I noticed from watching gameplay many players (myself included) don’t exactly use the roads but instead run straight towards the objective or town so you should make a chance for the horse to trip and possibly break its leg or something like that if the player does something like run up a mountain on his horse or go through a rocky area or just running through the forest it would make it so players would only risk running across broken ground on their horse if it is necessary to survive now I’m not saying that the horse should get hurt if it steps off the path for like a second
4 Likes
I’d be in favour of large speed penalties for unideal terrain.
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Its not really good to punish players for not using roads as it causes great frustrations, but do the opposite - give players speed boost and autosteer when using roads 
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Roads have two great features.
- horse magnetism
- fast travel
Both make the traveling much more comfortable. And I am not even talking about random events, which are connected with roads!
1 Like
Random events? It is like polovstian horsemen ambushed you and player has to escape them, trying not to get pierced by arrow?
As much as I wanted to, I am not going to say more about this.
But there will be some memorable moments there 
1 Like
Also horse can stampede in difficult terrain or when rider tries to go over an obstacle and it depends on players riding sklil if he fall from horse or not. So it is much easier to ride on road terrain and avoid any riding troubles.
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Umm. In reality horses can be used fairly freely on open ground. Hunting/Coursing is not restricted to roads only, cavalry use as scouts/archers/heavy cavalry was not restricted to a frontage of two horses side by side on a road, but could encompass hundreds of yards or more of frontage of agricultural or unimproved grassland.
Riding at speed in woods is fraught with danger, but then so is passing under low branches while on a made up road.
While I would expect more accidents over a long period of use riding at speed over non-road terrain, I doubt that the accident rate would be significantly above random-rare even on poor going.
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The problem is not really the horse on uneven terrain, but the rider. Although I have experienced horses struggling in muddy and rocky terrain, some are certainly better than others. Also, horses taking advantage of terrain to effectively get rid of you 
From personal experience, riding on rough terrain is a lot of exercise, so it would drain stamina, as it is very tiring and takes more concentration on maintaining control. Horses aren’t stupid -They don’t ram into trees, heavy brush or fences and only horses with proper training would jump over them.
Roads aren’t normal terrain for horses. Unless horses are given some kind of stables (which I haven’t seen in the game) horses, when not being ridden, spend most of their time in fields with tall grass.
The horse I spent the most time riding was very calm and stable. He didn’t like to gallop and if he went somewhere it was at a casual trot. I’d give him apple slices at the end of a good ride. I’d like to see more interaction between the character and his horse, at least naming it.
3 Likes