Zoonanay
Knight
All infantry is already faster than archers. Even the heavy kind. If you're not catching up to archers, it's because you're holding your shield up while giving chase. You should be able to put the shield up before getting shot if you have any semblance of the reflexes needed to play this game.
This is generally the case if the archer still has their bow still equipped. If you unequip all your items, you get a 5-10% increase to movement speed.
For the archer re-equipping the bow is not a problem (at least for recurve/short) as the draw time is under a second.
For the infantry its rather implausible, especially when considering they need to re-equip two items rather than just one. The long draw time on the shield can also leave infantry exposed to cavalry rushing around corners or quick shots from fast bows.
Shields slow you down alot and the game does a poor job of showing you that, since the movement speed value wont update according to your equipment settings. Weapons also dont show their weight, so you're left wondering how heavy this n that is.
Two sorely needed QoL changes. Weapon weight needs to be a visible stat if crushthrough is going to continue to be a major factor in gameplay. I suspect the Vlandian 1h Mace is deceptively heavy as I've had it crush through with overheads and hilt slashes, so would be nice to know and not guess.