Horses. What are they good for?

We are all aware that Recruits can be worth their weight in Gold in the Game. I have often wondered if there should be a pool of available Horses in a similar way to recruits. It would mean players having to consider how many Cavalry units & artillery batteries they would have to Raise. Or do you all think it would be an over complication?

It may mean armies would become more Infantry based as was I believe for most of the European Nations at least the case.

Also in Poland it is illegal to transfer horses out of the country so no selling them then

It would also mean looking at what breeds were available at that time. The thoroughbred only really appeared around 1700. A cavalry horse is sometimes different to a native breed (little shetlands, exmoors etc). In the game Richard allows players to develop or use existing breeds of horses. Its probably best to go for what was historically accurate for a country. So Turkish horses should be light and fast mares using their own breeds. West European horses should be heavier like a Holstien or Hanovarian. The perfect example being the Spanish school Lippizaners of Vienna. Most of their movements were military fighting moves.

Portugal starting can't raise cavalry except as elite due to lack of good horses, so in some ways this is built into the game in various ways.

In many ways, I think it might make for a more interesting game if you could in your start up trade off cash for other benefits: Food stockpiles, recruits, better horses, etc.

But I don't think it's a big enough difference that it is worth revising the game that much to add these features.

Except the food. I still think famine/food loss causes players to drop in early years without a commensurate benefit to having it in the game. I'd rather keep more people in the game longer with the chance they get more invested in their positions and so will handle some adversity when it arises later.

China is the other way around, can not raise elite cavalry. do not know if it is the horses or other reasons.

I agree that a famine in the first year can hurt a position and the players interest in it. The problem being that there is not much he can do about it if nobody will help him. Large nations such as France, China, Russia, India have no good options really and that is not a good thing.

I wonder if your night soil men collected from horse stud farms (assuming you've night soil men in each of your towns/cities) it would add a greater increase to the benefits to agriculture? The game states collecting human waste from cities has such use, so I'd imagine equine waste could be used similarly.

Obvious other use for horses, especially in times of famine, slaughter them for meat. How many positions use their cavalry units in the first x-amount of years? If famine did strike, slaughter for meat most of the non-Elite horse to stave off hunger and then sort out restocking horses later (possibly using an improved breed).

Sadly I know too much about horse s***. It is no good as a soil improver as in decomposing it uses up too much nitrogen. Unless it is kept for 3 years to decompose. So fields over grazed by horses get called "horse sick". The quality goes down as the nitrogen is sucked out of the ground. So these days if a location is short of grazing and they know what they are doing the droppings should be cleared from the fields and/or chain harrow the ground. Traditionally the way to deal with horse droppings is to run cattle and then sheep on a field after the horses. The mixture of droppings will balance out the loss of nitrogen and the different types of animal will keep the worm burden down in the fields. So sheep destroy horse worm eggs etc

Interesting! I had no idea that horse dung wasn't actually that good for fields.

how to compost horse manure

Apparently the wrong mixture of stuff and it will produce ammonia while composting which doesn't sound beneficial...

Ammonia is quite good for some soil types but you dont want to breath the stuff in barn lacking air or get in on the skin.

According to the Folk Wisdom of my Grandfather (a keen organic gardener before the term was used) Horse Manure is really good for Roses. But he used to favour fish meal (ground up fish bones) and bulls blood for his veg. He also used to dig ash from the fire into his garden to help the drainage and break up what was originally a heavy clay soil.

Dont know why these particular fertilizers worked for him but they seemed to do. I assume its all to do the the PH of the soil and things like this.......and it probably should be noted that some fertilizers will work great for some soils and plants but will be dire for other types of soil.
However I feel that going into this amount of detail in a game is probably going a bit over the top.

Probably best option is to provide various types of fertilizer for farmers to use as they see fit.

Ref horses as recruits strictly speaking these would have to be divided up into a) Light Horses for Hussars/Lt Cavalry b) Heavy horses for the heavy cavalry and c) Heavy draft horses for the artillery. While this may be historic I suspect that the major factor concerning the number of Cavalry V number of Foot/Artillery/Naval players raise will be operational. As I suspect it was for many powers in real life.

Thus Eastern European powers with large land areas to cover like Russia, Sweden, Poland, Ottomans etc will have a lot of Cavalry. While powers like England and the UDP with lots of Island Colonies reached by Water will not raise so many Cavalry.

England esp with access to quality Irish Studs is a good example of a power which can raise a lot more Cavalry if it wanted. But what use is Cavalry in the forests of North America or guarding ports/ Island colonies?

Think its probably more fun to allow players to sort out their own force balance. Unless they fight very unhistoric out of area campaigns they will probably soon find out most armies had a particular balance for a reason not always linked to the cost and how many horses were on the market.

Excellent information on equine waste. Certainly has saved me asking my farming academies to look into muck use - They can concentrate on B.S. now, and we have a lot of B.S. in Rozwi! [if there was a Bull emoticon to use I'd be using it   ]

Rozwi_Game10 wrote:Excellent information on equine waste. Certainly has saved me asking my farming academies to look into muck use - They can concentrate on B.S. now, and we have a lot of B.S. in Rozwi! [if there was a Bull emoticon to use I'd be using it   ]

Pity I was looking forward to reading about the great rose gardens of Rozwi......important for the development of Rozwi perfume industry and so young maidens can throw flowers under the hoofs of your victorious cavalry on their return.

Oh one other point .....eating horses which belong to your Nobles & Cavalry really upset both = Honour will take a really bad hit and your Cavalry will end up with low morale.

Well, now you have me imagining The Perfume Gardens of Khami, so maybe there is a use for all that horse muck after all!

Bugger, I'd forgotten about those soft-hearted horsey troops. I bet they'd be the type to feed their last handful of grain to the animals too, and die of starvation themselves. Maybe I need to instil some Shaka-like, draconian discipline into the Rozwi national mentality.

"Throw away your sandals! And you will stamp down on those thorns until I say stop!"

Rozwi_Game10 wrote:Well, now you have me imagining The Perfume Gardens of Khami, so maybe there is a use for all that horse muck after all!

Bugger, I'd forgotten about those soft-hearted horsey troops. I bet they'd be the type to feed their last handful of grain to the animals too, and die of starvation themselves. Maybe I need to instil some Shaka-like, draconian discipline into the Rozwi national mentality.

"Throw away your sandals! And you will stamp down on those thorns until I say stop!"

Seem to recall that Shaka got speared to death by his own generals/brothers.

And did you not say earlier that Rozwi has given Richard a Janissary type Guard which gets a "time of the month" every turn?

Ever considered that what your Character needs is a really fast royal yacht stocked with large amounts of cash.

Nobody would dare go against the Changamire's wishes. A quick sniffing out by a Sangoma and we'd soon have the trouble makers rounded up, accused of witch craft, and have sharpened wooden spikes hammered up their backsides!