bow weapons & cavalry

I have 2 questions regarding the military units.
First of all I do not understand why the bow armed units are not considered as first strike unit. I may well have a British/English bias (Agincourt, Crecy etc) when viewing such weapons, but they are distance weapons that do not appear to be treated as such.
Secondly the cavalry. Why do we need 40 horse to make a unit when everything else that I can recruit (so far anyway) only require 10 units? And what are they armend with, rolled up newspapers? They have such a pathetic strike & defence valuation that it appears to be a major waste of effort to produce them.