Size of armies

[Delbareth]

Hello!

During my last game session, I was wondering about the size of an army. How many men/orcs/ogres/whatever compose a typical army?

The only comparison I have is found in Tolkien book (Unfinished Tales). It gives some explainations about the Gondor army. During the War of the Ring, Gondor has sent 7,000 men at the Mordor's door. It is said that this is a quite small army since it corresponds to the rearguard of what was the Gondor's army during the great time. It is said that the Gondor's real army size should be approximately 70,000 men! Well this is an example of the army of a powerfull kingdom.
I don't remeber (shame on me) if a number is given for the Sauron's army. It is said 10,000 orcs in Mordor in the movie but I doubt it's in the books (too low in my opinion).

Now the same question can be applied to Khoras. In particular what would be the size of the Khartus' army. It is said "horde of Khartus" but how many orcs does it represent? 30,000? 50,000? 100,000 perhaps? How many "regular" soldiers of Duthelm join them? Or what would be the army of Kitar?
Here my objective is only to have order of magnitude, not precise numbers. It's just to have an idea...

[avisarr]

I've often wondered the same thing. Just how big is an army? Well, one way to figure that out is to look at the size of battles that are fought. There are a few places we can go for reference - fantasy movies, fantasy books, historical battles, etc.

Like you said, Tolkien is one interesting resource. Let's look at some of Tolkien's fantasy battles first, just for fun. In the second Lord of the Rings film, the main battle sequence was between Rohan and the orcs and uruk-hai of Saruman. Now, Saruman's army was 10,000. I think there are several sources that say that. Theoden, the King of Rohan, was shocked by that number. He himself only had about 300 men left by the time they reached Helm's Deep. (if I remember correctly). I always thought that that was an awfully small number. They later got supplemented by about another 300 elves. So, that battle was, maybe 600 humans and elves against 10,000 baddies. Although I've seen some sources say it was 2000 humans against 10,000 orcs.

In the third movie, we saw a MUCH bigger battle. I think Mordor had more than 100,000 orcs on the battle field and at least 100,000 more in reserves and in Morder territory. I don't recall specific numbers, but that battle felt 20 times bigger than the Battle at Helms Deep and the total number involved was in the hundreds of thousands.

Probably the best place to look is at historical battles. Wikipedia has some great articles on historical battles and in many cases those pages give a rough estimate of the strength of each force. Some of the largest historical battles had huge armies. The famous Battle of Thermopylae which the movie "300" was based loosely on was huge. Some estimates do put Xerxes forces at close to one million soldiers (if you count in everything he had).

Anyway, check out this link... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_warfare#Important_ancient_battles.  Good info there.

For gaming purposes, I think it would be possible to break it down into 4 size categories.

A small battle would tens or hundreds of soldiers on each side. Up to 1000 individual combatants in total. This would be bandit raids, skirmishes and battles fought that are too small to be of historical importance.

A medium sized battle would be thousands of soldiers on each side (up to 10,000 people total on the field). This would be a battle fought during the course of a war and would make the history books. The battle would have a number. A dozen such battles might be fought during the course of a war.

A large battle would be tens of thousands on each side. Up to 100,000 people on the field total. This would be the kind of battle that would start or end a war, or topple a kingdom and so forth. These wouldn't just be historically worth, they would be focal points in history.

Very large battles would be where each side has more than 100,000 soldiers. Possibly a million or more involved in to the battle. Battles of this size would be exceptionally rare. These are the kinds of battles that would topple an empire, involve the death of a god or perhaps the end of an Age and the beginning of a new Age.

So, that gives you a rough starting point.

If you want to talk about how big a particular army is, you could make it a simple percentage of the size of a nation and vary that based on the characteristics of the nation. I would say that an army would be anywhere from 0.5% to 5% the size of a nation depending on how militant they are. So, a nation of 15 million might have an army of about 150,000 total troops (going by 1%).

A quick search on Wikipedia shows that most nations in the modern world have less than 1% of the nation as active military personnel. I don't know if that percentage was true a thousand years ago. If I had to guess, I would bet that most kingdoms in ancient times would have been able to field more than 1% by conscripting militias and reserves and so forth. If you've got a small kingdom and hordes of orcs are pouring out of the mountains, you shove a sword or a pitchfork in the hands of every able bodied man you have and send them off to war.

Anyway, those are my somewhat hastily assembled thoughts on the topic.

And yes, I am aware that this is an area of detail that is sorely lacking in Khoras. I don't think I've got the size of armies listed for each nation nor much detail about some of the more important historical battles. Perhaps an upcoming spotlight? Is this information useful? Wanted?

[Spence]

Personally i think part of the beauty of Khoras is that numbers arent in fact listed.  It gives a Game Master plenty of flexibility in creating a campaign.  As a game master you always want to have an ace or two up your sleeves.  Players dont always act according to your idea's, and sometimes you just need to alter things to progress a story to maintain the fun.

[tanis]

I agree with Spence, but I would say that fleshing out the historical battles would be interesting. It allows you to infer individual unit strength, quality of tactics, and all sorts of things that could prove relevant. Battles and tactics in the real world depend on specific ratios of troops, among other things, and it would be useful information in game.

[Delbareth]

I personnally would be very interested by some quantitative values about size of armies.
I don't think such numbers could be a constraint to the liberty of a GM. Moreover if a GM wants to change that, it would imply to change the equilibrium of forces (Kitaran army crushing Duthelmian one for instance).

The situation is completely different for "historical battles" since too much information on that topic could really reduce the possibilities of a GM to adapt his game. I would say that only the major battles could be given, giving all latitude to put minor battles anywhere needed.

[tanis]

Well, of course. I'm talking about the Thermopylaes, Marathons, Hastings, and Tours, not the skirmishes that lead up to them. It could even deepen Khoras, flesh it out with more directly historical lore, legend, etc. If there was a battle between a small group of Dwarves, cut off from their home, fighting dythillins and Sarthaks, and they not only survived, but also managed to turn the tide of battle and return home with minor casualties, that would be something that would remain with the culture. Of course, if you list things specifically that small, you start to cut into GM territory, but a little bit of the key battles and noteworthy dates and places shouldn't prevent any GM from doing what they'd like.

Furthermore, it's Khoras. If you don't agree with something, or you don't feel you can use something in your plot, do whatever works in that context. The website is Dave's canon world, intended to be fleshed out and realistic unlike the majority of similar worlds, so that you can play there and it not require tons of tweaking to make it feel real. If the particulars of the canon happen to overcomplicate your plot or background, then it's defeating the purpose of Khoras to follow the world to the letter. Obviously, things tend to go smoother when you keep it close, but Dave's pretty clear that his world is our sandbox, so to speak, and as long as we take good care of it, he'll let us play in the sand a bit on our own time.

Finally, I'm a HUGE history nut, especially when it comes to tactics and military history and civilizations and their great battles, so I would find it EXTREMELY gratifying.

And thanks again for the world, Dave, since I'm bragging on it anyways.

[avisarr]

Well, it sounds like there's a consensus that having some of the major historical battles detailed would be useful. So I'll work on that next month. I'll detail out just the really major battles which affected the course of history, but leave lots of wiggle room for smaller battles and exact army sizes.

I liked your sandbox metaphor. Well said.

[tanis]

Thanks a lot, Dave. It felt appropriate. Anyways, I'll be checking in from time to time, so I'll wait with anticipation for some new content.

[sid6.7]

most of the armies on my world range from 3,000 to 30,000 i used the general .5 to 1 % rule

[avisarr]

For the February spotlight, I've been focusing on historical battles. I've completed the initial work. I've spent the last couple of weeks sifting through 4000 years of history for all the nations on Khoras and compiling a list of all the major historical battles. A lot of that work was just double checking dates and names and so forth. I'm not going to claim that it's complete or perfect. I'm sure there will be spots where I've mispelled a word or skipped a detail or missed a date. I'll try to clean it up as I find those errors. But it's a good start and hopefully it's 99% correct.

So, there's a new button on the History menu, at the bottom. Historical Battles. I think I may re-organize the entire History section at a later date. But for now, I'm just going to add that new button and save the major overhaul for later.

On the list of historical battles, I've included the approximate size of the armies involved and given a brief description to connect it to its place in the overall tapestry of history.

Some of the battles include a little new information, but I haven't gone very deep yet with it. For instance, in a lot of cases, I haven't named individual commanders of armies. Also, this list, as with all of Khoras history, is a little bit "Ithria heavy". That is to say, Aggradar and Qeshir are less represented than Ithria. That's just a side effect of Ithria being the oldest and most detailed continent on the website. I hope to correct that and add more Aggradar and Qeshir into the history section eventually.

I hope the new list answers some of the questions that were raised earlier.

[olympian73]

Are there any good history books or resources that specialize in ancient/medieval military 'stuff'?  I did a quick search on amazon and lots of books on the classical civilizations came up.  I also went to the West Point library online and found some great titles (http://www.library.usma.edu/), although, I'm not sure how one might attain a copy except through purchase.  Another quick search on wikipedia 'medieval battles' and found links to many specific battles.  I clicked on 'battle of agincourt' and they listed some numbers for the French and English armies.  It might also be a good inspirational source for writing the specific details of the battle (terrain, weather, mistakes/victories, etc.).  Can wikipedia be trusted, though....anyway....hope this helps a little...

P     

[avisarr]

I would start with Wikipedia. Not only does it have a surprising amount of information on a lot of obscure battles, but I have found Wikipedia to be very accurate. I trust it.

In my opinion, Wiki is a good way to get an overview of battles. If you find one that you like and want more info, then you can get a book on it.

[tanis]

Encyclopedia Encarta said that due to Wikipedia's moderation, it's 99% accurate.

And there is tons of info, it's just where to look. The first battles to be fought with over half a million people, though are basically Napoleon's campaigns. Well, except for the very rare battles like Thermopylae, where there may have been more than a million, but they can't verify the numbers.

I'm about to look over all the new content, including this, after I finish posting on the forum, and I'm stoked for the battles. I will say that when you get the time, commanders and tactics would be nice. That would inform how later commanders will fight and what sorts of warfare they will be capable of, seeing as I have a character partially rolled up for whom strategy and tactics are a build, and it would come in handy for said character.

[Drul Morbok]

I'm just wondering to which degree historical battles are suited to compare with Fantasy battles.

I once read (few parts of) an interesting book, maybe from Gary Gygax (shame on me to forget) where it was said that "fantasy warfare technology" would be so much closer to modern warfare technology than to medieval and older one:
Historical warfare often involved combatants seeing each other without being able to harm each other. That constellation became more or less obsolete in modern warfare, and I guess that might be true in Fantasy warfare, too...you would not want to send an army, wearing colours and banners and standards over an open field against an opponent using snipers, napalm, mine fields and automatic gun turrets, and I think one might be justified in saying that many fantasy worlds seem to offer more ore less equivalents.
So maybe some battles about big cities might more properly be compared to the recent Battle for Mossul rather than to classical sieges...?

Of course I do not mean to judge about True and False in anyone's fantasy world, and I one can surely argue that fantasy scenarios do not offer the means of mass production as did the industrial revolution for historical warfare.

So I hope what I said can be unterstood as inspiring rather than restricting or judging - after all, comparing PCs to modern elite troops might be a good way to build a campaign, since mass battles are not so easily represented in game mechanics.

[tanis]

Hmm...

Well, a few thoughts in response to your question, Drul:

First off, pre-modern warfare had certain typical characteristics. For one thing, battles and wars, in general, were much smaller and more like what we would think of as skirmishes, as alluded to above. And, as you suppose, battles were fought at much shorter range. Even with things like bows and slings, which have quite good range, they were typically used at much shorter ranges than we imagine, because of the need for projectiles to retain sufficient energy to penetrate even light padding (btw, padded clothing is a surprisingly effective and historically ubiquitous form of armor, and it's a pity we don't see more of it in fantasy settings, since it was kind of the default armor for poorer/lighter soldiers for thousands of years). There's very, VERY little historical evidence for the sort of arrow volleys we see in movies, and English longbowmen, a la the Agincourt campaign, were actually trained to fire at ranges closer to 30-70 yards, just to have a chance of penetrating plate armor.

So your assumption that magic would make a difference isn't unreasonable. But then again, it seems to me that, despite the siege-engine power of certain spells, there are still considerations needed about aiming at moving targets and similar things. There's more than one reason archers fired their arrows at such short ranges, after all. If you don't hit anything, it doesn't matter how much energy your arrow has.

There's also the consideration of siege engines themselves. Much like mages, siege engines would probably be somewhat rarer than we imagine. Even in the classical era, where siege engines like ballistae and torsion catapults were reasonably common, they were still rare enough and difficult enough to build, maintain, and deploy, as well as vulnerable enough if attacked, that they were largely used the same way that medieval cannon artillery was: you saved them for cracking the toughest nuts, like fortified cities and castles, and didn't use them regularly for anti-personnel purposes. They were of enormous strategic value, but had very little tactical usage, and the men associated with their employ were usually a small handful of skilled specialists who, like the machines they operated, were typically employed rather conservatively, so as not to risk their unnecessary loss at an inopportune moment.

Probably, mages would be similar in this regard. They would certainly be of greater tactical value, and be more widely employed, but real magical skill is still, even in the most magically gifted realms, rare enough that armies aren't going to be comprised of battlemage regulars, but of something more like a magical corps, with a few units which can be fielded in battle, and some auxiliary and support forces added in. Not, I should think, all that unlike Duthelm's Black Sorcerors, a paramilitary organization which participates in combat, but is primarily involved in support roles when it goes into battle. Duthelm would suffer a huge strategic blow if the Black Sorcerors were ever to lose a significant portion of their members in one attack.

And additionally, how close would a mage have to be in real life to ensure that their fireball spell, or whatever, didn't miss its target completely, expending valuable energy for no tactical advantage? Could they really function like snipers, with near-instantaneous effect at anything less than extreme ranges, as long as they were focused on an artillery-like role? Or would they have to rely more on weaker pinpoint attacks like magic missiles to have much anti-personnel effect at range?

Now, having said that, I do think there are aspects of fantasy combat that would make rapid, blitzkrieg-style attacks more effective than they would have been in medieval or classical times, such as the ability to teleport a force somewhere, or flying mounts/Kalimuran airships/levitation, etc., but these would be relegated to small-scale tactical uses in the context of generally more medieval- and Renaissance-style land and naval battles, rather than even Napoleonic-style modern combat, with its focus on battlefield artillery, or late-19th and 20th Century combat, with its mechanized forces and enormous firepower.

Now, as for visibility, well, even today it's extremely useful to be able to visually distinguish friend from foe, as well as being able to interpret command structure, it's just that with modern weapons, as you said, it's much more dangerous to do so with vibrant colors and clear insignia. But this is, at least in theory, a setting which is heavily focused on the sort of single and small-unit combat of armored men-at-arms or high-medieval and Renaissance mercenary companies, plus, as you said, having a party of PCs be a small, tight-knit, and elite unit makes more sense from a mechanical standpoint. Because of that, I think, perhaps, the best option would be to take hints both from pre-modern combat and contemporary special forces units, without trying to focus TOO much on either conception, taking what works well for the actual unit in question.

And, finally, at the end of the day, it's a game. If the PCs want to be black bag assassins a la SEAL Team Six (which isn't, btw, part of the Navy SEALs at all, it's just a cover name for a completely unaffiliated black ops hit squad) then have at it. If they want to be a medieval mercenary company focused on winning as much loot as possible, without much in the way of modern tactical considerations, then that's fine too. Either way, if the players are having fun, and the story that's emerging is satisfying and exciting, then you've done your job.