Underpowered cavalry ?

[Matt]

I have recently installed Rome Total Realism Platinum after not playing Rome Total War for over 8 months and I have noticed something odd.

I sent my general and his bodyguards to take out a unit of Rhodian slingers which I thought would be easy targets to cavalry following the rock, paper, scissor formula but at my surprise, my general's bodyguards were getting slaughtered by these lightly armoured units.

Has cavalry became useless or I am not using it effectively ?

[mercja]

the units are realistically more balanced. in RTW vanilla the light cavalry is way too overpoering for their purpose and thus in RTR they are tuned down a bit in order to reflect their real purpose, which is chasing down routed enemied or harrasing infantry.

[Cheexsta]

The morale of missile units in RTR is generally a *touch* too high, IMHO. While the killing rate of of a light infantry unit such as skirmishers against cavalry is about right (being unarmoured and the enemy not having stirrups makes it that little bit easier), they should be more inclined to run when there's enemy cavalry nearby. But it certainly is more realistic than vanilla; remember Macedon's "Light" Lancers? I never used to use Companions, just because the Lancers were easier to obtain and were still damn good...

In any case, I'd strongly suggest you don't just send a single unit of cavalry - particularly your general! - against enemy skirmishers. Try sending 2-3 units and hitting them with one first then the other to break them. Or, even better, hit enemy missile units with archers or slingers (bearing in mind that slingers no longer hit everyone in front of them, so having a unit of slingers behind your main line won't cause as much friendly fire as in vanilla).