Chapter 956 Zhou Xu's Thoughts
Grassland City was not far from Black Moon City. Under the escort of the elven knights, Zhou Xu arrived quickly in a carriage.
Completely different from the prosperous Black Moon City, the existence of Grassland City today is mainly based on functionality.
For the herdsmen on the grassland, the grassland city is actually a large market where they purchase daily necessities.
On weekdays, most herdsmen do not live in cities. Their lives mainly depend on grazing on the grasslands. They camp and rest wherever they graze.
The entire living conditions and customs here are completely different from those in other cities in the Great Zhou.
In this way, the scale of Caoyuan City is actually not that large, and it does not need to be built too large. Zhou Xu only spent half a day to complete a simple inspection of the city, and then took a carriage and rushed out of the city.
The next place he was going to was the largest and most important horse farm in the Great Zhou! "Your humble servant Ma Guotao, I pay my respects to Your Majesty!"
There are also restaurants in Caoyuan City. As a horse farm owner, Ma Guotao is definitely a high-income person in the Great Zhou Dynasty, so naturally he is a frequent customer of restaurants.
Through the storyteller, Ma Guotao also knew that their Great Zhou had grown stronger and stronger over the years, and the core figure who brought all this was their Majesty! In this case, his respect for Zhou Xu was also growing day by day.
"No need to be polite."
After meeting Ma Guotao, Zhou Xu also showed concern for the breeding and training of war horses in recent years.
As an outstanding talent, Ma Guotao is quite capable and he has managed the grassland horse farm in an orderly manner over the years.
Under this premise, he selects good horses every year and continuously optimizes the breeding. Now the grassland horse farm can produce war horses stably every year, and the number is increasing year by year.
And the BMWs like the Arabian horse have now been initially bred to a certain scale.
While they were talking, Zhou Xu, who had just finished a brief tour of the horse farm with Ma Guotao, took the opportunity to change the topic to business.
"It's like this. Aren't our troops in the southern border of the Great Zhou fighting the rat people right now? In the battle report sent back from the previous battle, the Xianzhen Camp reported a situation to me..."
That’s right, this time he came to the grassland mainly to discuss this issue with Ma Guotao.
During the conversation, Zhou Xu briefly told Ma Guotao about the problem of the Xianzhen Camp's war horses not being able to keep up with the physical strength.
After understanding the situation, Ma Guotao pondered for two seconds, then slowly spoke...
"Your Majesty, this is actually a common problem of heavy cavalry. Take the heavy cavalry in our Chinese history for example. They all have this problem. This is also the biggest reason why heavy cavalry was gradually eliminated later."
Although Ma Guotao was a horse ranch owner before he traveled through time, he was relatively familiar with cavalry units in the cold weapon era, after all, they were related to horses.
Sometimes, their horse farm will also hold some riding events for promotion.
"If Your Majesty wants to improve this problem, you can consider using draft horses."
"Tell me more about it."
"Draft horses are used to pull goods. They are good at endurance and strength, but poor in flexibility and speed. If the equipment of the trap camp is added, the speed will probably be even slower."
At this point, Ma Guotao hesitated for a moment, but finally decided to express his thoughts.
"In fact, Your Majesty, have you ever considered giving up the heavy cavalry and changing the configuration of the trap camp to light armor? In this way, the physical strength of the war horses will not be a problem at all."
Having said this, Ma Guotao completely let go and spoke out all his thoughts.
"In the era of cold weapons, although the heavy armored cavalry had great lethality, they could only inflict one strike, and because of their limited mobility, they needed the coordination of multiple parties to inflict effective damage."
"Although it is possible to achieve significant results once it is successfully used, the conditions for use are harsh and the investment is huge. There are not many occasions where it can be used, and the cost-effectiveness is too low."
"Besides, as long as the crossbow troops appear on the battlefield, it will be easier to target the heavy cavalry. It would be better to switch to something more mobile."
I have to say that Ma Guotao is indeed quite knowledgeable.
However, he obviously didn't know that within their Great Zhou, they had already developed individual crossbows, and even the formation of crossbow units had begun.
In addition, the dwarves of Copperforge had built a crossbow unit earlier than them.
Of course, Zhou Xu had no plans to tell Ma Guotao about this military intelligence for the time being, and the other party didn’t need to know it either.
As for the cost-effectiveness of heavy cavalry, no one had discussed this with him before, but now that Ma Guotao had opened the conversation, he didn't mind having a good discussion about it.
"I have actually considered all these issues regarding the heavy cavalry, but have you ever thought that the Xianzhen Camp is not just a simple cavalry?"
"The positioning of the Xianzhen Camp has always been an all-round soldier. They are cavalry when mounted and infantry when dismounted. If the battlefield requires, they can even become archers."
"From the perspective of cavalry, heavy cavalry is not cost-effective, but what about heavy infantry?"
Zhou Xu's question silenced Ma Guotao.
Zhou Xu didn't care about this and continued talking.
"The positioning of the trap camp means that they need to rush to the most dangerous places on the battlefield. They are always at risk of being surrounded by the enemy. They are often surrounded by enemies on all sides. When fighting as heavy armored infantry, without the protection of armor, how can they ensure that their combat power can be fully exerted?"
Ma Guotao really couldn't answer this question right away.
Just like Zhou Xu said, he only considered the value of the Xianzhen Camp as cavalry, but did not consider the value of the Xianzhen Camp as an all-round soldier! "So the next step is to train draft horses for the Xianzhen Camp to serve as mounts?"
There was still some uncertainty in Ma Guotao's voice.
"As I said just now, if we use draft horses, the speed of the Xianzhen Camp will probably become even slower. In fact, we don't have many excellent draft horses in the Great Zhou. If I start to breed horses with excellent endurance and strength now, I don't think I will see any results in a few years if I want to breed suitable draft horses."
After listening to Ma Guotao's concerns, Zhou Xu shook his head.
"Old Ma, have you ever heard of strange beasts and extraordinary creatures?"
“I’ve heard of it.”
Ma Guotao was stunned for a moment, and then his expression quickly became interesting.
"Your Majesty, do you want to..."
"I have an idea now."
Zhou Xu slowly spoke...
"If I get a drop of blood from a supernatural being and feed it to a good enough Ferghana horse, is there a chance that it will evolve?"
“…”
"Once it succeeds, it will at least be a different beast. If we're lucky, it can evolve into a supernatural creature in the future! When the time comes, we can breed it, and the warhorse born will definitely have better physical fitness than an ordinary Arabian horse!"
“…”
(End of this chapter)
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