I think horses & horse stables are needed when your town gets large. Especially for the Barrack soldiers. If you don’t build & maintain soldier barracks on every side, and the raiders enter from the opposite side, by the time you get your soldiers to engage them, alot of damage is already done. Horses would be very helpful for many other reasons too.
I do realize and found out that numerous watch towers are very effective too. I utilize both. But still…Horses please !
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I concur, horses should be a must in my opinion, like what you said but also for exploration in a big map
I think horses and oxen should be added to the game to work the fields and carry goods or materials. Horses and oxen were the primary sources of power at this time. The villagers should be slowed down to allow the use of the animals for full advantage
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I’m a proponent of the humble donkey/burro, and its more upscale model the mule, once you have horses. Oxen for early draft, donkey/burro for pack, and early small donkey carts.
Horses were often restricted to nobility, often by law. To even get a mule, it would usually be a gift from the local landowner. Since 99.99% of them are sterile, that kept the horse monopoly intact.
What time and place are you referring to? Certainly not Medieval Europe…
Full text from where wikipedia grabbed that abstract, which is only about horses but:
https://www.bionity.com/en/encyclopedia/Horses_in_the_Middle_Ages.html
Has:
Mule trains, for land travel, and barges, for river and canal travel, were the most common form of long-distance haulage, although wheeled horse-drawn vehicles were used for shorter journeys.
The start of the section Work Horses:
Work horses
A variety of work horses were used throughout the Middle Ages. The pack horse (or “sumpter horse”) carried equipment and belongings. Cart horses pulled wagons for trading and freight haulage, on farms, or as part of a military campaign. These draft horses were smaller than their modern counterparts; pictorial and archeological evidence suggests that they were stout but short, approximately 13-14 hands, and capable of drawing a load of 500-600 lb per horse.
That is a pony! And northern Europe did use ponies as work horses. Fell and Moor ponies of today in the UK are still typical and the Icelandic pony is a still used riding pony. With a gait for riding.
They were less suitable for more mountainous terrain, for that there were donkeys, and mules.
If you want to know about mules you need to go to works on mules and donkeys, like:
(University of Malta author)
Has one interesting tidbit that wars in the 1400s created much demand for war horses and mules/palfreys. But the supply was lacking. Too many of the breeders were using the mares to produce mules rather than horses due to the preference for mules. So laws were passed during the war to force royals required to supply mounts to keep at least 1 horse per 1 mule and to breed no more than 1/4 of the mares to donkeys during the wars so they’d be able to produce war horses in the numbers king demanded for the war.
Next Up:
Here is a reference on horse ownership being restricted to nobility in that era:
https://scholarworks.calstate.edu/downloads/qb98mg704
Often the “palfrey” or the animal the knight would ride for the whole trip instead of the warhorse (less comfortable gait and would be fresh) was a mule! The mare (horse parent) would be gaited (a specific stride pattern that is more comfortable to ride long distances) in hopes the mule would also be gaited.
And, from the Malta article, this about sums it up:
It is said of the Sicilian peasant that «he loves his donkey as he loves his wife».
That specifically says it became legally restricted to own “the most prestigious mounts”, not horses in general.
You consider sumpter horses as ponies - even though war horses of the time were only slightly larger at 14-16 hands - and that somehow makes them not-horses? Knights often rode horses the exact same height as what you consider ponies into battle - as your own first link points out. Hobbies, horses the skirmishers rode into battle, were 13-14 hands. They were all that small.
And those sumpter horses were very commonly used by commoners, not just donkeys. No monopoly on horses existed, no restriction purely to the higher nobility. Sumpter horses, palfreys and destriers all weren’t specific breeds, but types of horses, with different intended uses. All your linked articles confirm that.
I also don’t understand what you’re trying to say with that “Triumph of the Mule” paper, that doesn’t even seem to cover the relevant time period, nor make claims about all horses of the commoners being replaced by donkeys and mules.
I wasn’t contesting the use of donkeys and mules, just you’re claims of a horse monopoly of the nobility that didn’t exist in the time frame. You yourself started your reply with the mention of horse-drawn cars for shorter journeys. Those were very common for peasants bringing their goods to town. The only long-distance travel relevant to Farthest Frontier is the travelling merchants - nothing the player controls. All transport on the map would be considered very short journeys, like from a farming village to the closest city.
And the very next sentence from your link describes transport within a city:
Four-wheeled wagons and two-wheeled carts were more common in towns, such as London and, depending on type of vehicle and weight of the load, were usually pulled by teams of two, three, or four horses harnessed in tandem. In areas with good roads, regular carrier services were established between major towns.
(All of those in the hands of commoners, btw.)
I see no problem if the devs wanted to add donkeys and mules, but horses would be the more common choice. Certainly not reserved to the nobility.
Horse where more for nobles then farmers an ox’s could be used for work or food.
There was significant difference between northern and southern Europe in the towns. The pony (fell, moor, various native scandinavian/icelandic) filled the niche in usage that the donkey/burro filled further south. Mules however spread and a good mule was more prized than an average horse at that time.
I knew about the nobility laws from the descendants of said nobility explaining it to me when I started breeding one of the few breeds of horses that had been previously nobility restricted. They were 15-16 hands btw. and analysis of both horse genomes and preserved horse armor back that up. Still small considering what you see in say movies. I learned all this working, professionally with mule historians, rare horse breeds conservationists and breeding one of them. Many of the cartage “breeds” (Cleveland Bay) have nearly gone extinct, most were what you would call landrace breed in modern lingo. Also as a farmer, donkey poop is better than cow poop. Sheep poop though is better than both so eh.
So, I could really go on and on about the subject! But I think I have derailed this enough.
I still think the humble burro/donkey and the mule would be great! But a peasant draft/riding pony would also be fitting, but then were would the mules come from? Oh yeah, its a game … the trader!