Horses, Where (not) to find

[Quinn Inuit]

(I think I've posted this before, but I searched and couldn't find it. So...repost! Sorry, I'm in a weird mood tonight.)

Y'all have it too easy. You can recruit cavalry anywhere, if you build the right buildings. Not so back in the day. If the Persians wanted decent cavalry, they had to go to Media, Armenia, or Bactria.

So in the next major ExRM version, you're going to have to work for your horses. Here's a map:


See the orange? If you want to recruit mounted units, you'd better be in the orange areas. (Except for Macedonia and Thessaly. I think I forgot to put those on the map.) Furthermore, AsOR are going to be changed, so it'll be harder to recruit your faction cavalry when you're not at home, but you'll have a greater selection of local cavalry from which to choose. So no recruiting hetairoi in Arachosia. That's just...wrong. That also explains why you'll be able to recruit hetairoi (if you're a Diadoch) or Thessalians (if you're not) in part of Syria. (Don't look at me. I'm not the one who settled them there. Complain to Alexander.)

Some basic light cav units will probably remain widely recruitable, but that's it.

[AqD]

questions:

- Shouldn't Iberia a horse breeding place? Their horses were very numerous according to Roman accounts.
- What about horse importion? Will you add some buidlings to simulate it? (cavalry trained from it should be much more expensive)
- Wouldn't this cause cavalry to be available only from horse-breeding places, while it's not entirely so in history.. For instance, the Sacred Band Cavalry were certainly not recruited from inner africa, but from Carthaginian cities, probably with bought horses (so if you lose the horse breeding area you're in trouble )

[Carac Caratacus]

It was a while ago, but i remember reading that the riding horses in britain were originaly shipped in from spain, sometime in the early bronze age. One of the big cheiftans at the time decided he needed a cavelry and the native short ponies were not up to the job, so a trade deal was done with some celtic cheiftans in spain. something like that.

Doesnt this also tie in with the issue around using the buildings like 'pratice range'/'stable' etc as prerequisits for a particular troop type, and why it was shifted to the Auxilia in the first place?

And i agree with aqd, that maybe some kind of trade good system could be better used(wild animals?) that would allow some kind of rareity for horses and horse units?

Also how will this affect being able to recruit a 'leader' character - they use heavy cav dont they?

But yeah i approve in providing some rareity for the best horse unit types in the game - will it further power the all ready too powerfull factions vs the less so mind you? Will the Ai be able to cope etc.

[pannonian]

Also how will this affect being able to recruit a 'leader' character - they use heavy cav dont they?

Where heavy cav are rare but do exist in small numbers, general's bodyguards should represent this. Thus Romans don't really need a separate equites unit, as that can be represented by the general.

Edit: When I was poking through the mod forums at the Org, I found an interesting aspect of the EDB that I don't think RTR uses. In addition to the standard building levels, there's another group of levels that can be used as conditionals IIRC. I need to have another look at the complete EDB guide.

[despot_of_rhodes]

Pannonian: wasn´t metro naval mod using some trade ressources to allow or restrict some buildings upgrades or unit recruitment? ( iirc, it was related to the metal mines, so that the high quality armour and swords would be available for the faction, wich has access to this ressource, not sure though, have to check it out, it´s been a while... ).

[pannonian]

Pannonian: wasn´t metro naval mod using some trade ressources to allow or restrict some buildings upgrades or unit recruitment? ( iirc, it was related to the metal mines, so that the high quality armour and swords would be available for the faction, wich has access to this ressource, not sure though, have to check it out, it´s been a while... ).

MNM used the iron resource to restrict the final foundry building, plus various resources like timber to restrict the kind of port that could be built. I think ExRM has some degree of the latter.

The additional building levels I was talking about is plugins, but I don't think anyone's figured out how to use them. PatricianS said he'll look iinto them, but I can't see anything else in the thread.

[Caligula Caesar]

I would give a few Carthaginian cities the ability to recruit horsemen. Iberia (especially Celtiberia) is missing, as is Campania, BTW. Factions should be able to recruit light cavalry wherever, one they've settled the place, since most regions, if not all, would have some cavalry, if not good cavalry. Oh, and Tarentine cavalry should be recriutable from Asia Minor and perhaps Greece, Syria and Egypt from what I have heard.

[florin80]

So no recruiting hetairoi in Arachosia. That's just...wrong.

And why would that be wrong? You`re colonizing the place first after all. The game spans over a few centuries and many generations and while you play you influence history. You change it basically. Why would you want to freeze things at the level from the start of the game? It`s like saying that where there were macedonian and greek colonists in 280 fine, but after that no more colonies would be made. No natives would be hellenized, the natural trend would simple stop. Why?
And besides that I personally never liked the idea of restricting the recruitment of cavalry to certain areas. If rtw would have been a game where you could import horses it would make sense to have them as a resource, but otherwise it`s too restrictive imo. Name a people(anywhere on your map) that lacked horses entirely. When you make those building for recruitment(you don`t recruit all units now from government buildings, are you?) you can assume that everything would be brought there to equip the units. Not having horses in Arabia for example is like not having iron and wood there as well and not being able to train anything else than boxers(purely hypothetical example). It might be too restrictive to gameplay. Besides, unless I`m proven wrong I was under the impression that what was bred in those special areas(Cappadocia, Media etc.) were the mounts themselves. Not their riders too. And the horses would then be sent to wherever they were needed(as a resource sort of speak), but not necessarily along with their riders bred in the same place. Of course, I`m not telling you not to do it. Just expressing my view on this.

[Iskandar]

I'm with florin on that one. The game mechanics does not allow a good representation of cavalry (or army unit in general, for that matter) recruitment. One could go the way EB has taken, which admittedly has its own flavor but is nonetheless restrictive. I think FOE is going in a similar direction, though.
For the sake of gameplay, I'd rather have the recruitment as it is now.
Now that I think on it, we could allow recuitment of elite units (cavalry or infantry) in some initial lands, and if a faction wants to recruit them in other provinces, it would have to spend a huge amount of resources and time on colonization (i.e. building representing colonization effort, perhaps having the highest barracks level as a prerequisite or vice versa).

[Kurzschlus]

I am with Iskander here.

Though there is no doubt a major overhaul of cav is a good idea. Iskanders ideas are good there.

Like that you could bring back the Stadion to the recruitment, as the only way to get heavy cav and take most the mercenaries away, only allowing THESE to be recruited in your mentioned areas. The building time for the horse-races could be somewhere around 30 rounds again. This altogether would make sense, since heavy cavallery was an expensive thing to have ever.

Did you ever try to downgrade the value of generals bodyguards? There surely were bodyguards, as we know from a couple of sources, but no tanklike lanciers as presented in the game.

BTW.: Is there a way to reduce the size of the horses itself? Those in the game seem too big to me.

[Quinn Inuit]

questions:

- Shouldn't Iberia a horse breeding place? Their horses were very numerous according to Roman accounts.
- What about horse importion? Will you add some buidlings to simulate it? (cavalry trained from it should be much more expensive)
- Wouldn't this cause cavalry to be available only from horse-breeding places, while it's not entirely so in history.. For instance, the Sacred Band Cavalry were certainly not recruited from inner africa, but from Carthaginian cities, probably with bought horses (so if you lose the horse breeding area you're in trouble )

1) Yes, and it's already in orange on there...or at least it ought to be.
2) Hmmm...that dovetails nicely with some comments below, so I'll discuss that down there.
3) All of North Africa is going to get cavalry recruitment abilities, since it was all grasslands at the time and you're absolutely right about the cities. Are there any other cities like that notable for their horse importation, though? I can't think of any.

It was a while ago, but i remember reading that the riding horses in britain were originaly shipped in from spain, sometime in the early bronze age. One of the big cheiftans at the time decided he needed a cavelry and the native short ponies were not up to the job, so a trade deal was done with some celtic cheiftans in spain. something like that.

Doesnt this also tie in with the issue around using the buildings like 'pratice range'/'stable' etc as prerequisits for a particular troop type, and why it was shifted to the Auxilia in the first place?

And i agree with aqd, that maybe some kind of trade good system could be better used(wild animals?) that would allow some kind of rareity for horses and horse units?

That's interesting about Iberia being the source of British war horses. I didn't know that.

Hmmm, I probably should have a horse trading system, although I'm not sure which areas really exported their horses much. Those were a pretty big advantage, and people didn't want to give them up. The Greeks in the Ferghana Valley faced down tens of thousands of Chinese soldiers _twice_ to avoid having to trade their horses.

Also how will this affect being able to recruit a 'leader' character - they use heavy cav dont they?

But yeah i approve in providing some rareity for the best horse unit types in the game - will it further power the all ready too powerfull factions vs the less so mind you? Will the Ai be able to cope etc.

Not sure if the AI can handle it. We'll find out, I suppose.

Where heavy cav are rare but do exist in small numbers, general's bodyguards should represent this. Thus Romans don't really need a separate equites unit, as that can be represented by the general.

Edit: When I was poking through the mod forums at the Org, I found an interesting aspect of the EDB that I don't think RTR uses. In addition to the standard building levels, there's another group of levels that can be used as conditionals IIRC. I need to have another look at the complete EDB guide.

That's precisely what I was thinking, Pannonian.

Pannonian: wasn´t metro naval mod using some trade ressources to allow or restrict some buildings upgrades or unit recruitment? ( iirc, it was related to the metal mines, so that the high quality armour and swords would be available for the faction, wich has access to this ressource, not sure though, have to check it out, it´s been a while... ).

I think it was, yeah.

MNM used the iron resource to restrict the final foundry building, plus various resources like timber to restrict the kind of port that could be built. I think ExRM has some degree of the latter.

The additional building levels I was talking about is plugins, but I don't think anyone's figured out how to use them. PatricianS said he'll look iinto them, but I can't see anything else in the thread.

Jamey did some research on those before RL took him away. Basically, they function, but were never fully implemented in the game. You can't add them via script (IIRC), and you darn well can't make them build-able. The best way to get them in there is to put them in when you create the building in descr_strat.

What did you have in mind for them?

I would give a few Carthaginian cities the ability to recruit horsemen. Iberia (especially Celtiberia) is missing, as is Campania, BTW. Factions should be able to recruit light cavalry wherever, one they've settled the place, since most regions, if not all, would have some cavalry, if not good cavalry. Oh, and Tarentine cavalry should be recriutable from Asia Minor and perhaps Greece, Syria and Egypt from what I have heard.

I agree about Carthage and factions being able to recruit light cav pretty much anywhere.

I thought I put Iberia and Campania in there...darn. You're absolutely right that they should be, though.

I've heard similar stuff about Tarentines, but I thought that was for mercs only, and I've made them available through the entire eastern Mediterranean as mercs. Are you suggesting that I may Tarentine-style cav recruitable in that area? If so, do you know of any areas that were known for producing it? I don't know of any offhand, but I haven't looked it up.

And why would that {recruiting heavy cavalry in Arachosia -Ed.} be wrong? You`re colonizing the place first after all. The game spans over a few centuries and many generations and while you play you influence history. You change it basically. Why would you want to freeze things at the level from the start of the game? It`s like saying that where there were macedonian and greek colonists in 280 fine, but after that no more colonies would be made. No natives would be hellenized, the natural trend would simple stop. Why?

Because that actually seems to be what happened, from what I can tell. After the 280s, I don't think any new areas of Hellenistic colonization were established. Instead, although natives were Hellenized a bit, for the most part the Diadochi seem to focused on conserving their Hellenes.

I believe this is especially true of heavy cavalry. With the exception of steppe nomads invading, I can't think of anyone who moved into an area and started "growing" (for lack of a better term) their own heavy cavalry (at least in our time period). Everyone used the local variety: the Romans (especially the Romans), the Carthaginians, and all of the Diadochi. There was the occasional Greek settlement from which they could recruit hetairoi, but as time passed they had to rely more and more on the native cav (especially when it was better). I've done a fair amount of reading on this, actually, especially re: the Seleucids and Bactrians. I've tried to read about the Indo-Greeks, but there seems to be nothing available online about them.

And I've never read of heavy cavalry being recruited in Arachosia at any time in history. It's just not heavy cav country...too darn hot!

btw, speaking of colonization, the next version will hopefully include the Jewish colonies in the Nile delta and Asia Minor that the Ptolies established. I thought about making a "Jewish colony" buildable, but I couldn't figure out how to tie it to ownership of the Levant.

And besides that I personally never liked the idea of restricting the recruitment of cavalry to certain areas. If rtw would have been a game where you could import horses it would make sense to have them as a resource, but otherwise it`s too restrictive imo. Name a people(anywhere on your map) that lacked horses entirely.

Can't argue too much there. I'm going to make most faction light cav recruitable anywhere.

When you make those building for recruitment(you don`t recruit all units now from government buildings, are you?) you can assume that everything would be brought there to equip the units. Not having horses in Arabia for example is like not having iron and wood there as well and not being able to train anything else than boxers(purely hypothetical example). It might be too restrictive to gameplay.

Oh, Arabia! They should be able to recruit cav there, too, at least the AOR kind.

As for the gameplay, I'll run some tests and see how it works.

Besides, unless I`m proven wrong I was under the impression that what was bred in those special areas(Cappadocia, Media etc.) were the mounts themselves. Not their riders too. And the horses would then be sent to wherever they were needed(as a resource sort of speak), but not necessarily along with their riders bred in the same place. Of course, I`m not telling you not to do it. Just expressing my view on this.

Fair enough...that's why I posted this instead of surprising everybody.

AFAIK, the mounts were special, but they tended to not export them. In other words, if you wanted Nisaean horses in any quantity you had to control Media and you got the local horsemen along with them.

Let's take the Seleucids as an example. As I understand it, when Antiochus the X wanted heavy cavalry, he didn't import the horses and train his own. Instead, he want to Media or (late in the empire, after Media and Bactria had been lost) Larissa on the Orontes and hired both the horses and their highly skilled riders.

I'm with florin on that one. The game mechanics does not allow a good representation of cavalry (or army unit in general, for that matter) recruitment. One could go the way EB has taken, which admittedly has its own flavor but is nonetheless restrictive. I think FOE is going in a similar direction, though.
For the sake of gameplay, I'd rather have the recruitment as it is now.
Now that I think on it, we could allow recuitment of elite units (cavalry or infantry) in some initial lands, and if a faction wants to recruit them in other provinces, it would have to spend a huge amount of resources and time on colonization (i.e. building representing colonization effort, perhaps having the highest barracks level as a prerequisite or vice versa).

I'm amenable to that suggestion. I'm not quite sure how to work it, though. Like I said, besides horde-type invasions and the settlements of Hellenes by Alexander & Co., I've never heard of people bringing their horses with them for heavy cavalry, so I don't have any historical examples to guide me. And I'm not sure how we'd replicate settlements a la Alexander, since he actually moved vast numbers of men to new lands. Allowing someone to do replicate the settlement without replicating the cost to their homeland would almost be unbalancing.

Hmmm, I guess you could do smaller-scale colonization like Ptolemy did of the Jews, but that had stopped (IIRC) by 280 and it might be unbalancing if you could build whatever cool AOR unit you wanted wherever you wanted. The AI would be trying to build Nubian recruitment centers in Scotland.

I am with Iskander here.

Though there is no doubt a major overhaul of cav is a good idea. Iskanders ideas are good there.

Like that you could bring back the Stadion to the recruitment, as the only way to get heavy cav and take most the mercenaries away, only allowing THESE to be recruited in your mentioned areas. The building time for the horse-races could be somewhere around 30 rounds again. This altogether would make sense, since heavy cavallery was an expensive thing to have ever.

Did you ever try to downgrade the value of generals bodyguards? There surely were bodyguards, as we know from a couple of sources, but no tanklike lanciers as presented in the game.

BTW.: Is there a way to reduce the size of the horses itself? Those in the game seem too big to me.

I did downgrade the value of the generals' cavalry, actually. It used to be a lot higher. Is anyone still having problems with cataphract generals being unkillable?

How would I get rid of mercs with a building? I didn't know you could do that.

Some of the horses are too big, really. Most people should be riding horses not much larger than ponies. I'm not sure how to fix that, though. I know nothing about models or how to do unit editing.

[AqD]

3) All of North Africa is going to get cavalry recruitment abilities, since it was all grasslands at the time and you're absolutely right about the cities. Are there any other cities like that notable for their horse importation, though? I can't think of any.

- Seleucid cataphracts (not the 'Agema' unit) which replaced Xystophoroi in the last major battle between Seleucid and Romans. Those cataphracts should be greeks/macedonians by origin (not Medians, who are separatedly mentioned), but their horses would come from Media. As far as I know, the satrap of Media was not settled by Macedonian military settlers, so their cataphracts should not be recruitable there. But if they lose the region they should not be able to recruit cataphracts anymore

- Galatian cavalrymen. The land of Galatia is not a major horse breeding place itself.

- Macedonians imported Scythian horses.. by Alexander's father I remember.


There are also problems with different horse breeds.....


PS: I think Babylonia should also be a horse breeding place - there were native cavalrymen long before the Persians came.

[Carac Caratacus]

............. That's interesting about Iberia being the source of British war horses. I didn't know that.

Hmmm, I probably should have a horse trading system, although I'm not sure which areas really exported their horses much. Those were a pretty big advantage, and people didn't want to give them up. The Greeks in the Ferghana Valley faced down tens of thousands of Chinese soldiers _twice_ to avoid having to trade their horses.

Re the Iberian horse traded to briton, i'm not acutally sure now where i read/found that from - it might have been a tv program even? I do remember it was looking at the use of the war chariot and using skeletol remains from archeological digs involving horse bone to work out the size of the native horse, which would be fine for pulling a chariot, but were quite small mostly. At some point in that archeological history they found an introduction of larger horse and they traced that back to spain. I've looked around on the internet for some info, but havent been able to find anything yet. So i dont know if it really is a widely known thing or maybe just a possibility this particular investigation came up with?

And that reminded me of a historic novel i read, based post-roman period by the auther Anne McCaffrey called 'Black Horses for the King'. It's about a supposed trade between a romano-briton Lord Artos at the trade fair in Septimania for some Libyan horse, and based on an investigation around the predominance of pub names called 'The Black Horse' in the area on twelve battles he fought against the Saxons. It is just a novel, but she did a bit of research and it's quite interesting relating to the arthurian tales(and the whole knight tradition in those). Not the period we are after for ExRM, but it shows people did indeed trade for war-horse.

I know we have camels as a resource(are they required to build units at all?), but the horse is a far more important resource for the majority of the known world in this period i would say. Still if wild_animals are not used for anything it would be better to look at that as a possibility in terms of a trade resource, maybe changing their graphic if possible(if someone shows me where that data is i can have a go at turning the wolf into a horse!)?

I'm with the general concencus that limiting top end cavelry units some how is probably good(maybe restricting them purely to leaders in areas that didn't have access to best quality horse, then use some kind of trade model/building combo to allow recruitment of further heavy cav types?) but keep the low level horse units pretty wide spread. Still it will need experimentation to see if the AI is cool with it all.

[pannonian]

Jamey did some research on those before RL took him away. Basically, they function, but were never fully implemented in the game. You can't add them via script (IIRC), and you darn well can't make them build-able. The best way to get them in there is to put them in when you create the building in descr_strat.

What did you have in mind for them?

I was hoping that one could tie building with traits or ancillaries. I've seen it mentioned that in BI, a general can develop the impressed by cataphracts trait, and thus be able to recruit cataphracts. However, from the mechanics I know of, I don't know how this is done.

[Kurzschlus]

How would I get rid of mercs with a building? I didn't know you could do that.

I am afraid I expressed myself wrong here.

I thought you could control the mercs recruitability in an area to some degree. My suggestion was to take the heavy cavallery out here and allow it only in certain areas.

And make building them on your own in cities more complicated via the building queue.

As for the romans i would keep them the equites, but downgrade their generals body guards to a merely better equites unit, and do so with most of the factions. Diadochi Gernerals might get heteratoi.

A cavallery unit should be under no circumstances be able to enter a 6 man deep phalanx formation from the front. Not even when half of them die trying, as I still see to often in the game, because horses were seldomly armoured in that age.

I believe in fact that the difference in game between most of the heavy and light cavallery is still too big, since in fact the main differencies were better horses and better armor. So you could do here with a raised charge bonus (2 to 3 points)for most heavies and a better defence value.

But I really dont see what difference it should make, whether a sword or spear is wielded by a gallic noble or a gallic light cavallery man. Maybe the sword is of better quality and the man better trained, but to me that justifies only a difference of about 2 points in melee combat attack. Another 1 or 2 points could be added for overall better command of the horse. As I see it, the gap between a similar equiped light and cavallery unit for a faction shouldnt exeed like 3 to 4 points in melee, 3 to 4 charge bonus and defence depending on armor plus 2 points for being better trained.

Apart from some factions as the sarmatians or parthians, this applies to most units on the map.

celtic, british and german horsemen were described as often dismounting in combat, not to loose cehesion in melee, using the horse (a better pony) rather for transportation. they only deserve only a small charge bonus, not much better than their infantrys.

[florin80]

Because that actually seems to be what happened, from what I can tell.
After the 280s, I don't think any new areas of Hellenistic colonization were established.

What historian was bold enough to put that line not to be cross around 280 bc, out of curiosity?
But that`s a bit irrelevant. What`s to stop you as the ruler of the seleucid empire to establish colonies sorta speak, 200 years since you`re departed from the real history line?

I believe this is especially true of heavy cavalry. With the exception of steppe nomads invading, I can't think of anyone who moved into an area and started "growing" (for lack of a better term) their own heavy cavalry (at least in our time period).

The reason why I think you`re fooling yourself when you think you`re making things more realistic is that you`re not looking at the larger picture. You`re saying that heavy horses don`t breed in Arachosia because it is too hot, right? Which means you can`t train hetairoi there if you want. But what happens if you move a unit of hetairoi there and you station it there for decades(it`s my understanding you don`t want to obstruct that too). Where do you think the spare mounts would come from? RTW does not allow you to downgrade the hetairoi to arachosian cavalry on the grounds that the original macedonian hetairoi had past away from old age and so did their horses. Those recruiting buildings only make sense if you think at them as mustering centers. You`re not training an expensive heavy cavalry in a year, right? You`re calling there a noble who has been in the saddle all his life, with his equipment and mounts or you provide these for him yourself at this center. Horses are recorded as being supplied to units far away from home. If you only build heavy cavalry units where the heavy horse breeding areas are you should make sure you only build units where there is iron in the hills nearby or where there is a textile industry so they don`t ride naked etc.
EDIT: my point being that rtw does not allow for micromanagement of that sort and it kinda requires you close your eyes to certain aspects and imagine a reasonable explanation. Just like you can train unlimited numbers of x tribesmen in y region. It doesn`t reflect the numbers of populations, of resources, of how you get them in one place or exhaust them in another etc.

For the gameplay though it`s another matter. I personally think this will fragment it too much, but I may be in a minority or wrong altogether. It remains to be seen.

[Quinn Inuit]

- Seleucid cataphracts (not the 'Agema' unit) which replaced Xystophoroi in the last major battle between Seleucid and Romans. Those cataphracts should be greeks/macedonians by origin (not Medians, who are separatedly mentioned), but their horses would come from Media. As far as I know, the satrap of Media was not settled by Macedonian military settlers, so their cataphracts should not be recruitable there. But if they lose the region they should not be able to recruit cataphracts anymore

Since I don't think I can put conditionals like that on recruitment, I think we're stuck making them recruitable only in Media.

btw, I read that the cataphracts were native horse, which is why the rulers had a separate, better-sounding cavalry team made up of Hellenes ("You're not just the agema, guys, you're the agema basilikon!"). Am I remembering that wrong?

- Galatian cavalrymen. The land of Galatia is not a major horse breeding place itself.

I was wondering about them last night, actually. I would think the plains in the area would be decent for horses, and wouldn't the Galatians have brought them on their migration?

- Macedonians imported Scythian horses.. by Alexander's father I remember.

That's an interesting question. We know Philip got the horses, but since his baggage train was jacked on the way home by somebody (Dacians?), we don't know for sure that an appreciable number actually arrived there.

There are also problems with different horse breeds.....

*sigh* Yeah, I know. That's just getting into a little too much detail for me right now, though.

PS: I think Babylonia should also be a horse breeding place - there were native cavalrymen long before the Persians came.

Hmmm...true. Were they still raising cavalry there in our period, though? I don't recall anyone who controlled it raising much cavalry there. I mean, I would definitely allow the raising of light cavalry there.

Re the Iberian horse traded to briton, i'm not acutally sure now where i read/found that from - it might have been a tv program even? I do remember it was looking at the use of the war chariot and using skeletol remains from archeological digs involving horse bone to work out the size of the native horse, which would be fine for pulling a chariot, but were quite small mostly. At some point in that archeological history they found an introduction of larger horse and they traced that back to spain. I've looked around on the internet for some info, but havent been able to find anything yet. So i dont know if it really is a widely known thing or maybe just a possibility this particular investigation came up with?

And that reminded me of a historic novel i read, based post-roman period by the auther Anne McCaffrey called "Black Horses for the King". It's about a supposed trade between a romano-briton Lord Artos at the trade fair in Septimania for some Libyan horse, and based on an investigation around the predominance of pub names called "The Black Horse" in the area on twelve battles he fought against the Saxons. It is just a novel, but she did a bit of research and it's quite interesting relating to the arthurian tales(and the whole knight tradition in those). Not the period we are after for ExRM, but it shows people did indeed trade for war-horse.

Interesting. I wish I knew more about the horse trade in this period. We just spent a metric buttload of money on home repairs, so I can't buy the book I'd like to buy on the topic.

I know we have camels as a resource(are they required to build units at all?), but the horse is a far more important resource for the majority of the known world in this period i would say. Still if wild_animals are not used for anything it would be better to look at that as a possibility in terms of a trade resource, maybe changing their graphic if possible(if someone shows me where that data is i can have a go at turning the wolf into a horse!)?

Yes, camels are required to build some units.

As far as a resource, they basically use very small models for resources. I don't know much about making them, though.

I'm with the general concencus that limiting top end cavelry units some how is probably good(maybe restricting them purely to leaders in areas that didn't have access to best quality horse, then use some kind of trade model/building combo to allow recruitment of further heavy cav types?) but keep the low level horse units pretty wide spread. Still it will need experimentation to see if the AI is cool with it all.

I'm definitely concerned about the AI, and stumped as to how to make possession of Region A a requirement to build a unit in Region B.

I was hoping that one could tie building with traits or ancillaries. I've seen it mentioned that in BI, a general can develop the impressed by cataphracts trait, and thus be able to recruit cataphracts. However, from the mechanics I know of, I don't know how this is done.

I'm not sure how they do that, either, but I'd like to know. My guess is that it involves checking for the existence of a trait and then creating a building with a script, but that's just my guess.

I am afraid I expressed myself wrong here.

I thought you could control the mercs recruitability in an area to some degree. My suggestion was to take the heavy cavallery out here and allow it only in certain areas.

You can control recruitment, but only via the text file. I don't think there's anything you can do in-game.

And make building them on your own in cities more complicated via the building queue.

That we can definitely do.

As for the romans i would keep them the equites, but downgrade their generals body guards to a merely better equites unit, and do so with most of the factions. Diadochi Gernerals might get heteratoi.

I think I'm going to leave the generals' units pretty much as is, although if they're too powerful I'll address that.

A cavallery unit should be under no circumstances be able to enter a 6 man deep phalanx formation from the front. Not even when half of them die trying, as I still see to often in the game, because horses were seldomly armoured in that age.

Why not? Didn't the Bactrians and Armenians do reasonably well against Alexander's phalanx?

I believe in fact that the difference in game between most of the heavy and light cavallery is still too big, since in fact the main differencies were better horses and better armor. So you could do here with a raised charge bonus (2 to 3 points)for most heavies and a better defence value.

And skill (in many cases). Let's not forget the skill. So these men are better trained, better equipped, and have bigger, stronger mounts. I think that's worth more than a few charge points.

Also, the defense value needs to be relatively low to reflect that cavalry weren't yet the tanks they were in the Middle Ages. When not charging, they were quite vulnerable.

But I really dont see what difference it should make, whether a sword or spear is wielded by a gallic noble or a gallic light cavallery man. Maybe the sword is of better quality and the man better trained, but to me that justifies only a difference of about 2 points in melee combat attack. Another 1 or 2 points could be added for overall better command of the horse. As I see it, the gap between a similar equiped light and cavallery unit for a faction shouldnt exeed like 3 to 4 points in melee, 3 to 4 charge bonus and defence depending on armor plus 2 points for being better trained.

The difference between actual spear-armed light cav and heavy cav is only 2-4 points in general. The real difference is in the charge value. You're probably looking at sword cav vs. spear cav, where the difference is more substantial, but is made up for by the charge value differential.

Apart from some factions as the sarmatians or parthians, this applies to most units on the map.

celtic, british and german horsemen were described as often dismounting in combat, not to loose cehesion in melee, using the horse (a better pony) rather for transportation. they only deserve only a small charge bonus, not much better than their infantrys.

I disagree. We can't model that (I'd love to, but I can't), so we have to treat these guys as if they fought mounted. Otherwise, the game won't function as it appears.

What historian was bold enough to put that line not to be cross around 280 bc, out of curiosity?
But that`s a bit irrelevant. What`s to stop you as the ruler of the seleucid empire to establish colonies sorta speak, 200 years since you`re departed from the real history line?

No historian in particular. All I meant to say was that I couldn't think of any past 280 B.C. If anyone can, please let me know.

The reason why I think you`re fooling yourself when you think you`re making things more realistic is that you`re not looking at the larger picture. You`re saying that heavy horses don`t breed in Arachosia because it is too hot, right? Which means you can`t train hetairoi there if you want. But what happens if you move a unit of hetairoi there and you station it there for decades(it`s my understanding you don`t want to obstruct that too). Where do you think the spare mounts would come?

No, I'm saying that nobody raised heavy cavalry in Arachosia because it was too hot. I'm sure you could raise the horses there.

I can't obstruct leaving your hetairoi in Arachosia for a few decades, but IRL I don't think anyone did that. You'd only raise a unit like that for your main army or armies.

RTW does not allow you to downgrade the hetairoi to arachosian cavalry on the grounds that the original macedonian hetairoi had past away from old age and so did their horses. Those recruiting buildings only make sense if you think at them as mustering centers. You`re not training an expensive heavy cavalry in a year, right? You`re calling there a noble who has been in the saddle all his life, with his equipment and mounts or you provide these for him yourself at this center. Horses are recorded as being supplied to units far away from home. If you only build heavy cavalry units where the heavy horse breeding areas are you should make sure you only build units where there is iron in the hills nearby or where there is a textile industry so they don`t ride naked etc.

If that's the case, then why didn't the Romans raise cataphracts in Campania after they first saw them? Why didn't the Seleucids do likewise in Antioch, and why didn't the Greeks just import horses so they could have great cavalry, too?

I think the answer is that those nobles that had been in the saddle all their lives only lived in certain places around the world, and only trained in certain ways in those places. Elsewhere, the rich would become the elite hoplites, or the hypaspistai, or the Sacred Band. Bringing in iron is one thing, but bringing in the horse culture is another matter entirely.

For the gameplay though it`s another matter. I personally think this will fragment it too much, but I may be in a minority or wrong altogether. It remains to be seen.

I think the AI will be able to handle it, at least if I reduce the unit costs. Whether it drives people nuts is another matter entirely. Personally, I think it will add a strategic element to the game that's sorely lacking now. For instance, if you're the Seleucids and you lose Media, all of a sudden there are no more cataphracts. That's a pretty big deal.

If you are going to do this, I'd say there should be a building which makes you be able to recruit cavalry in other regions. Also, heavy cavalry should be less expensive and 0-turn, otherwise the AI won't recruit it much at all.

The former is probably not possible, or at least I don't know how it could be done. The latter is doubtless correct. I'm going to start with making it less expensive, which should hopefully do the trick. If I make it 0-turn, the AI will probably go nuts with them.

[Caligula Caesar]

If you are going to do this, I'd say there should be a building which makes you be able to recruit cavalry in other regions. Also, heavy cavalry should be less expensive and 0-turn, otherwise the AI won't recruit it much at all.

[Iskandar]

Well, since you seem set in going that way with ExRm let's make it the best we can. As I said, it offers a different dynamic, like EB, which is also quite enjoyable.

Let me then start with the ideas I have on the subject. First, have a look at the EB recruitment viewer. Since they stayed very close to historical recruitment areas, you can draw ideas from there.

If you are going that way with cavalry, consistency requires that you restrict geographically the recruitment of infantry types as well. At least the elite/special native units, since they require a certain unique fighting ethos and thus are localized among the people of such culture.
(A quick note on the Seleucids - although Media was the cataphract recruitment center, you'd still have to be able to recruit reformed companions in Syria and Babylonia, since the human potential remained there and horses were not bred only in Media. True, suitable breeds were not available in such quantities, but would have existed in the lands of the Hellenic nobility which fought as xystophoroi.)

Also, Parthian and Sarmathian/Scythian/Saka factions should be able to recruit heavy cav in most of the regions they conquer. I'm inclined to put Armenians in this list too, since they were horse people. The land stayed within the nobility class and they bred horses; the higher nobility fought as heavy armored cavalry. You'd have to put more restrictions for them, though, since Parthia could draw on the huge Iranian human pool and the steppe nomads carried their human resource with them , whereas spreading of armenians would have been more gradual. Perhaps the colonization building would serve right in this case.

I've not dabbled yet in the EDB/recruitment mechanics but it seems that you can't represent a trading system that would serve as a partial recruitment requirement. What I mean is, e.g., in Knights of Honor, in order to recruit cavalry you'd need a horses resource which can be gained either by developing your province with the certain base resource (pastures) or trading for it with another nation. I don't think we can achieve such degree of simulation, certainly not represent the effect of stopping the trade for the crucial resource.

I do not think the cavalry should be 0-turn but I definitely needs reducing in price. I proposed 10-15% in another thread but I don't think that would be enough. The same goes for elite infantry either. I'd also make all recruitment 1-turn except perhaps some levy units (like the levy phalanx), which could be 0-turn, but with an extremely high maintenance cost.

The impressed by cats trait is from EB. I think they use a script and allow upgrading the barracks so that the cat recruitment capability is included. At least that's how they introduced the migration form Camillan to Polybian roman units.

I believe the nature of cavalry use is misrepresented in RTR/ExRm. I stumbled upon this google book preview some time ago which changed my perspective a bit. It seems that the Companions/xystophoroi type cav used the "charge" as a means of closing the distance and not as a weapon in itself. They relied on extremely aggressive hand-to-hand (and horse-to-horse) fighting which is how they were able to master eastern cataphracts on a number of occasions under Alxander, albeit with heavy losses. Also the wedge was not a penetrating formation but rather a formation that allowed the unit to change direction the quickest as a whole. The cataphracts were the only cavalry that relied on the charge to break the enemy and even though this time period lacked the stirrups or the four-horn saddle of the Sassanians it still was a formidable threat. However, once they were tired or faced highly trained and determined infantry, their staying power diminished. I have an idea how to change the cav stats to reflect that but I need a few more days to mull it over.

[Carac Caratacus]

Good stuff all around guys Re Iskander's last point about the relative importance of a 'cavalry' in this period in terms of it's battle effect; I agree that it wasn't probably as a whole a hugely defining factor - it was still the time of the infantry(and complex seige equipement with the romans).

Horse was a great transport device, useful for a general to get around the battle field quickly to issue orders etc, and great for chasing down fleeing/broken infantry lines. I agree that basicaly untill the late middle ages where the cataphract tradition was fully developed and heavily mounted knights on huge horse were used like tanks, probably the use of horse in this tradtion wouldn't have been seen too much in the time period of ExRM. basicaly armour hadn't been developed to it's fullest capability to allow this type of horse combat, atleast not on a common basis(i'm sure in desperation and the heat of battle horse did charge into infantry lines).

So if we look at some form of simply making 'heavy cav' less common, and maybe a little less powerfull(although in my 5 or 6 games so far i've not really noticed them being uber units at all, their lack of numbers counts against them it seems?) then we are probably in the ball park. And it's a shame the game code wont allow the trade/resource model to really play a factor that it should, so maybe that just has to be allowed for.

Actualy talking about the respective stats of cavalry made me want to bring something else up. I've noticed in many of the unit stats and descriptions you will see a dissparity between them. So where a unit is described as using a 'shield' it will maybe not have a shield in the picture and not have a shield rating in it's stats etc. There are a whole bunch of things like this that should probably be addressed. I'm starting to make a list of those unit types where i notice this, but is it worth me continuing down this line? I wont change anything myself but if i collect the info on these descrepancies will that be usefull to post to someone responsible for the overall balance/make up of these unit stats?