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I remember disregarding Cavalrymen as my first ever ED character, because the rules for charge attacks made no sense to me, but at the time I thought I just didn't understand them, so I build something simpler. Now I was bored and took another look, having a few years of play under my belt, but either this rule is absurd, or I'm still not getting it.

"To make a charging attack, the rider must move towards the target in a relatively straight line at a rate higher than the mount’s Movement Rate (using the mount’s standard action to move)."

I think the intention is to avoid a player using charge attacks each round, but this rule just seems silly, but maybe I'm reading it wrong. As I read it, if you have a 10 MR mount you can do charge attacks at 11, where a much faster mount at 16 MR needs 17?

Warrior: What's that thing?
Cavalryman: Meet Lord Chompy Boy, my indoor mount.
Warrior: Is... is that Crocodile with a saddle?
Cavalryman: Oh yeah, the slowest thing I could put one on.

*Slaps croc on the saddle*

Cavalryman: You wouldn't believe the acceleration on this baby. 0 to charge in just 8 hexes!

well, you also want it to be strong

You are not the first person to make this observation ... It is a squirrelly rule.

The Cavalryman just seems very specialized to me. They work very well for a limited number of campaign styles and also for a very limited number of character builds. A campaign that's primarily in the wilderness and rural outdoor settings? They're going to dominate in many combat scenarios. Windling on a zoak? A LOT of mobility without any real drawbacks and it compensates for the Windling's inherent low strength. Most other situations? Might be fun to play but it's going to be a far from optimal character build.

But hey, they aren't alone in that regard, look at the Air Sailor. There's nothing wrong with them when they aren't on an airship but Swordmaster, Warrior or even Sky Raider is just simply better in most circumstances. If you've got a combat-ish focused campaign you're probably better off building a wilderness focused Archer or Beastmaster than a Scout. If you are in a campaign without any downtime, where the party is rushing from event to event, the Weaponsmith has a lot of useless Talents. Etc. etc.

The answer to your problem is "Wheeling Attack".

Thanks people. I just wanted to make I wasn't missing some central rule even now

Immediately below this post I have some Cavalryfolk knacks that I think offset some of their issues in play.

I actually think a good workaround would be to move a minimum of the Rider's movement rate, rather than the beast's.

Just change the rule like this and it works and makes sense:

"To make a charging attack, the rider must move towards the target in a relatively straight line at a speed of 10 or higher (using the mount’s standard action to move)."

Havn't checked the MR of the available mounts yet. Perhaps a 12 or even 14 would be better.

I'll have to peek at that Knacks thread.

I have been allowing Cavalrymen with a Knack to Charge dismounted with OK results. If the intent is to limit the sheer Step increase by making the mount move a ways to "speed up", then ditch the minimum movement and change the Charge Attacks calculation to:

A successful attack during a charging attack adds the lower of either the mount’s Strength Step, or the number of hexes moved (yards moved divided by 2), to the Damage Step due to the high momentum of the impact.

In fact, I'll keep that going for my Knack, capping the Rank Bonus at the # of Hexes moved and not allowing double-move+attack on-foot (the weirdness in the action-economy there was not fun). Keep Wheeling Attack as-is (as it allows the full Bonus if you "ride-through"), etc. I wonder if there would be any other side-effects...