Riding Horses and making saddles for them to use

[mesheagle]

It's a shame that this game can't be a little bit more in line with real events like using horses to ride and hunt or just to transport someone on long distance from a village. with a blacksmith he could tend to horses and make saddles or maybe the workshop could, even a wagon for transporting other people on long distances would be good , not so many would die or be tied so much. maybe one day this might happen but i am not holding my breath :))

[Ronald Gordo]

I do not think this change should happen. The horse is an ancient animal, but its domestication is relatively recent and the breeding of horses strong enough to carry a man on the back occurred only a short time ago and certainly not in places where DoM is played.

[Mk Z]

Publicado originalmente por Ronald Gordo:

I do not think this change should happen. The horse is an ancient animal, but its domestication is relatively recent and the breeding of horses strong enough to carry a man on the back occurred only a short time ago and certainly not in places where DoM is played.

horse was domesticated in the 5th millenium bc and by the bronze age it had got to north-western europe. some researches believe horseback riding preceded chariots. wild horses are no weaker than mongolian horses which are small but perfectly capable of carrying a man. horsemen were used along with chariots during the bronze age, there is evidence in the ancient egyptian texts and basreliefs.

[Mk Z]

also pretty big horses could be bred in the anicent times, see "buhen horse"
horse size is determined by nutrition during its young age to a large extent. ancients just didnt want to make their horses big, because small horses are more economical.

[Ronald Gordo]

In Kadesh, the first recorded battle of History (indeed, the point at which History becomes written), Egyptian carts faced Hittite carts, both supported by infantry. No horseman is mentioned. Images in ancient Egyptian temples and buildings show a gigantic number of carts, but no man on horseback until very recent periods.

In addition, the first drawings of men on horseback show that they fight in pairs: one holds the reins of other, which throws darts or use bow. Of course they still behave as if they are in a car (cultural heritage or the old custom of continuing to do things the way we have always done). Both, in fact, sit on the hind legs of the horse, not on the back.

When Gaius Julius Caesar invaded Britain (and we're talking about nearly a thousand years after the iron replaced the bronze), he encountered the barbarians using carts, not horsemen.

In fact, historians mention four technological revolutions in the Metal Age: the invention of bronze, the invention of the war chariot, the discovery (in fact, the smelt) of iron, and the domestication of the horse (riding), in that order.

What should be taken into account is that the stirrups give the rider stability and allow the horsemen to fight, including using the combined weight of horse and rider to propel a spear, but the invention of the stirrup is very recent.

In the battles of the past, even when horse breeding was well advanced , cavalry was not a shock weapon, but a way of confusing, chasing, and harassing an already defeated enemy. Even Anibal, one of the greatest generals of the Iron Age, and an expert in the use of cavalry, used his horsemen to surround the enemy, never like a battering ram. Alexander the Great, another master in battles, used the phalanx to pin and press the enemy, leaving the companion cavalry, the hetairoi, to attack the flanks or some weak spot of the adversary. The Parthians used archers on horseback, but even in that region, knights (the heavy cavalry armed with spears) were only used centuries later, when the stirrups appeared. Without stirrups, a horse was no good for melee fighting.

For the rest, and now concluding, fighting on horseback is an activity that requires a degree of specialization and a training time that are impossible for our villagers.

btw: Why are we discussing horses if DoM still has no cats? Priorities, as the name says, have to come first.

[Mk Z]

Ronald Gordo,
egyptian reliefs show a number of horsemen, and for the battle of kadesh too:
https://www.nilemuse.com/muse/1-3.html
also i've seen a text mention of asiatic horsemen but cant find the reference

the assyrian relief of 'paired' horsemen (just a single evidence of such phenomenon afaik) may show a noble with a page

David Anthony has researched the bit wear of Botai horses' teeth (4k bc) and thinks they were ridden.

Ceasar: "In chariot fighting the Britons begin by driving all over the field hurling javelins, and generally the terror inspired by the horses and the noise of the wheels are sufficient to throw their opponents' ranks into disorder. Then, after making their way between the squadrons of their own cavalry, they jump down from the chariot and engage on foot."
and there are other quotes showing that celts used chariots along with horsemen
http://penelope.uchicago.edu/~grout/encyclopaedia_romana/britannia/boudica/chariot.html
just like other peoples like indians, chinese, persians..
btw, persians and later romans also employed cataphracts who were impact cavalry but didnt have stirrups. i've seen practicing equestrians writing about the stirrups thing being overblown.

[Ronald Gordo]

@ Mk Z,

Wear on horse's teeth may come from long reins used in cars or any tractioned loads.

You are right about G. J. Caesar, but, as I said, he lived and fought centuries after the iron was cast.

I invite you to examine the battle of Kadesh because, here, you have a point (and stones carved by Egyptians to throw in my head).

Writing about lawsuits, the Italian Ferri said that "the queen of evidence is human logic." This also applies to History.

Consider the cost of building a war cart, the materials employed for this, the time required, the requirement of a flat terrain to use it, the relative speed (compared to a loose horse), the employment of two people (one to drive and another to fight), the maneuverability of the war cart (again compared to a loose horse) and think: your army have horses, hundreds or even thousands of horses ... why use wagons when you have horses?
Your army uses bows and javelins and need not discuss stirrups or expect them to be invented.
So ... tell me, my good Pharaoh, son of Horus, why do you put cars in battle?
The only explanation I can imagine is because most (if not all) of your horses can't carry a soldier in the back.
If you have another explanation, please tell me. I do not want Sobek to eat my heart for the sin of being dumb.

And may Bast forgive me for not talking about cats.

[Mk Z]

Ronald Gordo, wheels came into use a millenia after the horses' domestication, but they could be used as pack animals so yes bit wear doesnt 100% prove they were ridden. Botai people were living by hunting horses in the steppe, so Anthony thinks they rode horses to hunt horses. Btw there was a native Siberian culture which rode reindeer to hunt reindeer (Nganasan).

the use of chariots is indeed a puzzle.

first of all i think they werent slow (on the contrary!)
The highest race speed recorded over two furlongs is 70.76 km/h
modern chariot race: 400m in 22 sec, thats 65 km/h
http://www.dallasequestriancenter.com/chariot-racing-still-alive-today/
and chariots arent comparably popular nowdays, horses they use arent the best, so it seems a chariot's top speed is really no slower or only slightly slower than that of a rider.

and in the ancient times chariots could be faster than riders, as horses were smaller and had to carry relatively heavier burden. horsemsn were typically trotting at about 15 km/h while a chariot could gallop at 40-50 km/h for quite a long time. When driving over the sod a wheel would reduce the horses' burden about 3 times, 2 men + light chariot = 180 kg, /3 = 60 kg, /2 horses = 30 kg per horse. At the same time a rider's horse carries the full weight of a rider, 70 kg = 2.33x heavier burden, plus i think pulling is more efficient biomechanically than back-carrying.

I think chariots could outrun enemy cavalry and skirmishers, afaik the chinese continued to use them well into the first millenium against the nomads and less developed neighbors. a chariot could also take more projectiles and was more convenient to shoot and fight from so it had multiple advantages.

why did they disappear -- i think because of cheaper armors / better shields. a wooden plank can be pierced easily by an arrow from a powerful bow, while plywood is much stronger. plywood shields were used by the romans, those could be large and lightweight at the same time, making enemy archers pretty useless. and greeks covered their shields with metal. individual armors also became more widespread with time. But in the bronze age they were rare. e.g. in the battle of megiddo, tutmose captured just 1 bronze armor (belonging to the ruler of megiddo), 200 leather armors, 900 chariots and 500 bows, hence even elite warriors who fought in chariots didnt typically wear armor, not to mention infantry.

that said, chariots could be cost-efficient in the bronze age, but became useless in the iron age.

The Liu-t’ao’s authors even ventured detailed estimates of the relative effectiveness of chariots and infantry: “After the masses of the Three Armies have been arrayed opposite the enemy, when fighting on easy terrain one chariot is equivalent to eighty infantrymen and eighty infantrymen are equivalent to one chariot. On difficult terrain one chariot is equivalent to forty infantrymen and forty infantrymen are equivalent to one chariot.”

These are startling numbers, all the more so for having been penned late in the Warring States period when states still numbered their chariots by the thousands. Even allowing for exaggeration, given that the Liu-t’ao generally reflects well-pondered experience and is a veritable compendium of Warring States military science, the era’s commanders must have had great confidence in the chariot’s capabilities. Nevertheless, it might be noted that the great T’ang dynasty commander Li Ching, upon examining these materials in the light of his own experience at a remove of a thousand years, concluded that the infantry / chariot equivalence should only be three to one.

https://weaponsandwarfare.com/2018/02/22/the-shang-chariot-in-battle-i/

chariots could be more deadly than horse archers because of better fire rate/accuracy thanks to 'division of labor': chariot archer had a better archery skill as he had not to be trained in driving, and he wasnt distracted by driving in combat. And i think standing position was more convenient for shooting on the move before the stirrups. At the same time thanks to its speed a chariot was harder to hit with projectiles and harder to run down for the foot soldiers so it had more 'battle time'. e.g. 2x damage and 3x more battle time, thats 6x damage per battle for say 3x cost. But when fighting against heavy infantry, both chariots and horse archers had the same battle time, so the chariots became inefficient (2x damage for 3x cost)
thats my theory ;-)

as for cats they were used to pull chariots by the norse gods

ps a horse archer on a big horse was probably not better vs light infantry (say 1.5x battle time for 1.5x cost) and worse vs heavy infantry

[martiño]

Yes, horses in the Iron Age were mostly used for chariots, and it's hard to imagine these as being very effective in battle, but it is something in our minds, and we might look into it at some point.

[mesheagle]

OMG you people have blown this all out into a battle of the horse, it is a know fact that horses were used to pull carts as well as donkeys, so why do only carts carry material and not humans as well , all i said was that it would be great to have horses and or donkeys to transport humans with cargo in stead of having to walk miles pulling the donkey or horse along, fair enough that the game was based on the base model of Planetbase where everybody just walked around the base but still it would be nice to be lazy and ride a cart or a horse in the game and have to make saddles, or for those who like to kill a war cart, still it is interesting to read what people think about the history on man and horse :))

[Mk Z]

Publicado originalmente por martiño:

Yes, horses in the Iron Age were mostly used for chariots, and it's hard to imagine these as being very effective in battle, but it is something in out minds, and we might look into it at some point.

in the game, people and animals could have less hit points but a higher chance to evade a ranged attack, which would depend on their speed. a chariot could shoot at the approaching enemies, running circles around them, remaining mostly unscathed and evading close combat

[Vattende]

Publicado originalmente por Ronald Gordo:

@ Mk Z,

Wear on horse's teeth may come from long reins used in cars or any tractioned loads.

You are right about G. J. Caesar, but, as I said, he lived and fought centuries after the iron was cast.

I invite you to examine the battle of Kadesh because, here, you have a point (and stones carved by Egyptians to throw in my head).

Writing about lawsuits, the Italian Ferri said that "the queen of evidence is human logic." This also applies to History.

Consider the cost of building a war cart, the materials employed for this, the time required, the requirement of a flat terrain to use it, the relative speed (compared to a loose horse), the employment of two people (one to drive and another to fight), the maneuverability of the war cart (again compared to a loose horse) and think: your army have horses, hundreds or even thousands of horses ... why use wagons when you have horses?
Your army uses bows and javelins and need not discuss stirrups or expect them to be invented.
So ... tell me, my good Pharaoh, son of Horus, why do you put cars in battle?
The only explanation I can imagine is because most (if not all) of your horses can't carry a soldier in the back.
If you have another explanation, please tell me. I do not want Sobek to eat my heart for the sin of being dumb.

And may Bast forgive me for not talking about cats.

Yes, you're mostly right. Anyway it's hard to define, but i would admit that horse aren't the most urgent in DoM.
But, here we go again we the *we want mounts* argument, i'm not surprised.

For Bast and the cats, sure, i would love see them at my side, but again.
While we can imagine that the cat was known by some civilasation before we may think, there isn't a complet certitude like mostly. But yeah, a cave-lion...