Improving party speed

[KnooBill]

High morale, pathfiniding skill, party size and the question is: I read somewhere that having horses in the inventory helps; how is that defined? Also being all mounted works too? For example if I have only my companions, some are not mounted by default. I'll give them any horse I can find, will the party speed improve and will it improve more if I give them fast horses? And if on top of that I have horses in my inventory will it improve more?

 

[drunkhobo]

From what I tested, having horses helps, but only by a very small amount. (after the first 6 or so, only .1 difference from 3 horses) I kept adding horses until had something like 15 or 18, then saw absolutely no change after wards . The difference was more apparent when you carry a dozen sacks of salt/iron but in without it, the difference was almost negligible after 12 horses or so

As for companions, it seems to be based off athletics vs riding skill. I have an incredibly small party (20), and I shoved my low level companions on horses and back to walking, and it made absolutely 0 difference in overall party speed.

From what I can tell, it makes zero difference if you use an armored horse or a max speed horse either. It looks like its based off the riding skill

 

[Serazu]

From what I remember in native, having a pure-cavalry army makes your army faster. This also means that having even one prisoner, he slows you down. You 'd better look elsewhere (high morale, pathfinding, smaller but better army, etc.), because the notion of pure cavalry is not practical.

 

[Ser Pounce-A-Lot]

Riding/athlete skills of companions and troops matter most, after pathfinding and morale of course. It surprised me how fast I could still move with my loyal Immortals as the meat of my army. Then I searched the forum, and figured athlete matters as much.

 

[M0rdred]

Which is why there is a rumour in the game which states that a unit of Mettenheim Greatswords are able to move as fast as a company of Heavy Cavalry. What, you didn't think we gave hints like that away in the rumours?

 

[prava]

Someone has done some thorough tests years ago

http://forums.taleworlds.com/index.php/topic,46362.0.html

 

[M0rdred]

Useful find!

 

[NicotiN]

Yeah, like i would give away 5 slots of 1500 denars profit for +1-2 speed) or put more than 4-5 points in inventory management The books also take quite a bit of space.
Looks like if more party members have pathfinding helps speed even more than the horses and don't cost us $$$
But then again....in this game everything is a trade off so it is better to not use speed, have a lot of free inventory slots and party members with training, combat and medicine skills

 

[Ser Pounce-A-Lot]

Which is why there is a rumour in the game which states that a unit of Mettenheim Greatswords are able to move as fast as a company of Heavy Cavalry. What, you didn't think we gave hints like that away in the rumours?

Really? It's high time for me to pay more attention to rumors then..

 

[KnooBill]

There's a rumor that people worship saxondragon 

 

[M0rdred]

Nah, that one is true

 

[mp84]

Which is why there is a rumour in the game which states that a unit of Mettenheim Greatswords are able to move as fast as a company of Heavy Cavalry. What, you didn't think we gave hints like that away in the rumours?

I'm telling ya, it's all about the Mustache

 

[dulahan]

Huh...

I never knew Athletics affected the campaign map speed for infantry as well.  Very interesting.

 

[Asphe]

Yeah, like i would give away 5 slots of 1500 denars profit for +1-2 speed) or put more than 4-5 points in inventory management The books also take quite a bit of space.
Looks like if more party members have pathfinding helps speed even more than the horses and don't cost us $$$
But then again....in this game everything is a trade off so it is better to not use speed, have a lot of free inventory slots and party members with training, combat and medicine skills

... and hope your all 'Mettenheim style' campaign army doesn't get caught by that Jatu army .

Well adding horseys to inventory helps at first, I used a '1 horsey per 6 inventory items' rule of thumb but a horsey is also counted as an item. i.e. a completely empty inventory means faster speed than one full of horses. In any case, the effect on a campaign army drops as the army's size goes up. Once I hit a near 100 size party, I BBQ the horseys.

 

[Sibilance]

Well adding horseys to inventory helps at first, I used a '1 horsey per 6 inventory items' rule of thumb but a horsey is also counted as an item. i.e. a completely empty inventory means faster speed than one full of horses. In any case, the effect on a campaign army drops as the army's size goes up. Once I hit a near 100 size party, I BBQ the horseys.

I'm starting to get superstitious about this whole pile of tomfoolery, and would love to see some contemporary numbers for Warband's packhorse speed scaling. I took the 'six horses, six, all the time, and merchant the hell out of every bag of salt in Pendor' approach, and I thought the horses used to boost my speed earlier in the game, but now I have a mixed party of 104 cav and foot and I'd swear now that Armagan modded the horsey bonus out. You may have hit the nail on the head here, Asphe.

*gets the sazon salt rub and hickory chips*