Totte - scalars

Day trips

The distance traveled per day depends on the mode of transport. Good pre-industrial travel speeds (for lightly burdened travelers over easy terrain and good weather), in kilometers per day, are:

• By a river ship: 15
• With heavy wagons: 20
• With light carts: 30
• On foot: 40
• On horseback: 50 - 60
• By seagoing ship: 150 - 200

Travelers who take it easy cover less distance. Distances can be increased by making a forced march. This may increase the speed by a factor of 1½ or so, half from walking faster and half from walking more hours per day. Forced marches wear the travelers out and can only be maintained for a couple of days maximum. Note that walking long hours per day can be restricted by short days in winter. Traveling in the darkness is difficult, slow and brings risks of falling or getting lost.
Couriers can reach speeds up to 3 times faster than normal by frequently changing runner / mount. They travel both day and night; of course they need good roads to maintain speed and direction in the dark.
Armies, especially large ones, travel more slowly than small parties, some 20 - 30 kilometers per day on average. Soldiers are slowed down because they have to carry weapons, armor and provisions; supply trains lift some of the burden but are slow themselves. Large armies traveling on narrow roads are further constrained. Their columns can stretch so far that the vanguard can be hours ahead of the rear. If marching commences at daybreak and ends at nightfall, this can shorten the effective day length by the same amount of time.
Ships that are driven by sails instead of oars cannot make forced 'marches'; their normal speed is almost as fast as their top speed. However they can sail day and night. Their speed is heavily affected by wind and currents.

Terrain

The figures presented above are for humans walking on solid ground without severe obstacles. Moving through rough terrain slows you down. These effects are represented by multiplication factors. Four classes of terrain are considered:

• Light: flatlands with solid ground and few obstacles; gently rolling hills; light forest
• Medium: plains with boulders and pebbles; sand-deserts; steep hills; medium forest
• Heavy: mountains, dense forest / jungle; swamp; flatlands covered with a thick layer of snow
• Ultra-heavy: steep cliffs; lakes of quicksand; underground caves

Medium terrain slows travel down to ¾ normal speed; heavy terrain to ½ normal. There are no simple rules for ultra-heavy terrain, which forces humans to climb, swim, slide or move in another difficult way. Day-journeys on foot across ultra-heavy terrain are at ¼ normal speed at best.

The presence of a well-maintained or -built solid road lowers the terrain category by one. So a good road through heavy terrain makes it equal to medium terrain for movement purposes and a similar path through medium terrain enables you to travel full speed. A road through light terrain offers no substantial advantages to humans traveling on foot. However it can still be (very) useful for carts and wagons.
Lesser roads, like dirt-roads, also lower the terrain category by one but are prone to deteriorate in bad weather like heavy rainfall. In this situation their movement acceleration effect is lost, but they may still be necessary to drive carts and wagons as the surrounding terrain may be too uneven or littered with obstacles.
Minimal roads like walking trails or forest animal trails are assumed to be part of the terrain and be used during travel. If they are absent or purposefully evaded travel becomes harder, for instance a medium forest may count as effectively heavy terrain.

Humans

When you take a load upon your shoulders so that you no longer carry just your own body weight, your speed is slowed down. Totte helps to quantify by dividing loads into five levels. The weight limit ("X" in the table) for each encumbrance level depends on strength; these are listed also, in kilograms.

There are other ways of moving loads beside carrying it, of course. Most are less exerting and allow for greater weights:

• Drag or push across the floor: maximum load varies wildly, depending on the smoothness of the object bottom and the surface it is dragged or pushed upon. Values lie somewhere between 1 and 4 times heavy encumbrance limit.
• Pull on wheels: maximum load = 10 * heavy encumbrance limit for a two-wheeled cart, 20 times for a four-wheeled wagon. Double these weights on a good (hard-surface) road; triple them if the tires are modern pneumatic tires.

Animals

A few species of animals that can be tamed and are strong can be used to transport and pull loads. Numbers in the tables below are averages for adult animals. Note that many historical animals, especially horses, are smaller than their modern descendants. Also note that in some species, females are a lot smaller and lighter than males, while in others the difference is less pronounced.
Grazing animals can be fed with fodder, usually a mix of hay and barley, sometimes also oats, corn, alfalfa or other types of food. If there is grass, animals can graze along the way, though this slows them down. Normal horses need grass, but steppe horses, goats, donkeys and the like are much less picky. Dogs need meat or fish.

Pack animals are most suited to carry loads on their back. The load listed below can be carried without too much difficulty for a day, though on treks of many days it should be lowered to prevent wearing out the animal. Heavy loads, some 25% heavier, slow the animal down and can be carried only for half a day or so; 50% heavier loads only a quarter day. Speeds are for carrying a normal load over level terrain. The number of hours per day is the maximum number of hours per day that the animal can do heavy work, like carrying loads; other hours are needed for grazing and resting. Likewise, the consumption of food and water is for working animals; less work means a lower need for food and water.

Draft animals are mostly bovines, slower but bigger and stronger than pack animals. They are most suited for pulling sledges, carts and wagons on the road or plows and treadmills in the fields. Several species have relatively weak spines that make them unsuitable for carrying substantial loads on their back.
The pull listed below is the weight that the animal can pull sustained during a working day, mixed with rest periods; the maximum number of working hours per day is listed also. Multiply by 20 when the load is carried in a cart or wagon on a hard road, by 1000 when pulling a river boat. Lower this multiplication to 12 - 13 for gravel, 10 for frozen ground, 7.5 for dry pasture, 5.5 for wet pasture or 4 for loose soil. Too narrow wheels, ungreased axles, wear and tear will also lower the effectiveness. Modern pneumatic tires are 1½ times as good as solid wheels. Sleds are only ½ times as good, though are less affected by rough or loose ground.
Speed is walking speed while pulling the load. Animals can move faster by trotting or galloping, but this wears them out quickly.
To pull loads draft animals need a proper collar. Primitive, unsuitable yokes and collars constrict their throats and significantly lessen their power, up to 25%.
Multiple draft animals can team up to pull a load, but efficiency decreases with the number of animals. As a rule of thumb, subtract 7.5% per extra animal. So for example a team of four animals pulls not 4x more than a single animal, but 4 * (100% - ((4 - 1) * 7.5%)) = 3.1x more.

Vehicles

Cereals

The basic staple of medieval food are grains, especially wheat, rye, barley and rice. High medieval grain farming, using horse/ox/buffalo-drawn ploughs, little fertilization and a three-field system in which one third of the land lies fallow each year, produces only about 1000 liters of wheat per hectare per year, for about 265 liters of seed sown, thus a yield ratio of 3.8. The numbers for other types of grain are on average better, but these grains are less palatable and worth less money. From the gross yield must be deducted sowing seed for the next year, food for the farmers and their animals, production costs, taxes and tithes.
As a result, for a farming family of 4 - 5 people:

• 2½ hectares of arable land is the bare minimum, which requires the farmers to work mostly as wage laborers instead of farmers to make enough money
• 5 hectares ranks the farmers as poor serfs, tied to their land, who have to do some extra work to make ends meet
• 10 hectares can feed the family well, often making them free farmers who can choose their lord
• 25 hectares ranks the farmers as middle class citizens who hire others as workers
• larger estates are the domain of nobility

In a more primitive two-field system the yield ratio is only 2.5; a more advanced four-field rotation that alternates different crops can reach as high as 7; the best pre-industrial number is about 10. On fertile soils, like in well irrigated flood plains, the same 1:10 ratio can be achieved even with rather primitive methods Even higher ratios can be achieved, up to 24 on the best soils. Likewise crops like wet rice yield greater harvests than grains, though also require more manpower.

Other crops