Fantasy Travel Question

[Spence]

Re: Fantasy Travel Question

 

Lightning is correct. I have been around horses and ridden horses for decades. When it comes to rocky ground' date=' I get off and lead them so they won't go lame.[/quote']

 

 

Yes, and in some areas that are generally not bad to walk across I would avoid. Especially if there might be holes they might put a leg into. whne I was younger and we rode a lot, we seemed to lead as much as ride.

[LordGhee]

Re: Fantasy Travel Question

 

Lord Ghee and Mardok debusess into combat.

 

not very heroic sounding.

 

 

Lord Ghee

[Kristopher]

Re: Fantasy Travel Question

 

Can cover.

 

If you don't want to founder the horse you won't really make too much more distance in a day, though riding will allow yu to outdistance those on foot since you can "rest" the horse a little by dismounting and walking. The main advantage to cavalry as a scouting force was they were great sprinters compared to men on foot, and the ride/walk/ride allowed more sustained travel giving more distance.

 

In order to get the 40 to 50 miles a day, you either trailed a string of remounts and released each horse as it became blown carrying you, or you used remounts from pre-established outposts, post houses or pony-express stations for example.

 

While an unencumbered horse will easily outrun or outwalk a man, once you pile on 300-500 pounds of rider, tack and gear, it will lose a lot of its natural advantage, and wear down fairly quickly if you insist on pushing the pace.

 

http://www.geocities.com/davidbofinger/travel.htm

 

Where he states that with staged horses, 100 miles a day was possible, and that the "emergency rate of travel" on horseback would be about 15 mph. To get 40 miles out of a 10-hour day only requires the horse to travel at 4 mph, and an 8-hour day only requires 5 mph.

 

Another source, for which I have no link, is a friend of mine who grew up on a horse farm, and said that 30-40 miles in a day was a good limit.

 

To me, it doesn't seem at all unreasonable.

[Markdoc]

Re: Fantasy Travel Question

 

http://www.geocities.com/davidbofinger/travel.htm

 

Where he states that with staged horses, 100 miles a day was possible, and that the "emergency rate of travel" on horseback would be about 15 mph.

 

Which is reasonable, but that 100 miles a day is towards the upper limit for a good rider, changing horses every hour or so, and carrying nothing but the bare necessities. The pony express, known for the toughness of its riders and the quality of its horses, considered 75 miles about the upper limit for a rider, though they changed horses every 10 miles or so (their record is in fact about 100 miles, though the post as a whole travelled more than 200 miles a day, carried by multiple riders over 24 hours). So it's certainly possible, but no way could it be considered "normal travel".

 

To get 40 miles out of a 10-hour day only requires the horse to travel at 4 mph' date=' and an 8-hour day only requires 5 mph. [/quote']

 

Which is true, but remember that those are *sustained* rates of travel. If you stop for 10 minutes to check a strap or a horse's hoof and take a whiz, you need to kick the rate up significantly to sustain that level in the next hour, or travel longer. Same if you get off to lead the horse down a difficult slope, or slow to check the trees ahead for an ambush. 4 MpH is actually a pretty good sustained speed under real life conditions - and even for an experienced rider 10 hours in the saddle is nothing to sneer about. You certainly wouldn't do it on a regular basis

 

Another source, for which I have no link, is a friend of mine who grew up on a horse farm, and said that 30-40 miles in a day was a good limit.

 

To me, it doesn't seem at all unreasonable.

 

I suspect, since your friend's estimate is about half what the pony express considered the maximum for an experienced rider with several changes of top quality horses, that he is over-estimating. People to tend to do that when estimating how far they have travelled. It's certainly not impossible, but 40 miles by horseback is a hard, hard haul - it's about double what people managed historically and would almost certainly blow out your horse.

 

cheers, Mark

[Captain Obvious]

Re: Fantasy Travel Question

 

The Mongols moved 80 or 100 miles in a day. I'm certain they were changing horses to do that, but the remounts were moving right along with them as they went, so they weren't 100% rested when the change came. They had exceptionally tough horses too. Not as strong as European horses, and not as fast as Arabian ones, but able to slog it out over distances, and on coarser fare.

[Markdoc]

Re: Fantasy Travel Question

 

The Mongols moved 80 or 100 miles in a day. I'm certain they were changing horses to do that' date=' but the remounts were moving right along with them as they went, so they weren't 100% rested when the change came. They had exceptionally tough horses too. Not as strong as European horses, and not as fast as Arabian ones, but able to slog it out over distances, and on coarser fare.[/quote']

 

Cite?

 

John Masson Smith, Jr. of the University of California, Berkeley is an expert on steppe cultures and the Mongols in particular - he estimates their movement at 20 miles a day (which, you must remember for the time was considered impressive: the polish army that opposed them had a top speed of about 8 miles a day). Plano Carpini and Rubruck's diary estimates the same. Interestingly the yam - the mongol's military road along the old silk road had stations about 20 miles apart, which was considered one day's march.

 

Where we have accurate dates to work with, (as for example the mongol invasion of Syria/Palestine) we know that Hulegu's horde - which was marching down the trade road to meet the mamluks - moved more than 500 miles in 5 weeks - a touch less than 15 miles a day.

http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0073-0548(198412)44%3A2%3C307%3AAJMSOM%3E2.0.CO%3B2-C

 

It's important to distinguish between what was possible at the extreme limit and what people could regularly do.

 

Henry the V's army, which was mostly mounted at the time, managed a forced march of around 50 miles in one day and kept that pace up for several days, when trying to escape the french. But they lost most of their horses, rendered the rest unfit for battle, and lost quite a few men and most of their supplies in the process. After 4 days they were forced to halt and give battle because they simply couldn't go any further.

 

So I don't doubt that the mangudai could cover up to 100 miles in one day, with a string of horses. They might have even been able to keep it up for a few days. Since historically, however, mongol armies moved at nothing like that speed, I doubt very much they could keep it up for long.

 

cheers, Mark

[Zane_Marlowe]

Re: Fantasy Travel Question

 

I'm quite into the military history geekery (it is a noble geekery at that), but there's a problem with the "horses get exhausted too" reasoning that's comprised the last few posts. All the foregoing arguments seem to be of this sort: "well yes, horses are faster, but load one up and he won't get much further in a day of travel than you'd get." I deny none of the historical facts you mention, but I'd also draw attention to the point that according to the FH travel table, the travel rates for horse and human are equal when both are unencumbered.

 

Consider the following thought experiment. An unencumbered rider travels 5.5kph according to the table. When that same rider mounts a horse, the horse is now encumbered (probably in the 11-25% range), and therefore goes about 3.5 kph, so that it is actually slower for the rider to use a mount than it is for the rider to travel on foot.

 

My original question wasn't so much about the realities of horse travel, but about an inconsistency in the published table.

 

Having said that, I'd like to register another note on the historical matters regarding armies and logistics. As far as I know, none of these armies in question, from Alexander to Henry, was composed of entirely mounted troops as far as I know, and even if there were, there are a lot of contingencies to eliminate before one could say that the most restrictive limit on daily travel was the speed the horses could manage consistently without being immobilized by exhaustion. The only exception to this that I could see might be the Mongols, but I won't say more about them since I've not studied their logistics beyond the fact that they were a mainly mounted army.

[Markdoc]

Re: Fantasy Travel Question

 

Consider the following thought experiment. An unencumbered rider travels 5.5kph according to the table. When that same rider mounts a horse' date=' the horse is now encumbered (probably in the 11-25% range), and therefore goes about 3.5 kph, so that it is actually slower for the rider to use a mount than it is for the rider to travel on foot.[/quote']

 

It's a good point, but you don't start to lose speed until you reach 25% encumbrance which for an average riding horse (STR 25) is 200 kilos. That's a rider, full armour, weapons and a fair bit of gear. If the poor old horse was carrying that, it probably *would* be slower than an unencumbered human.

 

To turn it around, a horse carrying a fully-armoured rider plus light gear would be in the 11-25% category and suffer no penalties to its movement. The same armoured man on foot, would be in the either 25+% or 50+% encumbrance category and therefore significantly slower.

 

It makes a certain amount of sense.

 

My original question wasn't so much about the realities of horse travel' date=' but about an inconsistency in the published table.[/quote']

 

Yes, well, can't help you there - many of the tables in FH are a bit squiff.

 

Having said that' date=' I'd like to register another note on the historical matters regarding armies and logistics. As far as I know, none of these armies in question, from Alexander to Henry, was composed of entirely mounted troops as far as I know, and even if there were, there are a lot of contingencies to eliminate before one could say that the most restrictive limit on daily travel was the speed the horses could manage consistently without being immobilized by exhaustion. The only exception to this that I could see might be the Mongols, but I won't say more about them since I've not studied their logistics beyond the fact that they were a mainly mounted army.[/quote']

 

Actually, even the Mongols rarely used armies exclusively of cavalry (although as far as we can tell the army that faced the mamaluks at Ain Jalut, which I cited *was* - it was only a part of the whole Mongol army.) The Seljuk forces that swept into Anatolia in the 11th century, were, however composed entirely of cavalry, the byzantine chroniclers of the time stating as much and adding that they were completely helpless on foot. Nonetheless, they proved to be slower and less maneuverable than the byzantine armies of the time which contained a large proportion of foot. The difference of course was that the Byzantines were well organised and had a commissariat.

 

Actual mounted movement speed is clearly not the defining feature for how fast an army moves (it moves at the speed of the slowest units anyway) - and I agree that doesn't have too much to do with the speed of a small group of individuals.

 

cheers, Mark

[Captain Obvious]

Re: Fantasy Travel Question

 

Cite?

 

Well, I've heard this in many places before, so these are not my primary sources...just the ones I can find quickly online.

 

http://militaryhistorypodcast.blogspot.com/2006/01/mongolian-fighting-tactics.html

 

http://florilegium.org/files/TRAVEL/On-the-Road-art.html

 

http://www.silk-road.com/newsletter/vol3num2/6_blair.php

 

(search for "miles" to get to the good parts quickly)

 

The last link mentions a post system that could cover as much as 250 miles in a day. Not typical of an army or the typical traveler, but shows the possibilities. The first link says "They carried their houses with them, drank their own horse's blood to stay alive, and could travel up to 100 miles per day" which implies a faster rate than was likely the average...when moving that fast, they didn't carry their houses or anything else...hence the blood drinking. I've been led to believe that this was a sustainable pace for them, although not the standard rate of travel.

 

I know that I have walked 10 miles in just a couple of hours, carrying 50 lbs to boot. It's pretty easy to imagine getting significantly further if there's a good reason behind it.

 

Physical limitations on speed of travel really aren't what slows down armies anyway. It's the roads. There's only so much room on the road, and it takes time to get the whole shebang started. Then the guys out front have to stop early enough that the guys in back can get set up for the night while there's still some night to get set up for. As far as the Mongols were concerned, this was rarely a limiting factor. Traveling across the plains, an army doesn't have to line up in columns...they can spread out over a wider front, and start and stop at more or less the same time.

[Kristopher]

Re: Fantasy Travel Question

 

I've heard a lot of references to the Roman military, mainly on foot, managing 20 miles a day on the march, even with their habit of setting up highly organized and somewhat fortified camps at the end of each day's march.

[Kristopher]

Re: Fantasy Travel Question

 

Well, I've heard this in many places before, so these are not my primary sources...just the ones I can find quickly online.

 

http://militaryhistorypodcast.blogspot.com/2006/01/mongolian-fighting-tactics.html

 

http://florilegium.org/files/TRAVEL/On-the-Road-art.html

 

http://www.silk-road.com/newsletter/vol3num2/6_blair.php

 

(search for "miles" to get to the good parts quickly)

 

The last link mentions a post system that could cover as much as 250 miles in a day. Not typical of an army or the typical traveler, but shows the possibilities. The first link says "They carried their houses with them, drank their own horse's blood to stay alive, and could travel up to 100 miles per day" which implies a faster rate than was likely the average...when moving that fast, they didn't carry their houses or anything else...hence the blood drinking. I've been led to believe that this was a sustainable pace for them, although not the standard rate of travel.

 

I know that I have walked 10 miles in just a couple of hours, carrying 50 lbs to boot. It's pretty easy to imagine getting significantly further if there's a good reason behind it.

 

Physical limitations on speed of travel really aren't what slows down armies anyway. It's the roads. There's only so much room on the road, and it takes time to get the whole shebang started. Then the guys out front have to stop early enough that the guys in back can get set up for the night while there's still some night to get set up for. As far as the Mongols were concerned, this was rarely a limiting factor. Traveling across the plains, an army doesn't have to line up in columns...they can spread out over a wider front, and start and stop at more or less the same time.

 

I've walked 10 miles in a couple of hours, in a blizzard (no joke). It's not hard for me to believe that a professional messenger could do 20 miles in clear weather, given all day to do it.

[Captain Obvious]

Re: Fantasy Travel Question

 

I've heard a lot of references to the Roman military' date=' mainly on foot, managing 20 miles a day on the march, even with their habit of setting up highly organized and somewhat fortified camps at the end of each day's march.[/quote']

 

Twenty miles in a day has been a long-standing standard for infantry movement. The amount of gear a soldier has been expected to carry hasn't changed much in the last couple thousand years either.

 

Pretty interesting to me.

[LordGhee]

Re: Fantasy Travel Question

 

Most infantry movement is base on a 6 hour march day, 5 miles an hour is a good clip (not a great) over flat ground. there are many example of troops on roads making 50 miles in one long day. (Jackson's troops in the sharpberg campain) the trick is keeping fed and water. families in coverd wagons over trails in 1840's going to Oregeon mad 10 miles an hour with animals. Some day's where ten hours some less.

 

A hard pace is 8 miles an hour- good ground roads ect.

 

Eco racers over marked trails and with maps make 10 plus an hour.

 

More on this

[Zane_Marlowe]

Re: Fantasy Travel Question

 

Couple quick points.

 

1. Lord Ghee, I wasn't sure if you were referencing 5mph in relation to my last post above, but the number there was in kph. If unrelated, please disregard.

 

2. Markdoc, the table has 11-24% as encumbrance (~88kg/193lbs) that results in a -2kph penalty, so I can't see a horse with a rider on it being unencumbered if you include just the rider's weight and the tack. If that's so, then traveling on foot is actually faster than traveling on horse, which just seems odd to me, and I'm beginning to wonder if the encumbrance modifiers are not meant to apply to mounts.

 

Interestingly, I also notice that it's -4kph for 25-49%, and 1/2 movement rate for 50-74%, but if you're encumbered in the 25-49% range, you've already lost more than 1/2 your movement if you're using any of the movements modes on table.

[Markdoc]

Re: Fantasy Travel Question

 

The last link mentions a post system that could cover as much as 250 miles in a day. Not typical of an army or the typical traveler, but shows the possibilities.

 

Sure - we've already discussed post systems and several of them claimed speeds in excess of 200 miles a day - using multiple riders and dozens of horses and riding through the night. I don't think anyone seriously doubts that number.

 

The first link says "They carried their houses with them' date=' drank their own horse's blood to stay alive, and could travel up to 100 miles per day" which implies a faster rate than was likely the average...when moving that fast, they didn't carry their houses or anything else...hence the blood drinking. I've been led to believe that this was a sustainable pace for them, although not the standard rate of travel.[/quote']

 

We've mentioned this as well (see my post just previous) - several sources mention that the light cavalry (who were unarmoured) could cover up to 100 mile sin a day - for short periods of time. If you are bleeding your horses for blood, to keep the rider alive, you're obviously pushing the bleeding edge (pun intended) - the Masai, who also bleed their cattle, do it no more than once a month, except under emergency conditions. And cattle are both a lot bigger than a mongol pony and not being flogged over a 100 miles a day. So yeah, with multiple horses, maybe an unemcumbered man could do 100 miles over good terrain. If he's (an they) are as tough as iron, he might be able to keep it up for a few days. But not more.

 

I know that I have walked 10 miles in just a couple of hours' date=' carrying 50 lbs to boot. It's pretty easy to imagine getting significantly further if there's a good reason behind it.[/quote']

 

Sure, so have I - I've done a *lot* of hiking under all kinds of conditions, over all kinds of terrain. And I know the first couple of hours is OK, the next couple start to get hard, the next two you start to stumble, the next two all you want to do is fall down and the next two even strong, fit men *do* fall down. Speed decreases rapidly, the more time you move.

 

Physical limitations on speed of travel really aren't what slows down armies anyway. It's the roads. There's only so much room on the road' date=' and it takes time to get the whole shebang started. Then the guys out front have to stop early enough that the guys in back can get set up for the night while there's still some night to get set up for. As far as the Mongols were concerned, this was rarely a limiting factor. Traveling across the plains, an army doesn't have to line up in columns...they can spread out over a wider front, and start and stop at more or less the same time.[/quote']

 

All true, but 10,000 guys can neither carry enough food to cross the steppes on horseback nor forage. Open ground or not, they move at the speed of their food train: which is why, historically it took them months to reach Europe from the eastern Steppe (and two years gathering supplies in preparation), not the couple of weeks it would have taken had they moved at the 50 or 100 miles a day discussed here.

 

cheers, Mark

[Markdoc]

Re: Fantasy Travel Question

 

2. Markdoc, the table has 11-24% as encumbrance (~88kg/193lbs) that results in a -2kph penalty, so I can't see a horse with a rider on it being unencumbered if you include just the rider's weight and the tack. If that's so, then traveling on foot is actually faster than traveling on horse, which just seems odd to me, and I'm beginning to wonder if the encumbrance modifiers are not meant to apply to mounts.

 

Oh - OK, I was looking at the wrong table - I simply looked at the standard encmbrance table to see when movement penalties kick in - and there, that's at the next level up.

 

As I commented, many of the tables in FH are a bit suspect: if I were you, I'd simply redo them. One simple suggestion would be to kick the suggested movement penalties up one category so that they matched the movement penalties in the standard encumbrance table. Without much baggage a horse and rider should not be a great deal faster than a man on foot (at least for sustained travel), but in reasonable going they certainly should NOT be slower.

 

cheers, Mark

[Markdoc]

Re: Fantasy Travel Question

 

A hard pace is 8 miles an hour- good ground roads ect.

 

Damn straight, it's a hard pace: anyone who can walk 8 miles an hour should be competing professionally, because they'd easily blow past all world records. Here's the actual numbers:

 

http://www.iaaf.org/statistics/records/gender=W/allrecords/discipline=10KW/index.html

 

The world record is 6.2 miles in 42 minutes - for an average speed of 6.8 miles an hour. That's the world's fastest walker on a perfect surface, carrying nothing but ultra-thin clothing.

 

Of course, no human can *walk* 8 miles an hour - that's a fairly fast jog. People do go faster than that of course - world-class runners can manage better speeds than that even over a full marathon. but now you are talking about running - and not carrying anything.

 

As I said, people consistently overestimate the distance it's possible to cover on foot (or byhorse or even by car, for that matter). For all those "Of course you could walk 50 miles in a day" posts I'd merely point out the world record for long distance running is 62 miles in 6 and a quarter hours or about 10 MPH

 

http://www.iaaf.org/statistics/records/gender=M/allrecords/discipline=100K/index.html

 

That's the world's fastest human over long distances, after years of training, in perfect conditions, carrying nothing and getting carefully-tailored food and water provided to him at regular intervals. And he sometimes has to be carried away in a stretcher afterwards....

 

Now, there *are* records of people on foot, carrying equipment doing those kinds of distances, running for a half hour, walking for a half hour, etc. But those records all emphasise the suffering involved - they also record strong men dying from the exertion of forced marches, so it's not something one does casually. It's most certainly not something anyone does on a regular basis.

 

As a good rule of thumb, a fit, healthy human, not carrying too much gear, can manage about 5 KPH or about 3 miles an hour on reasonable ground. 4 miles per hour is a brisk walk and 6 MPH is a steady jog. Humans pretty much can't go much faster than that with any sort of load over long distances unless they are in really, really great shape. It's important to remember that carrying much weight really degrades your speed very quickly.

 

To put that in perspective, for a horse, a walk is considered 3-4 MPH (about the same as a human) a trot is roughly 8-10 MPH (equivalent to a running human), a canter is 10-17 MPH (this is reaching or surpassing the peak of human running speeds, but a horse can keep it up for an hour or more with a rider: this is the speed of all those post-riders we talked about) and a gallop is generally reckoned at 20-30 MPH - although the fastest thoroughbreds have been clocked in excess of 50 MPH (though like a human sprinting, they can't maintain that for any period of time).

 

cheers, Mark

[Captain Obvious]

Re: Fantasy Travel Question

 

Another interesting travel tidbit I've read. In the American Colonies, when horses were still quite rare, it wasn't uncommon for two people traveling together to share a horse. Rather than both riding it at once and tiring it out, one would ride ahead a ways (couple miles probably) and then tie the horse up near some forage. He would walk on, letting the horse rest until the other guy reached the horse. The second guy would then ride on until he passed the first guy by a couple miles, tie up the horse, and repeat the process. It was a little faster than just walking, and not as tiring.

[Markdoc]

Re: Fantasy Travel Question

 

Another interesting travel tidbit I've read. In the American Colonies' date=' when horses were still quite rare, it wasn't uncommon for two people traveling together to share a horse. Rather than both riding it at once and tiring it out, one would ride ahead a ways (couple miles probably) and then tie the horse up near some forage. He would walk on, letting the horse rest until the other guy reached the horse. The second guy would then ride on until he passed the first guy by a couple miles, tie up the horse, and repeat the process. It was a little faster than just walking, and not as tiring.[/quote']

 

Until of course ... "Dude, where's my horse?"

 

cheers, Mark

[Captain Obvious]

Re: Fantasy Travel Question

 

Until of course ... "Dude, where's my horse?"

 

cheers, Mark

 

Heh heh...yeah. There was an assumption that no one else traveling along would take the horse. Probably not that much travel going on, and horse thievery was a hanging offense for a long time.

 

A certain amount of trust, too, that the guy you're traveling with won't just decide to ride the last ten miles himself...

[LordGhee]

Re: Fantasy Travel Question

 

Cool find

 

10,000 march rates and hoplite pay ect

 

http://www.tulane.edu/~august/H310/handouts/Military_d.htm

 

just found it still exploring it

 

Ghee

[LordGhee]

Re: Fantasy Travel Question

 

this http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/policy/army/fm/71-1/711apxhf.htm#dismount

[LordGhee]

Re: Fantasy Travel Question

 

and The German army WWII

 

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/policy/army/fm/71-1/711apxhf.htm#dismount

[Markdoc]

Re: Fantasy Travel Question

 

Cool find

 

10,000 march rates and hoplite pay ect

 

http://www.tulane.edu/~august/H310/handouts/Military_d.htm

 

just found it still exploring it

 

Ghee

 

 

Cool find, indeed! Repped!

 

It pretty much confirms what we have been saying here, which is nice - standard marching for the 10,000 was a bit less than 20 miles a day, with frequent rest days, forced marching with suppplies laid in ahead of time can kick that up by about 50% to around 25 miles per day. And at the time it was considered a wonder - not surprising, since the author cites the standard movement for a greek army of the time at about half that: less than 10 miles a day - which funnily enough is not that different from the 8 miles a day for the medieval polish army.

 

These figures haven't changed much over the millenia - both the romans and mongols defined a full day's march for an army as 20 miles a day and they were both considered very mobile compared to their foes.

 

Indeed, the global security site says the same thing - the absolute maximum march for dismounted troops there is listed as a bit over 30 miles in 24 hours - or about the same as the forced marches of ancient history.

 

It's an important point: The global security site notes "Commanders of heavy forces often overestimate (or simply fail to recognize) the speed with which dismounted elements can move. " I see it all the time in roleplaying discussions, but it has more important real-life consequences: the the failure of the the Schlieffen Plan in WWI crippled the German chances of victory. A contributing factor to that was Molke's insistence that the troops could march at 4 km/h. Of course, they could - for a while - but nobody could keep that pace day after day, loaded down with weapons, ammo and clothing. Worse, no provison was made for delays, so once the offensive fell behind schedule it could never catch up.

 

cheers, Mark

[MitchellS]

Re: Fantasy Travel Question

 

To keep things simple our house rule was that a horse could comfortably travel as many miles per day as their con score [that was assuming a normal weight load, and was the reason people tried to buy healthy horses]. For every mile past con it cost the horse 1 LTE up to double con distance. For every mile after double con it cost the horse 1 body. Each +2" of running added 1 mile to the distance. So a 20 con horse can comfortably travel 20 miles per day and can burn 20 LTE to travel 40 miles. If a horse had a 15 body it could travel up to 55 miles before dying from exhaustion.