I fear this is too much to hope though.

How, Riding Horses aren't ridden into battle.  I believe that was the reasons the devs stated for why they offered no attack or defense bonus.

That logic would explain why it balances out with Heavy Warhorse for wolf riders, but not Riding Horses for swordsmen, trueshots, etc...

I'm not demanding anything.  I'm asking how it works.  We assume these crafted things will be destroyed when the troops are destroyed because that's how the cheap stuff works.  But they are making changes to the combat model.  When we attack animals they drop stuff, so it's clear that we have a new possibility in combat now.  I'm a little curious if they plan to extend that to troops or not and if so what sort of things that may imply?  I'm definitely not demanding anything though.

Well, the original question did premise that everyone did not die.  Mongol riders (in real life) would generally travel with several mounts and often switch to a fresh mount (there's a wiki for that).  The knights in this game have several mounts.  Horses are not tanks, they don't need a rider like a tank needs a driver.  Of course, horses can't do many things.  Horses can't pick up gold, spears, play backgammon or chess, but they are capable of following other horses or being led by a rider on another horse.  A single rider is more than capable of travelling with several horses and historically there have been military advantages to doing just that.  If I were a swordsman, leaving battle, getting my horse, and I saw my dead buddy's horse, I'd lead him (the horse, not the dead buddy) back.  His weapons might be broken, his armor rent, his beer drunk, but his horse (if not ridden to battle) would be fine and quite valuable.

If you (peanut gallery, not Geofrey) think it's a stupid question, that's fine.  I was just wondering "out loud".  Please forgive me.

The first is an example of a development issue.  I do not believe the game designers want troops to "desert Beneath the Misted Land" but somehow the game developers wrote a program that does that.  It's a bug.

This is a game designer question (not a request, a question).  I did premised the question with logic explaining the context of the question but it was a question (honestly).  I included that logic  because I honestly don't think the game designers will drop any player stuff (let alone consider what should or shouldn't be left and in what quantities) so I wanted to present some context for why I was asking.  Perhaps the inclusion of that logic was a mistake, sorry.  Regardless, game developers deal with trivial issues like checking to see that the number you enter in a field isn't bigger than what might sensibly be placed in that field.  Or, checking to see that a variable isn't longer than the allocated buffer/data field.  Or, determining if a data request has returned or not.  Making sure troops fight after a raze or capture "attempt", etc...  If you're not a developer, you'd be surprised at some of the things that are "top priority" from that perspective.

I believe that from a game designer perspective, what "drops" (or comes into existence or continues to exist) after combat is something the designers thought about (even if in passing).  Animal drops are a major part of the crafting update, I don't believe you think that was something the game developers did by accident.  I do realize the mechanics of my question are different but not entirely so from a game development perspective and somewhat inline with the changes made from a game design perspective.  For a game developer, you have an after combat event or function that checks the combat data (how many were there, how many died, what types, etc...) and then populates the map (or inventory in this case).  The next part of the crafting update (the development part) is to implement additional changes to the player combat mechanics.  I feel  positive that from a game designer perspective they thought up all the production, research and combat changes (and much, much more) at the same time so there is an answer to this question and I was wondering if anyone had come across it.

They would rather sell them to the horses black market and claim they were killed during an encirclement manouver ;)

KillianBlack wrote: I would think as every battle I have been in so far was to the death.... Then the riding/draught horses at best would be spoils of war, at worst die where they stood when the riders died.

You've never been in a raid, then.

See, now that's clever and logical.  

*maneuver