Well you should realize that Rome Total War uses the triangle strategy for units.
Cavalry > Archers
Archers > Foot soldiers
Foot soldiers > cavalry
You can make a triangle out of that. It's the same for a lot of other strategy games (age of empires)
So
Jstar1 wrote:
I'd have my cavalry charge into a group and like 2 guys tumble backwards when it reality everyone should be flying like bowling pins.
is really just a really bad move because you should not charge cavalry into a group of foot soldiers. That will rout your cavalry really fast.
What you should try to do is get your own foot soldiers against theirs and then smash your own cavalry into their backs. That will definitely get those units flying around and will rout them immediately if performed well.
In Rome your cavalry is really fast and swift, you can easily outmaneuver slower units and really smash into groups and then quickly ride away. In the other games cavalry just doesn't respond that fast.
Anyways, I really didn't want to turn this into a schooling or whatever. I (also) just play this game on single player so in the end it only matters if we all just have fun
Btw, I learned this stuff from the "Prince of Macedon" who makes really fun/educational videos on all of the Total War games. He calls riding cavalry into the back of engaged units 'hammer and anvil' strikes. Your own foot soldiers are the anvil and you hammer your cavalry on that to sandwich them.
Youtube Prince of Macedon if you really want to see the effectiveness of cavalry. He's got like a thousand videos out there so shouldn't be too hard to find one where he's hammering people with his cavalry.