Garisi 说:
I think it's about right, actually. The lance has great reach, just use it the old fashioned way. That's how I get most of my kills. I only bother to couch a lance if I need to take out a horse or break shield or something. The lance does plenty of damage on it's own, and it does that from a safe distance. You can kill faster with, say, a bastard sword, but you're much more likely to go down in the process.
I agree that it should be harder to block, though. A sideways club shouldnt stop you.
Assuming you have the right stats, you can kill faster with a 1-hander, a 2-hander, and a bow; none of those are more dangerous to use since you can do "drive-bys" better than you can with a lance, and even if you try to plow into the enemy they are safer (except for the bow) because you have a chance of hacking your way out. By faster I mean the amount of time it takes between you thinking "I want to kill that unit" and the point at which that unit is dead, is shorter for all those weapons compared to a couched lance (on average). I'm not sure about the crossbow due to slow reload, nor thrown weapons due to poor accuracy even at high stats.
The reason is because it is very easy to miss with the lance (or have it drop out of couch) and takes a long time to set up another kill. In tournaments you have to run to one end of the arena and hope the footman didn't decide to follow you or you won't have enough distance to couch. The lance should be one of the ultimate weapons. Instead, the bow would be if it weren't for shields, so it ends up being a 1-hander or 2-hander (1-hander mounted is fast and racks up kills, 2-hander on foot is fast and racks up kills). The lance simply doesn't have a place. You can try using it for kicks, but that's all it is... if you wanted to get serious you'd switch weapons.
EDIT: I'm talking about SP games here, but something tells me the same applies to MP... I doubt the lancers are the ones getting the kills... most likely it is footman with the 2-hander, or the hidden snipers.