The thing about cavalry is that its only effective at all against below average players or people already fighting someone (and even the latter is risky for the rider). Anyone who is good at playing infantry will easily defeat all but the absolute elite cavalry players unless they make a pretty big balls up. A good infantry player will almost always see that huge horse plodding towards them before its even anywhere near them (even more so thanks to the eyes in back of head button `), or hear the hooves thundering from behind, stab out the horse from under the rider thanks to his near perfect horse killing stick, and then stab the rider while hes on the ground.
I rarely play infantry, and while I am no Gragnok I do alright and even I see horsemen (except the ride-by gunners, which are Satan) as little more than free kills that save me the effort of having to run to them and instead bring themselves to me. It doesn't matter if they decide to try and get me from behind or the side because it takes you a miniscule amount of time to switch to stabbin' mode, spin around and deliver a fatal blow with a bayonet, the spinning round actually makes it that much more powerful so please, cavalrymen, come at me from behind, you might even think I haven't seen you. It takes less than a second to scan the entire 360 degrees around yourself for any cavalry too, you don't even have to stop moving/firing.
The effect of cavalry in a game will never properly reflect its effect in real life, there is no mass to the horse and there is no fear in the soldier, given that those two things are what most cavalry relied on or inflicted in order to be effective, something to counteract the lack of these factors in the game would be nice, (something small, I wouldn't want to see nigh invincible horses riding around one hit bumping people) be it stronger horses (as in massive health pools or a lower bump minimum speed, not bump damage) stronger horsemen or weaker infantry.
The main point i mean to put over is that most cavalry are only truly effective against inexperienced players, and as the game goes on there will be fewer and fewer inexperienced players. Don't get me wrong I accept that well played cavalry is an utter killing machine against a group of below average players (as long as they don't use that whole shooting aspect of their weapon but hey, lets forget about that for now) but are not competitive at all against good infantry players.