I havn't had to engage them so I dunno. But are the people who are having an easy time playing on "realistic"?
Why are some people having trouble and others not?
I just ignored their parties because they're too fast. I havn't even had a chance to fight them. Testing custom battles though, horse archers are overpowered.
I have a feeling a lot of the people saying they're ok are not playing in realistic and/or are playing as Khuzait with their movement speed buff and thus are able to catch them with larger parties. If you're not any of the above, steppe bandits are basically a big 'screw you deal with us' because that's all you can do.
Most of my playthroughs are pre-1.3 beta branch, so I didn't have the Khuzait campaign movement speed buff. My movement speed modifier is set to realistic. When I hunt steppe bandits it is with a small party (usually less than 25, almost always less than 30) then sitting on top of their hideout so they come to me. I only chase particularly annoying or juicy steppe bandit parties (lots of prisoners) but try to keep my speed above 7.4.
The other reason those small parties are so fast compared to most player parties, even with all-cav, is there is
a hidden debuff to the Cavalry bonus to movespeed, based on party size. I understand why TW did this, but it would be nice if it was listed and universal, rather than simply making the Cavalry bonus weaker for larger parties.
Once I figured that out, the solutions were obvious. Either go small, with high-tier shock cav, stripped down in numbers, no spare horses, very little food, no loot/prisoners and zoom-zoom around sniping all of them
or bait them in with their hideouts. As an aside, desert bandits can be just as bad, but relatively few people complain about them, even accounting for their low-tier bandits being foot units.
edit: I am not saying steppe bandits are not out of line with others (desert bandits take a bit of time to get rolling) but I think I'm the only person posting how to farm them, so I assume I'm the person you guys are talking about.