Army size?

[J.C.]

As a broad rule of thumb, 10% of any given population is young, healthy, combat-able males. Drafting and training them is a different story.

Of course, any country that puts all of its fitest and healthiest men in ranks and sends them out to battle will have a harder time keeping the fields worked and the roads repaired.

That's why, in The Art of War, Sun Tsu advises that you should avoid war as much as possible. It is too costly and destructive to do on a whim.

Logistics will also be a problem, but that will depend on the magic level of your game.

 

[trancejeremy]

Basic D&D had a little chart that would let you figure it out for countries, based largely on tech level and sexism level.

Anyway, for a Medieval level culture, in peace time, just men, the maximum size of the army is 1.5% of the population (2.5% if women are included). In wartime, that can increase by 10.

For Rennaisance, it's 1.25% and 2%

For Stone Age it's 2.25% and 4%

For Bronze, it's 2% and 3.5%

For Classical (Roman/Greek), it's 1.75%/3%

 

[SHARK]

*BUMP*

 

[S'mon]

John Keegan in "A History of Warfare" suggests that historically a country could field at most 10% of its population without crippling its economy. Most armies are a lot smaller of course - BTW Shark the 1st century Roman army of 25 Legions was about 200,000 strong according to the figures I've seen, not sure where you got 1 million - sounds more like the situation in the Civil War period up to circa 40 BC.

High medieval armies numbered up to about 30,000 fielded in one place, Napoleonic up to 1 million, but rarely more than 120,000 in one place.

 

[S'mon]

For twentieth century armies - the WW2 US military had around 7 million men under arms, about 5% of the population. Iraq in 1990 had about 1 million out of 18 million, plus a notional 1 million reserves. Generally I think 5% of population is a practical maximum for most civilised societies' fielded armies, plus another 5% militia for emergency homeland defense.

 

[sword-dancer]

It depends on the socio-economic organsation of your empire/enemies.
You say it´s a very religious culture, depending on the religion you could muster a relative high percentage, but could you equip them, feed them, train them, and hold your economy running.
How is it with logistics and support?
An army marches on its stomach, most medival armies are supporting themselves through the chevachee, foraging, plundering and burning.
Gods have mercy for such an army when they must retreat through the same route they had attacked.
go to www.netsword.com forums and look for BrockH s threads he had a good lore of medieval supply.

SHARK

You are wrong IMHO with the roman army.
The republican army was a citizen army, a militia.
They could replace their losses with other citizens.
But that could the greeks also.
After cannae the romans accepted or even recruited crminals and slaves to the legions.
A roman army consisted of two legions of Raman citizens and the same number of allied inf.
The allies had also to bring more cav than the romans.
The romans had only a greater pool of reserves and most of their enemies were numerically inferior as the celtic tribes or had smaller merc armies.
But the losses of the Varus defeat was never replaced by the legions.

 

[S'mon]

The largest fantasy army I've seen was in an Erekose novel by Michael Moorcock, the combined empires of Humanity under King Rigenos fielded an army of several million - either 2.5 or 5 million AIR. They got zapped by the Eldren.

The large empires' armies in my fantasy game number in the hundreds of thousands - the largest was the 600,000 of the Dark Empire of Hel's military, from a fully militarised society (similar to USSR) of about 18 million. More typical was the Albine Empire's army of 300,000 for an empire of 30 million.

 

[Eben]

The strenght of a roman army came from the fact that they tried not to commit to many legionaries, but they committed their allies. They considered the glory greater if no Roman blood was shed.

I a medieval world there was no such thing as a standing army. Armies were mustered when there was a need. In particularily violent times there would be large bands of mercenaries available. The Landsknecht in the early rennaisance are perhaps the most colourful example.
Large standing armies are something of a mixed blessing. They are there when you need them and they are better equiped and trained than levy troops, but they are high maintenance and can become a liability (i.e. Rome's civil wars and the later Imperial period.)

How do you go about to raise an army? Depends on your organisation: feudal lords are summoned by their lord to comle forth and bring their retinue. If the lords are obiedient, the army will be large, if not...
Roman armies were a combination of professional legionaries (citizen legionaries before Marius' reforms and auxiliarie troops supplied by allies.) Carthagian armies were mostly hired mercenaries.
Raising an army can also be influenced by the person who tries to raise it. During the hundred days campaign, Napoleon raise quite an army, thanks to the many volunteers. Louis XIV had a lot more problems raising an army at the end of the Wars of the Spanish succesion.

Since your empire in driven by religion, I would gues this would be a good basis to recruit troops. But probably these would be low grade levy troops.

 

[Mistwell]

There are pretty solid mass combat rules in the Quinessential Fighter handbook, by the way.

 

[Ysgarran]

The republican army was a citizen army, a militia.

The republican army was a militia army or an army of citizens. It wasn't until the time of Gaius Marius that Rome truly embarked on the fielding of a truly 'professional' army (and by professional I mean people who's first job was as a dedicated military man as opposed to a land owner).

To me, this signaled the eventual downfall of the Roman empire since the other side effect of this was that the soldier now owed more allegiance to the general he served than to the state itself. Violence became the method of political change rather than the rule of law. Marius used many his soldiers from his Numidian command as enforcers and political toughs in Rome. I don't think Rome really had a choice in this since the size of the Roman republic meant that the citizen was now away from his lands for too long of a time.

I was asking myself the other day if there was a way that Rome could have started fielding a professional soldier (as opposed to the citizen soldier) who owed more allegiance to state rather than the general he served. I am not sure how that could be done as long as the soldier was always payed through loot and the promise of land (the land when his enlistment was up).

A very fun game, particularly if you are partial to either Roman history or a political game is:
Republic of Rome


A link on Marius.
http://vassun.vassar.edu/~jolott/republic1998/marius/life.htm