Re: Will Vanheim Ever Become Spayed?
 

How about making them magical beings? That's already in the game. Not sure if the Mbeing counters are low enough in the research tree, however.

Re: Will Vanheim Ever Become Spayed?
 

I think that a gold or resource cost change is probably all that is necessary.

Re: Will Vanheim Ever Become Spayed?
 

I agree with you.

Re: Will Vanheim Ever Become Spayed?
 

I don't want to endless clarify and restate my position because 1) it is tiresome, and 2) it detracts from the thread.

But the continued misrepresentation of what I said by Gandalf's fanboys leaves me no choice.

Please note that I did not say "all his posts" are "worthless." I endeavor to be precise in my language, even on game forums.

What I did say instead is that Gandalf's posts are "worthless" when it comes to "threads of this nature": that is, threads where national or unit imbalances or comparisons are discussed.

Again, as a long-time lurker, I appreciate that Gandalf has made many invaluable contributions to this community, and I have even learned much from some of his posts. Moreover, he seems to be one of the nicer guys on this forum: witness the equanimity with which he takes some of these sharp criticisms in stride.

Nonetheless, all that cannot immunize you from criticism if you say something utterly devoid of persuasive force.

Re: Will Vanheim Ever Become Spayed?
 

Your position is fine. And Im not very good at specific comparions where people break it down into specific numbers.

I only wade in when a thread starts to paint such a bleak picture that it might scare off newbies reading here, or worse someone who has yet to purchase the game. I think its misleading to call such catastrophic results when it affects only a portion of the player base. In this case it appears to be MP on small blitz maps with no victory conditions.

Re: Will Vanheim Ever Become Spayed?
 

How about adding couple of spells:
1) N2 Ench (let's say 2): "Arrows to poisoned salted pork chops"? Affects all friendly troops. All fired missiles become poisoned salted pork chops and deal no damage. If eaten considered a weak poison.
2) Another Ench-2: "Hunger" (battlefield), AOE, "all affected units suddenly becomes hungry".

Re: Will Vanheim Ever Become Spayed?
 

Increasing Vanir price will probably do the trick by making them harder to amass from the start. I still prefer the thematic repurcussions of taking away their sacred, but I can understand if that doesn't change.

The question is, do you increase gold cost, resources cost, or both?

=$=

Re: Will Vanheim Ever Become Spayed?
 

Im not sure if Kristoffer just raises resource costs. I think he has kindof a formula for that based on the armor and weapons. So probably gold is the thing that can be most flexible.

Re: Will Vanheim Ever Become Spayed?
 

My solution would cost some coding time:

Gold/Resources don't change, but each sacred glamour unit costs 1 additional Air Gem to build up.

You've something to invest at the start and can't build up as much units. Later you can spend your air gems for a bigger sacred glamour army.

That would give Vanheim/Helheim something special and if you don't play a bless tactic you can use your other non-sacred glamour units (without gem costs).

2-3 Air gems/turn should be provided to vanheim/helheim in each era.

Re: Will Vanheim Ever Become Spayed?
 

It seems that mounted Vans don't have the barding resource cost that most mounted units have. Helhirdings are lightly armored, protection 11. It's kind of strange that units that do have barding receive no benefit from it.

Re: Will Vanheim Ever Become Spayed?
 

Since Kristoffer's watching and everyone's arguing and complaining already, so there's plenty of angry people to tell me why I'm wrong. I wonder if I should post my ideas for a revamped magic system here?

one-stop-shopping, as it were http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: Will Vanheim Ever Become Spayed?
 

Er, no, this thread has a topic and that's not it.

Re: Will Vanheim Ever Become Spayed?
 

After reading the entire thread, I think this is best/most easily solved by increasing the upkeep or the initial cost of the sacreds. Once you get in the realm of changing unit stats such as strength, armor, etc., you change the balance between nations too much. Tweaking the cost of the units preserves the uniqueness of the units, and allows for a more moderate tweak. It might take a couple of tries to settle on the exact costs, but it is the easiest way to handle it.

Re: Will Vanheim Ever Become Spayed?
 

I think this thread has by now 7 or 8 different topics, but it was a joke anyway so it really doesn't matter.

Re: Will Vanheim Ever Become Spayed?
 

The cavalry in this weight range don't generally pay for barding - none of the amazons do, for example, including the onyx maiden who has almost entirely the same equipment (she costs 1 RP less since she doesn't have a javelin.)

Beyond that, given the speed of the Fey horses, it seems pretty obvious they are not wearing barding. It'd be nice if there was some way for enemy units to exploit a lack of barding on your horses.

maybe - when a mounted unit is repelled by a reach weapon, it has to resist a big pile of stun damage using the barding? Then the barding would need to be specified and have a rating, this is getting off topic anyway.

Now, if it were needful to raise the resource cost of Vans (which I don't think it is, but for the sake of argument), we could just have them wear light-weight, magical barding, which seems common enough in Vanheim, and would presumably have the same resource cost as whatever barding slightly heavier cavalry usually get.

Re: Midgard (LE Vanheim)
 

Nether Bolts works well against van for me....

Also Eye of the void...

Re: Midgard (LE Vanheim)
 

I'd like to advance the idea that, just because their aren't currently tactics to use against the Van, Helheim, that most people can agree are acceptible, doesn't mean that they have to be Nerfed, it could just mean that more tactical/strategic options should and could be added that would focus on Van and Helheim's weaknesses without making them objectively any weaker.
Beat them the same way you'd beat any real-world unbarded calvalry-whether they were invisible or not-with field fortifications or phalanx. Unfortunately, we don't have a way yet to create fieldworks or field artillery or even simple ditches or stake-rows, but you can still use lots and lots of cheap units with long sticks, and eventually they'll get through the glamour. A scriptable "form phalanx" command with slow or no movement and a strong advantage against calvalry would be a start, that or a "set pikes" function which did the same thing, would be good. Magic would serve to ensure that phalanx-formations didn't dominate battlefields, but at the same time, they'd be an effective, obvious, and realistic choice against quite a few high-powered units, Van and Helheim included.

Another idea along this line is to have "landmine" type spells. I mentioned this earlier in another post, but basically it would be spells that remain placid-or even undetectable-until units contact them, at which point they go off, doing whatever effect they do. It's another fairly obvious use of, this time, battlefield magic, and it would make sense that wizards and whatnot would develope spells that would support an army while allowing the weak wizard to get well away from the conflict and danger, atleast as far as behind some bodyguards. To keep this type of magic from getting out of control, it could automatically vanish if the casting wizard is struck by arrow, spell, melee, whatever. In the meantime it would be great at breaking up charges and unaffected by Van glamour.

A third way to stop Van is if the glamour wasn't effective against blind or darkvision foes.

A fourth way is to give archers the command "target mounts". This would enable archers to concentrate on a target's trusty steed, which is a lot easier to hit than a Van, glamour or no glamour. You could also have them use British infantry tactics, with crossbowmen shooting standing, with a row of crossbow kneeling and firing and a third row behind them reloading/waiting to fire, with a command such as "Missle Volley". Put a couple rows of stakes in front of them (I'd really like to see units have the "Defend Position" command) and Van would have bad days all over the place. It wouldn't even be unfair to Helheim, because Valkyries could still fly over the defenders.

It would be nice if units gained more advanced tactical options, such as "Defend Position" and "Target Mounts" as they and their leader gained experience. Does anyone know if units in hills or woods recieve a defense bonus? If not, that'd be a great ability to add to the game. I know some units suffer from being in a swamp, but it seems like more experienced, elite forces would know to defend themselves well, and fight better, by taking advantage of their surroundings. Naturally, magic could only add to the potential for defending positions.

Re: Midgard (LE Vanheim)
 

I completely agree

Re: Midgard (LE Vanheim)
 

So do I, I love power in my games, raise the power levels, provide more strategic/tactical options, do not nerf nation after nation until you end up with a weak game, I hate game nerfing... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/mad.gif

Re: Will Vanheim Ever Become Spayed?
 

I'd go for a gold cost increase to begin with. Maybe to 90 gold, the same as a Knight of the Chalice. That would cut the number of Vans in play by about a fifth. If their starting fort had 30 admin, instead of 50, it would cut their starting income by about 10% (depending on scales), reducing their numbers still further.

Crippling...
 

I wonder if a mounted unit should have a higher chance to suffer the Crippled affliction when hit, given that the mounts are usually large targets, and any significant injury to the mount might slow it down for either physical or psychological reasons.

Re: Crippling...
 

Horses are not the most brave animals on the planet, taken as a whole. Even a well-trained warhorse is not a stupid animal and generally won't do something it knows is a bad idea. If vans rode giant armored wolverines, then they'd be realistically a problem, not that wolverines are stupid either, they're just incredibly brave, tough, and mean. If I were a long-lived, magically powerful van, I'd get myself some kind of undead mount, or atleast a magical construct along the lines of a golem, and I definitely wouldn't use a horse design, because it's too easy for even a good rider to suffer a freak accident and fall off-even immortal Vans have necks and spines to break. Who wants to spend a thousand years in a wheelchair?
Horses are good because there's a lot of them, because they're big and strong, because they're generally friendlier than a camel, and because they can travel faster over short distances than a human. A human is a much better long distance walker. We can outwalk almost any other animal. Horses are good mounts for humans, not immortals. If I were a Van with the resources-and as an immortal, I'd eventually have the resources-I'd breed myself a line of war-elephants trained and bred for both bravery and intelligence, I'd make friends with them and take good care of them so they didn't turn on me (elephants have excellent memories and can be vindictive), and I certainly would invest in some good barding. I'm not sure if it's in the Royal Hapsburg armory or not, but somewhere there's a complete, articulate suit of steel plate elephant barding. It's very impressive.

Re: Crippling...
 

But vans dont ride normal horses, they ride fast, magical super-fay horses! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: Crippling...
 

Yeah, so does my poor old grandmother in hillbilly heaven. The point is that the Vans would be weaker and more vulnerable because of their choice of mount. Maybe immortal horses are super brave and super tough and eat golden grain and spit sunshine, it still is a weak spot that should be able to be exploited in the game.

Re: Crippling...
 

I'm not sure I like to weaken Vans for thematic reasons. Maybe they could be made sort of unreliable? For example, if every turn there's a chance that Van will leave the army to do his godly things instead following commands of some pretender it will make overall Van strategy weaker without weakening Vans themselves. Not sure if there's such code in the game though. Gladiators leave after the battle, but with probability of 1.

Re: Will Vanheim Ever Become Spayed?
 

Just briefly, I would like to reiterate that I find Vanheim too strong on all map sizes in single player. Most folks are talking about MP, but I want to raise this again. I think a tone down associated with costs will help address this.

Also, Gandalf, thank you for the ideas on random maps and working to get it part of the vanilla game. One of the weaknesses of Dom II was the limited number of maps available without downloading. The random maps add a great deal to the playing experience for the game, “out of the box.”

Re: Will Vanheim Ever Become Spayed?
 

I'm a bit doubtful a human outwalks a dog or a horse.

Re: Will Vanheim Ever Become Spayed?
 

Van pricing is even more ridiculous when compared to KotC, who cost 16% gold more, and ... 5 times the resources, for lower stats except the 20 prot and the "big" lance (all that is heavily factored in the 61 resource cost !).
I suggest Vans to be at least 100-120 gold, or even 150 ! Don't forget that with Dom3 high gold income you can readily have 1000+ gold/turn on turn 10-12, quite easy with those wondrous vans, plus they don't cost much upkeep thanks their sacredness...

Re: Will Vanheim Ever Become Spayed?
 

Humans are very good walkers comparativly. Horses are seen as strong, as they carry us, but actually spend most of the day standing in place, eating grass.

Have you heard about the hunting of kangaroos? You just follow it all day. It will hope away each time you get close, so you just keep going. That night, you both lie down to rest. In the morning, you walk over and hit it in the head. The lactic acid build up is so much the kangroo (built for sprints) cannot move the next day, but the human is just fine.

Speaking of which, we need kangaroo's in this game. Perhaps in Dom 4 we can have a nation with that mythology in it. Kangaroos jumping over heavy infantry and attacking archers/mages?

Re: Will Vanheim Ever Become Spayed?
 

A line of ae buff spells making troops illusion immune or low level big ae spells doing 1 dammage would be sufficient to balance the game, if well distributed between paths.

Some ideas :
low level evocation fire or water spells doing only -1 AN dammage (max 1 hp like a whip) but in a large ae
low level nature alteration spell "owl eyes", medium ae, giving darkvision + making troops illusion immune
low level astral thaumaturgy or alteration spell "true seing", small ae making troops illusion immune
a level 5 version of true seing, large ae cost a gem, making troops illusion immune
a level 7 version of true seing, making all troops on the battlefield illusion immune
high level ritual version of owl eyes or true seing, make all troops illusion immune on a province for 1 + (extra gems) turns and give a patrol bonus to these troops
(illusion immune troops will also have bonuses against phantasmal creatures and some spells)
high level earth BF enchant "Truth of Weight", the earth only allow creatures having a weight to continue to exist, dispel all mirror images as well as phantasmal warriors and false horrors

Re: Will Vanheim Ever Become Spayed?
 

Thanks for the thanks. Its good for people to "pay" for free things by thanking the ones that have helped accomplish stuff that someone would like to see more of. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

But I really havent seen the Van problem in solo games. I dont think Van has won a single one of mine. Of course I do tend to play really large maps with lots of choke-points, very hard independents, and in MP games its usually a victory point game. Those things tend to create a very different playing field.

Re: Will Vanheim Ever Become Spayed?
 

Freezing Mist, W3A1, Evoc 3, 1 AN damage on AoE of 4+. Only mediocre range.
Darkvision would become even less useful than it currently is. Some nations are supposed to have a benefit. It only comes into play in very late game (Darkness) or when they defend their castles (Cave Castle, Cave Citadel etc), and if anyone with Nature (anyone after a while) could circumvent this, well... I'd rather have few illusion-strong nations than few underground ones made even weaker.

Eye of the Void is Constr 4, S1 and gives the commander with it an ability to dispel nearby illusions, similar to your suggested True Seeing ability. Regeneration (Thaum 3, N3 for AoE 1, Thaum 8, N4 for whole battlefield), reinvigoration (Relief) and increased magic resistance (Tempering the Will, Antimagic) are other abilities that a commander gets from Constr 4 item, and as you can see, abilities of this level aren't given to units in low-level spells. It isn't a perfect comparison, of course, but I don't think "true seeing" is supposed to be that easy to come by.

What about flying creatures? Mistform? Ethereal? True ethereal? Capability of canceling out Mistform and mirror images (both Air effects) would work; being unable to affect flying units would make Valkyries immune. Affecting ethereal creatures would be strange as it would kill Ghosts and such. Dispelling Phantasmal creatures would be strange because then this would be a very spesifically anti-Air spell.

Re: Will Vanheim Ever Become Spayed?
 

Darkvision will become useful once maps will be made with (dark) cave provinces, then spells will be needed to grant darkvision.

Eye of the Void is the cheapest +2 penetration item, don't know if anybody already made one for the anti-illusion flavor effect.

Freezing mist is a crosspath spell including a level 3 skill so isn't a common spell. I was thinking about a spell a common elemental mage can cast (say f2 *or* w2).

The last spell is of course another anti-illusion spell and illusions are an air magic thing. As air is near impossible to develop with a non air nation, it's one of the many anti air spells that should exist out of air magic.

Re: Will Vanheim Ever Become Spayed?
 

The KotC has better attack, strength, hit points and morale than the Van, although the Van is a better unit thanks to glamour, very high defence and a low resource cost.

Vanheim is a cool nation, and I'd hate to overdo things and end up with Vans being useless. Better to take things slowly.

Re: Will Vanheim Ever Become Spayed?
 

Hello, all...

As a longtime forum lurker, I've watched a lot of debates. I'd like to point out one thing, and ask someone to run a test...

(As an aside, I've played a piece of one MP game, which is why I'm asking for someone to test this idea)

Vans are susceptible to AoE attacks. Everyone acknowledges this. The earliest and most easily spammable AoE I know of is the Magma Children for EA Agartha. It's Conjuration 2 or 3, and has the Flame Strike attack. Can anyone do a realistic test of a turn 10-12 attack on Agartha by Helheim?

I only ask because my EA Agartha game, I was up against Helheim and Ulm (SP, of course), and I had much worse problems against Ulm, typically. Magma Children and the Earth Elementals did a real number on the Glamoured units, and Troglodytes are useful against the unmounted ones...

Of course, you also have easy access to Blade Wind and the Magma spells, but those are a bit too far away to take seriously in a rush, right? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Anyways, just a point...

Re: Will Vanheim Ever Become Spayed?
 

AoE attacks, and trample, are both good suggestions. Abysia can recruit Salamanders, whose attack has AoE 1 IIRC. They should also work well, at least for one turn before they are butchered.

Fire Shield is also very good. Again, EA Agartha has Magma Children and EA Abysia the Burning Ones.

Re: Will Vanheim Ever Become Spayed?
 

Hmmm I didnt think of heat or cold auras as being an area attack. Thats really a good point for the fast games.

Re: Will Vanheim Ever Become Spayed?
 

This thread moves to fast

To address the question of a human outwalking a horse or a dog: The Zulu in their heyday could RUN 50 miles, fight a full scale battle, and then RUN back. That's not just one Zulu, that was a whole Zulu division. At the battle of Marathon, a Greek soldier ran something like 26 miles in full armor (he delivered the message of victory and then promptly dropped dead, but still). 20 miles is no problem for a typical healthy human being. The problem isn't the distance, it's motivation. I myself am fat, I've got flat feet, and painful arthritis, and I can walk 12 miles at a stretch. Mind you, there are painful consequences, and it takes me about 3 days to recover, but I have done such a thing before and could again if I found it necessary. Humans get a bad rep compared to the rest of the animal kingdom, but we can wear anything out, eventually, and we can survive in more extreme conditions than just about anything, too, atleast among the "higher" forms of life. We're also able to eat more different types of food than most, and store that food as fat (not a bad survival trick), we have, as far as I know, the finest sense of taste (not smell, mind you) in the whole animal kingdom, and we can deal with both land and-to a limited degree-water environments.

We're not firmly on top of the food-chain by mistake, friends and relatives, and it wasn't just our brains and opposable thumbs that put us here.

Re: Will Vanheim Ever Become Spayed?
 

Of course athletes can run 26 miles, they do it all the time, but I don't think the "original" marathon was done in full armor. I'd certainly leave MY armor behind.

I'm squarely in the middle of the food chain http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif

Re: Will Vanheim Ever Become Spayed?
 

When I walked to Santiago de Compostela (1000 miles) we met a guy on a horse that made the same journey. We met him for a couple of days before he advanced ahead of us. I think he traveled slightly faster then a human, but for a shorter time each day not to exhaust his mount. By the time we met him he had been traveling for several weeks IIRC. It was just before we crossed the pyrenées and he was a bit worried that his horse 'Pedro' (strange that I don't remember the name of the man, but his horse) would become worse in its hind leg that was a bit exhausted and shaky (or whatever happens to tired horses). So my impression is that hoses are able to travel faster, but are less durable and might need some rest or so once in a while. Not that we didn't rest :-)

Re: Will Vanheim Ever Become Spayed?
 

He definitely did it in armor as far as I know, he was afraid of running into the enemy along the way, so he carried weapons and armor. And that's the thing about humans vs horses-humans can travel steadily and wear down a horse if the horse has to keep moving. Stopping and starting is fine for a horse, but a human hunter might not give the horse the option. That's also why wolves hunt in packs, because an individual wolf quickly gets tired, while a pack can relay off and give it's members time to recover in a long hunt.

Re: Will Vanheim Ever Become Spayed?
 

I disagree. I happen to have some experience with riding and horses.

The young healthy and strong horse with a rider who knows how to take good care of his horse, and with enough good food (not the grass type of food that horse may be able to find during the breaks, but the real horse food) will cover much longer daily distance then human, and will be able to do it consistently over more or less unlimited period of time, as long as the rider is taking good care of the horse.


Also biologically humans are quite weak comparable to many animals. The reason why we got on the top of the food chain are not our fragile bodies, small teeth and lack of claws, lack of fur to protect against cold, very weak (by animal standards) hearing and sense of smell, lack of night vision, extremely slow and inefficient reproduction system, et cetera, et cetera...

The reason we got to the top of the food chain and become dominant lifeform on this palnet, despite being rather weak race, is our brain, which helped us to overcome all these weaknesses. One might argue that humans developed intelligence exactly because they were so weak, and they needed it to survive competing against better prepared species and hostile enviroment.

Re: Will Vanheim Ever Become Spayed?
 

That may be the case, but it would be circumstantial. You're postulating a certain horse supplied with certain food traveling over certain ground against a certain opponent. I don't disagree with the assessment in theory, but you're talking about a horse PLUS a human VS a human, that throws the experiment off. Animal vs animal is a whole other deal since one of the reasons humans perform so well is by using our brains. We're talking a flat stretch of more or less constant motion. Again, in your experiment, the horse would be stopping and starting at the discretion of it's rider, not motivated by it's own fear. Don't forget also that some humans can travel 50 miles at a stretch, day after day. That's a good run even for a horse. I know horses might be able to go 70 miles or more, but they also tend to take more wear and tear than a human does and tend to recover from injury more slowly if at all.

Re: Will Vanheim Ever Become Spayed?
 

Well, I won't disagree that humans are weaker than a bear, have worse vision than an eagle, breed more slowly than a rat, etc. But my point is that in some ways, we can compete against animals, and even are superior in a few areas besides our brains. Ofcourse, our brains are our greatest advantage but not our only one, and one might also argue that our brains are just another area for sexual competition that happen to have given us a few short-term advantages. 8,000 years isn't a long time, and that's pretty much the limit that we've been on top of the food chain. Brains aren't the perfect tool for survival anyhow. Einstein had what's considered to be one of the finest brains in history, and he paved the way for the atomic bomb.

Re: Will Vanheim Ever Become Spayed?
 

He probably didn't do it at all. Check
Pheidippides in Wikipedia

Re: Will Vanheim Ever Become Spayed?
 

I have also heard how people in africa would hunt deer with a spear by chasing down the deer until it fell from exhaustion. Now that's real hunting.

Re: Will Vanheim Ever Become Spayed?
 

You've missed by several orders of magnitude. Try 200.000+ years rather than 8000 years, beginning at least at the Middle Paleolithic Era. 8000 years ago people were already living in the large settlements, having relatively advanced agriculture knowledge and irrigation systems, were hunting other species to extinction, et cetera, et cetera.

The example of horse + man being overrun by man was mentioned by Kristoffer, not me. My reply regarding horses was addressing that scenario.


As for atomic bomb - it is rather irrelevant to the discussion of human anatomy. But since you've mentioned it - it could be argued that since the invention of atomic bomb there was not a single major conflict for the last 60+ years between powers who had nuclear weapons. While before that there were two World Wars in the previous 25 years in which almost hundred of millions people died, and countless major wars before that.



Although what any of this has to do with Helheim, I have no idea... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: Will Vanheim Ever Become Spayed?
 

I think we can safely say we've gone off-topic...ooops.

The presence of the atomic bomb-as opposed to those types of "conventional" wars that were being fought before 1945-allows for complete non-survivability of all major forms of life on Earth. It's not the fact that it has probably saved hundreds of millions of lives-It may well have done so, and I'm glad that it was invented, personally. It still remains a singular non-survivable technology if used to it's full potential. Biological weapons would most likely not affect all species, they might wipe out humans but not life on earth. Nanotechnology might have that non-survivable factor in it's prime, but we're no where near that now.

As for Pheidippides, aren't myths wonderful? Still doesn't outdo the Zulu who were 19th century.

As far as the neolithic age, we were top predators for the last 200,000-250,000 years, but I wouldn't say that we were firmly established as the ultimate top of the food-chain until we started to form permanent settlements and could really influence our environment-after all, the cave bear successfully kept us out of large swaths of territory for a long time. In modern times, so has the Tzitsi fly (I hope I spelled that right), but in that case, it's inevitable that we have or will push into those areas. A major plague or natural disaster could have wiped us out before, or another animal-Neanderthal for instance-could have taken our place, or we could have not survived the last ice age. Things that keep us on top are communities, agriculture, and advanced toolmaking. Until we had those, our position on top of the food chain was precarious. I'll concede that we may have been THE top predator for the last 20,000 years, but I still think the last ice age could potentially have wiped us out.

Re: Will Vanheim Ever Become Spayed?
 

I thought wolves and other kinds of dogs are among the best endurance runners in the world, and that is not the reason why wolves hunt in packs.

Can I get references(links) to these zulu that can run 80 kilometers, have a full combat, and run 80 kilometers back? And no, not a refernce to just one of them, but a 'division'.

Thanks:)

Also, abuot the horse and the rider being two entities and thus this has something to do with them enduring more. Well, you, your shoe manufacturer, your food manufacturer etc are also many entities. Can you really walk 50 miles a day and hunt your own food while carrying weapons necessary for hunting? ... and do this with clothes you've done yourself. If you want to compare a lone human to a lone horse endurance-wise - remember to abandon all tools and preparation. Or be prepared to let the horse get help like you do... Also, if you bring in athletes and people who are used to walking and hunting - also remember to bring in horses specifically bred or trained for long range travel, thank you:)

Re: Will Vanheim Ever Become Spayed?
 

Another point on the horses vs humans, coming from the Wikipedia article, how about climbs of mountains. Most folks switch to mules or go all the way over to human porters. Part of it is we are monkeys, but part of it is that we do better in varied terrain.

Most folks think marathons are the longest people should run. However, in South Africa, the standard is set by something called Comrades. They run between two cities, reversing the direction each year and the distance is 89 km/56 miles Further, they have lots of road races of unusual distances, often longer than marathons. My point is that the numbers of people getting involved is substantial and while most modern humans are in the middle of the food chain, historic humans, even average ones, exercising much more than we do today, could do amazing things. While diet is generally better today, I suspect that the top soldiers of any age ate well most of the time, so they would not have suffered malnutrition as much as the average person.

This is just to say the historic Marathon runner is plausible. Further, in contrast to what another poster suggested, it is quite possible he ran it nude! The Greeks liked to strip down and run “gymnos,” with the idea that carry as little weight as possible to go faster. Think of all the icons you see, the early Olympics. They are nude. This historic figure would not have needed weapons, after all, they had just won the battle.