[aldin]

The more times I read your example the more confused I get. If you had about 50 Heavy Cav and they were divided into three Groups (say 17/group) and all the losses were in the center group (roughly 1/3 of that force, say 6) and your prophet wasn't casting Sermon of Courage (I presume the priest was the prophet based on the "three fire" comment), then two things are true. First is that all those losses were almost certainly friendly fire. Second is that a rout at that point wouldn't be unusual in my Ulmish experience.

The "fix" for the problem is twofold. First is to have Ulm's prophet cast Sermon of Courage like it was going out of style, Ulm needs it. Second is to offset Ulmish X-Bows such that there are no Ulmish troops twixt them and the enemy. I often build "neutral" archers/longbows to accompany my armies as Ulm because they don't do much damage to my heavily armored troops.

~Aldin