I was participating in a tournament, and I had got to the last round. I had un-horsed my opponent, and so you would expect that to be now an easy win for me- but no. My opponent killed my horse with an incredible 53 damage thrust with his jousting lance.

How does that even work? I play with half-damage, so if I was on full damage, it would be 106 damage! Neither me or my horse has ever taken such damage from polearms, and I have fought plenty of Rodoks (the Ashwood pike does 29 thrust damage in comparison to the jousting lance with 17 thrust damage)

Is it something to do with the speed of the approaching horse + the reach of the weapon?

Yeah. He had his spear braced. "b"
Basically holding one end to the ground so the approaching horse skewers itself on it
(horses speed bonus is added to spear damage.)

But no, that's not how lances work, though it's close.
When on a horse with a lance, you don't "hit", just let the lance be and speed up.
When you have enough speed, the lance points forward, then just guide it to the enemy and get a huge speed bonus to hit.
Good horse, good lance, you can take out a fully armored opponent in one go.

Needs to be a "lance", doesn't work with "spear".
Bracing works with spears too.

Check if the lance has a small grey/red circle near its picture (just as, for example, crossbows do). If it's grey, you can joust your enemy. If it's red, wait a few seconds and it will turn into a grey one.

The jousting itself is based on how do you have your settings set.

If you have lances control set to "automatic", speed up (that's why it is better to do this on horse, but it is possible to do this on foot as well - though, you have to have good Athletics and be as light-armored as you can) and do nothing. You will position your lance in front of yourself. Then just run/ride onto the enemy. If your lance hits them, you'll deal really massive damage. More speed, more damage. This works mutually, so if there are two horses charging against each other, you can easily do even 200+ damage.

If you have it set to "manual", speed up, but then you'll need to press "X" at the right time. Your character will position the lance, but will raise it after a few seconds. So you have to be a bit more skilled when manually controlling it.

I occasionally laugh myself silly seeing my lancers do this to opponents. Sadly the games design is so terrible that each group runs at each other like a cheesy movie and literally careens into one another...yeah because people would do this in real life like they have a death wish lol

In fact I recall this one time I rammed in a lancer by accident. The assholes behind me were going so fast, they pushed my horse into the lancer that I already rammed into. Well the game shit the bed and said I was hit for 200+ damage and my character literally flew up into the air so high it nearly froze the battle. Plus my poor horse flew sideways slamming into a few other soldiers, bowling them over flat killing 3 in the process, probably due to Charge effect from horses. I laughed so hard despite losing the battle I nearly fell off my chair XD

Bit belated, but thanks for the replies. Pole-arms are really dangerous to horses, esp when wielded with two hands.

wow you shoudl try telling the truth sometimes.

BTW that is how lancing worked in real life. Two guys charge their horses at eachtoher full speed and the horses will jsut barely miss eachother but sometimes even the horses would ram into eachother or hit heads and get knocked out just from the contact and die or be killed later since the injuriees usually lamed them. and often killed the rider or maimed him... but in the best case scenario you would deflect the opponents lance tip/it would miss you and you would catch your lance tip on some part of him or his horse....except if you caught his horse, especially in a joust or on a tuff peice of barding you could end up hurting your arm/breaking your lance/losing your lance....

It was basically like chicken and russian roulette. Look it up. IT wasn't smart and really even possible for anyone but insane nobles etc. Being a lancer, for example, involved a lot lest jousting with other mounted units nad more just chasing down and killing footmen...but they would price pikes and polearms...in this case you would try to jump or push through enmass...very nasty, and insane. But in general war is insane. Why do you think people would line up in front of eachother with muskets, often just a few yards, and let fire...obviously before the invention of the firearm warfare was even more insane, and it was. Now we just hide in holes hoping they don&t blow up the entire mountain your hole is in...

yea war is insanity.