Cavalry Speed: What's the difference?

[General Zhukov]

Well, one of the most valuable functions of light cavalry, reconnaissance, does not come into play. It would be nice if having light cavalry in an army extended sight range on the campaign map by three or four squares. As it stands, spies are the best scouts. On crusade, however, it would be better to have some light cav for recon since agent tag-alongs negate the bonus movement.

[econ21]

This thread needs a tester - a person with a stop watch and some time to kill. Some members (CBR?) measured running speeds in M2TW to compare them with MTW and RTW. But I am not sure how they managed to translate the distance covered in game into metres.

[IvarrWolfsong]

Every once in a while I notice that the Mercenary Frankish Knights, when controlled by the AI, move super fast. I don't know if this is an AI cheat or something but they certainly move faster than any of my heavy cavalry.

Ohhh and Stradiots <drooooool> if only I could recruit them and Vards into one army ...

[CBR]

This thread needs a tester - a person with a stop watch and some time to kill. Some members (CBR?) measured running speeds in M2TW to compare them with MTW and RTW. But I am not sure how they managed to translate the distance covered in game into metres.

Yep I did some tests. I found the distances by putting several units into one line and multiplying number of files with the distance between each file. Then its just a question of timing the units running along that line.

That distance can either be taken from the unit stat file(soldier spacing side to side) or measured by using a missile unit and see how far away you can move the pointer before the little arrow turns red (which means its out of range) and then see how many files that is.

For infantry its either 1.2 or 1.6 meters per file.

Both infantry and cavalry have 3 run speed categories. For infantry its about 157/215/255 meters/minute and cavalry 415/525/600 420/530/630 meters/minute +/- a few meters. YMMV.


CBR

[econ21]

Thanks, CBR and Dopp.

Putting your findings together:

There are three horse speeds:

Fast: 600 metres/minute. (14% faster than normal)
This covers fast ponies.
Includes Alans, jinettes, stradiots, border horse, albanian light cavalry, most horse archers, Skys, Vards

Normal: 525 metres/minute
This covers heavy horses and ponies. Basically all horses that are not "fast ponies" and don't have any armour.
Includes mailed knights, mercenary Frankish knights, demi-lancers, Latinkons, Byzantince cavalry, lancers, hobilars, Danish scouts, French mounted archers

Slow: 415 metres/minute (21% slower than normal)
This covers mailed, barded and armoured horses.
Includes feudal and Chivalric knights, gendarmes,Italian men-at-arms, kataphracts. Sipahis?


I wonder, is there anyway in the game to tell which horse speed your unit has? I am guessing the fast ponies say "fast" in the unit description? But I have not worked out how to tell if the unit is slow (is it just a matter of seeing if the horse is covered by something).

R'as al Ghul - having this information in your tables would be really nice.

BTW: are mounted crossbowmen still fast like in MTW? (always seemed a little odd, but nice for my HRE).

[FactionHeir]

Mounted Xbows are fast ponies so yes.
If its fast pony it will have it in the unit description. For normal vs slow you just need to know by looking at the unit's portrait

[R'as al Ghul]

R'as al Ghul - having this information in your tables would be really nice.

Yes, I've said above that I'll correct the entries for "fast" to just "pony" for the respective units. In fact they're finished but I can't ftp from work.
Do you also want me to include the metres/minute values or shall I add a column that says "fast", "normal" or "slow"?

[econ21]

Thanks, Factionheir - I'll pass on that info to our Throne Room HRE PBM players.

Do you also want me to include the metres/minute values or shall I add a column that says "fast", "normal" or "slow"?

A column for "fast", "normal" and "slow" would be ideal. CBRs translations into metres/per second could go in the notes.

[dopp]

Actually, I've noticed that the separation distance between fast and medium is about the same as the separation between the medium and slow, so I'm not so sure about the 14% faster and 21% slower, it looks more like 15% and 15% to me.

Yes, it's just a matter of seeing whether the horses have barding or not.

[econ21]

I've updated the FAQ with the information in this thread.

For infantry its about 157/215/255 meters/minute ...

Off-topic, but for completeness, I have to ask - which infantry is fast and which slow? And how can you tell?