The proper counter to cavalry is cavalry
Ah, that explains the ridiculous rant and subsequent posts. You believe that the game balance is fine when the only counter to something is itself. If this were how the game was meant to work, why shouldn't we all just go cavalry? They clearly have the advantage over ranged players (they quickly ride up to them and kill them) and they clearly have an extreme advantage over anyone engaged in any other activity (in a melee, dodging arrows) because they can ride up quickly and silently behind them and lance them. The only disadvantage to playing cavalry is someone using a pike. Not even a polearms user or any type of class - one specific weapon is regarded as being capable of stopping cavalry.
The problem with this is that cavalry can easily ride past any pikeman - I've yet to ever catch a horseman that realised I was a pikeman and rode the opposite direction. I've yet to successfully surprise a cavalry by pulling out my pike just before they're in range - I either get killed because I waited to long to pull it out and attack or I pull it out with just enough time to attack; which also happens to be enough time for the cav to ride way past me.
How can a pikeman get the jump on cav? They don't have the speed for it, so all they can do is hope that a cav will ride into their pike.
If it's a one vs one situation (somehow), all the cav needs to do is ride slowly at the pikeman so that the thrust doesn't rear up the horse or damage it too greatly and then proceed to thrust/slash at the pikeman. Once the horse has lost a reasonable amount of health, the cav can back off a little, dismount and hey-presto, they're infantry! Pikeman's already had a bit of health taken off, so it's not a terribly difficult fight for a half decently skilled cav (one that can actually block - I've seen some that can't!).
People keep saying that it's a case of rock stating that paper is OP and scissors are fine. The reality is, however, that there is no such system in place. 2H/polearms beat 1H shielders which beat ranged which beat 2H/polearm. Cav beat ranged, 2H/polearm and shielders one on one. In groups, cav can easily swarm a few players (cav have a huge speed advantage, so they can flank the infantry from both sides, that way one is guaranteed to kill him). If the going really gets tough (too many pikes) they can just dismount. The few points they spent on riding aren't a big enough disadvantage to guarantee they'll lose an infantry fight (and their agi/str are usually decently balanced - I've never seen a tank rider who can't wear plate).
As the OP said, he believes cav should counter cav, which clearly shows he doesn't want a rock/paper/scissors type balance either. No idea why he believes that should be the case (it's neither realistic nor balanced), but that's it.
I believe a better balance would be: 2H/polearm beats 1H/cav beats bows/xbow beats 2H/polearm. Bows now have cutting damage, so cav is even more dangerous to them than before, xbows still have pierce but have such a long reload time that they're extremely vulnerable to cav too. So, all that would be need is for cav horses to be given less health - they have armor to stop the arrows and bolts, so the only thing they need lots of health for is fighting infantry (high pierce plus extra damage due to speed takes off much more health than an arrow). It'd be nice if 2H weapons could rear a horse too, but that might be asking too much.
Edit: Also, get rid of the frigging knock-down! It's realistic that a horse charging someone could knock them down, but it's also realistic that someone with an axe or maul could break a horses legs (even as they're being trampled)! Either make horses as vulnerable as they are IRL (even the ones with armor would frequently break legs, not to mention simply not do as the rider wanted because they were injured or scared) or remove knock down. Hell, leave it in for a charging horse if it's an absolute must (as if cav don't have enough advantages over others), but please stop a cav from slowly walking over me and knocking me down. Often I'll finally manage to force a cav into a wall and he'll just turn around, ride the few steps between me and him and then ride straight over the top of me, knocking me down. Sadly, I fear horse bumping might be hard coded
