I loved the idea of this mod. And I was having a lot of fun in early game where you fight against bandits and weaker groups. Armor and weapons were feeling really realistic. But it began going downhill really fast when I started fighting against larger armies.

I was roleplaying as a Sturgian, so all of my troops were from the Sturgian line. I noticed that the mod changed the elite cavalry units of Sturgia into elite heavily armored horse archers. I thought this new cavalry could at least hold their ground against other elite cavalry units. I wasn't expecting them to win against shielded elite cavalry. But I was expecting them to at least kill half or 2/3 of the enemy cavalry by the end of the battle. But I was extremely wrong. All other elite cavalry ABSOLUTELY DESTROYED Sturgian heavily armored horse archers in every test I conducted.

By the way, these horse archers not only have a 4 meter long lances, but they also have two handed axes for close range combat. These elite horse archers should (in theory) be at least as competent as historical Persian heavily armored horse archer which also didn't have any shields but wreaked havoc on the Byzantine cavalry. What is worse, is that Sturgia doesn't have a dedicated non-archer cavalry line. So basically, if you want to win against the Empire or Vlandia or even the Aserai you can't deploy any cavalry. Because if you insist on using the elite horse archer you will loose 100 of them while only killing 15 from the enemy cavalry.

This always happens regardless of whether they get tangled or not, or whether they use their bows or not. They can only compete when they are dismounted. And at that point, they no longer count as cavalry.

I bet it is almost impossible to find a single battle in history where an army can win a field battle without employing any cavalry against an enemy that employs a ton of them. But as Sturgians, your cavalry are absolutely useless against all others except the Khuzait line. So if you are fighting anyone except the Khuzaits, you are expected to not employ any cavalry for the win. But that is extremely unrealistic.

A smart warlord almost always uses cavalry to counter cavalry. That is what cavalry is all about. Once you demolish the enemy cavalry, you can even dismount them to fight as foot soldiers. You may think that the most elite archer cavalry would at least compete against lower tiered shielded cavalry, but even then, they get absolutely destroyed. I also did other tests where I compared different shielded cavalry from different factions and I must tell you... Aserai Elite Cavalry and Imperial Elite Cataphracts are ABSOLUTELY useless against the Vlandians. At that point, the game becomes so unrealistic that even your most elite cavalry force can't kill more than 10 enemy cavalry units And by that time you will loose 50 on your side.

I would like to have a mod where you can at least feel free to deploy your own heavily armored elite cavalry regiments, knowing that they will at least hold their ground or challenge the enemy cavalry to some extent.