Yes I'm 100% sure, but it's really minor, it will only add 0.1 if it's enough to go over a tipping point. Basically just as much as any other piece of equipment.

Agree with OP and others that some balancing is required.

- Too many horses/wargs available. 

- Can have both. Would prefer a choice.

- Should have combat downsides and costs as well as providing mobility and some combat upsides. Base this on reality if possible. 

There are way, way too many horses/wargs on the map, the engine is just putting too many down. On a few recent starts there was a horse/warg for almost every other resource of every other type combined. 

The medieval game theme is hurt a great deal with no brainer all mounted units armies.

NERF.

What if Warg Dens were guarded by 3 timber wargs (the pack leaders), and Horses were guarded by Troll Warrior armies (the trolls eat 'em!)? Then it'd be harder to just snag them, you'd have tyo fight for 'em, a la darkling villages and ogre dens. 

Probably still easier to spawn less, but making more of an opportunity cost to snagging the resource could prevent mount saturation.

Firmly Agree with this. This would also make upgrading iron/crystal/horse/worg resources an important feature of game play; after all if you have to upgrade these resources in order to increase max storage capacity as well as resource gather rate you will really want to research prerequisite techs and build these upgrades. Also it would make protecting resources much more important since losing a resource means an automatic reduction in max resource and potential loss of any resource that is greater then the new max resource. This makes raiding enemy territory and destroying resources a better tactic.

Edit: Also increase mounted unit wages far more to better represent the value of mounted units. If you need more of a reason for increased wages then just say that mounted units need to pay for fodder, stabling, grooming, and so on. Mounted unites have such an increase in overall unit ability that the much higher wages are justified. Thus it doesn't matter how many horses you have if you don't have a large enough treasury you simply won't be able to afford to have all that many mounted units.

Don't agree with any kind of "usage multiplier" for unit creation. Take my current game for example.

I had to conquer my way through an enemy in order to find my first horse resource. By that point, I had ~20 settlements occupying the large majority of the right side of the "Anthys" custom map. No horses. In order to train some horse archers as supporting fire for my 5 champions (in multiple stacks), I had to pay to get some from an AI (incidentally, the one I was about to curb stomp = P). I got just enough for 3 troops, and that's with abusing the 3-unit-and-upgrade creation cheat the current, bugged system allows. I didn't get more horses for another ~20 turns. During that time, those horse archers were my most precious unit.

Even now, I still only have one horse resource (and I don't think I ever found any Wargs), so they're still a fairly precious commodity. Of course, I'm playing an Epic tech progression rate and am on turn 430. I own literally half the map, with something like 35 settlements (and I haven't "revived" the wasteland spots on the map, yet!). But them horses... they still be an issue = P

Could use the civ5 way? Each horses/wargs nodes can support 2 units (or 1). Champions & henchmen who can buy at shop should not be counted in.

Compared to civ games, mounts are full win with no malus. In civ mounts give you an offense bonus AND a def malus, and cavalry have a counter unit in pikemen. Spearmen could have a def/att bonus vs mounted units? Or introduce pike as special spears in the warfare tech tree.

EDIT: Give mounted units special skills, like charge for horses, a rush with a boost damage, but with the def malus they are left easy prey to swarm after the initial attack.

Warg could get different bonus/malus. More Initiative + dodge but still vulnerable to pikemen.

Hmm.  Remounts for armies have always been necessary - horses die or are severely injured in combat ... and changing mounts increases the distance you can travel before your mounts are exhausted.

I think it would be reasonable to add an "upkeep" for mounted troops, as suggested above. 

And I really like the idea of more fantasy mounts ... it would be beyond awesome to be able to ride Pegasus.

I'm actually surprised elemental didn't go the CiV way of resources.

Ie. a horse resource gives you say 12 horses. Its not cumulative, you only get the 12 horses. Tech and building upgrades would increase this number but it would really limit the amount of cavalry in an army.

Edit: This could further be extended by the current system. Say you gain 0.1 horses per turn up to the current limit. Again i'm pulling numbers out of my head; think of the concept behind these numbers not the numbers themselves.

That's a horrible system.

All it would do is breed scarcity within your empire and restrict you from different strategic paths.

You would be able to conduct a war on your opponent's economy. Cities are too well protected? You don't have to reach them. At least not for the moment. Raid your opponent horses harvesting buildings and they will end with only the few horses they could storage in their cities. Also, they won't be able to stockpile hugresources of resources to sell to other empires. 

Or just cast earthquake repeatedly on the city in question = P

Sell your excess horses.

I believe the simplest solution is to apply the same cost/upgrade system for horses/wargs as is used for metal/crystal. That means providing an upgrade path for each type of mount with each mount costing a certain amount of horses or wargs.

Something along the following lines:

• Horse: +2 move, +20 weight capacity, cost 8 horses
• Warhorse: +2 move, +40 weight capacity, cost 12 horses
• Charger: +2 move, +40 weight capacity, +3 attack, cost 20 horses
• Warg: +1 move, +2 initiative, +10 dodge, cost 8 wargs
• Ice Warg: +1 move, +2 initiative, +20 dodge, cost 12 wargs
• Shadow Warg: +1 move, +4 initiative, +20 dodge, cost 20 wargs

The upgraded mount types could be linked to the middle/late warfare techs (along with an improvement to increase horse/warg yields).

I like this. But limiting the placement of horses and wargs is probably easier. 

As easy as the ai is that wouldn't do anything but delay the same thing just a few turns.

how about an extra slider on the world setup that sets the relative abundance of mount tiles? pretty much a copy/paste of the resources slider, but only affecting either the number of wild horses/ wild wargs on the map, or the production rate of the stables/kennels (or both).

"high" setting would be what we have now - virtually no restriction once you have the tech; you'll typically find a horse or warg node within less than 20 tiles of your starting spot; with high setting, mounts are almost guaranteed and generally available

"medium" would be a bit rarer (less than 1 horse or warg node per AI faction, and not in the immediate vicinity of the starting spot; you'd typically get them in the mid game, but you wouldn't have a stockpile of dozens or hundreds already, so you would play with mixed troops for most of the mid game and maybe switch to full mounted armies late in the game

"low" would make them really rare - maybe 2 or 3 nodes total on a medium map; also far away from the starting areas, so you'd have to fight your way through some leveled up lairs and roaming bands of critters to build your stable outpost at some point in the mid/late game; mounted units would be the elite of your armies since you'll only have few and probably not enough to outfit more than a select few elite units

with a slider, players who like it as it is now can just use the high setting, others who are fed up with the overabundance of mounted troops could reduce it and probably eventually settle for the balanced medium setting

Yeah, that's what I do.  Trade your excess horses/wargs to other factions for Knowledge/Money/Crystal/Metal.  

I do agree that you end up with a lot of them, although this has been lessened since they added the requirement of getting the appropriate tech before you can build the harvesting improvements.  

Mounts do actually increase the unit wages already, and also add labor cost to the unit.  I don't know if this is new.  I hadn't noticed it before, but I probably just never looked before.  I'm pretty sure it didn't have a labor cost before.  It's 10 per horse, now.  The wage increase seems to be percentile, as I didn't see it increase until I'd added some equipment to the unit I was designing.  Maybe they could increase the wage cost.  Horses do eat a lot.

Quoting igncom1, reply 21Could we compensate the amount of one type of mount by adding more?

Like pegasi that boost initiative over health

Or unicorns that boost magical ability's over weight carrying ability......I just asked for unicorns...


Would love to have more 'fantastic' mounts to choose from.

Pegasi can fly...

Unicorns can teleport...

Naturally, other magic types would require they're own fantastic creature types.

 

 [/quote]

I am going to start a thread suggesting these units as fantastic mounts as a summoning spell or as alternative familiar units.  Saw your posts and it encourages me that others feel the same way...

I wish you could get dragon mounts like Waerloga has. 

One thing I never really understood in FE & LH is why you had to learn the Horse Tech before learning Warg Riding.  Seemed silly to me.  Would also have thought Horses would require Pastures from the Civ Tree, and Wargs having a similar pre-req, probably from the magic tree.

Agree with the OP about the overabundance of mounts available w/o any disadvantage whatsoever in their use.  Many ideas have been presented to balancing mounts in the past and have no desire to repeat them yet again. 

Like the idea of a maintenance cost.  I would prefer it hitting my food supply, rather than money.  Too many mounts in the field will impact city growth as grain goes to keep them supplied in the field.

yeah, i see an over-abundance of mounts as well (i mostly play on temperate maps).  I think reducing the amount of mounts provided per turn would be best in addition to requiring higher wages, this way, you have a decent chance of having at least some cavalry in your army.  having said that, a faction trait that doubles the number of mounts you get from said resources would be interesting if you wanted to make a hun/mogol/dothraki custom faction.

So did they fix horses/wargs in the latest patch?

Without checking patch notes to see if they made any changes on this; I vote for 1 horse farm supports up to X units of horseman. It would drastically increase the strategic value of horse farms because you would need more than one, and would pursue additional horse farms based on how many units you want to field at once on horses.