome indeed: the drop in morale they cause really shows up in EB - they greatly help in speeding up the battles.

First assault I did this campaign I wasn't aware; in fact it took me so long that I feared my units might be pushed out of the settlement/rout without support; and I had them all comitted to the fight already save for my presumed useless BG's. Aka the joys of an early economy with the Casse, the year being 272 BC.

So in a sort of desperate attempt I sent two FM's to the gate (to park just outside it and commence the javelin throwing business): within minutes the defenders broke; and the last stand at the square hardly was a last stand either after I moved my FM's close enough.

Of course, this being hardly conclusive evidence on its own, I repeated this scare-manoeuvre the next siege first thing the walls were down - lo and behold: it worked again.

Whether or not it is really that great or a combination of various other effects I do not know: what I do know is that siege/assaults have never been as smooth with my AS campaigns in which I developped highly succesful missile/heavy infantry armies for this purpose (apart from being really expensive to maintain compared to other similarly effective forces).