Training

This is where a horse's daily round is built: the session the game will apply to it every day. You get here from My trainings, by clicking a line's programme, or through the actions menu to set the same programme on several horses at once.

Almina and Bezir on one side, Chorus on the other: these are not the same rules. The same screen, but two trades. Read the section for your world.

What the window tells you on arrival

At the top, the state of the programme in place: how many times it has been carried out, the date of the last session, and a two-column table — Average progression and Total progression — line by characteristic.

The table only has a line for what training makes progress: three on Almina and Bezir — speed, resistance, suppleness —, five on Chorus, which adds obedience and constitution.

Obedience does exist on Almina and Bezir, and the horse's card displays it; it simply cannot be trained, it rises through tests — that is the jockey's business, not yours. See riding.

The average is the gain per session, the total what the programme has produced since it was set. It is your measuring instrument: no help will tell you which round makes what progress, it is up to you to discover it by comparing. A good trainer is somebody who keeps their figures.

The sentence about the last session speaks of the lad, and that is deliberate: it states the division of roles. You decide the training, the lad carries it out. Here you define the round to follow, and he is the one who applies it every day, without your having to trigger anything.

On Almina and Bezir: four kinds of ground

You choose four sections, and nothing else. Each is taken from six kinds of ground: Flat, Climb, Descent, River, Mud and Jump. A thumbnail shows the ground chosen, and two arrows scroll through the six without opening the list.

Neither length nor intensity: the session is entirely defined by the sequence of the four kinds of ground. It is simple to set, and all the subtlety of the trade therefore lies in the choice of the combination.

On Chorus: four sections to adjust

Each section carries three settings instead of one:

  • a length, from 200 to 2,000 metres in steps of 200;
  • an effort: Light, Normal or Hard;
  • a ground, from the same six as elsewhere.

Two lines displayed above frame the whole: Maximum total distance and Current total distance. The first is particular to the horse and increases with its constitution; the second is the sum of your four lengths, recalculated at each modification.

Aim at the maximum distance. Training over less means leaving potential aside — and that is exactly what the alert colour signals in My trainings. As the maximum distance rises over the career, a programme that is right today becomes too short in a few weeks: you have to come back to it.

If your total goes over the maximum, saving shortens the sections for you, beginning with the one you have just modified and never going below 200 metres. In that case a star is added to the programme's name: it is the sign that what you saved is not quite what you entered.

The methods

The Use a method list, at the top of the frame, applies a complete setting in one go. It contains two kinds of entry: your own saved methods, and a series of predefined methods, offered to everybody.

These last are shortcuts whose name announces the objective. The letters are abbreviations of the characteristics — Speed, Resistance, Suppleness, and on Chorus also Obedience and Constitution — and what goes with them says how the effort is divided.

  • On Almina and Bezir, the notation uses signs: Spe+++ puts everything on speed, Spe+Res++ gives priority to resistance while keeping a little speed, Spe+Res+Sup+ divides between the three. Up to Res+++ and Sup+++, which concentrate everything on one.
  • On Chorus, the figure is the number of sections devoted to the characteristic, speed being written Sp and suppleness Su: Sp4 puts all four on speed, R2O2 gives two to resistance and two to obedience, Sp2RO two to speed then one to each of the other two.

It is the simplest way to begin: choose the method whose name carries what you are looking for, look at the grounds it has set, and you have learned something in passing.

One difference to note on Chorus: a predefined method only changes the grounds there. Your lengths and your efforts stay as you had set them — so it does not undo your work on the distance.

And that is where the name displayed in the programme column comes from: there is no field in which to enter it. If your round corresponds exactly to one of your methods, its name is displayed; otherwise, the column shows the four grounds. Naming your settings in My methods therefore makes the list far more legible at a glance.

Careful: saving resets the counters

That is the trap of this window. At the moment of saving, the game starts again from zero: the number of sessions carried out falls back to zero and the reference values are taken from the horse's current state. Your progression measurements are therefore erased.

It is logical — a new programme deserves a new counter — but it means you must not save again a programme you are in the middle of measuring. If you open the window to look at your figures, close it again without saving.

The intensive training course

A separate tab offers a burst of acceleration: a course, which gains points at a stroke on every characteristic, within the limit of the horse's maximum, and modifies its biorhythm.

The gains as well as the risks are in no way comparable from one world to another, the genetic scales not being the same.

  • On Almina and Bezir: up to 100 points on each of the four characteristics, and a new biorhythm curve. In case of injury, up to 300 points lost on suppleness and on maximum suppleness — that lowered ceiling then rising a little each day.
  • On Chorus: up to 1 point on each of the five current characteristics and up to 0.2 point on each of the two biorhythm curves. In case of injury, up to 3 points lost on each current characteristic and 0.6 point on the biorhythms.

Note the asymmetry: on both sides, an injury costs three times what a successful course brings in. The window recalls these figures before you confirm; read them.

Three things to weigh before clicking.

  • It costs 20,000 sulkies to the horse's owner, not to you. The window shows you his balance, in fact, and refuses the course if he cannot pay. Ask for his agreement: it is not your money.
  • A horse can injure itself during the course, with the consequences given above in figures. It is not a risk in principle only.
  • A fortnight minimum between two courses. While the delay runs, the tab displays the date from which the next will be possible.

Once the course has been done, a Before the course / After the course table shows you what it produced — and warns you if the horse has injured itself.

The other tabs

The window also carries the horse's description, its genetics, and its notepad, modifiable without leaving the screen. Take the chance to note what you observe: that is what will serve you in a month, when you no longer remember what you had tried.

In the same section