My, my. It seems my metapolitics are paying off.

Anyway, to get to the essence of the bear rider idea. What I really want is, as mentioned in other threads, a variety of mounts. Of course, halfing boar-riders are out (because.. well.. there's no halflings in Elemental!). Not just the tiresome horse. While Pegasi have been mentioned (and.. unicorns?) (if I'm not mistaken) they are magical - they're supposed to be rare.

What I want is essentially non-magic, non-rare alternatives to the average horse, that is still within the suspension of disbelief in a fantasy context. Suggestions include bears and chicken/chocobos (call a spade a spade). Wolves or boars, unless super-sized, are more or less out of the question. Worgs would suffice, but worgs tend to be magical beasts and thus not encompassed in my idea of a viable 'common' choice of ridables.

Of course, for this to be viable, there must be an option to convert map resources from one type to another, since a nation depending on one obviously don't want the others. I'd have no use for horses, for example, if I want to primarily depend on bears (which obviously hurts my flexibility, but aids my specilization).

And that's as far as my idea goes. If there's going to be an option to domesticate badgers, or wolves, or boars, or whatever - I'll leave that up to the druidicly inclined lot around here, the life/earth magic fetichists.

Those things should be rare, and not in every game.

Just because you want Bear Cavalry- you'll need to have a sufficient source of bears, people to ride them, and a way to get the bears under control.

 

Also, at some point all our feature requests will add up to excess feature bloat.

 

On a side note, it would be nice to see different mounts native to different factions.

Tech tree, use it.

 

All this complication when we already have an entirely rational method of integrating different mount systems.  Just make using the more obscure mounts different tech requirements, in a FFH style tech tree, you'd have your horseback riding, then your beast riding, and then maybe a third for the mythical monsters that eat people riding with perhaps a separate tech that lets you mount flying creatures.

 

Then you just treat them like any other resource.  You have to have copper to build a copper mine, you have to build a copper mine to mine copper.  You'd have to have bears to catch bear cubs(no, domesticating bears doesn't work for propogating their species, they breed very rarely in captivity) and you'd need some sort of foresters guild to manage the aquisitions of those cubs.  Problem solved, no nonsense needed, an exercise in simplicity.  I'd drool at the thought of it, but I did enough of that today what with the turkey dinner.

The only love I'm feeling is this:

There are other godesses in the lore. Moreover there is no law that requires one to stick to TSR or popular lore for that matter. That is one reason why I can see "drow" or "shadow elves" in Elemental as part of the Fallen. It would suck bigtime if there will not be a cave or underground layer however. 

 

Why is it a problem, and why would you want to turn horses into chickens?  I'd think giant chickens would have their own resource.  If the resource system is open to modification, you can make your own resources for your own mounts and add in whatever you want too.

 

The whole point of having a not-stupid resource system is that it balances itself out by requiring work to get the stuff.  You wont have to worry about someone having horses, bears and giant chickens while you only have pot bellied pigs, they don't need to make the actual resources scarce, just the aquisition.  If they do it right, the number of resources you have will be less important than your choices in aquiring them.

 

Being able to convert them on the otherhand, that just defeats the point of having them.  Might as well do it old school where you didn't actually need resources for anything.

I didn't mean that it was a problem, as such. I meant that it's not as easy as "I research X!". And converting a chicken habitat to a bear habitat is important, since resources are limited - If I want to, I think I should be able to specialize. If I can't convert one habitat to another, it means I'm squandering a limited resource.

In essence, I trade in my versatility for specialization. It'd be much more versatile if I didn't just have bear paladins, but also had chocobo scouts and horse calvary; but for a variety of reasons, I may not -want- 3, 4, or 5 different kinds of 'knights', be it because I prefer slow-but-mauling units, or purely thematic reasons (The Empire of Ul'Regth has no interest in filthy horses).

Yes, it does. I can only construct as many bears (or horses) as I get a continous supply of. Let's say that, for arguments sake, every resource allows me to construct 1 unit of that type. If I have 5 horse resources, I can construct 5 horses/turn.

But if I have 2 bear, 1 chicken, and 2 skyshark, I can only field 2 bears/turn. To get the most out of my available resources, I'm going to have to subscribe to a versatile approach - which I don't want to, primarily for thematic reasons (I'd -prefer- if my armies doesn't look like a huge zoo, swarming against the enemy). I'm unable to specialize or restrain my nation to conform to a thematic idea.

Taking this into the real world again, that's just not true. Horses are the mounts of choice because they're quite possibly the dumbest, most innane and will-less animals that humanity has run into yet, that we can actually use as a mount.

I'm hard-pressed to come up with any other truly viable mount. Most other animals cannot be truly domesticated, and even bears that have lived their entire lives with their trainers have proven time and again to be incredibly fickle animals that could quite possibly chew your head off. Ultimately, though, horses are good because we made them good. They've been subject to generations of breeding to make them what they are.

Mooses came to mind, but there's actually been attempts to domesticate elks, and they went south pretty quick.

Yeah, I know. When I make the example of a chicken, I just don't want to call it a chicken. But I don't want to call it a chocobo either, but in the end, we must call a spade a spade. They're big, ridable, chickens. No matter what we choose to call them, they're going to be chocobos.

I only can't agree that horses are more dumbs than general animals. But agreeing... Ill give you viable mounts but fact is, none of them are so good has the horse. Still they are viable and would be used if there wasnt for the equines.

What happens with the use of horses I think, and I agree is also comportamental, is that they are herbivory. Just like the elephants, that can be used veeery weel and is also passible even being big. I'm pretty sure, if someone take a giraffe, and invent a way to direct it, its also mountable when tammed. Thing is, they don't have humans in their diet. That bear idea really wouldn't work. Carnivore animals aren't passive has Herbovory has they need to atack and be agreesive always.

Cattle can be easily rideable. Like I said in my post earlier, just happens that Horses are the perfect thing, not surprising HOW MANY centuries they have been using it. Incredible agile animal too, unlike cattle and any other. There is also Llama and Camels (Camels have even be used for war) but they are just incomparable to a Horse. There isn't much meaning to be trying anything else, if you got something that is cleary better. There are a lot of rideable mounts in our world, but one will be indentified has better and surpass the others for the job, that is the horse. So thats what every population will be producing and creating the enviroment for it since centuries.

About the bear, let me say that, just because you can manage to go up in the back of it, doesn't mean its a mount lol. But yea Horses eat grass, and for being a herbivore, nature resources can naturaly support it in big numbers. A big number of bears wont be sustainable, then its hard to tamme and worse to thrust and not agile or fast. Its just not possible to be a produced mount.

"Mooses came to mind, but there's actually been attempts to domesticate elks, and they went south pretty quick" lol

I maintain that despite what actual cognitive abilities they have, horses are generally dumb as doorknobs; wheter the excuse as to why they jump into burning stables is viable or not doesn't apply in this regard. All animals are slaves to their instinct, but horses are the retards of the animal kingdom.

And as for a number of viable mounts, from a realistic point of view, hit me. Because I'm still stumped.

I really don't want to be mean, but I just have no idea what you tried to say there.
First of all, the problem is "invent a way to direct it", and even with that, I think you'd win some kind of nobel price if you managed to domesticate and mount a giraffe. Contrary to popular belief, giraffes aren't just horses with a long neck.

Alright, I'll give you cattle, as in cows. That's cattle, as in cows. Bulls are still pretty much out of the question. You'd still be pretty hard pressed to actually mount and ride it. You wouldn't as much ride it as.. sit there.

On horses being superior to camels, however, you're completely wrong. It's entirely based on the geography. Despite what Hollywood may tell you, horses are near-useless in the loose sand of a desert enviroment, and can't take long travels without considerable support, wheras a camel can easily endure and travel where the horses will falter and fail.

You're not going to be riding a cow anywhere, in any organized form. That somewhat leaves the Horses, the Camels; both which are pretty even, since their usage are so wide and distinct from eachother (in a geographical context). Add elephants to that, and you have a list of all (more or less) viable mounts. I wouldn't call that "a lot of ridable mounts in our world", nor would the horse "surpass the others for the job", since their jobs are so different.

You won't be seeing a horse lifting piles of wood any day soon.

It's about internal realism and suspension of disbelief in a fantasy context. Bending the nature of the bear in context doesn't mean that there's suddently going to be Spanish leprachauns popping out of space-rifts and painting chess-board patterns across a psychadelic rainbow, smoking an indian peacepipe. Having bear mounts could 'make sense' and be 'realistic' from the viewpoint of internal realism, just like the fact that 'Magic works like this'.

I think that George Lucas described it reasonably well (before his laxative acid trip that is Eps.1-3) when he said that there has to be a certain number of ground rules when you create a fantasy, or in that case sci-fi universe. For example, in Star Wars, there is sound in space. Logically, this doesn't make any sense. But it's about the suspension of disbelief and internal realism. It's something that isn't far off, or way out there. It's a minor discrepancy our minds are willing to accept, just like dragons, the existance of magic.

The "this is fantasy lol there's trolls lol why not ridable bears lol?"-argument doesn't hold up, due to the necessity of internal realism. Fantasy should never be an excuse to not make sense. Ridable bears, for example, is completely logical - if we accept it as such, in this reality.

I somewhat messed that up, when I edited it. It's supposed to be mooses all the way. There were attempts to domesticate them for war usage by a Swedish king (can't remember which one). It ended. Badly.

I agree. If you want resources other then the natural ones you own then trade for them.

Camels are smarter, tougher and meaner.  If they weren't flatfooted they'd be the mount of choice instead of horses, smelly or not.  That massive advantage in the desert is bloody worthless everywhere else.

 

 

You're self limited, it doesn't have to be the case.  If you have more resources than you can harvest, your limitation is in utilizing them, not having access to them.  You don't have to be able to use all your animals, they probably shouldn't even function the same way.  If I were designing it, inherently undomesticated animals would be captured in the wild, gathered for their use.  Horses, an easily domesticated animal, would also be captured in the wild, but for the purpose of raising herds, not training for mounts themselves.  You could take your horses produced from that resource, and instead of using them for mounts, found another herd.  They could even have magic pertaining to the domestication of those animals not feasible to domesticate naturally, making the original resource access academic in the long run.

 

When resources have to be worked, they don't need to be so scarce that you're utilizing every resource you have.  An oddball resource conversion isn't necessary.

 

 

Key word, relatively.  Compare a horse to a cow and the answer is immediately clear.  Horses will open latches to get out of gates, they socialize in a friendly manner outside of mating, they're loyal to their owners when taken care of.  Cows eat, shit, and sleep.  That's about it.  Horses have outstanding range, you can raise and utilize them almost anywhere, from sub arctic conditions to the Sahara.  Their stupidity traits, like jumping into burning stables, are common among the herd animals similar to them as well.  When something tries to eat them, they run.  Panic in the face of danger is a safety measure for food.  They aren't a predator

 

 

Sticking with men of average size and real animals.  All cattle, some like the water buffalo are badasses, various similarly built animals from gazelles to zebra's, various deer. Remember, the wild horse wasn't the mount it is today from the start.  They started out smaller, stockier, and slower.  The gazelle lacks the bone mass to carry a full size man any useful distance, but they're about the same size as the wild horse were, with careful breeding they could make fantastic mounts with superior speed, acceptable endurance, and stupendous maneuverability.  Cats would work too if you could keep them from rolling when they fought.

 

If you could tame one, a rhino would be sublime for war.  Hide thicker and tougher than an elephant with raw power far in excess of what traditional mounts are capable of.  Eight thousand pounds of 2 inch thick skin moving thirty miles an hour would put the fear of God into anyone, and it's got horns to top it off.  Full plate armor for rider and animal would be a negligible weight addition too.

 

If you toss size out the window and we have three foot tall midgit armies, everything from wolves to pigs get thrown in the mix.  Dwarves riding russian boars would be mean.  Plenty of hunters have been killed by those suckers.

 

As far as riding cows go, they were ridden before horses were.  They drew wagons before horses as well.  They lack sustained speed, so aren't useful as traditional cavalry.  You can however run over people on foot just fine with them, even a few of the domesticated breeds get pissed and try to run you down when you're working them.  They might have made it into military applications if they weren't vastly superior as food.