Except my cavalry which breaks as soon as the enemy just breathes in its direction. Or did they fix this lately (haven´t played in a while)?
Cavalry suffers morale loss very easily, though I believe it still doesn't get taken out of the battle until it hits ~25% strength. But you're right that it's extraordinarily vulnerable; I don't mind cavalry being fragile in ranged combat or when attacking enemy infantry head on, because that's about right for Civil War cavalry, but I've had 500+ man cavalry units lose in a melee battle in the open with ~200 skirmishers (which is silly) or with
single artillery batteries (which would be outright hilarious).
I think my general view on the game is that there are some things it handles very well (compared to other games) and some things it handles poorly.
Among the things it handles well, one of them is that it gives you a good sense of how long it takes to move and realign troops (that is, how it takes ages to get your troops into a flanking position) and another is that you can sometimes end up in situations where you really feel the value of giving or reserving fire.
Among the the things it handles poorly, on the other hand, are morale and casualties. Just about every single battle is an absolute bloodbath because if a unit goes in on the attack it can end up taking upwards of a hundred casualties in a single volley, and then go away for half an hour, regroup and come back again.
It seems to me that it would be better to use a system more like this, within the existing mechanics:
- Morale damage from taking fire is about the same (at least for infantry) but taking enough morale damage cancels out a bayonet charge. (This still leaves units able to fire.)
- If an attacker gets within a certain distance and is still conducting a bayonet charge, the defender suffers a large morale penalty.
These would simulate how actual crossed bayonets were relatively rare, because either the attacker would slow down and stop for a firefight or the defender would retreat.
- Units regenerate morale faster the higher their morale and condition are.
- If a unit's morale comes close to bottoming out, it takes hours for the morale to climb back up again.
The intent here is that on a given day a single unit can fight quite a lot if it's well taken care of, but if it's shattered it's functionally not able to fight again until relieved.
- Casualties inflicted are lower across the board.