
Its not the horses, its the
Riding School
-50% production cost for a whole plethora of units.
+2 XP for them all.
And free Speed promotion « This is
really hard to deal with since the horseman literally pawn everything and all I have to defend is movement speed 1 units on trails.
I think something like -30% production cost, +3xp and no free speed is more than ample.
Its probably the best building in the game by a mile if you ask me.
Let me add some context - when Congo first got riding school we both had our capital and 2 size 1 cities.
In order to keep my 2nd size 1 city, I had to reload about 4-6 times trying different builds and stuff, and finally kept it alive. (It was in an important place).
To do this I had to have about a 2-1 unit advantage right from the start, and I had to speed build ALL the defensive buildings with those merchant guys.
Even then, I would lose like 60% of the time when horseman attacked into my city which was full of atl-atl and stone spearman all with Combat2 + anti-mounted promotions. He was building 1 horse every turn out of his capital with surplus hammers so it was like 4 horses every 3 turns. I could build 1 atl-atl or half a spearman per turn in my cap.
He just kept the pressure on and expanded etc.
Cut a long story short, when I had 6 cities, he would break up groups of horses and hit from top middle bottom and it was virtually impossible because my units were so slow. I basically had to load a number of times when his army caught me by surprise - so that I'd know where he came from, and could have an adequate 15+ units in that city.
The other problem was gatherers were impossible to keep and even killing rogues was impossible because if I left units outside of cities unless they were in a stack of at least 4-6 they were dead because all his dudes have
3 movement compared to my 1.
*After-thought maybe horseman should get -20% vs melee or something. Strength 6 units with 3 movement vs strength 3 unit with 1 movement, its hardly fair.
** Oh and compare the flint knapping hut to riding school, its half the cost 240 hammers vs 480. It gives +10% build time to spearman, archer, javilneer (all 3 waaaay off into the future), and stone axeman and stone spearman. Thats it.
10%! Compared to 50% even as far forward as CAVALRY, +2xp for sh1tload of units, Free speed that lasts all the way till ASSAULT MECHS! , +1 culture.