SP - World Map Suggestion: Horses should be fed

[Yangbang]

I dont understand why this idea is so unfathomable to some people. Having to feed your horses is literally the same as feeding your troops. And if they aren't feed to a certain capacity, then they aren't battle ready and their riders are simply put on foot at the start of a battle.

It's really a great idea and with just a little brain power I bet it could easily be made a feature.

 

[Vespa]

I think it's a little overpowered to be able to just have an army of horses, increasing your carrying capacity without having any negative effect. I have almost 300 horses in my army, with just 100 soldiers.
If you had to feed your animals it would be harder to maintain such a big amount of horses which I feel would be beneficial for the experience.

If this or comparable features are implemented, I suggest there be an option to turn it off. Not everyone wants to micromanage select details or have everything simulated. For example, stamina could be implemented. Your party should have to rest every so often - say, on a related note, for meals.

That said, I get that horses are not that far removed from party members. Should they level up? They do in real life (to degrees - granted, it's not often that a dwarf pony levels up into a Clydesdale). Is the line that's drawn end with food? Should it be a simple simulation requiring X amount of food per horse or would it vary per breed and cargo (e.g., supplies, a person, their armor - it goes on)?

 

[A_Mustang]

I don't think we need to raise horse to the point of npc/leveling: the current system of horse, pack horse and war horse do that well enough with equipment.

The primary point is the reduce the value of simply have massive numbers of horses in your baggage train with no downsides. This is the current issue people are having with the horse herd gameplay: there is no reason not to mass horses.

While the herd slow down feature is a start, but i'm not sure it's could be balanced correctly, and adding the requirement of horse feed to maintain your horses adds another balancing axis.

Realistically, armies in the middle ages and even today are restricted by their baggage train. The mongols required scouting of pasture as they advanced in conquest in order to maintained their herds. There are a hundred ways of balancing the horse herd problem. Food and herding of pack animals seem to be the most obvious and intuitive.

 

[Holy Shift]

Even Khuzaits doesnt have massive horsemen. Who is gathering an army or cavalry?

 

[Wasdefg123]

Just no. got tired of buying food for my men it's not fun, if you want to nerf horses just increase their salary

 

[DestructoRama]

It adds to the game, it makes it less attractive to have too many horses in your party. You know horses offer benefits. And yes, the AI buys food for it's soldiers already so it will also buy food for their horses. I would also accept an additional daily fee to pay per horse.

You want stuff to always be as easy as possible I noticed. Just play with cheats: problem solved.



Yea, and then if you run from a big party you need to tell them to pause for a second because your horses need to graze, right :

It adds to the game, it makes it less attractive to have too many horses in your party. You know horses offer benefits. And yes, the AI buys food for it's soldiers already so it will also buy food for their horses. I would also accept an additional daily fee to pay per horse.

You want stuff to always be as easy as possible I noticed. Just play with cheats: problem solved.



Yea, and then if you run from a big party you need to tell them to pause for a second because your horses need to graze, right

It does not add to the game. Sorry, but sitting in the inventory Screen for 40% of my playtime sucks. Why the hell would I want to just keep arduously clicking resources? Fill up the resources. Leave settlement. Uh oh! 2-3 days went by and my horses ate half of it and now another 1/3 is rotten trash and my men are nearly out. Time to go back to another settlement and repeat.

All this unimaginative idea would bring to the gameplay loop is constantly focusing on having a huge over-abundance if food at all times, and having to constantly babysit some stupid supply balance, replenishing constantly as it would degrade.

What a boring, unimaginative, lazy idea. It’s not new. It’s not fun. It’s not interesting. It’s not game-changing.

It’s a chore. If you like playing complex RTS and diplomacy games to manage your food stocks and talk to the inventory screen all day, you have no business lecturing others on what is “fun”.

 

[DestructoRama]

terrible idea, horses graze as been said 100x times, time is accelerated and tacking this on is just pure tedium

+1, 100%

I want to fight battles and concern myself with strategy, tactics and diplomacy.

This is not farming simulator.

 

[DestructoRama]

I dont understand why this idea is so unfathomable to some people. Having to feed your horses is literally the same as feeding your troops. And if they aren't feed to a certain capacity, then they aren't battle ready and their riders are simply put on foot at the start of a battle.

It's really a great idea and with just a little brain power I bet it could easily be made a feature.

It’s not unfathomable. It’s stupid. It’s boring, tired, unfun, tedious, and a waste of time.

Go play stardew valley.

Seriously, no one plays mb for livestock management. Like, what? It’s about armies, battles, seiges and complex diplomatic relationships.

You’re talking about implementing some boring, worn out mechanic that’s been in countless games over the last 30 years, and you want MORE of THAT???

Awful, awful idea. Yes, let’s make the devs spend weeks on making us all take more intense care of our horses. That’s much better use of their time over expanding the actual gameplay, populating the map with unique situations and areas, introducing strategic activities on the map and deepening the AI and siege mini games.

Yes, screw all that. I want to be constantly reminded that my horsies need babysitting!

 

[Yangbang]

Seriously, no one plays mb for livestock management. Like, what? It’s about armies, battles, seiges.

War logistics is the greatest part of all wars. I'll assume you don't know so I'll enlighten you of the 4 B's of war.

Beans, bullets, bandaids, and bad guys.

For all your talk of wanting TW to make bannerlord a good war game, but to exclude immersive factors of war. You really sound like an arcade player.

Go play fortnite.

 

[DestructoRama]

War logistics is the greatest part of all wars. I'll assume you don't know so I'll enlighten you of the 4 B's of war.

Beans, bullets, bandaids, and bad guys.

For all your talk of wanting TW to make bannerlord a good war game, but to exclude immersive factors of war. You really sound like an arcade player.

Go play fortnite.

Lol, I’ll repeat, go play stardew valley.

Nah, I just don’t care about boring mechanics like babysitting a bunch of arbitrary numbers. It’s unimaginative. It’s a synthetic time sink to get players to log more hours in an endless cycle of clicking a food icon every 20 minutes.

They have beautiful graphics, a beautiful map, and a deep diplomacy system. They should leverage what they have instead of add further complexity for what amounts to a worn out gameplay mechanic of repetition and mindlessness.

I want to go to battle. I already pay a bunch for a lot of management, and the fief management System sounds to get further complex as well.

We already have to keep food handy, have a good variety etc. it’s just bothersome, and what you’re asking for is more of the same mechanic we already have, but with more icons to click and more **** to carry around.

No thanks.

 

[darksoulshin]

Lol, I’ll repeat, go play stardew valley.

Nah, I just don’t care about boring mechanics like babysitting a bunch of arbitrary numbers. It’s unimaginative. It’s a synthetic time sink to get players to log more hours in an endless cycle of clicking a food icon every 20 minutes.

They have beautiful graphics, a beautiful map, and a deep diplomacy system. They should leverage what they have instead of add further complexity for what amounts to a worn out gameplay mechanic of repetition and mindlessness.

I want to go to battle. I already pay a bunch for a lot of management, and the fief management System sounds to get further complex as well.

We already have to keep food handy, have a good variety etc. it’s just bothersome, and what you’re asking for is more of the same mechanic we already have, but with more icons to click and more **** to carry around.

No thanks.

considers logistics from the point of view of battles and balance.
Each army needs food and ammunition to cross a territory.
If these resources were always available or easily available (as they are now), then these armies could cross half the world and if they are lucky enough to find enemies that had damaged each other, simply the snowball effect occurs that we have seen a couple of times.

Furthermore, a smaller or much smaller army can hardly stop a large army or slow it down, because it does not have the strength to do it.

Now imagine that this large army has a line that connects it to the last city it left behind.
The chariots that periodically transport food and ammunition to this army pass along this line.
Now this army is about to travel half the world to always attack that damaged country.
But once you enter enemy territory and having no other armies to defend the line, you see that line cut by one of the enemy armies.
Now the great army has 2 possibilities:
1) conquer what must conquer as fast as it can.
But without the supply line, food is starting to run low.
If the enemy manages to slow him down until he runs out of food ... well ... they end napoleon in russia ...
2) go back and restore the line, then form more armies or groups and cover a larger territory so that its supply line is not cut.

You can see how a weak faction now has a chance against a larger faction.
It also gives more value to many other mechanics and to the map itself, which becomes "geographically relevant".

It's a good way not to make the game repetitive until you get bored, is it?

 

[Memento]

+1,if you'll be able to determinate which food you're able to cosume like not allowing soldiers to eat/drink grain or beer etc etc

 

[Ironsun]

I think if implemented properly this could have a positive effect on the overall experience!

 

[Rabies]

The obvious solution would be to include an option to delegate to a companion the responsibility of keeping the horses fed. (And the troops, for that matter.)

That way, you can simulate the logistics but still allow the player to concentrate on other things if they can't be bothered with the micromanagement. After all, that's what most people would do anyway if they were landed Noble: employ someone else to look after the boring stuff for you.

 

[Dcvd2005]

Are you sure this would be more realistic?

The Mongol armies were successful in part because their horses could graze off the land. They managed 2-4 mounts per soldier without issue. The Mamluks started a policy of scorched earth (burning pastures) to prevent grazing.

I'm not convinced by the arguments that the game doesn't show armies taking time to graze. I'm not aware of anyone measuring the distances in the game and figuring out how fast parties are actually moving. In fact, part of the reason why Mongol armies moved as quickly as they did (60 miles per day is given by multiple books) is because that was the only way they could keep the horses fed with enough grass. See e.g. https://history.stackexchange.com/a/10336

 

[darksoulshin]

Are you sure this would be more realistic?

The Mongol armies were successful in part because their horses could graze off the land. They managed 2-4 mounts per soldier without issue. The Mamluks started a policy of scorched earth (burning pastures) to prevent grazing.

I'm not convinced by the arguments that the game doesn't show armies taking time to graze. I'm not aware of anyone measuring the distances in the game and figuring out how fast parties are actually moving. In fact, part of the reason why Mongol armies moved as quickly as they did (60 miles per day is given by multiple books) is because that was the only way they could keep the horses fed with enough grass. See e.g. https://history.stackexchange.com/a/10336

the consumption of animal feed could be linked to the biome in which it is found.
If you are on green grasslands, then horses consume much less food.
If instead it is winter and there is nothing around, the animals consume what they should consume.
In this way the various factions would have a different way of relating to the environment and logistics.

 

[Meko]

You can feed the horses to the other horses, horses are food if you got nothing else.

 

[Q. Velanor Lycanus]

I understand I'm late to the party. But couldn't the feeding of horses be worked in as a party speed nerf and take it as implied within the game mechanics that travel between locations automatically factors in that horses need to eat?

There's already the herd penalty that is a fixed speed nerf that makes sense as trying to constantly wrangle extra horses would automatically slow you down. But if there was an added mechanic where traveling horses across grasslands would incur no speed penalty, traveling horses across snow or desert would incur a "burdensome" speed penalty with following rules:

-Carrying "horse provisions" along the way completely negates the speed penalty across all terrains so long as you have provisions (horses consume as food)
-Camels have zero speed penalty in deserts but penalized in snow
-Sturgian horses have zero speed penalty in snow but penalized in desert
-Steppe horses have half speed penalty in desert and snow
-"Temperate" equines only compete on equal footing with other horses through grasslands and temperate forests

I think it would add a very interesting layer to the husbandry of the game where Sturgians have a horse advantage in snow, Aserai have an automatic desert advantage on camels, the Khuzaits are adapted to travel through both, and the temperate kingdoms have to carry food for horses into those places to compete.

Also work it into the game mechanics where a player of Sturgian origin can purchase Sturgian horses at a lower price than someone of a different origin until you build Charm perks. Apply the same dynamic Khuzait vis-a-vis steppe horses and Aserai vis-a-vis camels and I think it would all work together quite nicely.