Overview
Gotta go fast! Are you having trouble catching up to caravans, chasing down mounted bandits, keeping up with lords during war time, or simply getting around the map? Here are a few things you can do to speed up your travels!This guide is fairly small, but there’s enough info that it would be an awkward fit in any other guide, and I need to quote this information from one of my other guides. Apologies to the community for cluttering up the guides section.
How do math!
To view your current party speed, and understand what’s slowing you down, expand the map bar at the bottom-right of your screen, and hover over the horse icon:
I’ll be using some some of that horrible math that makes the brain meats go itchy, so here is a small legend with variables:
i is the number of footmen (infantry/archers) in your party, includes you if you do not have a horse equipped
c is the number of cavalry in your party, includes you if you have a horse equipped
T is total party size, including yourself. Not to be confused with Maximum party size.
A is total amount of animals in your inventory, including horses, camels, cows, etc.
a is the party’s animal limit. See the Herd modifier explanation below for details.
D is some diminishing effect multiplier that’s hard to pinpint, probably related to party size or something, but it’s negligible. For example, the difference between 1 cavalry and 80, is the cavalry speed modifier of 2.99 and 2.62.
There are a number of modifiers that can affect your speed, and you can check the ones that are currently affecting you as described above. Here are the modifiers that I’ve come across:
Base speed: Starts at 5.00. Formula seems to be 5.00 * D.
Cavalry: Always a boost to speed. Max of 2.99 when no foot infantry is present, with a reducing multiplier for size of party. With infantry present, the modifier is heavily reduced. Formula is 3 * c / (i + c) * D
Cargo within capacity: always a reduction. Ranges between -0.01 and -0.09, depending on the how much of your maximum inventory space your cargo takes up. If your cargo exceeds maximum capacity, this number stays at -0.09. Haven’t seen anything else change this modifier
Overburdened: Only comes up if your cargo exceeds your maximum capacity. I’m not gonna bother finding the formula for this modifier, because you shouldn’t be planning on running around with it. However, an approximation is about -0.20 when you’re 15-20% over carrying capacity. Effect gets higher the larger your max carrying capacity is.
Footmen on horses: This is always a positive modifier, and you get it if you have unmounted troops, but you have horses in your inventory. For every pair of horse and footman, you get about 0.02 speed modifier bonus, with a D factor.
Herd: Always a negative modifier. If you exceed a certain threshold of animals in your inventory (camels, horses, mules, cows, etc), you get a herd modifier. The threshold at which this modifier kicks in seems to be dictated by the size of your party: T * 1.05 * D.
Once the party’s animal limit is reached, The modifier itself is something to the effect of (A – a) / a * -0.09 * D. In other words, if animals exceed your party’s animal limit, the Herd modifier will reduce your movement speed by 0.09 at double animal limit, by 0.18 at triple animal limit, 0.27 at quadruple, etc. Again, it’s just a rough estimate, but close enough to go by.
Scouting skill tree perks can be used to improve your overall travel speed. I haven’t played around with it because it feels overkill to spend skill points on that tree, but if anyone wants to shed some light on whether those perks only affect your base speed, or your total speed that includes modifiers, please do so in the comments and i’ll give you a shout-out.
If you know of any modifiers, or have some inside knowledge or resources to help clean this up a bit, feel free to leave a comment and I’ll likely add it to the guide and give you the deserved credit