What is the measure of a Man? (on a horse)

[RogerCooper]

When converting historical battles to Triumph, I have been making the assumption that a unit of infantry represents twice as many men as a unit of cavalry. My logic is the a man on a horse takes up more space than a man on foot, and that is reasonable to count a cavalryman as 2 creatures. However Triumph converts infantry to cavalry one-to-one when dismounting.

Am I giving horses too much credit here?

[David Kuijt]

When converting historical battles to Triumph, I have been making the assumption that a unit of infantry represents twice as many men as a unit of cavalry. My logic is the a man on a horse takes up more space than a man on foot, and that is reasonable to count a cavalryman as 2 creatures. However Triumph converts infantry to cavalry one-to-one when dismounting.

Am I giving horses too much credit here?

Sorta. First, the size of units is notional. As you and I have discussed before, it varies widely from period to period. Second, the size of a unit varies depending upon unit quality -- Mongol Horsebow during the Mongol Conquest are likely smaller units than other Horsebow in the same period fielded by Qarluq Turks, Liao, Central Asian citystates, and so on. Third, size of dismounting units is a really sore point for almost every game system. DBM (or DBMM, I really can't recall) had a bizarre system where two Horsebow units would dismount to be one Bow unit or something like that -- and for Chariots, the dismount ratio was like 3-to-1. That is based upon notional sizes (the number of troops that the game designer thought were in each stand). But it makes no real sense to me, because in those same systems one Cavalry would dismount as a single stand of foot -- but it was clear that Cavalry armed with bows was not twice as numerous (twice as many people in it) as Horsebow.

So I wouldn't say you are giving horses too much credit -- but the space involved isn't a strong argument for anything. In theory we should be discussing issues like frontage and unit depth -- but as I'm sure you're aware, historians and military historians cannot agree about frontage, unit depths, or any of that stuff. There are a thousand theories, and until we develop a time machine and can go back and look, we're just going to be making up answers.

Which is where the Triumph conversion for dismounting comes in. In the real world (in real history), sometimes cavalry dismounted, and sometimes it did not. (In armies where it could, like the Teutonic Order). So clearly, in the real world, sometimes the real-world people commanding thought it would be to their advantage, and sometimes they did not. In Triumph we tried to make a simple system where sometimes it was to your advantage, and sometimes it was not. Any 2-to-1 conversion would automatically be very complicated (how do you write the rules for it? How does it effect victory points when you kill a dismounted unit?) and would basically NEVER be advantageous (seriously, two Bad Horse is better than one of almost anything infantry, in a real battle, because of overlaps and frontage issues).

So we keep it simple, and sometimes it is good, and sometimes it doesn't look as wise. We're happy with the solution. We tried writing rules for a 2-to-1 and it was horrible. Plus there really is no direct evidence to support it (a 2-to-1 or 3-to-1 dismount ratio)