

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. For example, the difference between 1 cavalry and 80, is the cavalry speed modifier of 2.99 and 2.62.

I always end up using a horse in battle, because it really makes the game a lot harder when you are on foot. The upkeep for high tier cavalry in your armies is significantly higher than that of infantry or archers, making an unstoppable all-cavalry army unsupportable financially until very late in the game. The base level of horses should be a lot more expensive. As far as I know, they do not dramatically increase food consumption like they would in real life either. Even these cheap saddle horses can give a huge advantage in battle. In Vanilla, and in many mods of the game, you start off with a horse or you can buy a horse for <300 denars. Horses shouldn't be nerfed any further in battle, but they do need to be nerfed on the campaign map. They are still overpowered to some extent, but they should be, because they really really were in real life. Pikes and Spears have extra bonus damage vs mounted units, creating a sort of rock paper scissors dynamic between melee units (Cavalry, Spear infantry, Sword/axe infantry). In my opinion, Floris does a fairly good job of this. Mods go some way to nerf their abilities.
