Depredation (Civ6)/Civilopedia

Light cavalry were famed for depredation – not pillage or plunder, which entails carrying stuff off. Among early raiders, this was the most common and effective form of warfare since they generally couldn’t face an organized army in a stand-up fight. These depredations could lay waste to whole regions, the chevauchée (literally, “horse charge”) popular during the Hundred Years War, such as that carried out by the Black Prince in southern France in 1355 AD. The Prophet Muhammed preached the use of depredation during Islam’s initial expansions, a strategy perfectly suited to the highly mobile Arab forces. As a policy, depredation lasted into the Napoleonic and American Civil wars, after which it fell out of favor.