What saddens me the most is that cavalry got nerfed because of GK`s , and their retarded way of playing as cavalry, e.g spawnraping..
na im pretty sure its more because dedicated loomed cavalry at the peak of there power could take on a hole team and win. pretty much no matter what horse they used, be it arab, courser, cataphrac or mamluk.
the changes were fair, anit cav got buffed, lancer cav got nerfed. in the process, 1h cav got more popular (it was strong before (look at ugly bastard on his charger), but lancers had a great edge due to there angle)
a few things that concern me, especially concidering lancer cav:
non loomed low level cav might be a bit underpowered. as cav you are a great target for ranged, so i kinda pitty the newbies to lancing.
very low damage vs low armored men. this can be frustrating, but tbh, if you hit the person at the sweetspot, you usually do oneshot.
very low charge. Im not complaining about bump damage, it could be 0 for all i care. but not beeng able to get passed a standing peasant is awkward. at least heavier horses should get passed one man at any low speed.
the heavy lance. ok so the damage is meh, who cares. but its so dam slow, putting it to a great disadvantage to any other mounted weapon :'/ it actually feels like it does about the same damage as a lance, i dont complain about that. but its speed makes it a predictable weapon with less room for finess
edit:
IMO Risen, couching is the only thing that should insta kill. Lance poking is about as effective as throwing rolled up 50$ bills at people and hoping they will die from shock. Couched lances pretty much always wipe out there target unless of course the speed bonus gets pwned somehow.
unfortunatly a couched charge into a low-medium armored target can be a mere scratch.