Actually, if horse ranged spends their gold on a heavy horse; it also makes them more vulnerable to melee cav in a way.
The problem with that theory, is that most light/fast melee cav
doesnt naturally go toward horse ranged...
BECAUSE horse ranged are the best anti-cav class. Thus even if you're a horse ranged and you're using a heavy horse to fend off your other natural counter (archers that doesnt know how to headshot a moving target at 50m
), you're not likely to get hunted by the fast enough melee cav/lancers. Except if they are good, the horse ranged are out of ammo or they are suicidal and lucky to get a hit.
Playing on my cavalry alt, I know that if I see Zlisch/Torost/Hate_More from too close on any map, I'm going down even though I use a War Horse +3. There is only a few windows of opportunities against such persons, namely surprise attacks and betting on their innacuracy (not very effective).
HA's have less damage power but are able to spam more, thus if they know how to aim while riding and you dont have an omni-shield to protect both you and your horse, you're going down too.
Thus the only natural class able to kill horse ranged efficiently
ARE other horse ranged (pointless to say that) ranged footman. Problem is, most of them prefer easier targets and aim other ranged footman, melee footman most of the time.
And even if they aim for Horse Ranged (sometimes they play smart), if they are using heavy horse you will need arbalest to dismount them
or accurate aiming of the rider (it happens too).
But frankly, with the current state of the upkeep system, one should not add nerf on classes which are losing money on a steady basis. And Horse Ranged are one of the worst class to upkeep, close to Ultra Heavy Ranged/Melee/Shielder/Lancer Ultra Heavy Cavalry (grellenort and mircan
)