Alright, I have a question: How the heck do I use my horse archers properly?

In an ongoing Byzantine campaign of mine, it has become embarrasingly obvious how horrible I am at dealing with horse archers, whether they are mine or the enemy's. I don't use vanilla Horse Archers myself, but the Seljuk's did so to a large extent (basically all they can recruit right from start are HA's, Spearmen and Turcoman Horse). In my first large battle against the Seljuk's I was besieging Rum and the Sultan sallied out with reinforcements from Armenia and Edessa. I had my army lined up in a very traditional manner with Treb. Archers behind a wall of vanilla Spearmen (my Armoured Spearmen were on their way to the front) and with my Kataphraktoi (including the Emperor) on one flank and the Varangian Guard on the other.

The Seljuk's began by charging two units of Armenian Heavy Cavalry right into my line. Needless to say, they were routed. But then the Sultan sat back and let his HA's do his dirty work. Lacking light cavalry as I did, I could to little to drive them off, and it ended with a long firefight between my archers and the HA's. Normally, this wouldn't have been too much of a problem, but unfortunately I had no great height advantage and the map wasn't really ideal for defending. On my left flank, where my Varangians were, the enemy even controlled a slight hill (or knoll, rather) giving them the advantage in height. Also, it seems as if HA's have more ammo than Treb. Archers, or they just fire slower, 'cause they continued to pepper my men long after I had run out of arrows. This of course caused my rather heavy casualties, and when the Seljuk's finally took their infantry and remaining heavy cavalry to attack me head-on, I regarded it as a relief. My enemies were easily beaten and I managed to capture the Sultan.

However, although I sustained hardly any casualties in the melee, I realised that I needed a better way to deal with enemy horse archers. My Varangian Guard, which was at full strength at the onset of battle, was down to 43 men after it, most of if not all of them were killed by enemy HA's. My Spearmen also took heavy casualties since they lacked any real armour. Later on in the campaign, I tried Byz. Lancers as HA-chasers, with mixed results. I managed to drive them off, but never caught them and eventually only exhausted my own men. This bought my own archers time, but I still couldn't kill of those pesky Turcomans. With traditional Catholic armies, I rarely have this problem, at least not in High and Late, since Arbalesters can rout enemy missile cavalry before they can do any real harm, but how do you deal with this in Early? Ideas/suggestions?

And then, on to the second problem of mine: How do I use my own missile cavalry?

Once I got Byzantine Cavalry, I tried to keep two units of them in each army of mine - both for offence and defence. To put it simply, I usually deploy my army like this:


Black being my general's BG (the position of which varies according to the situation).
Green being my spearmen.
Blue being my archers (I sometimes put the archers up front in offensive battles).
Red being some form of flanking units (usually Byz. Infantry or Kataphraktoi).
And Yellow being my missile cavalry (Byz. Cavalry)

This setup varies of course, and I usually bring a lot more cavalry to battles than the picture suggests. Anyway, my BC's usually manage to inflict some casualties and will, if they are extremely lucky, lure one or two units of infantry away from the main army. Mostly though, they are attacked by enemy cavalry and retreat until they reach the edge of the map where they are engaged and killed/routed, nullifying whatever casualties they've previously inflicted. Even if they are chased by infantry, the same scenario occurs. By the time they are cornered, I have enough to do watching over the main battle and whenever I have actually diverted time to try and save the BC's by running them back to the middle of the map, they fail miserably in their maneuvering and get caught by the enemy anyway. This means I sometimes have battles where 90% or more of my casualties consists of my HA's. To put it simple: They kill 30 enemies and then loose 30 men themselves, after which they rout.

The only instance when I found them useful was in Naples when the Pope invaded with an army of Spearmen and UM only. Since their stats are good enough to take on UM's head on, they proved quite useful, but as soon as an enemy of mine fields cavalry of their own, they're useless. How are you supposed to use these guys? I have ceased recruiting new BC's now, and the ones I have left I keep behind my spearwall until the enemy routs and they can serve as chasers (which Byz. Lancers do better anyway).