Horses

“A man on foot sees the world one field at a time. A man on horseback sees the whole horizon.”

Horses are a strategic resource essential for building mounted military units. Hidden until Animal Husbandry is researched, horse deposits represent the wild herds and pasture lands needed to breed warhorses. Access to horses transforms your military options, unlocking fast, powerful cavalry units that can outmanoeuvre and overwhelm slower infantry-based armies.

Stats

Required For

Strategy

Horses are the key to mobility on the battlefield. Mounted units move faster, hit harder on the charge, and can exploit gaps in an enemy’s line that foot soldiers simply cannot reach. The moment Animal Husbandry is researched and horse deposits are revealed, securing access to horses should be a top priority – especially if you plan any kind of aggressive military strategy.

Horsemen are available relatively early and provide a huge tactical advantage over civilisations still relying on Warriors and Archers. A small force of Horsemen can raid enemy improvements, pick off isolated units, and retreat before a counterattack arrives. This harassment capability is unique to mounted units and can cripple an opponent’s economy without ever fighting a pitched battle.

Horses become even more critical in the medieval era, when Knights become available. Knights are among the most powerful units of their era, but they require both horses and iron – making a civilisation with access to both resources extremely dangerous. If you control horses but lack iron, or vice versa, seek out the missing resource through trade, expansion, or conquest.

Like iron, losing your horse supply during a war can be devastating. Cavalry-heavy armies become impossible to reinforce if the enemy pillages your horse tiles or captures the city controlling them. Diversify your resource access whenever possible, and consider stationing defensive units on your horse tiles during wartime.

Historical Background

The domestication of the horse, occurring on the Pontic-Caspian steppe around 4000 BCE, was one of the most transformative events in human history. Horses provided speed, power, and endurance that no human could match on foot, revolutionising warfare, trade, and communication across the ancient world. The chariot, and later the mounted warrior, gave steppe peoples a decisive military advantage that shaped Eurasian history for millennia.

The great cavalry traditions of history – the Scythians, the Parthians, the Mongols, the medieval European knights – all depended on access to large numbers of quality horses. Alexander the Great’s Companion Cavalry, mounted on the powerful Thessalian and Nisean breeds, spearheaded the conquests that created the largest empire the world had yet seen. The Mongol Empire, built entirely on the back of the hardy Mongolian horse, stretched from Korea to Hungary at its peak. In every era, the civilisation that mastered mounted warfare held a decisive edge over those that fought on foot. The old military maxim held true across cultures and centuries: cavalry wins battles, infantry holds ground.