Cavalry moves too fast

[aryaman]

I think everybody will agree on this, right now very deep raids are possible because of that, I wonder, has any mod considered reducing cavalry move rate?

[Jabberwock]

Cavalry actually moves at close to its historic rate of speed, or slightly less. The primary cause of deep raids IMO is reaction time. If cavalry starts in a particular direction, it takes the enemy two weeks to react. There is definitely some modding going on to provide 7-day turn scenarios.

[aryaman]

What do you consider the historical movement rate for cavalry? I think it is only marginally fatser than infantry ona 15 days period

[Jabberwock]

In 1863 Jo Shelby raided through Missouri. They didn't exactly travel in a straght line.

~1500 miles / 41 days = 36+ miles per day. Foote vol. 2, pp. 776-778.

That's over 500 miles a turn. About one region a day. More if they had been going in a straight line. It is an outlier, but it does show a speed that cavalry was capable of maintaining if they were pushing very hard.

For the Union, Grierson's raid across Mississippi was ~400 miles in 15 days, with 5 days off to rest in the middle of it. It was more of a straight line than Shelby's raid, from LaGrange, TN to Baton Rouge. Also Wilson's 1865 "raid" from Eastport, MS to Macon, GA ... 480 miles, 25 days, with 8 days off at Selma. This was 13,500 cavalry travelling in three columns, mostly across muddy hills, and fighting two battles along the way.

In civilian terms, for most terrain:

10 miles / day = real easy
14 miles / day = average travelling speed
20 miles / day = vigorous
30 miles / day = pushing it
35+ miles / day = horse-killing speed

Many CW operations were carried out at horse-killing speed, making substitutions from captured or impressed horses.

This topic has been discussed several times before, most recently here.

[aryaman]

Thanks for the info, I guess that battle ready horses were not as in important in ACW times as previous times, so they could push their mounts to limits they would make them unusable to close combat.